The Old Family vampire stares at me now, the beautiful blue of his eyes capturing me. He doesn't seem surprised to see me; in fact, he gives no reaction at all. Just studies me.
"I see you got my gift," he finally says.
My anger spikes and I can't keep it out of my voice. "I don't understand you, Victor. You seem … almost nice, but then … you stole blood from the blood site."
He rolls into a sitting position. "You left me no choice."
"I didn't tell the Agency yet, because I owe you for saving Vivi's life and mine, but I'm taking the blood—"
"No, you're not." He brushes past me to the fridge as though I'm simply a fly that's irritating, no real threat.
Livid, I glare at him, unsure why I haven't plunged the stake through his heart. He snatches up a backpack, opens the fridge, and starts stuffing the blood bags into his pack. "I have to get these delivered tonight. It was too risky last night."
"I can't let you take them."
He stands up, shrugs the pack onto his shoulders. "You can't stop me, Dawn."
"Vict—"
"So come with me and see why I had to take them."
I'm not sure what I was thinking when I accepted his invitation. Maybe that I would learn more about this illegal operation and could provide the Agency with names and vamp hidey-holes. We waited in silence for nightfall before leaving the theater. Now we're maneuvering our way through the darkness over debris, slipping through alleys. I stumble.
Victor grabs my arm, stops me from landing with a splat. "Sorry we can't use the flashlight," he says. "It'd reveal our location to any watching eyes. Just stick close and I'll guide you."
He takes my hand, threads our fingers together. Vampires can see in the dark. I realize now that the first night he brought Vivi and me to the theater, he used a flashlight for our benefit. And as just another layer to disguise what he truly is.
We don't talk. Another method to keep our movements undetected. What amazes me is how quiet Victor is. Wearing black, he's lost in the night's shadows. If his hand didn't grip mine, I might think he wasn't even beside me anymore. He makes no sounds at all, steps cautiously to avoid landing on anything that would give away his position. My father once explained to me that not all vampires exhibit this kind of stealth. It's limited to Old Families, the ones who are born into a vamp's body, and are comfortable with all its capabilities. Those who are turned very seldom completely assimilate into the vampire form. At their core, they're human—they've just acquired an invincibility, an agelessness, and a craving for blood.
I'm not even sure where my father got all of his information. But as a scholar, he was always scouring through ancient texts and documents. It seems like we've been walking forever. I can see why we didn't drive here. It's so run-down, so littered in these narrow streets. My imagination is running wild, and I can envision all sorts of illegal deals going on here. Blood for money, blood for drugs, blood for food. The precious crimson that runs through my veins has become the currency of the new world.
Eventually, he stops at a building and opens a door I hadn't even noticed. We slip inside.
"Stairs," Victor whispers.
Reaching out with my free hand, I grab a banister. It makes going up easier. I count the steps, count the flights, just to keep my mind occupied and away from the fact that I'm in the middle of nowhere with a vampire.
At the fourth floor we start walking straight. I hold my hand out and feel it brushing against a wall. We're in a hallway, one that hasn't seen the light of day in quite some time. Bumps and bruises cover the wood, water damage from years of rain seeping down, rotting the building from the inside.
Victor stops and I hear a quiet knock. A door creaks.
"Victor," a soft feminine voice says. "Thank goodness."
Victor brings me inside. When the door closes, a light comes on. I see the flashlight in Victor's hand. He releases his hold on me and sets it upright on the table. It fills the room with a weird glow. I see a woman who must be the one who opened the door. She's slender. Her eyes are hollow.
"Martha, this is my … friend Dawn. How is Justin?" Victor asks.
"He hasn't moved all day. If it were possible for him to die, I think he would have by now."
Shrugging off his backpack, Victor walks through an open doorway, the broken hinges the only evidence that a door ever hung there. I glance around and decide to follow.
The light from the flashlight creeps into this space and casts an eerie glow on a young boy of about nine lying beneath the blankets on a bed. "Hey, Justin," Victor says, opening the backpack. "I brought you something."
He takes out a bag of blood and presses it to the boy's mouth. Without hesitation, Justin's fangs emerge and pierce the bag. The coppery scent of blood wafts up as he greedily devours the contents. I watch his throat working to swallow the lifesaving fluid, knowing I should be repelled. But instead I'm fascinated. With just a few ounces of blood, Justin already looks worlds better. Never before have I understood the full extent of the miracle of our blood. Now I understand that they need it to live—in some weird way, maybe even more than we do.
"His father turned him, turned us both," Martha tells me, her voice quiet, as if she might disturb them. "He returned from the war a vampire and couldn't stand the thought of facing eternity without us." She sighs, looks at me. "You're the delegate."
I nod, not sure why I'm uncomfortable with her scrutiny or feel as though I've let her down.
"I know we're not supposed to be in the city, but I don't like it beyond the wall. This has always been our home."
I'm at a loss for words. The apartment, the vampires, it's all very surreal. Like something I would've seen on television and then had a dream about.
Given where I am and what surrounds me, I should be afraid. But I'm not. These are the kinds of vampires Victor was telling me about the other night: the ones not much different from me.
"Before I was turned, I saw all vampires as monsters," Martha says quietly. "Funny, now I think it's the humans. I laugh and cry and feel just the same as they do. I'd never hurt a soul, but if I walked these streets openly, I'd be staked. If the Night Watchmen ever find us, they'll kill us. And the next day, in the papers, there would be a small column written in praise of the slayings. My son and I would just become numbers, notches on their belt."
"How did your son get so weak?"
She rubs her hands up and down her arms. "My husband, Robert, works for Valentine, beyond the wall. Valentine doesn't give rations to those of us who live in the city. To do that would be to acknowledge that there are vampires in the city." I hear the loathing in her voice. "And that would be against VampHu. He's supposed to be our lord, but he doesn't care about us. Robert brings us what he can, but it's never enough, and it's difficult for him to get into the city. It's been three weeks since I saw him."
I can tell that she's worried about him. He could have run into a patrol, Night Watchmen, or a vigilant citizen. He could have even run into that creature from the other night.
"All the while, Justin has been wasting away," she says. "Slowly at first, but now his cries echo through the night, and I can't do anything except hold him close and tell him it'll be better tomorrow. In another week, he'd just be an empty shell, alive inside, but unable to move until he feeds. My fear is that before then, he would have left the apartment out of desperation and killed somebody. I've tried to teach him that all life is precious and that he can't take blood from people's necks, but I know the pain he's feeling, and how quickly those lessons are forgotten."
"What's it like?" I ask. "To be without blood?"
"Horrible. You spend so much time trying to keep the monster under control, but when you are starving for blood, everything just goes. It's like a temporary insanity. Nothing else matters until you feed. It's absolutely terrible. And now my son is suffering it."
But not for long. Within an hour, Justin is running around the apartment. His mother takes her share of the blood Victor brought.
When Victor and I are back outside, I ask, "Why didn't you tell me what you needed the blood for?"
"You didn't give me a chance. And you weren't exactly receptive to believing me anyway."
"Can you blame me? From the moment we met, you've lied—"
"I've never lied to you, Dawn. I may not have told you everything—"
"You deceived me. You made me think you were hu—"
Without warning, he pushes me into a crevice, backing me up against a brick wall, his body pressed against mine.
"What—" I begin.
"Shh. Watchmen." Victor's voice is soft in my ear, his cheek touching mine.
I hear them then. The scuff of boots. The low murmurs.
One of my palms is flattened against Victor's chest, and I can feel the hard thudding of his heart. It matches mine.
"Stupid," he says, his voice so low that if his lips weren't brushing over my ear, I wouldn't catch his words at all. "To bring you with me, to put you in danger. I just wanted you to understand that not all vampires are monsters."
We hear a crash, someone turning something over. Victor goes so very still, as still as death.
"Because I'm the delegate, right? So I'll be more sympathetic to the vampires?"
"That's not the only reason." He pauses; a silence stretches between us as I wait for him to explain. "I've known humans," he finally says, "but I've never known anyone like you, Dawn Montgomery. You're so passionate in your beliefs. We live forever and have started to take so much for granted. You appreciate everything."
I don't know why he's telling me these things. Maybe he's trying to distract me from how very close we are to each other.
"I'm going to try to draw them away," he whispers. "If I don't come back for you, stay here until the sun comes up."
"No." I realize I'm clutching his T-shirt. Silly of me to think that I have the strength to hold him here. "Just wait."
And he stays. He doesn't say anything else. Our hearts slow. The long, interminable minutes pass. The night air seems to be growing cooler, but Victor's body radiates warmth. I know the Watchmen wouldn't kill me—if they recognized me. But they wouldn't expect me to be in this part of town, at this time of night. And if they find the bags of blood Victor still has, too many questions would be raised.
Everything grows quiet. No more footsteps. No distant voices. Then I hear the sounds of tiny creatures starting to stir once again.
"They've moved on," Victor says. "Thank you for not calling out to them."
He eases back then, and I'm hit with the realization that he never covered my mouth. That I could have yelled to the Watchmen, could have turned Victor over to them. And not once did it cross my mind to do so. I tell myself that it's only because I was taken by surprise. That I didn't shove him away or draw attention to us because if the Night Watchmen found us, I'd have a lot of explaining to do to the Agency. I was just protecting myself. That makes much more sense than me worrying about Victor getting killed.
Taking my hand, he guides me out of the crevice. Carefully we make our way over the debris and hurry on. We make two more stops, but we don't go inside either place. He just slips the blood through the narrow crack when the door opens to his knock.
As we're walking away from the last one, I say, "You've never stolen from the blood sites before, have you?"
"No. I usually steal from my father's stash, but these vampires couldn't wait. They don't die, Dawn. They just suffer, withering away until all they can do is sit in a corner, unable to move, waiting to be staked by a wandering Watchman or for the sun to pierce them through a window. A vampire can spend an eternity like that, alone with his thoughts."
I shiver. Tonight I was given an uncomfortable view of vampires as a … family. And seeing Victor as some sort of Robin Hood, stealing game from the king's forest in order to deliver food to the poor. Only in his case, it's taking from the blood bank to give to the vampires in the city, those neglected by Lord Murdoch Valentine.
It's also strange to realize that he's holding my hand again. Yes, we're in the dark; yes, he's guiding me. Yet somehow I can't help but believe that it's more than that. Something changed between us while we were in that stupid crevice, and I feel guilty when I remember Michael.
"How many are in the city?" I ask, trying to regain my original intent of using this as an intelligence-gathering mission.
"What does it matter, Dawn? If they're not hurting anyone, why can't they live here in peace?"
It doesn't escape me that he avoided answering my question. "But they know to come to you if they need anything?"
"I do what I can."
"Does your father know about all this? Know what you do?"
"Does Rachel know everything you do?" he asks.
"I hate when someone answers a question with a question."
"Then stop asking questions."
I know that he's holding back secrets. In spite of everything that happened tonight, he doesn't trust me any more than I trust him. The realization saddens me.
Still, I can't help wanting to know more, to test whether he has any trust in me at all. "So why does your father insist that I dress in Victorian garb? It's like he's obsessed with that era."
"We were at our height during that time. We understood the world. And then all the technology came, and suddenly humans knew more than we did. We're not creative. We can't envision possibilities like you can. We have very little imagination."
"I never knew that."
"Painting, writing stories, poems, or plays … it all eludes us. But what I can imagine is a world in which humans and vampires coexist. Where humans willingly donate blood so we're not forced to suffer. Where we serve as the protectors against evil, instead of being viewed as monsters."