Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (25 page)

Unlike most men she’d met, his first thought had been directed at her personality, not her body. She knew his concern was sincere. But no matter how much Chelsea wanted to accept the gloves, she couldn’t.

Even her father had been capable of showing love. That hadn’t stopped him from hurting her. What would stop this stranger?

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Did I ask for your help? Now please, fuck off.”

His mouth dropped open.

As she watched him walk away, anger and sadness twisted her up inside. If only she could dare to accept someone’s kindness, let someone come close to her. At that moment, Chelsea became painfully aware that the walls she’d put up to protect herself had become a prison.

Chelsea rushed out of the line-up and sprinted towards him. “Hey. Wait! I’m sorry.”

He smiled.

She had taken the gloves. “Thanks. My name’s Chelsea. Wanna wait in line with me?”

The memory made Chelsea ache inside. Brian had taken care of her, had shown her how to survive on the streets. He was the only man she’d shared her body with that she’d trusted. And now he was gone, shot in the head because he’d caught a fever.

“We can’t let him make the rest of us sick,” they’d said. That happened after The Scorching, while people struggled to survive below the city streets, in the metro stations and tunnels.

She’d fled to the streets above, feeling powerless and hating herself for it. She had roared, wept, screamed, and begged whatever was out there — God, the universe, the devil, she didn’t care — to give her the power to repay them, all of them for what they’d done to her, to him.

Now, as Chelsea grew faint from blood loss, she looked away from the mouth clamped on her wrist. She heard someone groan. Before she could register it as her own voice, she slipped back into her Place of No-Hurt.

She holds a rifle. She fires it at the man who shot Brian. The bullet takes off half his head, spraying skull fragments and grey brain into the air. But in this fantasy, he does not die. Blood washes over what remains of his face. He begs her to stop. She aims at his stomach, fires. Guts splatter. But in this fantasy, he doesn’t die. He screams, waving his hands in surrender. The sound of his pain is soothing music to her ears.

She feels a hand—

—patting her cheek, jerking her out of her fantasy.

Chelsea opened her eyes and took in the Offish-people, their strange faces highlighted by the glow of the torches, and creased with flickering shadows. She was in an armchair. The same woman she’d seen outside sat opposite, patting her cheek. Chelsea waved the hand away.

“Wake up, sugar,” the woman said.

“I’m awake, I’m awake!”

Chelsea saw the bracelet, still on her wrist. A cloth was tied below it, serving as a bandage. The blood had been washed away.

She looked at the woman. What she’d imagined to be a long coat was actually a pair of wings, thickly webbed with veins, and attached to the hooked thumbs. Chelsea thought of a bat. A
vampire
bat.

“I know what you are,” Chelsea murmured.

“Do you now, Sweetie?” asked the woman. She tilted her head, smiling, but her eyes stared coldly.

“You’re the Offish-people.”

The woman arched an eyebrow. “What?”

Chelsea thought,
Let her be confused.

“Desmond,” the woman said, “get her some water.”

A moment later, the same man who’d knocked her unconscious held a cup to her mouth. Chelsea finished the water in one gulp.

Offering her hand, the woman said, “My name is Jessica. And yours?”

“Chelsea.” She looked at Jessica’s hand with a mix of horror and disdain and didn’t take it. Jessica withdrew it.

“Fine. Let’s get down to business. As you’ve probably already guessed, we’re a colony of vampires. The way we work is, we hibernate for twenty years, then hunt and feed for one. We don’t have to do this. We chose to when your kind began hunting us back. We’re a young colony, most of us less than two-hundred years old. We’ve followed this pattern for all that time. When we woke up yesterday, though, we encountered a problem.”

Yeah, I bet you encountered a problem,
Chelsea thought.
A big fucking problem.

Chelsea tried to hear Jessica’s think-voice. It was no use. Though she felt much better than the last two times she’d awoken, she lacked the strength to tune in. She figured she was too weak from the blood they took. “I guess you didn’t hear about The Scorching?”

Jessica’s cold stare remained unchanged. She clapped her hands together in a let’s-get-started manner. “Now, this is exactly what we need from you, Chelsea. Information. So please, tell us about The Scorching.”

“How come you never asked anyone bef—?”

“Why we do things isn’t your concern,” Jessica scowled, and leaned forward into Chelsea’s space. “When we awaken, our first priority is taking care of the weakest in our colony. That answer’s free. Any more questions you want to waste my time with?”

Chelsea thought of the reason Brian had been shot. She compared that to the vampires’ priorities. Though she felt a chasm between herself and them, she also felt a reluctant respect.

“The Scorching, that’s when an asteroid hit Earth. Before it struck, the news said it might be coming. Most people thought it would be a false alarm. Nobody was prepared.”

“So, how come you’re still alive?” Jessica asked.

“Some of us got some supplies together and went under the streets, into the Metro stations and tunnels.”

“We’ve been down there. There are only bodies.”

“A lot of people died from radiation, and starvation. A lot were murdered. Like my boyfriend.”

Jessica leaned forward. “Help us find them.”

“Why should I help you?”

“What choice do you have?”

“I’m not afraid to die.”

“Who says we’ll kill you? We can do a lot worse than that. In two-hundred years, we’ve had a lot of practice making people suffer.”

Chelsea’s will hardened. Suffering didn’t frighten her. Suffering defined her. “You’re gonna have to do better than that if you wanna scare me.”

Jessica’s hands balled into fists.

“Want my help? Fine. There’s something you gotta do for me.”

Jessica gave a tight-lipped smile. “You’re hardly in a position to negotiate.”

“Make me one of you,” Chelsea blurted out. “Turn me.”

Jessica threw her head back and laughed. “You think you can handle immortality? Once you realize you can’t be in the sun, that you can’t contact loved ones anymore if you want the colony’s protection, you’ll commit suicide like most of the ones we turn.”

“I have no friends or family. And I hate this world and the people in it. They’re selfish. They’re
evil
. If I would’ve had your power—”

Jessica raised a hand. “Okay, okay, enough. If we turn you, you’ll help us?”

“Yes.”

“If you don’t help us, or if you create problems, you’ll be killed for treason. I’ll cut your head off myself.”

Murmurs and nods of approval.

“So,” Chelsea asked, “how does it work? Does someone have to bite me?” Chelsea tilted her head to expose her neck.

The group burst into laughter. At that moment, her confidence shriveled. There was a fierceness, a
knowingness
in that laughter.

“No Sweetie,” Jessica said, setting her hand on Chelsea’s thigh, “that’s not how we turn you. You’ve watched too many movies. And a Vampire 101 lesson for ya — we’re not mind readers, and stakes through the heart don’t work.”

You aren’t mind readers,
Chelsea thought,
but I am.

“Then what do you do? Or … is it something I have to do?”

Jessica stroked Chelsea’s thigh and gazed into her eyes. “For you to become a vampire, one of us has to impart to you their being. Make himself one with you.”

Chelsea’s face scrunched up. “I don’t get it.”

More laughter.

“Sex, sweetie,” Jessica said, her hand stroking slowly and sensuously now. “One of us must have sex with you.” She waved her hand and the one that had knocked Chelsea out came over. “Desmond, please oblige the girl.”

At the word
sex
, Chelsea felt like a trapdoor had opened beneath her. A falling sensation filled her chest and she found it hard to breath.

Desmond rushed forward. He seized her by the throat and shoved her to the floor. Pain exploded in her skull. He straddled her, knocked the air from her lungs. Chelsea struggled, twisted her body, clawed at his hand.

Finally, she realized he’d been still the whole time, patiently waiting for her surrender. Up close she could feel his hot breath. His piercing stare filled her with dread.

He spread her legs and the reality of what was happening crashed down on her like water breaking through a dam. It drowned her mind, soaking her thoughts with bloated images and Desmond’s features turned into her father’s.

A scream welled inside her. He pressed a hand to her mouth. She steeled herself as he seized a handful of denim and tore. One pant leg came off with a quick, dry raspy sound. Goosebumps prickled her leg as her body trembled. Her throat constricted. And tears gushed from her eyes. He snatched the crotch of her panties and ripped them off too.

“You’re such a brave, brave girl,” Desmond said. It sounded as if there were two voices speaking through the same throat — the above voice a normal person, the underneath voice composed of millions of swarming, skittering insects.

His eyes changed. The irises spread like ink stains until there was only blackness.

His face changed too, blanching, then webbing with purple veins. Features reshaped themselves as seamlessly as liquid metal — his face elongated, extending his eyelids to droop like hound dog eyes; his nose flattened into double-slits on wrinkled flesh; a snout emerged, as if molded by invisible hands; lips blackened, stretched up to the ears and fangs, dripping with saliva, sprouted from his gums. She realized that the offish features were a disguise for his true form:
vampire bat.

He roared. That skittering insect sound became the top-voice. Chelsea now understood humanity’s instinctive loathing for insects. The sounds they make — sizzling maggots, chirping crickets, skittering cockroaches, buzzing flies — pronounce the names of demons. These are the creatures that can articulate the names and the voices of the dead.

Chelsea screamed. Her head beat against the floor as she thrashed. Desmond guided himself inside her, writhing and slithering like a snake. The horror plunged her to the rim of madness. If her father had shattered her, then this undead thing was grinding what remained of her soul to dust.

He clutched her head and forced her to stare into his black eyes. His mouth opened and his red tongue, tapered to a point, slid out, stretching longer and longer until its slimy wetness touched her face.

He grabbed her hair and jerked her head forward so she could see her belly.

She screamed,
“NO! NO! NO! GET IT OUT OF ME!”

She saw her stomach distort. She screamed for oblivion, desperate to un-see, to un-know, unable to do so.

In her mind she raced towards The Place of No-Hurt. Where was it? She couldn’t find it!

The colony of vampires gathered around them in a circle chanting, their voices rising, becoming one, the howl of a demon. They were chanting a name of the dead.
Her
name!

She awoke changed. She was filled with a power that had eluded her. Until now.

In the wide, torch-lit chamber, the new Chelsea propped herself up on her elbows. Desmond no longer seemed a monster to her. She felt a strange kinship with him now.

The friendship bracelet was lying on the floor, a broken chain that released her from her former life.

Desmond knelt before her, spoke to her in tender tones. “I must feed you. You’re weak because you’re young. Soon you’ll have the power to hunt on your own. I’ll teach you how. Colony law says if you turn someone, you become their protector.”

“You were so fierce. You hardly seemed—”

Desmond put a finger gently on her mouth, silencing her. “Shh. You’re weak. You need your strength. I was fierce because you were my prey. I was a hawk staring into the eyes of a rabbit. Things are different now.”

He put his face over hers. “Here, I must feed you. Look up and open your mouth.”

She obeyed.

His jaws opened wide. With a guttural retching sound, blood spilled from his mouth and into hers. Warm and hot and delicious. It coated her mouth and throat and ignited her fragmented soul with a rippling current of black life.

She hungered for the blood. Lusted for it. She moaned and shuddered as she rose up and kissed him hungrily, deeply. They were one now — the same.