Fawn's Blood, page 18
“I know some people hate sellers and people who buy, for sure,” I said. “Not everyone. I haven’t run into trouble yet.” I just want it. I felt the zap-zap.
“How did you feel? When I drank?” she asked. She leaned forward, voice grave.
“Good,” I said. Then I thought I’d be a little bit more candid, because of the way her teeth were elongating over her lips. “I mean, really good. It feels like stars.”
“It didn’t feel like—degrading?”
Okay, weird. “I liked how it felt.”
Another expression of panic from her.
“I realize I’m being weird,” Rachel said quickly. “I don’t—I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
“Would hope not. Might commit suicide if you thought I was bad,” I said, grinning at the bizarre tension on her face—the fangs and her pursed, scrunched frown—and she looked offended—a deep, incredulous, panicked scowl—until I laughed, and then she laughed too, nervously.
“I also don’t think you’re bad,” I added.
I felt superior again, and also felt a pang of anxiety for her, and for myself—having to look after her. One of Cain’s troubled “children,” like Richeza said. Young vampires without guidance, like Wanda said. Where’d she come from?
“No,” Rachel said slowly. She covered her mouth with her hand. Her brow furrowed and unfurrowed. “Hey, I have something for you to take with us into the place. In addition to uh, the money.” She pulled a glittering small electronic device from her pocket. “It’s a taser. In case anyone drinks from you who you don’t want to.”
The side of the taser said Security Sisters in looping cursive.
Again, something kind of off but also really earnest in her voice, her face, the way she looked at me. Maybe it was just that she was confused.
“Uh, thanks,” I said. I put it in my pocket and ate my bun, looking away from her at the water, feeling like Chihiro in Spirited Away. The free food at least was a good gig. “You gotta give the money to me before we go in too.”
She nodded solemnly and pulled out an envelope, passed it across the table. I could book it now, if I wanted, I thought. But I felt beholden to this vampire who thought I was going to be able to help her.
I checked my phone to make sure I understood where Damalbi’s was, where the bar was, and to see if Silver had texted me or seen my text. He hadn’t. I led Rachel after me up the stairs and outside, mostly silent, up a short, steep hill. At the cross section where the grocery store sign flickered, I looked down between my feet at the tiles of thick purple glass in the sidewalk, where electric light glowed, and at the closed metal storefront. Next door was an abandoned theater, its cracked marquis announcing a movie that had premiered in 2015. A car and a delivery cyclist skidded by on the damp street, and I was briefly distracted, watching him vanish up the hill. I could be a delivery cyclist, that would be how I could make money.
Blond, little Rachel hovered uncertainly at my arm. “What now?”
I looked around, trying to project competence. The area was mostly deserted. There wasn’t a big line of vampires going to the same place. I didn’t know how to get inside. I stretched my neck by turning my head side to side, drew my necklace out and looked around for someone who would notice and let me in on the strength of my bat-heart. Then I jumped.
Across the street, I saw a girl looking at me who looked a lot like Flo. It was dark; I couldn’t see her face after a shadow fell across it, and I knew I had to be seeing things, because even given her note, what were the odds? She wore a long coat, which wasn’t like Flo, even though it looked good. When I looked again, she was walking away from us down the street. Her walk was Flo’s. I felt my heart spike into the back of my tongue. I thought about the threat of slayers. Richeza, talking about the Castle.
“Did you see that girl over there?” My voice was high and tight.
“I think that’s the door over there,” Rachel said, pointing. I looked, and saw a yellow flash of light in the metal trapdoor in the street, just starting to close. When the long-haired man in front of us saw us coming behind him, he held the door open with his free arm, and flashed red eyes at us as we scrambled after him
“Don’t let it stand open too long.”
We slid in. He was grey-haired, with a small, focused mouth, holding a big box; he turned to descend a long, spiral staircase in a strange, tiny, arched hallway. The brick walls were plastered over near the door in scuffed white, but then the plaster stopped and they were only caked in glitter, so that every step on the metal sent a little cascade of gold dust down on our heads, its shine illuminated only by a red bulb at the first curve of the stairwell. We followed the long-haired man down, echoing. At the base of the stairs, he turned around, free hand held in a claw, and said, “Boo!”
His nose flared out, batlike.
Rachel jumped, and I didn’t. He loomed over us a little, his head almost on the ceiling, his eyes red. No webbing between his fingers; only two fangs were pointed.
“First timers,” he said, grinning. “Here because the false safe place is gone. Welcome to the real underworld. Ten bucks.”
Rachel looked ready to pass out, so I held her hand, and I felt her grip mine back. I handed over the cash from the envelope. Sixty bucks left.
“I’m Fawn,” I said. I took out my necklace and put it over my shirt. “This is my friend, who’s going to drink from me tonight.”
His expression changed a little.
“Haven’t met you before, Fawn. Welcome. You are needed tonight. Here.” He handed my ten back. “A lot of folks are very scared right now, and will be hungry soon. Are you ready to help? Had your dinner?”
“Yes,” I said.
“This box has some cookies and sandwiches from the Vietnamese place over a few blocks, if you need a pick-me-up later. It’s hungry work. They’ll be over on that table. I’m Ryan. If anyone drinks from you too long or you need to go home and you need a drive, talk to me or one of the other people with a white armband. Remember, don’t give more than three pints tonight or you might have to go to the hospital and then there’s a chance we’ll all get busted. You can hang out after you’re done giving, just move to the fainting couch for a bit.” He gestured to his arm: a white handkerchief was tied around the upper part, and then to a series of futons on the other side of the long red room. “And who are you?”
Rachel stammered. “I’m Ray,” she said, after a second.
“You look half-starved. Remember, what we are doing here is practicing abundance. Even in emergency. This is where we drink freely, according to our own appetite, instead of what someone tells us to. We have a security system, so don’t be scared. This isn’t the clinic.”
He walked away to put the box on the table.
“What does that mean?” Rachel said. “Abundance? There’s only so much blood in your body.”
“We’ll find out,” I said, in a low voice. “I guess it depends how many humans there are.”
Purple fairy lights and dim red bulbs glowed in a wide, dirty room with brick walls and old hardwood flooring. Along the walls—my eyes focused and unfocused on them, trying to make sense of it—there was a system of wires, interlocking pulley mechanisms, and piping, all of which looked more or less DIY. The music in here sounded like kickdrums in a distant basement being pounded over and over with electric bubbles on top; the lights were so low that it felt like being in the photography darkroom at school. There was a long bar, and I could see two fridges behind it. A handful of mismatched armchairs stood in corners. The whole space was long and low, the ceiling barely two feet over my head covered in dusty bare boards, and looked as if at least two other rooms had been here; huge wooden beams bisected the wide room. I searched for another clearly marked exit and saw a distant door, unmarked and closed, at the other end of the hall-like room. The air was stale. I did smell, immediately, something metallic. There were only maybe twenty people inside with us, but above us, I heard more feet stomping down on the metal. I pulled Rachel to the back of the room, near the closed doors, and we stood against the wall.
“This is weird,” she said, turning to me. The ridges on her forehead were out. “Drinking here. I guess it’s cooler than the clinic.” She pushed her hair back and giggled again. She was really on edge. “Would it be crazy to drink from you right now?”
“Seems like it’s what the space is here for.”
“Are you okay if I do? I’m, um. Ready.” Garnet eyes. And the feeling again—I am useful, for someone, for something. I’m needed.
“Sure,” I said.
She set a six-minute timer on her phone, then awkwardly kneeled and took my hand, as if she was proposing, but bent her face so a few strands of gold hair slipped over her forehead. Her eyes were closed, and her tongue seemed prickly, like a cat’s. Her hand reached up to stroke my stomach as her fangs sank into my wrist, which I didn’t expect—nobody touched my stomach. I felt her shiver as she prepared to bite. Her touch made me warm, and without thinking, I grabbed the back of her head, to hold her to my wrist while she drank. She growled, and twisted her head in such a way that there was a brief jolt of real, deep pain, but then her lips moved more, and I felt the galactic space overhead open, a dreamy wave that made the lines of my body shiver. It didn’t feel like when Richeza had drunk from my neck, and nothing like Wanda. There was a cold xylophone being played on my spine. But I felt the timid want she had, felt the rush of need she was feeling, despite her embarrassment, and I saw, inside her, the place that Richeza’s strange electricity came from.
When she looked up, I could see her nose change a little. The edges of her nostrils had begun to flay away from her face, like a Star-nose mole’s. As I watched, they receded, and she looked like a young Margot Robbie again.
“Drink more,” I gasped, as the timer went off. It was a command, though I hadn’t meant it to be.
But she pushed me away and leaped up, turning, covering her face again, as scared as she had been at Roxy’s. “Nnnope, that’s enough for me,” she said.
Someone heard her and moved toward us. “Too early in the evening to say that,” the girl who sidled up to us said. She was a Black butch woman in a maroon tweed suit jacket and black turtleneck and half-heart necklace, holding a juice box. When she smiled with eyebrows raised at Rachel, no fangs showed—she was a human. Maybe a few years older than me. “Take a drink from me too, hon.”
Rachel put a hand to her chest. “I’m—I’m new,” she said. “I think I need to wait a little. Uh. I don’t . . . want to go too hard.”
“It can feel overwhelming. But that’s why the space is here. This is where you can let loose.” The butch, whose cheek held one perfect dimple, held out her hand, where a gold ring sat on her second-to last-finger. “Jess. Haven’t seen you before.”
I felt unexpectedly moved-in-on. I had wanted to get rid of Rachel a few minutes ago, to look for Silver—now I felt the anxiety of having something this woman wanted. And Rachel, I thought, was her own valuable, nervous kind-of-beautiful woman. Even if she was going through it right now, maybe she would be exactly the right kind of person on the other side of it.
Rachel retracted her hand behind her body, looking down at the ground. Jess tensed. So did I. Rachel’s posture was crouched as if Jess was the one who had blood running down her chin.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said to the floor, and I saw she was visibly shaking. “I—have to go.” She backed away from Jess toward the stairwell and then, pell-mell, pelted up it heavily and blunderingly, against the tide of bodies coming down, having to elbow and push in order to get through. Jess watched her go with an expression on her face that felt recognizable to me.
“She’s scared,” I said.
Jess scoffed. “Fuck that noise. Something I come here to avoid is when they’re scared.”
There were a rush of people who had made it downstairs. Some looked comfortable, and some looked nervous, like Rachel. Maybe from the clinic. Ridged brows, but also smooth ones, different ages and sizes—though you had to be kind of agile to get down those steep steps. The humans were mostly young. They were moving around the space now, around us. Most looked no older than Jess, but some eyes flashed red. There was no scream, no roar—but the music increased in volume, and the lights dimmed. People started dancing around us, and Jess made no move to join, just sulked against a wall, looking across the room, browsing. The growing crowd’s taste in clothing leaned toward the glam end of Gothic or toward all-black sweatsuits. I saw more than one shabby black velvet coat, bandeau made out of black tape, more than one sequined shirt, more than one set of fishnet fingerless gloves—though some were in patched black jeans and t-shirts. I was not completely out of place, just too young. I felt eyes on me, on the blood on my wrist. There was an anticipatory buzz in the air. I saw people hauling amps past through the dancers, though it wasn’t clear where they were going. I couldn’t see Silver anywhere.
“Go eat something,” Jess said to me finally. “Your girlfriend might come back.”
“She won’t, I think,” I said, feeling a rush of confusion in my stomach about what I’d wanted Rachel to do. It was stupid to want her to drink more. I wanted to save the rest of my blood tonight for Silver.
Jess looked at me with a smirk—down at the heart necklace, and up at my face, and at my neck. She hadn’t looked at me hard before and it made me sweat. I felt my hand go to it reflexively, and she laughed.
“You like when they bite the neck, huh.”
“I’m Fawn,” I said, and held out my hand, readying myself to talk about the clinic again. But though she shook, I felt her eyes were already flitting around the room. Sure enough, in a second, she’d walked off toward the table of food, where in a second she had found another tall woman to talk to.
The hum of general sociality and music and dancing around me made it seem like it would be easy to talk to people, but I felt as alone as I ever had. It was more crowded. Everyone was in small circles. Some were in circles around two figures, one of them probably drinking.
The man who’d let us in was tinkering with an electrical panel. I watched him, wondering about where I might have seen his face before, when I felt a cold hand on my arm.
“What are you doing here,” Silver said.
Silver, alive. White as snow, his two moles high-contrast, his black hair blacker than night, the same length as the day I last saw him.
I turned toward him, expecting him to fade into the air. But he was solid. He wore a leopard-print blazer, a ripped black tee shirt, and baggy black jeans. He was sullen, red-eyed, ridged, fanged, clutching my wrist. He looked—I couldn’t tell if he was angry. He always looked angry.
“I came to find you,” I said, gasping, suddenly feeling more dizzy than I had a minute ago. I reached out for his other hand, and to my delight, to the endless gratification of the buzzing imperative that had made me chase him, he took it. “I texted you.”
His ridged brow furrowed and he dropped my hand. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“Well, why not,” I said, feeling a jolt in my heart. What? “What the fuck. You up and left me. You left Flo. You left everyone.”
“I had to go.”
He scowled at me in such a familiar, sullen way that my heart did somersaults. It had been so long since I’d seen his scowl. We stared at each other, furious, seething. And I also felt confused.
“Are you—did someone hit you in the head? Look.” I grabbed my phone, pulled it out, showed him where I’d sent him the picture of my neck. “See, right here. I say, Silver, I want to see you.”
“You want to see me,” he said, with the kind of contempt I’d only ever heard him use toward teachers. “But you always looked down on what I wanted. You thought it was a game.”
“No. I was in it with you.” His face was papery white, his skin more like vellum than it had been, but he was himself. He hadn’t been replaced with another person. He seethed at me.
“Whatever,” Silver said. “So, what, you’re here to give blood now? You love vampires now?”
“Obviously,” I said, pointing to my neck. “I came here. I found you. I found others too. Just drink my fucking blood already.”
He turned away from me. I leaned forward to grab his arm, pull him in. He turned, flashing his fangs as if to scare me and lunged for my neck. I took a step back to absorb his weight but put up no arms to stop him, and his face collided with my shoulder. My heart was pounding. I put a hand in his hair, thinking about Flo being right outside, about to burst in with a crossbow. If she came in, God damn it, she would see me holding Silver, never letting him go. Even if she shot him.
“Drink,” I said. I growled. “You’re such a monster, then drink.”
He sputtered, looked at me, and bit my neck. My knees weakened. I felt the necklace jangle as he pushed the chain to the side.
He was not as desperate as Rachel, but he was hungry and imprecise like her, scraping and nuzzling my neck with his teeth. He’d bitten my neck with his human teeth before just this way. I felt drunk, letting him pull me down slightly, my spine bent so he could reach. My head was red fog, but the mist was like a sunset on a hot evening, and my legs went soft and rubbery with the full song running through me. Silver, mine.
I heard a whistle from behind us, and Silver did too—he started to pull back, but I clutched at his head. “Get wings,” I said. “Drink until you change.”
He gurgled, swallowed, sucked to the beat of the double kickdrums coming over the speakers like my heart. Over Silver’s shoulder, I saw Jess, and Jess was looking back toward us now. In this room of vampires, there was mostly chatter and rhythmic dancing; our bent forms were the locus of the corner we were in, and I heard fingers snap behind us and more low hoots of encouragement.
He slowed, his tongue moving a little against the bruise he drank from. “I thought you hated me,” he whispered.
The confusion of this statement blurred like charcoal as soon as he said it, because he was holding me. “I missed you.”
