Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kindlepitch) wrote2020-01-06 06:43 pm
kindlepitch) wrote2020-01-06 06:43 pm
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Selections from Carry On:
Baz told me that for him, it’s like lighting a match. Or pulling a trigger.
It’s always fire with Baz.
Baz is actually a fairly decent person to share a bathroom with. He’s in there all morning, but he’s clean; and he doesn’t like me to touch his stuff, so he keeps it all out of the way. Penelope says our bathroom smells like cedar and bergamot, and that’s got to be Baz because it definitely isn’t me.
As soon as I’m alone, I change into my school pyjamas—Baz brings his from home, but I like the school ones.
I’d be happy to spend my days helping Ebb herd goats if I live through the Humdrum, but Political Science is interesting enough, so I take it every year. Baz always takes it, too. Probably because he expects to reclaim the throne someday… Baz’s family used to run everything before the Mage came to power.
Baz’s mum was the headmistress at Watford before the Mage, which made her the most important person in magic.
Baz has always ranked first in our class.
Baz takes violin lessons.
He started giggling. “Really? You think I’m a vampire? Well, Aleister Crowley, what are you going to do about that?”
I know that it’s Baz’s handkerchief before I even see his initials embroidered in the corner, next to the Pitch coat of arms (flames, the moon, three falcons).
Every magician inherits some family artefact. Baz has a wand, like me; all the Pitches are wandworkers.
Baz’s eyes are usually the kind of grey that happens when you mix dark blue and dark green together. Deep-water grey.
But there are cobwebs in my hair tonight, and I was so thirsty that I got blood under my nails when I fed. That hasn’t happened since I was 14, not since I was just getting the hang of this. I can usually drain a polo pony without staining my lips.
My bed there is heavy and draped, and if you look close, you’ll find forty-two gargoyles carved into the trim. There used to be a step stool at the head because the bed was too tall for me to climb into by myself. This bed, at Watford, is more mine than that one ever was.
Snow says I’m obsessed with fire. I’d argue that’s an inevitable side effect of being flammable. I mean, I guess everyone’s flammable, ultimately—but vampires are oily rags. We’re flash paper.
The cruel joke of it is that I come from a long line of fire magicians—two long lines, the Grimms and the Pitches. I’m brilliant with fire. As long as I don’t get too close.
The windows are still open, and the sunlight is pouring in. I’m fine in sunlight—that’s another myth. But I don’t like it. It stings a bit, especially first thing in the morning. Snow suspects, I think, and is constantly opening the curtains.
I might be immortal. (Maybe. I don’t know whom to ask.) But I’m the kind of immortal you can still cut down or light on fire.
I get dressed in the bathroom. Snow and I have never dressed in front of each other; it’s an extension of our mutual paranoia. And thank snakes for that—my life is painful enough.
I feel myself blushing. (Crowley, that’s how much blood I drank last night—I’m capable of blushing.)
Baz’s elocution is flawless. In four languages. (Though I suppose I’m just taking his word on that when it comes to French and Greek and Latin.)
But bringing fire is as easy for me as breathing; it hardly takes any magic, and I always feel utterly in control. I can make it twist through my fingers like a snake. “Just like Natasha,” my father always says.
“He’s got more fire than a demon.”
He has these droopy dog eyes that always look like they’re peeking out from under his eyelids, even when his eyes are wide open. And his lips naturally turn down at the corners. It’s like his face was designed for pouting.
He has long hair for a bloke. When he plays football, it falls in his eyes and on his cheeks. But he slicks it straight back after a shower, so he always looks like a gangster first thing in the morning—or a black-and-white movie vampire, with that widow’s peak of his.
(Baz has a long thin nose. The kind that starts too high on someone’s head and practically gets in the way of their eyebrows. Sometimes when I’m looking at him, I want to reach out and yank it down half an inch. Not that that would work.) (His nose is also a little bent towards the bottom—I did that.)
Baz’s magic burns. Like heat rub. It hangs in the muscles of my hand.
12 August 2002.
I start to ask what happened that day, then I realize.
“You were only 5,” I say. “Do you remember anything?”
That there were babies, and sometimes, if one was crying, the miss would let me stand over the cradle and say, “It’s okay, little puff, you’ll be all right.” Because that’s what my mum would say to me when I cried.
“I meant temperature-wise,” she says. “Your magic feels like a grease-burn, Basil.”
Baz waves his wand in a shrug and turns to the chalkboard. “Runs in the family.”
They’re imagining my father sitting me down in a leather club chair and saying, “Basilton, there’s something I need to tell you.…”
He’s never said those words.
Nobody tells anyone anything in my family. You just know. You learn to know.
No one had to tell me that we talk about Mother, but we don’t talk about Mother’s death.
No one had to tell me I was a vampire:
I remembered being bitten, I grew up with the same horror stories everyone else did—then I woke up one day craving blood. And no one had to tell me not to take it from another person.
I take a sandwich and the apple, and stand up. “I need some air.”
I wait until I’m down in the Catacombs to tuck in. I don’t really like eating in front of people.
I can’t always tell when Baz is mocking me. He’s got a cruel mouth. It looks like he’s sneering even when he’s happy about something. Actually, I don’t know if he ever is happy. It’s like he’s got two emotions—pissed off and sadistically amused.
(And plotting, is that an emotion? If so, three.)
(And disgusted. Four.)
I like to practise violin in the library. My brothers and sisters aren’t allowed in here yet, and there’s a wall of lead-paned windows that look out on the gardens.
I like to practise violin, full stop. I’m good at it. And it distracts all the parts of my brain that just get in my way. I can think more cleanly when I’m playing.
My grandfather played, too. He could cast spells with his bow.
I mean … they do look like really expensive jeans. Dark. And snug from his waist to his ankles without looking tight.
Baz stops. He pulls a pack of fags from inside his jacket, then lights one with his wand. Everyone standing at the table jolts back. Baz takes a deep breath—the end of the cigarette glows red—and blows the smoke out over the table.
I didn’t know he smoked.
Because I’ve never kissed anyone before. (I was afraid I might bite.) And I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone but him. (I won’t bite. I won’t hurt him.)
The looking at Baz and thinking about the way his hair falls in a lazy wave over his forehead …
Snow kissed me last night until my mouth was sore. He kissed me so much, I was worried I’d Turn him with all my saliva. He held himself up on all fours above me and made me reach up for his mouth—and I did. I would again. I’d cross every line for him.
I’m in love with him.
I’ve just pushed my fingers between Baz’s shirt buttons; his skin is room temperature.
I think Simon is right; you really can see Baz’s fangs sometimes through his cheeks.
Everyone says I favour my mother in appearance—we’re from the Egyptian branch of the Pitch family—but I consciously mimic the way my father carries himself: the way you can never see what’s happening behind his eyes. I’ve practised that in front of the mirror. (Of course I can see myself in the mirror; Simon Snow is a fool.)
No one ever calls me Tyrannus. My mother insisted on it because it’s a family name, but my father hates it.
I thought there might be extended family here for the holidays, miscellaneous Grimms and Pitches, but it’s just Baz’s parents and his siblings. There’s the older girl, Mordelia, then two other little girls, maybe twins—I’m not sure how old, old enough to sit up by themselves and gnaw on turkey legs—and a baby in a fancy carved high chair tapping a rattle onto his (her?) tray.
They all look like Baz’s stepmum: dark hair, but not black like Baz’s, with round cheeks and those Billie Piper mouths that don’t quite close over their front teeth.
Baz looks up at me, and his cheeks look fuller than normal. He smiles then, and I see them—long white fangs, trying to push out over both his lips.
He sighs and pulls back his lips. His fangs are huge. And they look so sharp. “Where do they even come from? Like, where do they go when you’re not using them?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds kind of like he’s wearing braces.
“Can I touch them?”
“No. They’re sharp. And toxic.”
He lifts his face, and it’s wrong, too. Twisted. His eyes are dilated and black, and his mouth is full of white knives—his lips have retracted to make room for them.
He’s shaking his head so fast, it blurs.
There’s a tree between us, and Baz rips it from the ground and tosses it aside.
“It’s okay,” Baz says. “It’s all okay now.” One arm is tight around Simon’s back, and the other is smoothing his hair out of his face. “You did it, didn’t you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Baz wraps both arms around him. “It’s all right, love.”
Baz is starting at the London School of Economics in a few weeks. His parents both went to Oxford, but Baz said he’d be staked before he left London.
Anyway, Baz and I thought about getting a flat. But we both decided that after seven years together, it might be good to have different roommates.
Baz grins, then leans over and kisses my neck. (I have a mole there; he treats it like a target.)
“Go on, then,” he says. “Carry on, Simon.”
She fished my wand—polished ivory with a leather hilt—out of her giant handbag and stuck it in my shorts pocket.
Selections from Wayward Son:
I’ve loved him through worse. I’ve loved him hopelessly.…
So what’s a little less hope?
A month ago, I would have walked to the sofa and touched his shoulder. Three months ago, I would have dropped a kiss on his cheek. Last September, when he and Bunce first moved into this flat, I would have had to pull my mouth away from his to ask the question, and he might not have let me finish.
And he’s as handsome as ever. (More handsome than ever. Taller, bolder, with a beard now anytime he wants one. Like adolescence isn’t quite done dealing him aces.)
Everything that happened with the Mage and the Humdrum just made Baz more of who he was meant to be. He avenged his mother. He solved the mystery that’s hung over him since he was 5. He proved himself as a man and a magician.
I think Baz would have broken up with me by now if he didn’t feel so sorry for me. (And if he hadn’t promised to love me. Magicians get hung up on honour.)
Baz acts like he does this every day. He’s completely relaxed, with one long, pale hand resting on the steering wheel and the other firmly managing the gear stick. He’s wearing light grey trousers, a white shirt cuffed just below his elbows, and a pair of sunglasses I’ve never seen before. His hair has got longer since we left school, and the wind is bringing it to life.
“It can be a lot to manage all at once—it’s frustrating at first.”
“Who taught you how to drive?” he asks.
“My stepmother.”
“And she got frustrated?”
“No,” I say. “She was lovely. I got frustrated. Go ahead and release the handbrake—it’s just there.” I put my left hand on his shoulder, then reach across his lap with my right, pointing.
“Crowley, that was excellent, Snow.”
“Let me try—” And he’s in third. Which is too fast for a residential neighbourhood, but well done, all the same.
“Smashing, Simon. You’re a natural.”
Baz has stopped glaring at Penelope and started glaring at me. “What on earth are you drinking, Snow?”
“A Unicorn Frappuccino.”
He frowns. “Why’s it called that—does it taste like lavender?”
“It tastes like strawberry Dip Dab,” I say.
Penny’s grimacing at Baz. “For heaven’s snakes, Basil, I can’t believe you know what unicorns taste like.”
“Shut up, Bunce, it was sustainably farmed.”
“Unicorns can talk!”
“They’re only capable of small talk; it’s not like eating a dolphin.”
Baz takes my Frappuccino and sucks down a huge gulp. “Disgusting.” He hands it back to me. “Not like unicorn at all.”
But I can’t really focus on it because of the sun and also the wind
and because I’m very busy making a list.
Things I hate, a list:
1. The sun.
2. The wind.
3. Penelope Bunce, when she hasn’t got a plan.
4. American sandwiches.
5. America.
6. The band, America. Which I didn’t know about an hour ago.
7. Kansas, also a band I’ve recently become acquainted with.
8. Kansas, the state. Which isn’t that far from Illinois, so it must be wretched.
9. The State of Illinois, for fucking certain.
10. The sun. In my eyes.
11. The wind in my hair.
12. Convertible automobiles.
13. Myself, most of all.
14. My soft heart.
15. My foolish optimism.
16. The words “road” and “trip,” when said together with any enthusiasm.
17. Being a vampire, if we’re being honest.
18. Being a vampire in a fucking convertible.
19. A deliriously thirsty vampire in a convertible at midday. In Illinois, which is apparently the brightest place on the planet.
20. The sun. Which hangs miles closer to Minooka, Illinois, than it does over London blessed England.
21. Minooka, Illinois. Which seems dreadful.
22. These sunglasses. Rubbish.
23. The fucking sun! We get it—you’re very fucking bright!
24. Penelope Bunce, who came up with this idea. An idea not accompanied by a plan. Because all she cared about was seeing her rubbish boyfriend, who clearly cocked it all up. Which we all should have expected from someone from Illinois, land of the damned—a place that manages to be both hot and humid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don’t expect it to also be humid. That’s what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!
25. Penelope “Girl Genius” Bunce.
26. And all of her stupid ideas. “Good for us all,” she said; all I heard was “good for Simon.” Crowley … Maybe she was right … Look at him. He’s as happy as a pig in mud. As happy as someone who’s suffering under the “A pig in mud” spell—which I’ve considered casting on him numerous times over the last six months. Because I’m just so tired, and I don’t how to—I mean, there’s nothing—There’s no fixing him.
27. The Mage. May he rest in pain.
28. Penelope—for maybe being right, about Simon. And America. And this wretched convertible. Because just look at him.…
Off the sofa, out of the flat. Over the ocean, under the sun.
Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy.
And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed.
There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t
tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.
Simon looks over at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“What?!” he shouts. He can’t hear a thing I’m saying over the wind and the engine and the classic rock.
“I hate this fucking car!” I shout back. “The sun is burning me! I might actually catch fire, at any moment!”
The wind is blowing Simon’s hair straight, and he’s squinting—from the sun and from all the smiling. “What!” he shouts at me again.
“You’re so beautiful!” I shout back.
Though I’m well accustomed to how they both smell when I’m thirsty.
Simon smells like the kitchen after you pop popcorn and melt butter. There’s a singe to it, with a round, yellow, fatty feeling that sticks to the roof of your mouth. Bunce is sharper and sweeter—vinegar and treacle. She skinned her knee once, and my sinuses burned for hours.
“Where’s your phone?” Simon asks me.
“It doesn’t work out of the country.”
“Why didn’t you switch it over?”
Because I’m on my parents’ plan, and I didn’t want them to know I was leaving the country, which I don’t want to tell Simon. “Did you switch yours?” I say instead.
Baz drops his cutlery and swings over to Penny’s side of the table, helping her set her Blast down, putting his arm around her. “Please don’t choke to death, Bunce. Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.”
Baz rubs her back and lets her cry into his shirt. I love him so much, and I want to tell him so. But I’ve never managed to say it, and now is definitely not the time.
He looks up at me, his eyes urgent. “Switch places with me, Snow. I’m about to drain her dry.”
Penelope sits up—not as urgently as she should, I reckon—and Baz extricates himself from her arms and her hair and the booth.
He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I think I’ll step outside. For a moment.” He’s white as a sheet, though his cheeks and nose look sort of flushed with black. He wheels around and heads for the exit, dipping towards the hostess on his way out, then backing out the door.
Simon’s sitting next to Penny, and I’m flushed with warm feelings for both of them. (A side effect of being flushed with the blood of nine cats, probably.) I go to their side of the booth—“Scoot over”—and pick up a fork.
It seemed at first that all my dreams were coming true, that he was finally mine. Mine to love, mine to live with—to walk with—to have. I’d never been in a relationship before. “I want to be your terrible boyfriend,” Snow said, and I couldn’t wait for it.
I hear Baz getting up and moving around again in the dark. I wonder if he’s cold. Or thirsty. Then, in a rush of warmth and cedar and bergamot, he kisses my cheek. “Good night, Snow,” he says.
And then I hear him climb back into bed.
The boys are leaning on the car when I get down there. Simon’s eating a banana. Baz is wearing his giant sunglasses and a beautiful floral shirt.
(White with blue and purple flowers and fat striped bumblebees. It probably cost as much as my tuition.) He’s tying a pale blue scarf around his hair.
“You can’t wear that,” Simon grins.
“Shut it, Snow.”
“Where did that even come from? Do you just carry a ladies’ scarf around with you?”
“It was my mother’s,” Baz says.
“Oh,” Simon says. “Sorry. Wait—do you carry your mother’s scarf around with you?”
“I wrap my sunglasses in it when I’m travelling.”
“Are those your mother’s sunglasses, too?”
Baz’s sunglasses are as big as his head. And that scarf. It should make him look like a mad old bat, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look half glamourous. Like a boy Marilyn Monroe.…
My brain gets kind of stuck on “boy Marilyn Monroe” for a while.
You’re never supposed to point your wand at your own face, but I do. Is something wrong with it?
My eyebrows drop, in suspicion, then I slowly raise the left one. Maybe Nebraska is the good life.…
“Baz,” she says. “Those are all spells from back home. They’re British idiom—useless here.”
Oh. Crowley. She’s right
“Wait,” Simon says, “why?”
“Because there aren’t enough Normal people here using those phrases,” I say. “It’s the Normals who give words magic—”
Simon rolls his eyes and starts quoting Miss Possibelf. “‘The more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations’—right, I know. So your magic’s fine?”
And somewhere, someone is playing a dulcimer. (My aunt plays the dulcimer; all the women in my family learn.)
“The young master hath a fine idea,” I say. “He is fair in aspect and sharp
in mind.”
“How’d you do that?” Simon asks. “Did you flip a switch?”
“I’m just pretending to be in a Shakespeare play. Lay on, my boy.”
“I’m not your boy,” he says, laughing, but also laying on.
“‘He’s gone,’” I lament. “‘I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe him.’”
“Othello,” Bunce says. “Very nice, Basilton.”
Baz smiles at me. Like he hasn’t in a while. Like he almost never has, in public—like it’s easy. “You’re right, Snow. Better tie you to the mast.”
He’s wearing a shirt with a whole field of flowers on it. I didn’t know how to dress once we didn’t have to wear uniforms every day, but Baz was apparently spoiling for it. He almost never wears the same thing, the same way, twice.
“That’s the Master Sword,” I say.
“Perfect for me then.”
“From The Legend of Zelda?”
He still doesn’t get it. Baz isn’t into games.
“‘You have witchcraft in your lips,’” Baz says.
“Is that more Shakespeare?”
“Yeah, sorry. I know you prefer Homer.”
The vampires are unbelievably fast. But then, so is Baz.
I’m keeping two more at bay: a guy in a polyester cape and a woman dressed like Tom Cruise’s Lestat. (Of course I’ve read Anne Rice. I was a 15-year-old closet case whose parents pretended they didn’t notice when the family dog disappeared.)
And there’s no point trying to be humane. Penny’s on the right track: We can’t lock them up, and we can’t let them go. And it’s not like I have an opportunity to convert them to rat-drinking. “Have you heard the good news about small mammals?”
The vampire impaled on my axe handle has already started to wither. Like it was the magic in his heart holding him together. I pull back the stake, and he falls—a man-shaped pile of blood and boots and ashes.
Baz uses the distraction to get back on his feet and throw a punch at the other vampire, the guy. It’s a messy punch. Baz has never learned to fight with his body, even though he’s made of steel.
Baz staggers back from his opponent, then stands tall, making two fists at his hips. His eyes go hooded and dark. That’s a very attractive way to die, I think. But then Baz opens his palms, and he’s holding two balls of fire.
Simon catches up with me and traps me against the car. He’s kissing me before I see it coming, bending me back over the boot. “You were amazing,” he says, taking a breath. “You didn’t even need a wand.”
I hold on to his shoulders. “I’m a little disturbed that you find slaying vampires this exciting.”
He kisses me so hard, my head tips.
We have broken every rule today. The World of Mages doesn’t have many, but we’ve shattered them all:
Don’t pester the Normals.
Don’t interfere with the Normals.
Don’t steal from the Normals.
Above all, don’t let the Normals know that magic exists.
Above even that, don’t let the Normals know that we exist.
“It could be anything!” I say. A wraith, a leach, a ghoul. Something specifically American: a gun demon, a prairie mog, one of those sirens who live in wells. Can coyotes drive cars? I know they can play poker, the Mage told me.
I don’t want to look away from Simon, so I rub my fingers along the pockmarks in my chest. They sting, but they seem to have already stopped bleeding. I still don’t know what kills vampires—but I suppose I can rule out a chestful of buckshot.
I hear Baz casting spells in the back of the truck. Making us hard to see, making us hard to follow. Deep magic. He’s probably already exhausted.
He holds me there, a little too tightly. Usually I forget Baz is so much stronger than me. He doesn’t carry himself like he’s that strong. He doesn’t touch me that way. He never pulls or pushes me, not like that. Not any harder than I can push back.
I couldn’t help her with the spells. I’m still not … right from the gunshots. My skin has closed and mostly healed—I look like I was shot twenty years ago, not twenty hours—but my chest aches. And I feel listless. Like my undead body had to make some steep sacrifice to hold on to its “un.”
Baz closes his eyes again. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!” His voice sounds lush when he sings. Deeper and heavier than when he talks.
Baz hunted just outside of Denver, but he’s as grey as I’ve ever seen him, and his nose is still sooty from those days in the sun. (He went black instead of red.)
I’ve known about Baz’s vampirism for at least a year—and Simon suspected for years before that—but Baz is still self-conscious about it. He won’t ever feed in front of us. He won’t even eat a sandwich if he thinks you’re watching. Simon says it’s because Baz’s fangs pop, and he’s embarrassed, so I always look away. (Though I would love to get a better look at them, for scientific purposes.)
“I don’t kill predators,” he says.
“Why not? Fellow feeling?”
“They’re too important to the ecosystem. Besides, there are sheep around here, of some sort. I saw tracks.”
“Found this on him,” the woman says, holding up my wand. “Probably stolen. Heffalump tusk. Extinct.” She tosses it over her shoulder.
I know that I heal faster than other people. (More proof that I’m not a person.) But I’ve never really tested my limits. No one’s ever emptied a shotgun into my chest or kicked me in the gut with steel-toed cowboy boots.
…
The worst I’ve been injured before this was when the numpties took me. I think my leg healed right away even then—but it healed wrong because I was stuck in that coffin.
Before that, there were fights with Simon. A few black eyes over the years, a split lip. I healed fast from those injuries, but so did he. I think Simon’s magic used to heal him, even when he couldn’t cast the spells to heal himself.
It’s covered in glossy white scars now—but those will heal, too, I think. All my other scars have.
One of my socks is covered in feathers, but the shirts are clean. I put one on straightaway—a good print, aubergine with navy leaves—and tuck the rest into a plastic bag.
Shepard keeps trying to draw us out. To no avail. I’ve never been drawn out in my life, and Bunce especially has taken against him.
“Come here,” Simon says.
I really hate riding back here. I feel like a cup of tea left on top of a moving car. “This is so dangerous,” I say, kneeling. “What if we hit a bump?”
“You’ll be fine, you’re Kevlar.”
“What about you?”
“Wings.”
I’ve never heard Baz’s heartbeat.
And I’ve lain all night with my head on his chest.
“The Katherine?” he says. “It’s one of the vampire hotels. The oldest, I think. The parties there are infamous—every night in the penthouse suite.”
Baz is standing in front of a full-length mirror, wearing—I swear to Merlin—a flowered suit. It’s some slick material, dark blue with blood-red roses. With a white shirt. No—a light pink shirt. When did he start wearing all these flowers? When did his hair get so long? He’s put stuff in it, and it’s hanging over his collar in thick, black waves.
They aren’t especially beautiful. (Though some are.) That’s a myth, I think—vampire beauty. What they are is especially rich. And especially … liquid.
They move like oil, like shadows. Like cats.
Is this what I look like? Like I don’t have any parts that stick?
I’ve been to a hundred of my parents’ parties—I know how to stand around wealthy people and look bored.
Though these people don’t look bored.…
I don’t really go out back home. Simon and I don’t. (The wings, you see. And the fact that I hate drunk people.) (I really do. If I were sober, I’d hate myself right now. What a bore.)
He pulls me closer, the man sandwiched between us—the fragrance is irresistible. My fangs have dropped. There’s no room in my mouth for my tongue.
Baz’s voice had got softer and mushier over the last hour, harder to hear over the music that was always playing in the background. He was on at least his third drink. (Baz never drinks with me. He says it’s boring.)
“They all smell so delicious,” he said. “Fermented. Like warm bread.” I was pretty sure he was talking about Normals.
This …
Is a new low.
I spell the birds away. Then the blood. And draw myself a bath.
I reheat the water twice just to avoid facing anyone. They’ve all seen me now. Even the Normal. Sucking down tropical birds. More like a mongoose than a man. At least real vampires look cool when they feed on people.
“I kept waiting for an opening,” I say. My extra teeth make me sound like a 12-year-old with braces.
I kill everything I drink.
I always thought it was safer that way. If I let the animals live, they might end up like me. (Can a vampire Turn a rat? Or a deer? Or a dog? I’d rather not find out.)
When I’m thirsty, this isn’t really a decision. I just drink till there’s no more to drink. I haven’t ever tried to stop.
I’ve never tasted human blood before. I’ve had low-risk opportunities, of course; in football, there’s blood everywhere—plus, I smashed Simon’s nose with my forehead once, and he practically bled into my mouth.
But I’ve never wanted to cross that threshold. Like, you can say you’ve never tasted human blood or you can say that you have. And once you have, what does it matter whether it’s one person or fifty?
And what if one taste wasn’t enough? What if I couldn’t stop thinking about it? (I already never stop thinking about it.)
What then? What options would that leave me? The way I understood it, mass murder or mass conversion.
I changed into one of my new suits before we left. Black this time, with a heather-and-gold flowered shirt. (I suppose Bunce isn’t the only one who can’t let go of Watford purple.)
I raise an eyebrow, which is my go-to move when I want to look cool but don’t have anything cool to say.
(I can be droll, I can pretend that nothing matters—it’s practically my neutral state.)
It’s hard to imagine my fangs retracting when they’re filling up my whole mouth. I’ve never once kept them from popping. Have I ever once tried? My usual strategy is subterfuge and avoidance: Don’t let anyone watch me eat. Ever.
“Baz,” he says, “how old are you?”
I don’t have a lie ready. “Twenty.”
“Right. And I’m thirty-four. How old are you really?”
I look up at the lights, at the acoustic tile ceiling. “Twenty.”
I hear him exhale.
Lamb looks utterly put off. “Oh, Baz,” he says in dismay. “No wonder you’re so pale. You’re malnourished.”
I laugh. “But I’m not one of them.”
“No,” he says, eyeing me with one brow aloft. “You’re a starving child from an oppressed nation who has barely met himself. But you are not one of them.”
I thought we might come to blows just now; the energy felt so like it had when we were still at Watford, screaming at each other over our school beds. (Though there’s no Roommate’s Anathema to keep us from killing each other here.)
Those fights used to feel so good. It meant getting to look at Snow.
Getting his attention. Having a place to hurl all my feelings for him, even if they came out spiked and razor sharp.
Fighting doesn’t feel good anymore. It feels like breaking something because you don’t know how to fix it.
Vampires are banned. They’re actually forbidden. It’s the law. They’re like pithbulls or adders, simply not allowed in the World of Mages. Because you can’t trust them not to murder you!
My parents wouldn’t even let me use the Internet.
And brought more Altoids. (They’re very good for blocking out blood smells. Especially the spearmint flavour.)
Simon is on the ground. His wing is bent the wrong way. His blood is red and abundant. It smells like brown butter. His hair is a mess, his face is in the sand. He doesn’t know how much I love him. He’s never really heard it.
And probably everyone here would be more horked off over that if Baz didn’t just grab the leader of the Next Blood by the neck and rip off half his jaw.
Selections from Carry On:
Baz told me that for him, it’s like lighting a match. Or pulling a trigger.
It’s always fire with Baz.
Baz is actually a fairly decent person to share a bathroom with. He’s in there all morning, but he’s clean; and he doesn’t like me to touch his stuff, so he keeps it all out of the way. Penelope says our bathroom smells like cedar and bergamot, and that’s got to be Baz because it definitely isn’t me.
As soon as I’m alone, I change into my school pyjamas—Baz brings his from home, but I like the school ones.
I’d be happy to spend my days helping Ebb herd goats if I live through the Humdrum, but Political Science is interesting enough, so I take it every year. Baz always takes it, too. Probably because he expects to reclaim the throne someday… Baz’s family used to run everything before the Mage came to power.
Baz’s mum was the headmistress at Watford before the Mage, which made her the most important person in magic.
Baz has always ranked first in our class.
Baz takes violin lessons.
He started giggling. “Really? You think I’m a vampire? Well, Aleister Crowley, what are you going to do about that?”
I know that it’s Baz’s handkerchief before I even see his initials embroidered in the corner, next to the Pitch coat of arms (flames, the moon, three falcons).
Every magician inherits some family artefact. Baz has a wand, like me; all the Pitches are wandworkers.
Baz’s eyes are usually the kind of grey that happens when you mix dark blue and dark green together. Deep-water grey.
But there are cobwebs in my hair tonight, and I was so thirsty that I got blood under my nails when I fed. That hasn’t happened since I was 14, not since I was just getting the hang of this. I can usually drain a polo pony without staining my lips.
My bed there is heavy and draped, and if you look close, you’ll find forty-two gargoyles carved into the trim. There used to be a step stool at the head because the bed was too tall for me to climb into by myself. This bed, at Watford, is more mine than that one ever was.
Snow says I’m obsessed with fire. I’d argue that’s an inevitable side effect of being flammable. I mean, I guess everyone’s flammable, ultimately—but vampires are oily rags. We’re flash paper.
The cruel joke of it is that I come from a long line of fire magicians—two long lines, the Grimms and the Pitches. I’m brilliant with fire. As long as I don’t get too close.
The windows are still open, and the sunlight is pouring in. I’m fine in sunlight—that’s another myth. But I don’t like it. It stings a bit, especially first thing in the morning. Snow suspects, I think, and is constantly opening the curtains.
I might be immortal. (Maybe. I don’t know whom to ask.) But I’m the kind of immortal you can still cut down or light on fire.
I get dressed in the bathroom. Snow and I have never dressed in front of each other; it’s an extension of our mutual paranoia. And thank snakes for that—my life is painful enough.
I feel myself blushing. (Crowley, that’s how much blood I drank last night—I’m capable of blushing.)
Baz’s elocution is flawless. In four languages. (Though I suppose I’m just taking his word on that when it comes to French and Greek and Latin.)
But bringing fire is as easy for me as breathing; it hardly takes any magic, and I always feel utterly in control. I can make it twist through my fingers like a snake. “Just like Natasha,” my father always says.
“He’s got more fire than a demon.”
He has these droopy dog eyes that always look like they’re peeking out from under his eyelids, even when his eyes are wide open. And his lips naturally turn down at the corners. It’s like his face was designed for pouting.
He has long hair for a bloke. When he plays football, it falls in his eyes and on his cheeks. But he slicks it straight back after a shower, so he always looks like a gangster first thing in the morning—or a black-and-white movie vampire, with that widow’s peak of his.
(Baz has a long thin nose. The kind that starts too high on someone’s head and practically gets in the way of their eyebrows. Sometimes when I’m looking at him, I want to reach out and yank it down half an inch. Not that that would work.) (His nose is also a little bent towards the bottom—I did that.)
Baz’s magic burns. Like heat rub. It hangs in the muscles of my hand.
12 August 2002.
I start to ask what happened that day, then I realize.
“You were only 5,” I say. “Do you remember anything?”
That there were babies, and sometimes, if one was crying, the miss would let me stand over the cradle and say, “It’s okay, little puff, you’ll be all right.” Because that’s what my mum would say to me when I cried.
“I meant temperature-wise,” she says. “Your magic feels like a grease-burn, Basil.”
Baz waves his wand in a shrug and turns to the chalkboard. “Runs in the family.”
They’re imagining my father sitting me down in a leather club chair and saying, “Basilton, there’s something I need to tell you.…”
He’s never said those words.
Nobody tells anyone anything in my family. You just know. You learn to know.
No one had to tell me that we talk about Mother, but we don’t talk about Mother’s death.
No one had to tell me I was a vampire:
I remembered being bitten, I grew up with the same horror stories everyone else did—then I woke up one day craving blood. And no one had to tell me not to take it from another person.
I take a sandwich and the apple, and stand up. “I need some air.”
I wait until I’m down in the Catacombs to tuck in. I don’t really like eating in front of people.
I can’t always tell when Baz is mocking me. He’s got a cruel mouth. It looks like he’s sneering even when he’s happy about something. Actually, I don’t know if he ever is happy. It’s like he’s got two emotions—pissed off and sadistically amused.
(And plotting, is that an emotion? If so, three.)
(And disgusted. Four.)
I like to practise violin in the library. My brothers and sisters aren’t allowed in here yet, and there’s a wall of lead-paned windows that look out on the gardens.
I like to practise violin, full stop. I’m good at it. And it distracts all the parts of my brain that just get in my way. I can think more cleanly when I’m playing.
My grandfather played, too. He could cast spells with his bow.
I mean … they do look like really expensive jeans. Dark. And snug from his waist to his ankles without looking tight.
Baz stops. He pulls a pack of fags from inside his jacket, then lights one with his wand. Everyone standing at the table jolts back. Baz takes a deep breath—the end of the cigarette glows red—and blows the smoke out over the table.
I didn’t know he smoked.
Because I’ve never kissed anyone before. (I was afraid I might bite.) And I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone but him. (I won’t bite. I won’t hurt him.)
The looking at Baz and thinking about the way his hair falls in a lazy wave over his forehead …
Snow kissed me last night until my mouth was sore. He kissed me so much, I was worried I’d Turn him with all my saliva. He held himself up on all fours above me and made me reach up for his mouth—and I did. I would again. I’d cross every line for him.
I’m in love with him.
I’ve just pushed my fingers between Baz’s shirt buttons; his skin is room temperature.
I think Simon is right; you really can see Baz’s fangs sometimes through his cheeks.
Everyone says I favour my mother in appearance—we’re from the Egyptian branch of the Pitch family—but I consciously mimic the way my father carries himself: the way you can never see what’s happening behind his eyes. I’ve practised that in front of the mirror. (Of course I can see myself in the mirror; Simon Snow is a fool.)
No one ever calls me Tyrannus. My mother insisted on it because it’s a family name, but my father hates it.
I thought there might be extended family here for the holidays, miscellaneous Grimms and Pitches, but it’s just Baz’s parents and his siblings. There’s the older girl, Mordelia, then two other little girls, maybe twins—I’m not sure how old, old enough to sit up by themselves and gnaw on turkey legs—and a baby in a fancy carved high chair tapping a rattle onto his (her?) tray.
They all look like Baz’s stepmum: dark hair, but not black like Baz’s, with round cheeks and those Billie Piper mouths that don’t quite close over their front teeth.
Baz looks up at me, and his cheeks look fuller than normal. He smiles then, and I see them—long white fangs, trying to push out over both his lips.
He sighs and pulls back his lips. His fangs are huge. And they look so sharp. “Where do they even come from? Like, where do they go when you’re not using them?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds kind of like he’s wearing braces.
“Can I touch them?”
“No. They’re sharp. And toxic.”
He lifts his face, and it’s wrong, too. Twisted. His eyes are dilated and black, and his mouth is full of white knives—his lips have retracted to make room for them.
He’s shaking his head so fast, it blurs.
There’s a tree between us, and Baz rips it from the ground and tosses it aside.
“It’s okay,” Baz says. “It’s all okay now.” One arm is tight around Simon’s back, and the other is smoothing his hair out of his face. “You did it, didn’t you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Baz wraps both arms around him. “It’s all right, love.”
Baz is starting at the London School of Economics in a few weeks. His parents both went to Oxford, but Baz said he’d be staked before he left London.
Anyway, Baz and I thought about getting a flat. But we both decided that after seven years together, it might be good to have different roommates.
Baz grins, then leans over and kisses my neck. (I have a mole there; he treats it like a target.)
“Go on, then,” he says. “Carry on, Simon.”
She fished my wand—polished ivory with a leather hilt—out of her giant handbag and stuck it in my shorts pocket.
Selections from Wayward Son:
I’ve loved him through worse. I’ve loved him hopelessly.…
So what’s a little less hope?
A month ago, I would have walked to the sofa and touched his shoulder. Three months ago, I would have dropped a kiss on his cheek. Last September, when he and Bunce first moved into this flat, I would have had to pull my mouth away from his to ask the question, and he might not have let me finish.
And he’s as handsome as ever. (More handsome than ever. Taller, bolder, with a beard now anytime he wants one. Like adolescence isn’t quite done dealing him aces.)
Everything that happened with the Mage and the Humdrum just made Baz more of who he was meant to be. He avenged his mother. He solved the mystery that’s hung over him since he was 5. He proved himself as a man and a magician.
I think Baz would have broken up with me by now if he didn’t feel so sorry for me. (And if he hadn’t promised to love me. Magicians get hung up on honour.)
Baz acts like he does this every day. He’s completely relaxed, with one long, pale hand resting on the steering wheel and the other firmly managing the gear stick. He’s wearing light grey trousers, a white shirt cuffed just below his elbows, and a pair of sunglasses I’ve never seen before. His hair has got longer since we left school, and the wind is bringing it to life.
“It can be a lot to manage all at once—it’s frustrating at first.”
“Who taught you how to drive?” he asks.
“My stepmother.”
“And she got frustrated?”
“No,” I say. “She was lovely. I got frustrated. Go ahead and release the handbrake—it’s just there.” I put my left hand on his shoulder, then reach across his lap with my right, pointing.
“Crowley, that was excellent, Snow.”
“Let me try—” And he’s in third. Which is too fast for a residential neighbourhood, but well done, all the same.
“Smashing, Simon. You’re a natural.”
Baz has stopped glaring at Penelope and started glaring at me. “What on earth are you drinking, Snow?”
“A Unicorn Frappuccino.”
He frowns. “Why’s it called that—does it taste like lavender?”
“It tastes like strawberry Dip Dab,” I say.
Penny’s grimacing at Baz. “For heaven’s snakes, Basil, I can’t believe you know what unicorns taste like.”
“Shut up, Bunce, it was sustainably farmed.”
“Unicorns can talk!”
“They’re only capable of small talk; it’s not like eating a dolphin.”
Baz takes my Frappuccino and sucks down a huge gulp. “Disgusting.” He hands it back to me. “Not like unicorn at all.”
But I can’t really focus on it because of the sun and also the wind
and because I’m very busy making a list.
Things I hate, a list:
1. The sun.
2. The wind.
3. Penelope Bunce, when she hasn’t got a plan.
4. American sandwiches.
5. America.
6. The band, America. Which I didn’t know about an hour ago.
7. Kansas, also a band I’ve recently become acquainted with.
8. Kansas, the state. Which isn’t that far from Illinois, so it must be wretched.
9. The State of Illinois, for fucking certain.
10. The sun. In my eyes.
11. The wind in my hair.
12. Convertible automobiles.
13. Myself, most of all.
14. My soft heart.
15. My foolish optimism.
16. The words “road” and “trip,” when said together with any enthusiasm.
17. Being a vampire, if we’re being honest.
18. Being a vampire in a fucking convertible.
19. A deliriously thirsty vampire in a convertible at midday. In Illinois, which is apparently the brightest place on the planet.
20. The sun. Which hangs miles closer to Minooka, Illinois, than it does over London blessed England.
21. Minooka, Illinois. Which seems dreadful.
22. These sunglasses. Rubbish.
23. The fucking sun! We get it—you’re very fucking bright!
24. Penelope Bunce, who came up with this idea. An idea not accompanied by a plan. Because all she cared about was seeing her rubbish boyfriend, who clearly cocked it all up. Which we all should have expected from someone from Illinois, land of the damned—a place that manages to be both hot and humid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don’t expect it to also be humid. That’s what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!
25. Penelope “Girl Genius” Bunce.
26. And all of her stupid ideas. “Good for us all,” she said; all I heard was “good for Simon.” Crowley … Maybe she was right … Look at him. He’s as happy as a pig in mud. As happy as someone who’s suffering under the “A pig in mud” spell—which I’ve considered casting on him numerous times over the last six months. Because I’m just so tired, and I don’t how to—I mean, there’s nothing—There’s no fixing him.
27. The Mage. May he rest in pain.
28. Penelope—for maybe being right, about Simon. And America. And this wretched convertible. Because just look at him.…
Off the sofa, out of the flat. Over the ocean, under the sun.
Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy.
And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed.
There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t
tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.
Simon looks over at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“What?!” he shouts. He can’t hear a thing I’m saying over the wind and the engine and the classic rock.
“I hate this fucking car!” I shout back. “The sun is burning me! I might actually catch fire, at any moment!”
The wind is blowing Simon’s hair straight, and he’s squinting—from the sun and from all the smiling. “What!” he shouts at me again.
“You’re so beautiful!” I shout back.
Though I’m well accustomed to how they both smell when I’m thirsty.
Simon smells like the kitchen after you pop popcorn and melt butter. There’s a singe to it, with a round, yellow, fatty feeling that sticks to the roof of your mouth. Bunce is sharper and sweeter—vinegar and treacle. She skinned her knee once, and my sinuses burned for hours.
“Where’s your phone?” Simon asks me.
“It doesn’t work out of the country.”
“Why didn’t you switch it over?”
Because I’m on my parents’ plan, and I didn’t want them to know I was leaving the country, which I don’t want to tell Simon. “Did you switch yours?” I say instead.
Baz drops his cutlery and swings over to Penny’s side of the table, helping her set her Blast down, putting his arm around her. “Please don’t choke to death, Bunce. Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.”
Baz rubs her back and lets her cry into his shirt. I love him so much, and I want to tell him so. But I’ve never managed to say it, and now is definitely not the time.
He looks up at me, his eyes urgent. “Switch places with me, Snow. I’m about to drain her dry.”
Penelope sits up—not as urgently as she should, I reckon—and Baz extricates himself from her arms and her hair and the booth.
He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I think I’ll step outside. For a moment.” He’s white as a sheet, though his cheeks and nose look sort of flushed with black. He wheels around and heads for the exit, dipping towards the hostess on his way out, then backing out the door.
Simon’s sitting next to Penny, and I’m flushed with warm feelings for both of them. (A side effect of being flushed with the blood of nine cats, probably.) I go to their side of the booth—“Scoot over”—and pick up a fork.
It seemed at first that all my dreams were coming true, that he was finally mine. Mine to love, mine to live with—to walk with—to have. I’d never been in a relationship before. “I want to be your terrible boyfriend,” Snow said, and I couldn’t wait for it.
I hear Baz getting up and moving around again in the dark. I wonder if he’s cold. Or thirsty. Then, in a rush of warmth and cedar and bergamot, he kisses my cheek. “Good night, Snow,” he says.
And then I hear him climb back into bed.
The boys are leaning on the car when I get down there. Simon’s eating a banana. Baz is wearing his giant sunglasses and a beautiful floral shirt.
(White with blue and purple flowers and fat striped bumblebees. It probably cost as much as my tuition.) He’s tying a pale blue scarf around his hair.
“You can’t wear that,” Simon grins.
“Shut it, Snow.”
“Where did that even come from? Do you just carry a ladies’ scarf around with you?”
“It was my mother’s,” Baz says.
“Oh,” Simon says. “Sorry. Wait—do you carry your mother’s scarf around with you?”
“I wrap my sunglasses in it when I’m travelling.”
“Are those your mother’s sunglasses, too?”
Baz’s sunglasses are as big as his head. And that scarf. It should make him look like a mad old bat, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look half glamourous. Like a boy Marilyn Monroe.…
My brain gets kind of stuck on “boy Marilyn Monroe” for a while.
You’re never supposed to point your wand at your own face, but I do. Is something wrong with it?
My eyebrows drop, in suspicion, then I slowly raise the left one. Maybe Nebraska is the good life.…
“Baz,” she says. “Those are all spells from back home. They’re British idiom—useless here.”
Oh. Crowley. She’s right
“Wait,” Simon says, “why?”
“Because there aren’t enough Normal people here using those phrases,” I say. “It’s the Normals who give words magic—”
Simon rolls his eyes and starts quoting Miss Possibelf. “‘The more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations’—right, I know. So your magic’s fine?”
And somewhere, someone is playing a dulcimer. (My aunt plays the dulcimer; all the women in my family learn.)
“The young master hath a fine idea,” I say. “He is fair in aspect and sharp
in mind.”
“How’d you do that?” Simon asks. “Did you flip a switch?”
“I’m just pretending to be in a Shakespeare play. Lay on, my boy.”
“I’m not your boy,” he says, laughing, but also laying on.
“‘He’s gone,’” I lament. “‘I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe him.’”
“Othello,” Bunce says. “Very nice, Basilton.”
Baz smiles at me. Like he hasn’t in a while. Like he almost never has, in public—like it’s easy. “You’re right, Snow. Better tie you to the mast.”
He’s wearing a shirt with a whole field of flowers on it. I didn’t know how to dress once we didn’t have to wear uniforms every day, but Baz was apparently spoiling for it. He almost never wears the same thing, the same way, twice.
“That’s the Master Sword,” I say.
“Perfect for me then.”
“From The Legend of Zelda?”
He still doesn’t get it. Baz isn’t into games.
“‘You have witchcraft in your lips,’” Baz says.
“Is that more Shakespeare?”
“Yeah, sorry. I know you prefer Homer.”
The vampires are unbelievably fast. But then, so is Baz.
I’m keeping two more at bay: a guy in a polyester cape and a woman dressed like Tom Cruise’s Lestat. (Of course I’ve read Anne Rice. I was a 15-year-old closet case whose parents pretended they didn’t notice when the family dog disappeared.)
And there’s no point trying to be humane. Penny’s on the right track: We can’t lock them up, and we can’t let them go. And it’s not like I have an opportunity to convert them to rat-drinking. “Have you heard the good news about small mammals?”
The vampire impaled on my axe handle has already started to wither. Like it was the magic in his heart holding him together. I pull back the stake, and he falls—a man-shaped pile of blood and boots and ashes.
Baz uses the distraction to get back on his feet and throw a punch at the other vampire, the guy. It’s a messy punch. Baz has never learned to fight with his body, even though he’s made of steel.
Baz staggers back from his opponent, then stands tall, making two fists at his hips. His eyes go hooded and dark. That’s a very attractive way to die, I think. But then Baz opens his palms, and he’s holding two balls of fire.
Simon catches up with me and traps me against the car. He’s kissing me before I see it coming, bending me back over the boot. “You were amazing,” he says, taking a breath. “You didn’t even need a wand.”
I hold on to his shoulders. “I’m a little disturbed that you find slaying vampires this exciting.”
He kisses me so hard, my head tips.
We have broken every rule today. The World of Mages doesn’t have many, but we’ve shattered them all:
Don’t pester the Normals.
Don’t interfere with the Normals.
Don’t steal from the Normals.
Above all, don’t let the Normals know that magic exists.
Above even that, don’t let the Normals know that we exist.
“It could be anything!” I say. A wraith, a leach, a ghoul. Something specifically American: a gun demon, a prairie mog, one of those sirens who live in wells. Can coyotes drive cars? I know they can play poker, the Mage told me.
I don’t want to look away from Simon, so I rub my fingers along the pockmarks in my chest. They sting, but they seem to have already stopped bleeding. I still don’t know what kills vampires—but I suppose I can rule out a chestful of buckshot.
I hear Baz casting spells in the back of the truck. Making us hard to see, making us hard to follow. Deep magic. He’s probably already exhausted.
He holds me there, a little too tightly. Usually I forget Baz is so much stronger than me. He doesn’t carry himself like he’s that strong. He doesn’t touch me that way. He never pulls or pushes me, not like that. Not any harder than I can push back.
I couldn’t help her with the spells. I’m still not … right from the gunshots. My skin has closed and mostly healed—I look like I was shot twenty years ago, not twenty hours—but my chest aches. And I feel listless. Like my undead body had to make some steep sacrifice to hold on to its “un.”
Baz closes his eyes again. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!” His voice sounds lush when he sings. Deeper and heavier than when he talks.
Baz hunted just outside of Denver, but he’s as grey as I’ve ever seen him, and his nose is still sooty from those days in the sun. (He went black instead of red.)
I’ve known about Baz’s vampirism for at least a year—and Simon suspected for years before that—but Baz is still self-conscious about it. He won’t ever feed in front of us. He won’t even eat a sandwich if he thinks you’re watching. Simon says it’s because Baz’s fangs pop, and he’s embarrassed, so I always look away. (Though I would love to get a better look at them, for scientific purposes.)
“I don’t kill predators,” he says.
“Why not? Fellow feeling?”
“They’re too important to the ecosystem. Besides, there are sheep around here, of some sort. I saw tracks.”
“Found this on him,” the woman says, holding up my wand. “Probably stolen. Heffalump tusk. Extinct.” She tosses it over her shoulder.
I know that I heal faster than other people. (More proof that I’m not a person.) But I’ve never really tested my limits. No one’s ever emptied a shotgun into my chest or kicked me in the gut with steel-toed cowboy boots.
…
The worst I’ve been injured before this was when the numpties took me. I think my leg healed right away even then—but it healed wrong because I was stuck in that coffin.
Before that, there were fights with Simon. A few black eyes over the years, a split lip. I healed fast from those injuries, but so did he. I think Simon’s magic used to heal him, even when he couldn’t cast the spells to heal himself.
It’s covered in glossy white scars now—but those will heal, too, I think. All my other scars have.
One of my socks is covered in feathers, but the shirts are clean. I put one on straightaway—a good print, aubergine with navy leaves—and tuck the rest into a plastic bag.
Shepard keeps trying to draw us out. To no avail. I’ve never been drawn out in my life, and Bunce especially has taken against him.
“Come here,” Simon says.
I really hate riding back here. I feel like a cup of tea left on top of a moving car. “This is so dangerous,” I say, kneeling. “What if we hit a bump?”
“You’ll be fine, you’re Kevlar.”
“What about you?”
“Wings.”
I’ve never heard Baz’s heartbeat.
And I’ve lain all night with my head on his chest.
“The Katherine?” he says. “It’s one of the vampire hotels. The oldest, I think. The parties there are infamous—every night in the penthouse suite.”
Baz is standing in front of a full-length mirror, wearing—I swear to Merlin—a flowered suit. It’s some slick material, dark blue with blood-red roses. With a white shirt. No—a light pink shirt. When did he start wearing all these flowers? When did his hair get so long? He’s put stuff in it, and it’s hanging over his collar in thick, black waves.
They aren’t especially beautiful. (Though some are.) That’s a myth, I think—vampire beauty. What they are is especially rich. And especially … liquid.
They move like oil, like shadows. Like cats.
Is this what I look like? Like I don’t have any parts that stick?
I’ve been to a hundred of my parents’ parties—I know how to stand around wealthy people and look bored.
Though these people don’t look bored.…
I don’t really go out back home. Simon and I don’t. (The wings, you see. And the fact that I hate drunk people.) (I really do. If I were sober, I’d hate myself right now. What a bore.)
He pulls me closer, the man sandwiched between us—the fragrance is irresistible. My fangs have dropped. There’s no room in my mouth for my tongue.
Baz’s voice had got softer and mushier over the last hour, harder to hear over the music that was always playing in the background. He was on at least his third drink. (Baz never drinks with me. He says it’s boring.)
“They all smell so delicious,” he said. “Fermented. Like warm bread.” I was pretty sure he was talking about Normals.
This …
Is a new low.
I spell the birds away. Then the blood. And draw myself a bath.
I reheat the water twice just to avoid facing anyone. They’ve all seen me now. Even the Normal. Sucking down tropical birds. More like a mongoose than a man. At least real vampires look cool when they feed on people.
“I kept waiting for an opening,” I say. My extra teeth make me sound like a 12-year-old with braces.
I kill everything I drink.
I always thought it was safer that way. If I let the animals live, they might end up like me. (Can a vampire Turn a rat? Or a deer? Or a dog? I’d rather not find out.)
When I’m thirsty, this isn’t really a decision. I just drink till there’s no more to drink. I haven’t ever tried to stop.
I’ve never tasted human blood before. I’ve had low-risk opportunities, of course; in football, there’s blood everywhere—plus, I smashed Simon’s nose with my forehead once, and he practically bled into my mouth.
But I’ve never wanted to cross that threshold. Like, you can say you’ve never tasted human blood or you can say that you have. And once you have, what does it matter whether it’s one person or fifty?
And what if one taste wasn’t enough? What if I couldn’t stop thinking about it? (I already never stop thinking about it.)
What then? What options would that leave me? The way I understood it, mass murder or mass conversion.
I changed into one of my new suits before we left. Black this time, with a heather-and-gold flowered shirt. (I suppose Bunce isn’t the only one who can’t let go of Watford purple.)
I raise an eyebrow, which is my go-to move when I want to look cool but don’t have anything cool to say.
(I can be droll, I can pretend that nothing matters—it’s practically my neutral state.)
It’s hard to imagine my fangs retracting when they’re filling up my whole mouth. I’ve never once kept them from popping. Have I ever once tried? My usual strategy is subterfuge and avoidance: Don’t let anyone watch me eat. Ever.
“Baz,” he says, “how old are you?”
I don’t have a lie ready. “Twenty.”
“Right. And I’m thirty-four. How old are you really?”
I look up at the lights, at the acoustic tile ceiling. “Twenty.”
I hear him exhale.
Lamb looks utterly put off. “Oh, Baz,” he says in dismay. “No wonder you’re so pale. You’re malnourished.”
I laugh. “But I’m not one of them.”
“No,” he says, eyeing me with one brow aloft. “You’re a starving child from an oppressed nation who has barely met himself. But you are not one of them.”
I thought we might come to blows just now; the energy felt so like it had when we were still at Watford, screaming at each other over our school beds. (Though there’s no Roommate’s Anathema to keep us from killing each other here.)
Those fights used to feel so good. It meant getting to look at Snow.
Getting his attention. Having a place to hurl all my feelings for him, even if they came out spiked and razor sharp.
Fighting doesn’t feel good anymore. It feels like breaking something because you don’t know how to fix it.
Vampires are banned. They’re actually forbidden. It’s the law. They’re like pithbulls or adders, simply not allowed in the World of Mages. Because you can’t trust them not to murder you!
My parents wouldn’t even let me use the Internet.
And brought more Altoids. (They’re very good for blocking out blood smells. Especially the spearmint flavour.)
Simon is on the ground. His wing is bent the wrong way. His blood is red and abundant. It smells like brown butter. His hair is a mess, his face is in the sand. He doesn’t know how much I love him. He’s never really heard it.
And probably everyone here would be more horked off over that if Baz didn’t just grab the leader of the Next Blood by the neck and rip off half his jaw.