by R. J. Blain
But I knew better.
For hours, I whittled while I watched in hope of hearing or witnessing something, but the crews kept eerily quiet, and the conversations reaching me exposed work commentary and little else. None of the gossip I needed manifested, and when the hour drew too late for me to remain, I scuttled off the roof and returned to Central Park, my newest home until further notice.
I could only hope I wouldn’t have to hunt for a miscreant while on the streets.
I had long ago tired of death, especially mine.
Night after night led me to bust after bust, with one bright spot consisting of an easy meal. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve vetted the miscreant before taking the opportunity, but the young couple he’d made the mistake of attacking in an alley needed help, I thirsted, and my frustrations outweighed my caution.
Both humans would need medical care, bitten and drained although still alive. According to their wallets, they lived in Manhattan, and the presence of their health cards and numerous credit cards, including a prized black American Express, implied they were wealthy.
The woman might remember me, a problem I’d have to deal with later down the road; I’d caught her staring in my direction while I finished my grizzly, foul work of draining the asshole vampire dry and decapitating him.
To make sure that someone would come along and rescue them, I took the woman’s phone, called the police, and reported the murder of a vampire who had attacked two humans.
My growled voice might hide my identity—I hoped. I blamed my temper for the annoyance in my tone, days of thirst for its hoarseness, and my desire to kill the jackass again for my choice of clipped words. Then, I left the call connected near the woman’s head, stole the vampire’s jacket, and covered her in hopes it would ward off the chill until an ambulance arrived. Uncertain of how to comfort her, I prepared to leave. In the off chance she might listen, I put a bloody finger to my lips before departing, taking my precious stake with me along with the bastard’s head.
Instead of making the hike to Harlem as I’d done every night before, I bypassed the neighborhood, searching for a place to make certain the miscreant would never bother someone again. Along the shore, I discovered a garbage truck making its rounds, and one toss later, the head joined the rest of the junk being crushed, which I hoped would be sufficient to keep him from getting back up.
The bad taste of miscreant blood lingered for days after my kill, and while I still ventured into Harlem in search of news, I returned to my old ways. Sometimes, I wondered if Emerick and his brood had found what they’d wanted from Breckenan. I should have cared more about joining the hunt for my maker.
My uncertainty over the circumstances of becoming a vampire prevented me from pursuing that truth.
I believed Clarke.
I didn’t want to remember.
Upon finishing my first stake, I sought out a new tree for my next piece, one I’d use the instant I found the courage to face what I couldn’t dredge from my memory. I’d whisper Breckenan’s name while I carved, and I’d steel my nerve until I found the strength I needed to put aside the circumstances of my transformation into a vampire so I could truly move on with my life. I’d even do my best to fulfill my odd and questionable vows to Emerick.
Had I made a mistake?
Time on the streets offered no answers.
That left me with the problem of carving my next stake, and I didn’t need help figuring out where I’d get the wood. The Alley Pond Giant made the perfect target, and at over a hundred feet tall, I’d be challenged to get as close to the top of it as possible to retrieve a dead branch that hadn’t yet fallen to the ground. The poplar was likely one of the oldest living things in the entirety of New York City, second possibly to some preternatural like Clarke.
If its wood couldn’t help me dispatch the vampire who’d forced me into a life I hadn’t wanted, I doubted anything would.
The hike from Manhattan Island to Long Island took the entire night, and I took shelter from the sun in a bat-filled attic in Queens. The bats protested my presence for a few minutes before we all settled down for an uneasy alliance and a day of rest.
I needed to remember that the stench of guano lingered and made a mess of leather—a mess I’d hate cleaning if I ever made it back to civilization. No, I doubted even magic could get the guano out of my leather, and it would take more than a miracle to convince me to show up anywhere someone I knew might catch me smelling worse than a garbage disposal.
I found some comfort that the trees didn’t care what I smelled like. In the deepest part of the night, Alley Pond Park slept, including the homeless who dozed on their chosen benches and various other hiding places around the park. I tiptoed around the transient residents, careful to avoid waking them while I searched for the massive poplar in the heart of the park.
To my relief, nobody lurked nearby, and I wasted no time climbing as high as I could without damaging the tree. After what felt like an eternity of searching, I located a branch, which had snapped sometime recently, too far gone to save but still new enough the core of the wood had yet to die.
I’d never carved a stake with any life left in it before, and I wondered what would happen—or if it would even work.
“Sorry,” I murmured to the tree before stealing the branch, which was almost as thick as my wrist and as long as my forearm. It’d be the largest of my stakes, although I’d found size didn’t matter for my purposes.
I could carve a toothpick and find use for it.
Hmm. With that thought in mind, I lingered a little longer, until I found a twig that suffered from a similar fate to my branch, and I made a point of apologizing to the tree again before making off with my bounty.
As I wasn’t inclined to spend another night with the bats and their guano, I searched Queens for a place suitable for a vampire to hide, discovering that Long Island had taken steps to prevent my kind from taking unwanted residence.
Cursing my fouled luck, I rejoined the bats, although I pilfered newspaper and a few plastic bottles from a recycling bin in order to clean a space for myself rather than roll in bat refuse again.
The next time I suggested I should return to the streets, I hoped someone would smack the sense back into me. I accepted my fate with a sigh and kept the bats company, aware I needed a plan more substantial than stealing wood from trees and carving stakes.
One certainty remained: Emerick had changed me, waking me to the real possibility of having a future more substantial than hunting miscreants and drinking their blood. That alone was all the motivation I needed to get off my ass, accept what I couldn’t change, change what I could, and get on with the rest of my life. Somehow.
I worked on the twig first and found carving the equivalent of a toothpick to be a more daunting task than I’d believed possible. The wood liked to warm my hand and relax me, as though it sought to comfort me. It reminded me of being wrapped in a warm blanket in a soft bed, fully embraced while also cherished. It’d been so long since I’d experienced safety and security that I cried while I worked. In time, I supposed Emerick might have provided such things, but I’d been too focused on the past to notice if he’d awoken those emotions in me.
I hadn’t trusted him with that. Not yet. I wondered if I would.
Considering I roosted with a bunch of bats, the leather he’d given me had seen better days, and I’d have to hunt another miscreant sooner than later, I had my doubts. But I wondered.
Assuming I could curb my pride, or make myself a little easier to find, I’d be able to learn if we could make a relationship work.
We were conveniences to each other, for different reasons—reasons neither of us had been given a chance to fully explore. I could accept his motivations for wanting me as much as I could accept mine for wanting him. Love played no role in our arrangement, although I acknowledged lust, and a thirst for his blood, factored into my choices.
Had he inspired the same feelings as the little twig in my hand did, I would’
ve done more than sign marriage papers to close loopholes in a society I didn’t fully understand.
It amazed me a little piece of wood could teach me so much.
The nights flowed into each other, and after I finished with my toothpick of a twig, which I put into my boot, I began work on the larger stake. The wood remained green in its core, as though it refused to give up its life despite having been separated from its tree. I hadn’t been the one to damage the branch, although some guilt hampered me all the same. Leaving the branch wouldn’t have changed its fate. I recognized that.
But I hated having taken it from the sun, too.
I had hated having the sun stolen from me.
Like the twig, the larger branch warmed beneath my hand, more like a comforting friend than a weapon meant to fight against some dark preternatural. While I could go for a while longer without needing to hunt some miscreant, it would get its chance soon enough.
I’d have to go somewhere other than Queens, as the area prided itself in making things difficult for the preternatural. If vampires lived in the area, they didn’t make themselves known to me—a wise thing, really. I wouldn’t trust me in a dark alley.
I kept the bats company for four more nights while I finished carving the stake. Despite Emerick’s claim stakes could go without being sanded, I refused to agree with him. Hunting for sandpaper beat hunting vampires, although I’d have to hunt some vampires soon enough.
Without knowing who would betray the Lowrance brood, I made a point of avoiding Manhattan during my search for sandpaper, making use of my Central Park trick to burrow in the wildest parks I could find across Long Island. After my third dumpster dive at a hardware store, I got lucky, scavenging a torn pack of fine grain sandpaper. While damaged, they’d do the job. Pleased with my acquisition, I rummaged through for anything else of interest and discovered a screwdriver set, a pocketknife with a broken key ring, and a pair of worn but serviceable leather gloves.
I grabbed everything, and a hand tapped the back of my leg.
Without wings, I shouldn’t have been able to enter orbit, but I jumped halfway to the moon before crashing to the asphalt. I lost my grip on the screwdriver set and the pocketknife clattered to the ground, too, which left me armed with some sandpaper and a pair of gloves.
“I could have sworn I told you that you do not need to dig through the garbage to find sandpaper,” Emerick stated.
Asshole vampire. Delicious asshole vampire. I licked my lips at the thought of his blood, and I tensed, releasing my hold on my ineffective weapons. “Has no one told you it’s not wise to sneak up on someone with more stakes than sense?”
“I appreciate you recognize that you’ve been lacking in sense.”
I detected a certain amount of scorn in the vampire’s voice. “I have not. I did exactly what I was supposed to. Well, mostly.”
“The mostly is the issue.”
“Which part of the mostly is the issue?” I considered the past few weeks of my life. “That one attic was definitely a mistake, but it was a safe mistake. The roommates left a lot to be desired.”
“Bats, if my nose does not deceive me. I wish my nose were deceiving me. We do not transform into bats, Mrs. Lowrance.”
The tasty vampire transformed our last name into an unfairly attractive weapon of relationship war, and I needed him to hiss at me a few more times before I lured him somewhere for a few sips. “We transform?”
“Some of us do, and in time, considering your special dietary requirements, I’m sure you’ll figure out the trick to it eventually. You, however, have some explaining to do.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
I gathered everything I’d dropped, narrowing my eyes. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that, Mr. Lowrance.”
He raised a brow, and the corner of his mouth twitched. Unable to tell if he wanted to smile or frown, I waited. Finally, he replied, “Why don’t you explain what you think you need to explain. Should you not cover what I wish to know, I will offer some clues.”
Damn, he meant business, and meant for me to accept full blame for evading him for so long. I smiled at that.
Escaping him for weeks must have annoyed him.
Still smiling, I replied, “There are very few places in Long Island suitable for vampires to hide outside of holes in the ground and bat-filled attics. I spent an inappropriate time with a bunch of bats in an attic.”
“Yes, you’re rather fragrant. I’m afraid those leathers will have to be burned.”
That erased my smile, and I grimaced despite agreeing with him. “It beats frying in the sun.”
“This is true. What else do you have to explain?”
“I didn’t vet that one miscreant more than witnessing him attack a couple and try to kill them, so I drank him dry and chucked his head into a garbage truck. I didn’t want him to get back up. He tasted disgusting. I called the cops with the woman’s phone before leaving.”
“Yes, the police inquired with the broods. The couple is grateful. I was required to acknowledge the killer was likely my wife, as she can’t seem to keep from killing fugitive vampires that cross her path.”
“If he had left the couple alone, I wouldn’t have taken his blood.” I licked my lips again, and as I had some desire to keep from pouncing on Emerick and having a snack, I refused to look at him. “The humans are all right?”
“Quite, thanks to you. I promised I would bring you when you finished your business, and that you were quite a skilled huntress seeking to remove threats to humanity. It was good promotion for you and our brood, and as you weren’t there to stop me from singing your praises, I enjoyed myself.”
“Is there anything else you wanted me to explain?” I asked in my sweetest tone.
“You can discuss why you wandered to Long Island when we live in Manhattan.”
“I needed a branch from a tree. It lives here.”
“You came all the way here to fetch a branch from a tree?” He sighed. “This should not surprise me. You carved a stake, then?”
“I carved three stakes, actually.”
“And how many vampires have you killed with your new stakes?”
“Just the one. I didn’t let him keep my stake.” As Emerick didn’t sound angry, I pulled out all three of my new stakes and showed them to him. I tucked the larger ones under my arm and showed him the toothpick. “This one was hard to carve, but it’s so friendly.”
Emerick took the tiny stake from me and rolled it between his hands before handing it back to me. “It’s small, but it’s fierce. I recommend against pricking yourself with that one. Don’t use it unless you mean to end that vampire’s life. I suspect it can decide if it turns one of us to ashes at its will rather than yours.”
“Isn’t that the case with most of my stakes?”
“Indeed. Truth be told, I find your affinity with stakes to be both promising and disturbing. We have work to do, which is why the brood has split up scouring New York for you. I figured you would not listen to me when I said you were going to do unnecessary things, so I started looking into places where a determined young lady might find sandpaper.”
I held up my pilfered goods. “And I did.”
“Indeed. There’s nothing quite as disturbing and amusing as finding my wife with her ass sticking out of a dumpster while wearing more stakes than any one vampire needs.”
“Well, the sandpaper was deeper into the dumpster. That’s not my fault.” I narrowed my eyes and kept my sandpaper out of his reach. “I found it, so it’s mine.”
“I would be quite pleased to provide you with everything you need to carve new stakes, if carving new stakes makes you happy.”
“Happy isn’t quite the word I’d use, but it will work. You’re still not taking my sandpaper.”
“Very well. I don’t suppose you would be willing to be hosed off before you contaminate the car? I would rather not have to replace the interior of my favorite vehicle today, and as Ben
is hunting for you in a different area, I cannot stink up his car instead.”
“Just toss me in the nearest somewhat clean body of water and give me your jacket. We can burn the damned leather in a dumpster.”
“However amusing that may be, we aren’t starting a dumpster fire.”
“There’s a dumpster right here. It wouldn’t take long. I’d just have to find a lighter.”
“We’re still not starting a dumpster fire when a hose and some basic cleaning will do.”
“Where would we find a hose?” I gestured at the dumpster, the alley, the neighboring residential street, and the nearby hardware store and its empty parking lot.
Emerick pointed down the street. “I’ve a friend who lives a few blocks away who would be pleased to loan you some clothing and hose you off in his yard. He is the master of a friendly brood, and he will find you interesting. He will also be helping with a plan I require you for.”
I liked the sound of that. A plan that actively involved me beat sharing space with a bunch of cranky bats annoyed I’d invaded their home. “What plan?”
“My maker has been unable to get near your mother; your father has her under tight guard right now, but the guard lightens whenever there is a lead on you. They leave your mother to check into the lead regarding you. In short, we are going to arrange for a meeting with your father, during which my maker will retrieve your mother and take her to Europe. We expect your father will attempt something violent and stupid in an attempt to take you back, but I’ve allied with several of the local broods on this matter. Your status as my wife makes this matter important to all broods.”
“Less because I’m your wife, more because I was recently turned into a vampire.”
“It’s both in equal measure. As you’re my wife, you’re the mistress of our brood, and you hold equal power to me, and I hold equal power to you.”
“You’re getting the short end of that stick, Emerick.”
“Hardly, although I find your end of the stick is rather odoriferous at current. As I do enjoy Kennwich’s company, I will insist you are thoroughly hosed off in his back yard before you make use of his bathroom, which is far inferior to ours, I assure you.”
