Authors: Jamie Wahl
Two shiny gray heels.
That is the first thing Michael saw when he opened his eyes again.
“Hi, there,” said a silky voice.
Michael looked up with bleary eyes to see who had spoken.
There in his moldy, towel-less bathroom, standing in the small shaft of light coming in through the half-boarded window, was the most beautiful woman in all creation.
She stood at ease, with her hands on her hips, staring down at Michael.
She looked inconceivably out of place.
“Who…” Michael said, “who are you?”
“My name is Bell,” she said calmly, orange fingernails drumming idly on ample hips, “and you are Michael?”
“Um…yeah…” he said, straining to raise his head off the floor.
A pair of underwear was stuck to his face.
“This is embarrassing,” the woman called Bell said with a smile, “I’ll step out and let you have a minute to yourself.”
“Oh,” Michael said, but she was already out, closing the door behind her, a faint aroma of spring lingering for a moment before the damp air enveloped it.
Michael got clumsily to his feet.
He looked in the mirror and tried to tame the side of his hair that had been pasted to the wet bathroom floor.
His curls bounced right back into fuzzy disarray.
That wasn’t going to get any better.
Finally, feeling numb and stupid, he opened the door.
Bell sat on the end of his unmade bed, still looking fantastically foreign.
She wore a light gray business suit that touched her every curve, and heels in gunmetal gray leather.
Her hair was pin straight and perfect- brilliantly red against her creamy ivory skin and vibrant green eyes.
She was a tall, impossibly beautiful woman.
Why in the world is she in my apartment?
Then a horrible thought occurred to him.
Was she a detective?
He didn’t think a detective would break in to someone’s home…unless she thought she could make an arrest.
“Hello, Michael,” she said, flashing a perfect smile, “feeling better?”
“How do you know my name?” Michael choked out.
“Or where you live?” she chided, eyes sparkling mischievously.
“Yeah…that, too.” Michael’s head spun. He quietly closed the bathroom door and leaned against it for support.
“This is my neighborhood, Michael,” she said, glancing to the fire escape. Two men stood there, one looking into the street below, one watching the roofline. “This is my city. I know everything that happens in my city.”
“Are you…a cop?” Michael asked, hating his voice for trembling.
Bell laughed. It was an unsettling, sharp sound.
“No,” she said firmly as she rose from the bed, “I am not a cop.
They are not cops,” she added, gesturing to the men on the balcony.
Her full height was stunning.
Michael had very rarely met a woman as tall as himself, and when he did she was big in every direction.
Bell was something else entirely.
Her lithe limbs were cut with lean muscle. There was something playful and terrifying in her stance, a commanding presence and a strange, restrained energy that unnerved him.
“Well, then, uh…” Michael said, unable to take his eyes from her body.
“We are vampires.”
“Okay…”
“You do know that you are a vampire, don’t you?”
Michael was unwilling to accept this information. He didn’t say anything.
He couldn’t say anything.
Yesterday morning he woke up worried about his midterm and about their opening night.
He would trade anything for his old problems.
He missed them. He just stared blankly somewhere near Bell’s mouth.
His brain had stopped processing requests for new information.
“Michael?” Bell sighed impatiently. “Will this help?”
Suddenly her long limbs and ample curves morphed in front of his eyes.
She appeared to shrink and grow at the same time, to warp and unravel, and in an instant, there stood a short, scantily clad and large chested brunette covered in tattoos.
Michael stepped backward in surprise.
“Less your type?” she asked in a voice riddled with emphysema.
“How—how did you do that?” Michael asked in horror.
“Can all vampires do that?”
“No,” she said with a deep smirk, “they cannot.
What do you know about vampires, Michael?”
“Uhhh…” Michael held up his hands and made his best Bela Lugosi
Dracula
face.
All the humor drained from her face.
She morphed back into her tall, luxurious self.
It was no less jarring than the first time.
She took one step toward Michael, and then suddenly she was standing right behind him.
Michael could have blinked and missed it.
“Then you don’t know anything,” she whispered. Her breath was cold on his ear.
“Uhhh…No.
No I don’t,” Michael said, wincing as Bell’s breath tickled the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Well, I don’t have time to tell you all about it,” she said, gesturing sharply to the taller man on the balcony. He only nodded, and turned his eyes back to the roofline.
“I’m just going to give you the basics,” She said, walking around to face him and adopting her bored tone once again. “‘Being a Vampire in My City 101.’ Do not tell any mortal. If you do, we will kill that person. And probably you,” she added with a shrug.
“I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Michael said, shaking his head and trying to think of a scenario in which he would want to tell anyone.
“You will not attack during the day,” Bell said briskly, as though she had this list memorized. “Most mortals are under the impression that we cannot go out in the day, and we would like to keep it that way.”
“I won’t
—
” Michael said in horror. “I can’t. I can’t attack…” he said, his occasional southern accent making an appearance.
Bell looked at him curiously for a moment.
“You’re a cute little thing, aren’t you?” she said, smirking.
She glanced around the room and paced like a cougar in a cage.
“You will. You cannot survive without blood,” she looked at him and smiled darkly. “Give it 24 hours and you’ll attack. I have no doubt about that.”
Michael stared at the floor and tried, once again, not to vomit. There was no way he would ever, ever kill anyone. He would rather die.
But I don’t
want
to die
.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said quietly.
“You will not make trouble for me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Remember,” she said sternly, “it is easier for me to kill you than to put up with you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Stop that,” Bell said firmly.
“Yes
—
” Michael nodded.
“Do you have any questions?” she asked, coming to a stop with her hands on her hips.
Michael had a thousand questions, but he didn’t want to ask any of them.
He was afraid of all the answers.
He stared at the floor for a moment and finally spoke.
“Can I undo this?
Is there a way to go back?” he asked, looking up hopefully.
Bell’s mouth hung open for the briefest of seconds before two long, ivory white fangs descended to graze the soft red flesh of her bottom lip. She appeared inches away from Michael’s nose.
“No,” she said in a deadly voice.
Michael felt a piercing, paralyzing fear race through him.
He stood frozen, staring into her eyes, whose pupils dilated until they were two dark metallic voids on her snow white face. At her sides her hands were ready to strike, her elegant fingernails lengthening into razor points.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Michael stammered, unable to break her gaze. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Her savage features melted back into glowing, smooth skin. Her black eyes returned to green.
She stepped back slowly, never taking her eyes off Michael.
As quickly as it had come, the anger
vanished,
as if she had simply shut it behind a door.
“I want you to come see the rest of the clan tonight,” she gestured to the shorter man on the balcony. He opened the heavy window with ease and stepped inside.
He had curly black hair and thick eyebrows.
His teeth were pearly white against his tanned skin.
He stood with confidence next to Bell, though he only came to her shoulder.
“This is Tanish,” she said with a smile. “He will be taking you out tonight.”
Michael did not want to go anywhere with anyone, least of all to a clan with a vampire.
But it didn’t sound like a request.
“Nice to meet you,” Tanish said, holding out his hand.
“You, too,” Michael lied, shaking the man’s hand. It was so cold Michael inhaled sharply in surprise.
“And out there,” Bell said, gesturing to the heavily muscled man on the balcony, “is Joseph.”
The man named Joseph kept his eyes on the rooftops.
“What is he watching for?” Michael asked, his natural curiosity getting a jump on his tongue.
Bell glanced at Tanish and gave Michael a warm smile.
“Don’t worry about that, Michael,” she said in a patronizingly mother-like tone, “just some other bad guys.”
Tanish stifled a laugh.
“I’ll see you tonight, Michael,” Bell said in an authoritative tone, walking toward the open window.
“Okay.”
Tanish followed her out onto the balcony, looking amused.
"Wait—" Michael called after them, "Where should I meet you?" he asked, leaning out through the open window.
But they were already gone. Michael looked down into the rusted fire escape. They were nowhere in sight. They weren't in the street, either. They seemed to have
vanished
.
"I guess I'm staying home.”
His phone rang from somewhere on the table. He found it behind the open laptop. The small screen displayed the incoming call. It was Randy.
Michael sat down cross-legged in the middle of his apartment, staring at the phone. He wanted to answer it so badly. Randy had known everything about him since their first day of preschool. Michael hadn’t kept anything from him—even the things he wanted to keep from him. He wanted to open the phone and tell his friend everything that had happened. But Bell’s words still hung in the air.
He couldn’t tell anyone.
He pressed “decline,” set the phone down on the floor, and crawled to his bed. His mind longed for sleep and within moments his body, aching with stress, obliged.
Michael was in the alley. His feet were inches off the ground and the world was spinning as he floated above the wet pavement. Gray and white and red swirled around him like a kaleidoscope of fog. Images, things from his nightmares, blossomed into garish pictures before him.
Stark white hands. A green heeled shoe. The light leaving her eyes. Ice cold hands pressing down hard on his chest, so hard that blood was drawn under sharp fingernails, painting the whole scene red. Michael wanted desperately to stop all these things, but he was held up by invisible strings, a living marionette.
“Hello?” said a deep voice.
Michael was startled awake. He sat up fast, looking around for the sound.
It was Tanish. His dark curls were framed by the purples and pinks pouring in the window behind him. Michael had slept all day.
“How are you feeling?”
“Um,” Michael rubbed his eyes.
“Not great, huh?” he said, “I remember turning. It isn’t pretty.”
“Turning?” Michael asked, standing and feeling the blood rush to his head.
“Yeah, you know: mortal to immortal,” Tanish grabbed Michael’s shoulder to steady him. “The first 48 hours are pretty rough.”
Michael didn’t say anything. The hand on his shoulder was bitingly cold, even through his shirt.
“You good?” Tanish asked, his white teeth practically glowing in the half-light.
“Yeah,” Michael said, “I’m good. How long did you say it’ll be like this?”
“At least another day.”
Michael’s go-to mental picture of a vampire was a grossly pale old man with dirty fingernails and a satin cape. That, or a sparkly teenager with a vacant expression. Tanish was neither. He was kind of short, a foot shorter than Michael, and he dressed like an upper middle-class citizen. He wore a blue button-down shirt and a suede jacket. No creepy jewelry. No tattoos. Just khakis and a warm smile.
“So,” Tanish said, “I’m going to take you to meet the clan tonight.”
“Okay,” Michael stared at the floor. “Now?”
“Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked hesitantly, gesturing to Michael’s “Flaming Lips” tee and ragged jeans.
“Um…no?”
Michael cringed. His two least favorite things: underworld creatures and inscrutable social code. He never thought they would be married into one awful situation.
“No. You’re not just a student anymore,” he said, perusing Michael’s makeshift closet. “Have some pride.”
He handed Michael the only button down shirt he owned. His mother had given it to him for his birthday in August. She said it complemented his skin tone. It was carnation pink.
“Oh,” Michael blushed, “that was a gift. I wasn’t going to wear it, um, ever.”
Tanish’s smile faded slightly. “Where do you think we are going, Michael? McDonald’s?”
“Alright,” Michael accepted the shirt. “I’ll get changed.”
Michael stopped by the dresser to retrieve a pair of dress slacks. They were the only ones in the dresser because they, too, were unworn. He trudged to the bathroom. His hands shook as he did up the buttons, and he almost walked out before putting on his pants. Tanish was waiting on the balcony when he finally emerged.
“So much better,” Tanish said, the bright smile returning. “Now, let’s go.”
Tanish climbed the rail of the third story balcony and stepped off the edge.
“What the—” Michael exclaimed, rushing to look over the side. Tanish was standing on the ground three stories below, as if he had stepped off a curb.
Michael gripped the rails tightly. His head was still swimming, and he was acutely aware of the surfaces that his skin came into contact with. He could feel the slight variations in the thickness of the metal as his hand slid down the rail, each flake of rust around the screw holes a glaringly obvious defect. He took the steps carefully, unused to his heightened senses.
By the time he reached the ground, Tanish was noticeably impatient.
“Come on, Michael. While the night is young, please,” he said, “You’ll get used to everything sooner than you think.”
“How long did it take you?” Michael asked, wondering how many years the young man next to him had been living.
“A while,” he said, “It gets much better after the first kill.”
Michael pressed a hand against his stomach to quell the rising tide of yuck.
Tanish gestured down the alley, and they started walking. It was clear from the steady pace that they were not going to get a cab.
Michael felt disconnected from reality. His senses were sharp, as if he expected an attack, but it was just the two of them, walking without speaking. He was unwillingly aware of every movement on the street. Every car horn and rude city sound, which usually seemed to him as one collective noise, was crystalline and singular, making him aware of everything happening in every direction. It was very similar to his first night in the city, except instead of all the stimuli bringing excitement and possibility, they brought only dread. Michael covered his ears.
“We need to keep moving,” Tanish said. He gripped his right arm, just above the elbow, and led on. “Think about something else. It helps distract from the sounds.”
Michael searched his mind for something distracting. Where are we going? A club? A bar? Will it just be vampires? How many vampires will there be? Was this going to be a hazing situation? Will it involve saran wrap? Is someone going to kill me for asking the wrong questions? Will it be quick or will it be slow and painful?
“So…” Michael said, desperate to derail his train of thought, “Where are we going?”
“Bell told you where we are going,” Tanish said, never taking his eyes off their surroundings.
“Are you…looking for someone?” Michael asked, noticing how Tanish glanced down every alley and turned Michael abruptly down seemingly random streets, like a bodyguard escorting a diplomat with enemies.
“Just being cautious, Michael,” he tightened his grip on Michael’s elbow. “We aren’t the only things that go bump in the night.”
Michael swallowed hard. He hadn’t thought of that yet. What other nightmarish fantasies weren’t fantasies at all?
“Like…like what?” Michael asked, clearing his throat repeatedly.
Tanish only smiled. Michael got the feeling that he was enjoying scaring him. They walked on in silence, Michael trying not to let his imagination get the better of him. Was there going to be an ambush of werewolves? Or an attack from a horde of zombies? Michael jumped at every turn. He couldn’t stand the silence.
“Are you from here?” Michael asked loudly.
“No,” he kept his eyes ahead, “I’m from Bangalore.”
Tanish glanced at Michael’s blank stare. “India?” he asked.
“Oh. Cool,” Michael said stupidly. “Gandhi.”
“Gandhi. That’s all anyone knows about India. I hate that movie.”
“Sorry,” Michael followed in quiet for another block. He wondered how long ago Tanish had lived in India. He hadn’t noticed even a trace of an accent. “Did your parents come to New York, or…?”
“I know what you want to know, Michael,” Tanish said. “It’s not considered polite to ask about a vampire’s mortal life in our world.”
Our world
. His world was the classrooms at school, the corner deli down the street from his apartment, and the game shop he frequented with Randy. His world was playing Dungeons & Dragons and geeking out about real band-aids that are printed to look like strips of bacon.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Tanish looked at him appraisingly as they walked, Michael following his lead as they continued to turn every couple of blocks.
“How far is it?” Michael asked.
“Across town,” Tanish answered. “We are meeting with Joseph just a few blocks from here. He has a new turn of his own.”
“Another new vampire?” He suddenly wondered how many there were in the city.
“Yes,” he said, “another young man. He’s about your age, too. Maybe a little older. I don’t know. You are all so young to us.”
“I suppose,” Michael said quietly.
This seemed to amuse Tanish. “This way,” he smiled, “down the alley.”
Tanish led him into a well-lit alley behind a tall apartment building. Michael had tried to get a room in that very building but had to settle for his rat-favored one instead. At least his was closer to school.
Joseph stood at the end of the alley. A blonde man in his thirties stood next to him.
Do I look that old?
“What took you so long?” Joseph asked.
“Just getting dressed,” Tanish said with a wry smile.
“Alright,” Joseph said gruffly. “This is Chad,” he added, shoving the blonde man forward.
The man named Chad walked up to meet them and shook Michael’s hand energetically.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, releasing him and shaking Tanish’s hand with equal vigor. “Nice to meet you.”
Tanish and Joseph shared a meaningful glance at Chad’s expense.
“This is Michael,” he said, “and I am Tanish.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said again, positively bouncing with excitement.
Michael wondered idly if he was on drugs. “Nice to meet you, Chad,” Michael said unconvincingly.
“You’re new, too, huh?” Chad asked, punching him on the shoulder. “When were you…you know…’turned’?” he made accompanying air quotes.
“Last night,” Michael said.
“Cool,” Chad said with a wide, boyish grin. He had an odd sort of excited head bob that he didn’t seem to be able to control- combined with his blonde hair and absurdly large nose it gave him the overall impression of a duck on acid.
Michael and Chad stood there awkwardly for several moments while the other two exchanged looks. Michael began singing Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” in his head.
“Right,” Tanish said finally. “We are going to make a quick stop before heading to meet the clan.”
“Where are we going?” Chad asked before Tanish had even finished his sentence.
“Tanish is in need of some nourishment, and I could do with some as well,” Joseph said, his heavy brows drawn down in annoyance.
“You mean…blood?” Chad asked with baited breath.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Joseph replied flatly.
“Cool,” Chad said, nudging Michael with his elbow conspiratorially. “We get to see how it’s done!”
Michael smiled weakly. He felt pale. He had gone past feeling sick or weak, now he actually felt pale.
“There’s a good place a couple of blocks from here,” Tanish said, gesturing back down the alley the way they had come.
“Lead the way,” Joseph said, positioning himself in the rear of the formation.
They were herded in silence. Michael felt that he was walking to an appointment with the gallows.
I am not ready for this
, he thought frantically.
Chad seemed to be having the opposite reaction. He smiled at Michael over his shoulder every once in a while, Michael trying his best to keep smiling in return.
“Do we get to…’do it’ too?” Chad asked as they turned the corner onto a less well-lit street packed with cars. Pulsing bass blasted from a crowded bar at the end of the block. Every reflective surface on the block glowed neon green thanks to the bar’s overenthusiastic signage. Michael’s head throbbed with every beat of the music.
“No,” Joseph said firmly. “Not tonight. Only watch.”
Chad looked disappointed. Michael’s opinion of Chad shifted from “annoying druggie” to “possible sociopath.”
“Are we going to have a problem?” Joseph asked in response to Chad’s deflated posture.
Chad seemed pretty low on the IQ ladder, but even he could read between the lines of Joseph’s tone.
“No,” Chad said quietly.
“Good,” Joseph said.
Tanish laughed out loud, and Michael wondered what had been so funny.
Michael had only been in a bar once before. Some of his acquaintances from school had insisted on taking him out when they had found out it was his twenty first birthday. It was a dark, smoke-filled corner with questionable patrons loitering in the bathrooms. Michael had one sip of some horrible smelling liquid and left the rest to a couple of his friends. They had both proceeded to get very drunk, and then very sick. Michael picked up the tab and the cab fare to take them home. He hadn’t returned to the bar scene.
This bar was packed with people. Michael wouldn’t have used word “filthy” but no one would reference it as “high class” either. As they approached, Michael’s sense of impending doom skyrocketed. He pressed his palms against his temples trying to dull the pain in his head.
Near the entrance, they were almost run over by a gaggle of giggling women. They were dripping with costume jewelry and the tallest among them wore a Miss-America-style banner that read “Bachelorette” in garishly pink letters.
Tanish eyed the group as they passed by but turned back to the bar when they all got in the same car.