She squirmed anyway. “You killed Antonio.”
“He brought it on himself. He should have left it alone.”
“He wasn’t very tasty, either,” Rakim tutted. “I will be so glad when we run this town, and we don’t have to dine out on its leftovers. Maybe I’ll have me some nice Park Avenue socialite then. Hey, you should hold still if you don’t want your mark to look all busted.”
The pain was back in her arm. “I’ll go with you for your first kill,” Johannes promised sweetly. “It’s not so bad. You’ll see.”
“You get used to it. And you feel totally amazing after.” Alex stood framed in the doorway, smiling. “Before long, you don’t care about what you’re doing.”
Rakim finished his work, wiping away the last of Lauren’s blood with gauze. Her arm was sore and the Angelus insignia was black against the red of her skin. Johannes freed her from the table’s restraints.
“You’re free to go. You have twenty-four hours. If you don’t make a kill, you’ll get very, very sick. If you do choose to be one of us, you have to be back before sunrise. It’s your choice.”
Johannes’s lips were on hers and she couldn’t keep from kissing him back.
The night was hot; the sky was the oily black of old coffee. Lauren wandered the streets of Brooklyn in a haze, the humidity pressing down on her. She rode the F train all the way to Coney Island and back into the city. The bright white inside the train made her eyes burn and her head pound and she got off at Fourth Avenue. Above her, the vampires swarmed the skies shrieking. They were not birds; she knew that now. She was beginning to see and hear everything. Her ears picked up the smallest noises: rats scuttling in alleys, the sighs of discontented lovers, new life coming into the world on a tide of pain and blood, always blood. She passed by her apartment and listened to her parents breathing, could sense their worry. Outside the super’s apartment, she felt his restlessness as he dreamed of his time with the Tonton Macoutes, his machete doing its grisly, silencing work. Everyone had something to hide.
She moved on, fighting the jittery need making itself known in her anxious heartbeat. The skin of her arm was puffy and tight beneath the new tattoo, and every part of her had begun to hurt, as if she could no longer be contained by the limits of her flesh. Bile churned in her gut; her blood, which pumped with a new ferocity, begged for satisfaction. She licked her lips and ran her tongue over the tiny nubs of fangs pushing through her upper gums, making her mouth tender and swollen. How long had it been since the tattoo? Twelve hours? Fifteen?
Here and there she saw the vampires, squatting on the burned-out shells of cars, climbing the fire escapes of the tenements, circling the bridges and the piers, crouched under the overpasses, yellow eyes flashing, tattered wings spread out, lips peeled back to show their bloody maws, bodies breaking in the grip of their unnaturally strong hands. One glanced at her and laughed.
It was an hour later than she had ever remembered knowing before. Sharp pain twisted round her muscles like squeezing vines. In the alley near the water where Johannes had kissed her so perfectly, Lauren fell onto the broken pavement in a cold sweat. She blinked. Her eyelids scratched. The homeless woman staggered up the street without her boyfriend this time. She sang a Stevie Wonder song off-key. As the woman moved closer, Lauren felt her body quickening, tensing, the nubs of her fangs descending. She shut her eyes tight and tried to hold very still.
“Hey.”
Lauren opened her eyes to see the woman very near, so near that the scent of her blood beneath her skin was nearly unbearable. “Hey. You got some change you can spare? I’m hungry.”
“Go away,” Lauren rasped.
“You stupid little bitch.”
“Go. Away,” Lauren growled through gritted teeth.
“You think I like doing this? You think this is my idea of a good time?” The older woman spat on her and cursed until Lauren was forced to take refuge elsewhere. Lauren walked till she was numb, making her way through Red Hook, toward the water, to wait for the sun. At Lorraine Street, the blue of the pool tantalized her. She thought about going in for a last swim, about letting her lungs fill with water and ending it, but when she came around the corner, there was the girl sitting alone on the wall outside the recreation center in her day-camp shirt. It was close to dawn, maybe five-thirty. The sun would be up soon.
“What are you doing out here?” Lauren asked.
“Waiting for my aunt. She went to get me donuts.”
“Donuts are good.”
“I like the ones with the powdered sugar.”
The girl smelled like powdered sugar to Lauren. Like something sweet and perfect. Lauren doubled over and wrapped her arms around herself.
The girl looked at her strangely. “You sick?”
“Yeah, sweetie,” Lauren choked out. “You should stay back. I’m real sick.”
The child was scared now. Lauren could smell the fear mixing in her blood, and Lauren wanted to tell her to get ready because the whole world was sick, as diseased as she felt inside. But this girl with the large eyes didn’t know that yet. It was waiting for her, like a spoiled donut gone to maggots. And then, as Lauren’s body shook with new agony, she realized the girl didn’t have to know.
Lauren would save her.
Fourteen
LAUREN STOOD ON the old cobblestone street taking in the view of the yawning mouth of the city, its steel and stone teeth ready to devour the morning sky. Already, signs of dawn showed. At the top of the hill, Angelus House loomed. Someone had left the front light burning, and Lauren she made her way toward it now with slow, sure steps, adjusting to the tangy iron taste in her throat. She’d only vomited once at the beginning, but the girl was small and too weak to get away, and Lauren had held her with surprising strength. The girl’s blood had tasted sweet and sugary and slightly creamy, as if she might have had a quick cup of milk that morning before leaving the house. It had been fairly quick, all in all. Her only mistake was looking into the girl’s eyes and seeing her face mirrored there. She would not make that mistake next time.
She passed by her old desk. They’d have to find a new assistant, of course. A note had been left on her chair—
“We are the fallen angels,” they intoned. “We are the shadows in the night.”
Johannes held out his arm to welcome her into the circle, and she took her place, mouthing along with them, her whispers growing stronger, her words gaining power and conviction until her voice could not be distinguished from anyone else’s.
All Hallows
by Rachel Caine
DATING THE UNDEAD is a bad idea. Everybody in Morganville knows that—everybody breathing, that is.
Everybody but me, apparently. Eve Rosser, dater of the undead, dumb-ass breaker of rules. Yeah, I’m a rebel. But rebel or not, I froze, because that was what you did when a vampire looked at you with those scary red eyes, even if the vampire was your hunky best guy, Michael Glass.
None of them were fluffy bunnies at the best of times, but you really did
