paper prescription bag. The walls are plain, but the wardrobe and the back of the bedroom door are covered with layer upon layer of yellowing, curling posters—mostly half-naked male breathers surfing, horse riding, rock climbing, bungee-jumping. Abe nearly trips over a pair of hiking boots and the dress shoes Steve wore last night as he takes another cautious step forwards, bewildered by the amount of things crammed into such a small space. A riding helmet rests on the floor by the bed. Three handguns rest on top of wicker hamper possibly intended for laundry. A stack of newspapers and magazines as tall as the headboard of the bed rest propped against the far wall, a set of stirrups resting on top.
Steve lies curled on top of the bed in a pair of tracksuit pants and an oversized T-shirt, his head raised, a somewhat-damp paperback—Abe has never heard of Gideon Haigh—shoved up against his chest. Somehow, the idea of Steve drooling on a book while pretending not to be asleep seems adorable, even if he looks nothing close to adorable at the moment. Much better than last night, of course, but tired and drawn, his gel-stiffened hair flattened into an array of odd spikes poking out at ridiculous angles. Abe takes a step backwards. He was right, after all, and it will be better for everyone if he leaves Steve to sleep…
“Abe!” Steve sits up and waves Abe over. “Mum didn’t scare you, did she?”
“A little,” he confesses as he finds a clear place to stand near the end of the bed. “I think I, well, now understand you a whole lot better.”
“Sorry about that.” Steve’s easy grin, too, looks so much like his mother’s, even if he looks little like her physically. “She scares everyone, though. Chichi reckons that if we parked her out the front her smile would ward off the feral zombies. It’s why she’s so good as a copper.”
Abe can’t help a laugh at the thought of Debra Nakamura grinning at a starving feral trying to chew on her arm, and Steve, who possibly possesses much the same ability, laughs with him.
“I was going to look up your number.” Steve yawns and slumps back against the pillows. “It’s a bit hard to thank you properly from the back of an ambulance.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” Abe bites down on his lower lip. “I just came here to apologise, really.” He holds out the blazer. “And give you this.”
“Toss it on the pile.” Steve shrugs and pats the bed. “Come sit?”
Why does he want Abe to get anywhere close to him? “I’m happy standing,” he says as he tries to find a hook or knob that isn’t already burdened by a harness, bridle or rope. There’s no such thing, so Abe opens the wardrobe and slides the blazer onto an empty hanger. Half the hangers, he notes, bear harnesses and holsters, and the rest hold either blazers or what looks like hiking clothes—the kinds of sturdy jackets and T-shirts sold in the windows of outdoor lifestyle stores. He knows Steve is a bit, well, metrosexual, and the selection of styling products and hair dye boxes on the windowsill bears that out, but Abe didn’t expect to find a mountain-climbing adventurer.
Steve lets out a long, slow sigh. Even being the next day, it’s a relief to hear him breathe without that terrifying whistle. “The doctor told me that I had—or have, rather—anaphylaxis. Like a nut allergy, except that we don’t think I’m allergic to nuts.” He grins again. “Which is good, because I’d be a little bit shattered if I couldn’t have cashews. I can live without peanuts, though.”
Vampirism is better than the alternative, but it had been years since Abe was able to enjoy cashew nuts or anything else edible. Great-Aunty Lizzie expounded at length on just how hard it is to be a vampire and watch a human partner enjoy the delight of eating, and it’s a decent argument for avoiding human contact. But how can one do that at all, when he needs a job, needs to buy blood, needs to spend time around others? Watching breathers eat is just something he needs to learn to deal with—in a way, it isn’t too dissimilar to an allergy as far as avoidance goes. The consequences aren’t good if he eats, so he doesn’t.
He wishes, he realises, that Great-Aunty Lizzie was wrong about everything pertaining to breathers and vampires—just as much as he wishes that Steve Nakamura, of all the people in the world, was the last person to be struck by such an illness.
“Do they know what triggered it?” he asks, quite sure that he doesn’t want to hear the answer.
He has to know, though.
There’s something in Steve’s raised eyebrow that makes Abe think he knows why Abe is asking the obvious. “Not for sure. I’ve got to see my GP on Monday and get a referral to an immunologist, and then they’ll find out, I hope.” Steve’s eyes meet Abe’s; his lips twist into an apologetic-seeming grimace. “Since I wasn’t allergic to anything before, since I wasn’t eating or drinking and didn’t get stung by anything, they’re liking vampire venom as a cause, since it’s apparently a common allergen, but I heard you say that last night.” He grins. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll hold off on kissing you for a while, just in case. You can actually sit down, though, as long as you promise to behave and not spit on me. I’d prefer not to make it a record by ending up in hospital twice in twenty-four hours, though. Next-door-Greg will fucking kill me. By which I mean he’ll remind me of the hell for the rest of my life.”
Abe doesn’t move; he folds his arms and tries to figure out why Steve doesn’t look the least bit reluctant, but he can’t come up with even the remotest of sensible answers. “I nearly killed you.”
“Nearly made me a zombie, you mean.” Steve shakes his head and slides just a little down the bed so that he can rest the back of his neck against the top pillow. “I’m a carrier. Didn’t I say I got bitten? Death is only a theoretical concept for most of us, here—you’re not the only one.” He shrugs. “Sorry for not sitting up. In all the chaos I didn’t fucking take my meds until late, and I’m a bit whacked out.”
Is becoming a zombie any different from dying, given that there is only a twenty percent chance one survives death with any kind of mental faculty intact? Steve might remain Steve, just more likely to lose a limb here and there, but more likely he will become a walking, mindless corpse trying to chew on anything with a heartbeat, probably dismembered and destroyed a short time after death—if he’s lucky enough to have someone attending his death and doesn’t become a wild, feral zombie roaming the countryside. If Abe’s family found it hard knowing that their son had turned into a vampire, after all the years of being prepared for such a fate, knowing a son became a zombie and escaped into the bush had to be heartbreaking.
No wonder Steve has such strong feelings about ACPIZ.
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
Steve shrugs. “None of this makes it your fault, either. I don’t recall you pinning me to the wall and forcing me to kiss you.” He snickers. “Actually, more like the reverse.”
“Aren’t you scared?” The question flies off Abe’s tongue before he thinks about its stupidity.
Steve, for some reason, nods. “Yes! Of course I am. I hope like fuck it is you because then I’ll know what is, man. What if they never find out? I’d really rather not go through that again. But speaking to you from across the room is stupid.”
That hurts more than it should, even though Abe knows exactly what Steve means: there’s not much more terrifying in not knowing why one’s body is set on killing him or what provoked it. Even an unpalatable cause is better than none at all.
“C’mon, Abe. Sit down. You saved my life, a bit, so you don’t get to stand awkwardly at the back of my room.” Steve’s smile verges on the edge of rueful. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but … well, I liked kissing you, you know. I liked dancing with you. It’s not fucking easy finding people who are cool with being a carrier—who wants to be with someone who might make them a zombie-to-be if the condom tears? Here just about everybody’s a carrier, so it doesn’t fucking matter, but in Sydney? I liked being in a space where I wasn’t a freak—with someone who cares about things that aren’t fish. Or just thinks I’m hot. Or who—fucking hell, man—tries to distract a not-breathing guy
by talking about irony. Johanna was laughing all the way to the hospital over that one.”
Of course, Steve has to yell out the back of an ambulance that he thinks it is situational irony, so he’s just as bad if not worse—and that’s why Abe wishes he hadn’t come here at all.
He sits down on the bed. “If I say that I do, are you going to run for the door?”
Steve takes Abe’s hand in his and rolls his eyes. “Mate, I know you think I’m hot. It was pretty damn obvious.”
Steve might be shunned by people with only a very small reason to fear him, but Steve has a significant reason to fear being around Abe, and here he is, refusing to treat Abe the way he was treated. Abe just stares at him, smiles, sighs. Abe fell hard in lust over a cute face, a confident hand and a sexy dance, but Steve the person might just be worth getting to know, even if there’s no chance in hell of being anything but friends.
He wants it, even though he’s a monster.
Abe’s not sure he has the right to ask, but he needs to know. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly did you tell your mum?”
“Everything,” Steve says in a voice that sounds more mystified than annoyed. “Why?”
“Everything?”
“It’s not like Greg’s not going to tell the