Other Books by Carrie Vaughn
Kitty Norville
Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Kitty Goes to Washington
Kitty Takes a Holiday
Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand
Kitty Raises Hell
Kitty’s House of Horrors
Kitty Goes to War
Kitty’s Big Trouble
Kitty Steals the Show
Kitty Rocks the House
Kitty in the Underworld
Low Midnight
The Golden Age
After the Golden Age
Dreams of the Golden Age
Standalones
Voices of Dragons
Discord’s Apple
Steel
Short Story Collections
Straying from the Path
Carrie’s Website:
www.carrievaughn.com
I WAS HOPING my roommate Jack would forget that he’d made me promise to go out with him that night. He didn’t. As quickly after sunset as vampirically possible he slammed open the door to my bedroom. “Come on, Sam. Time to go. Up and at ‘em.”
At least he didn’t turn on the light. “Fine. Give me a second to get dressed.”
I washed, put on jeans and a T-shirt, ran a comb through my hair and wandered to the living room.
“You can’t wear that,” Jack said.
“What?” The clothes were clean. We had a washer and dryer, and used them. After being turned, I had been terribly disappointed to learn that vampires still had to do laundry, that we didn’t have some supernatural power that kept our clothing ageless and immortal as well.
“This is a club, you can’t wear that if you’re going to be convincing as an evil vampire.”
“I don’t have any other clothes and I won’t fit in yours.” I was four inches taller than he was, and not nearly as svelte. Jack was third generation Chinese-American and looked like an actor out of a hyperactive Hong Kong action movie. He dressed like a stereotype, on purpose. Suave silk shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, black trousers, trench coat, and just a little bit of eyeliner to give him a brooding appearance. I had to hand it to him, he really knew how to work it.
By his sigh, I’d have guessed this was the most frustrating thing to happen to Jack all week. “Not even a dress shirt? Do we need to get you some dress shirts?”
“When would I ever need a dress shirt?”
He looked at me bug-eyed, clearly expressing his belief that I was an idiot. “For when you go out to the club, duh.”
Maybe he’d get so annoyed with me he’d leave me home.
“You guys are yelling, stop it.” Aaron, our third roommate, was in his room, the door closed. I was pretty sure becoming a vampire hadn’t changed his lifestyle all that much.
“Here, I can fix this,” Jack said. He went into the hall closet and dug around until he found what he was looking for. “At least wear this.”
He presented me with a black leather jacket. One of mine even, from before I was turned. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn it. Nostalgia made me put it on. It still fit, because of course it did—I was the same size I’d been fifteen years ago. I looked myself over. What was it about black leather jackets that made any outfit look just a little bit cooler?
“At least try to look like you might be dangerous,” he said.
“I’m a vampire. I am dangerous.”
“You’re a shlub. Now let’s go.” He patted my arm and headed for the door.
We walked from our apartment to Psalm 23, a club at the northern edge of downtown Denver. A long walk, but we were strong, and we could move fast when we wanted to.
Saturday night, downtown was busy, crowded. Times like this, I was hyperaware of being a vampire and how it made the world different. I could hear heartbeats, smell the blood of people on the sidewalks with us, even those in the cars passing by with their windows rolled down. I could use these senses to hunt, stalk these people into dark alleys and strike. I didn’t have a heartbeat of my own, but I flushed thinking of theirs. I needed blood. Just a little every day or so, but I needed it. The streetlights and headlights glared, balls of energy in the darkness. I could feel warm summer air passing over my skin, prickling individual hairs. Every sensation was sharp. Even after years I was still getting used to this way of seeing.
“Okay, let’s go over this again,” Jack said. “You make the first move, totally aggressive. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a target. Act like as much of an asshole as you know how. But a vampire asshole, right?”
Everything Jack knew about vampires he learned from The Lost Boys. As much as he’d learned about them since, he still clung to some of his old ideas. I’d gone back to watch the movie since being turned. It didn’t age well.
“—and then I swoop in for the rescue.”
We’d done the bad vampire/good vampire act before. I knew how it worked. I kept letting Jack talk me into it because I was, as he observed, a shlub.
“Why do I always have to be the asshole?” I asked. “Can’t I be the hero once in a while?”
“I thought you said you didn’t care. You’re the asshole because you don’t care.”
I didn’t. I kept telling myself I didn’t. This was all just a game. Arguing with Jack was too much effort, so I didn’t.
Psalm 23 was the main vampire club in town. A high-end fancy place straight out of a movie. Some stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason—as it turns out, a great way to go hunting for blood is to open a nightclub, fill it with a bunch of bright and beautiful young things, fill them with booze, then seduce the hell out of them. And do it in such a way that they think they’ve had a wonderful evening and always come back for more. It was a place where the city’s vampires could safely and easily feed, watched over by the city’s Master.
Aaron and I preferred delivery. Even as vampires, we didn’t fit into places like this. Neither did Jack, really. He worked so hard at being a tortured, soulful vampire protagonist that he tended to stand out.
The club had been around for a couple of decades, rebranded a couple of times as the neighborhood gentrified around it, but it had always been popular. It had a line behind a velvet rope and bouncer doormen and everything. If we’d been normal mortal humans, no way would we get through that line. But we were vampires, which meant the bouncer had to let us in. We walked straight past all those beautiful people, all of them filled with rich, hot blood. I could understand why Jack kept coming back here.
“Hey, Braun,” Jack said to the bouncer, a black man in a tailored dinner jacket, quarterback-sized rather than linebacker, but still intimidating. He was also a vampire, one of Rick’s own inner-circle henchmen. “How’s it going?”
“Jack. Sam.”
Why was I nervous that he didn’t even have to think to remember my name? We’d seen each other maybe five times, ever. But it was his job as enforcer and bodyguard to know everyone’s name.
Jack clearly expected him to just open the rope and let us in, but Braun looked us over a good long while. Jack started bouncing a little. I thought he was going to say something when Braun finally let us past, giving us a pronounced frown. I waved a little. The frown got deeper.
As I understood it, there were Masters of other cities who were not as easy going as Rick. They expected some kind of loyalty, some kind of service. They required, you know, dress codes. Me, I figured Rick was nice to us because we were never supposed to be vampires in the first place. We were, in a word, an embarrassment. They cut us a lot of slack because of that.
The place was dark, lit by colored accent effects and recessed lighting, and sleek, lots of gray and chrome and high-backed booths and spindly tables. The music was tec
hno, kind of relentless for my taste. Inside the club, Jack was a predator on the hunt. Literally. He scanned, watched for victims. Pulling us to a ledge by the wall, he leaned up against it and looked causal. To his credit he actually seemed comfortable here, even if he was trying too hard. But me? No other guy here was wearing a T-shirt and leather jacket. Denver had clubs where I would have looked right at home. I should hang out at one of those.
A handful of other vampires were around, and not just the ones who worked here. They blended in, beautiful and sinister, giving us cautious nods across the room—plenty of snacks here for everyone, right? I gave them cheerful waves in return, until Jack elbowed me to stop it.
I would have been happy just sitting back and admiring the scenery—skirts had gotten very short since the last time I paid attention. Short and skin tight. I caught myself wondering if some of these women were even wearing panties under their very short skirts, and if I was standing in just the right place when they sat, would I find out?
Turned out I didn’t have to work all that hard to play asshole vampire.
“There,” Jack said, and nodded. Three women stood by one of the side bars. Not stereotypical clubbers—their skirts weren’t quite short enough and their eyelashes not big enough. Mid-twenties instead of early twenties, out for some kind of celebration. A challenge, in other words. They had drinks, the bartender was somewhere else, and they were isolated.
I gave him a look. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am, they’re the perfect age to have grown up reading Twilight.”
Oh, for God’s sake… “Fine. But you owe me one. No, you owe me five.”
I knew if I was going to do what Jack wanted and be the bad vampire asshole in this scenario, I couldn’t act the way I thought an asshole would act. My imagination wouldn’t go far enough. No, I had to act the way Jack thought an asshole would act.
I barged into the middle of them, shoving them apart, knocking over one of the drinks, a martini, breaking the glass. Perfect, couldn’t have worked it better if I’d planned it.
I grinned, showing fang. Because for Jack, that was the whole point. Not to hide the fact that we were vampires. “Oh, hey, sorry about that, how about I get you another one, huh?” I flashed a look at two of them, but focused my attention on the one I’d isolated. “Or maybe we could go somewhere else, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Put a little adventure in your life?”
“What the hell?” said one of the women behind me.
“Those are fake, right?” said the one in front of me, about my fangs.
I ran my tongue over them, making the gesture as skeezy as I could, disturbed that I had this behavior living inside me. “Baby, they’re totally for real. Wanna touch?” I leered and closed the distance, pressing her to the bar. Come on, Jack, any second now…
“Hey, is he bothering you?”
Jack appeared, standing so the light hit him in the most dramatic way possible, shadowing his face, making his eyes gleam. He was rakish and very striking. The bastard.
Two of them made polite we-don’t-want-to-make-trouble noises. But the third, the one I’d isolated, said, “Yes, he is.” Brave, stepping confidently into her role.
The rest was choreographed. Jack stepped in front of me, I let him get close and let the woman escape. “You want to maybe get the hell out of here?”
“You going to make me?” I leered. I was so going to get him for this later.
He bared his teeth, showing fang. One of them gasped. Jack glanced at her sidelong. “We’re not all like him. We’re not all… bad,” he said in his most suave, alluring vampire hero voice ever. Angel, eat your heart out. Geez, Jack was good at this. He had me fooled.
He grabbed the collar of my jacket, spun me around, and shoved me to the exit. “Get out.”
I hissed in outrage, fangs on display, like a dutiful asshole vampire. He puffed himself up, super strong and super heroic. All of it posturing. I fled, on cue.
My job done, I went outside to slump against the wall and reflect on how my life had turned out so far. I was too old to be doing this crap. No, scratch that—I still looked twenty-five. I was the perfect age.
But I felt forty. That didn’t feel good.
Braun spotted me and sidled over. “He’s not making you do the good vampire/bad vampire act again, is he?”
“Yes, he is,” I grumbled.
The bouncer shook his head and made a sympathetic tsk. “It would be pathetic if it didn’t actually work so often.”
That was the crux of the whole thing. I hadn’t bothered glancing over my shoulder as I left, but the fact that Jack hadn’t reappeared suggested he was still there, chatting up the women, winning them over with excruciating politeness and vampire heroism, seducing them with his hypnotic gaze. Because yes, the system worked. There was no justice in the universe, or the club scene.
“I have to admit,” Braun continued, “since the whole vampire thing went public he’s the first one I’ve seen use it to his advantage. It’s… kind of weird.”
Yes, yes it was. “I try not to think about it too hard.”
I stayed by the wall another few minutes, debating about whether to wait for Jack or to go home to my game controller and Left 4 Dead (I was aware of the irony of this). Home just about won out, when one of the women from the bar—not the one I’d isolated, and not the one who’d gasped, but the “What the hell?” one—came out the door and looked around as if searching. When she spotted me, I cringed. Yeah, I should have started for home about thirty seconds ago.
She regarded me for a moment, then said, “Does that always work, or did it just work this time?” She was talking at me like I was an actual person.
I smiled wryly. “It usually works. Surprisingly enough.”
“That’s kind of amazing,” she said.
“Mostly it depends on how eager his target is to meet an actual vampire. Do you and your friends, ah, read a lot of vampire novels?”
“Jenn has been talking for a year about how much she really wants to meet a real vampire.”
“See? That’s the real trick. Jack knows how to spot ‘em.”
She pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “Do I need to go back in and rescue them? Are they in trouble?”
I winced. “It depends on how you define trouble. But no, Jack won’t hurt them.” Much...
“And you… what? You just stay out here playing bad vampire?”
“That’s me. Bad vampire. Rawoar.” I couldn’t pull it off, here under the streetlights.
She crossed her arms, smiling gamely. “I figured you couldn’t be a total asshole if you’re wearing an old-school Metroid T-shirt.”
Was I? I had to look. And sure enough, there was Samus in her armor, facing out, beneath the blazing logo. The image was faded enough Jack hadn’t chastised me for it.
“Good eye,” I said. “Well, you got me, it’s true. I’d rather be at home playing Left 4 Dead.”
“Me too, actually. Jenn got a raise at work and really wanted to celebrate. She heard vampires hung out here. I told her she was crazy.”
“Not so crazy after all.”
“Yeah. I’d never have guessed Denver was interesting enough to have vampires.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.” Vampires, werewolves, some real haunted houses and a few other things besides.
“So. Left 4 Dead 1 or 2?” she asked.
“First one. Oldie but goodie. Just straight clean play, no bells and whistles needed. And Zoey kicks way too much ass for me to ever abandon her.”
“You don’t think it’s maybe a little… slow? No real strategy or tactics necessary, you just stand there and press down on the trigger. Some of us like a challenge, I suppose.”
Something in my non-beating heart popped. I tried to play it cool. “Yeah, well, you kids today don’t know how good you have it, with your 3D rendering and your games that require actual conscious thought. I’m old enough to remember when the NES was cool.”
“Hey
, I played NES. When I was three.”
There came that popping again. “You’ve been gaming since you were three?” So had I, but when I was three the only game out there was Pong.
“What, shocked at meeting a real-life gamer girl?”
“No… you seem more of a gamer-woman to me. I’m just… I hardly ever get to talk about this stuff with anyone in real life. You’ve met my one roommate, and the other… well. I’m Sam.” I held out my hand for shaking because it seemed like the sanest, most stable thing I could do at that point.
“Ginny,” she said, accepting the gesture. “And you’re really a vampire?”
“I really am.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“You shouldn’t be. Jack mostly hits on girls who are sure, and I frankly find it a little weird. You know?”
She laughed. She had a really great laugh. I felt this powerful urge to reach for her, and I started salivating. Which wasn’t right. I pressed my lips into a tight smile. I did not under any circumstances want to start drooling. But seriously, she looked so good…
“I think I need to get back inside and check on Jenn and Anne. But we should, I don’t know, play together sometime. Xbox or Playstation?”
“Both,” I said, and gave her my screen name: CaptainHoboMan. She gave me hers: PrincessScruffy1. The latter-day version of trading phone numbers. Felt like a victory.
“Nice meeting you, Sam,” she said, waving as she went back inside. She looked awfully cute. I could feel the heat of her blood, even as she was moving away.
I was still drooling.
“Good job holding back,” Braun said. “I thought I was going to have to run an intervention there.” He was chuckling like he’d made a joke.
Yeah, he was an older vampire and I was the baby vampire. He didn’t have to rub it in. I could control myself and not rampage at the carotid artery of a pretty woman who stopped to talk to me. I was just fine.
“Good night, Braun.”
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jacket and marched off.