By the time I get outside, the rain has started. I pull the hood on my raincoat over my head as I move through the streets. With my eyes on the ground, I watch the puddles grow around my shoes, every step making a bigger splash than the one before it as the rain picks up. I'm enjoying the pitter-patter of water droplets against the plastic hood; it echoes until it drowns out the world and it's just me and the sidewalk.
It's a long walk, past the areas of Denver that have been rebuilt. When I get to my destination, I take a moment to just look at it. The building used to be called Greene Tower, then Tower Eight, then Abandoned Building Thirty-six, before ending up as Demolition Site B. A massive fire ripped through the building several years ago. It was so fierce that, in spite of the efforts of the fire department, what remained after the flames were doused wasn't livable. So it was simply abandoned, like so much of the city. Abandoned, like I'm feeling today. It's thirty stories high. My parents and I lived halfway up. Before they were hired by the Agency, they were professors at the local college, and this was all they could afford. It used to be somewhat nice, but now it's an empty shell with pieces of walls and windows missing, entire floors collapsed, stairs with so many crumbling steps they're unusable. No lights. No water. Just shadows and memories.
I step inside and the rain stops beating against me. Some transients might be left, trying to live in the few rooms that haven't been infested with rats and roaches, but I've never seen anyone inside, not since it was condemned. Even though the storm has intensified, enough light comes through the clouds to illuminate the building through holes and cracks and windows. It's gray and weak, but it's enough. I know where I'm going.
I cautiously make my way deep into the building before coming to the right set of stairs. My goal is the eighteenth floor, but I'll have to navigate a maze of steps and hallways to get there. It used to be as simple as entering the stairwell and going up. But not anymore. Too much rot and decay. I have to zigzag between flights of stairs to get there, and even then, if I don't watch my step, I'll fall down a new hole that wasn't there last time.
When was the last time? Two months ago, I think. At this rate, I'll never finish. No artwork remains in the building, so the place looks like nothing more than a series of walls and beams thrown up to create an intricate, towering box. I often got lost in them as a kid, running around and banging on strangers' doors until they pointed me in the right direction.
When I was seven years old we had a neighbor named Mickey. He was my first real crush. Just an innocent kind of thing. I wanted to, I don't know, kiss him on the cheek and then run away, or give him a giant bouquet of flowers, because I thought maybe boys liked dandelions. I knocked on his door one day so I could invite him to my birthday party. I'd already arranged the seating chart so he'd be right next to me. I was so proud of my cunning ways. But when the door opened it was a different family. My parents said Mickey had "gone to a new school" and his parents had to move. A few months ago I looked through the Agency files on Mickey, hit with a sudden curiosity. He was killed in his sleep by vampires. His entire family was drained.
It's difficult to believe that I was ever that innocent—or young. Sometimes I feel as though I've been acting like an adult forever. I don't know why my parents didn't move. The war was in its last days. Maybe they thought things would get better when the peace negotiations were finalized. Maybe they truly believed that VampHu would keep vampires on the other side of the wall. I hate knowing that my brother, after surviving the war, returned to us here and was the one to dispel that myth.
After the last flight of stairs, I finally arrive at the eighteenth floor. I walk down the hall, bits of light coming in through the doorways, since most of the doors have been stripped off their hinges. I step around one of the holes in the floor and almost trip on a bit of torn-up carpet. Rats must've chewed through it, because I don't remember that from last time.
When I get to my old apartment, the place where we lived until Brady died, it's the brightest one on the floor. But that's only because the entire outside wall is missing. I'm ten steps from plummeting to the ground. We weren't the last tenants, of course. There was always someone more desperate ready to fill an apartment back then, even one vampires had attacked. So the sparse furniture crumbling in the corner isn't ours; nor is the small crib in the next room.
I sit cross-legged near the ledge. It provides a good panoramic view of the city. I couldn't really appreciate it as a kid. It doesn't face the Works or the downtown district. No huge buildings are in the way. Just the streets below and the row houses and the wall and the mountains beyond that. The wind lashes, and raindrops splash on the already soaked hardwood floor. It was carpeted once, I think. Hard to remember now. Details like that fade.
I unzip my backpack and pull out a photo of my parents and me. Back when we were happy, or as happy as humans were allowed to be. Just the three of us smiling in front of the water fountain in the North District, a fountain that stopped working long ago. My father's holding the camera at arm's length to capture all of us.
I'm thirteen in the photo, my hair pulled back in a French braid I thought was so mature. We'd moved into the apartment that I now share with Rachel, courtesy of Dad's new prestige within the Agency. He was initially hired as a consultant on vampire affairs. The Agency provides housing for all its employees. Mom looks happy; maybe she finally found the security she always longed for. The thought of making a better future for their only surviving child must've been powerful. It must've brought smiles to their faces every night as they tucked me into bed.
And then they died. Together. On the road to Valentine Manor. Because Mom couldn't stand the thought of Dad facing Valentine alone. Like I now have to.
I put down the photo and pull out a box of matches from my jeans pocket. I light the corner of the Polaroid. It curls inward, carrying the yellow flame with it. The fire erases my dad's face, turning it black and charred, then consumes my family until we are just ash. I come here to let everything out. This way it doesn't affect my work; it doesn't affect my studies. I purge all my emotions here, in this abandoned building. I don't know if it's big enough to house all my anger and sorrow. Maybe that's the reason it's falling apart. The weight of my emptying heart tears it down piece by piece.
This is why I don't talk about my parents to other people. I don't want to be reminded of the pain. This is where I do my remembering. I burn photos of them, slowly, one at a time. Maybe one day they'll all be gone, and so will the despair I feel. And the nightmares.
I cry a little less every time. It's just a trickle now, so little I can't tell the difference between the tears and the rain already on my cheeks. I'm afraid my relationship with Michael is like this building, deteriorating until it's beyond repair. I don't know how to make anything last. How to hold on to Michael. Or if I even should.
The photo's almost finished burning. I wish my emotions drained that fast. The wind carries the ash outside, where the rain beats it down to the ground.
"You shouldn't be here."
I turn around. Victor's standing in the doorway, his back against the frame, arms crossed. His heavy coat is soaked through. He didn't bother to wear a hat, just let the storm have its way with his hair.
"I have to be here," I say. "It's the only way I can survive the days."
"And what about the nights? Vampires are going to be out soon. They'll come here, looking for the homeless."
"I'll take the risk."
"One day you might not come back."
"What's there to come back to?" I shake my head. "Sorry. This place just brings that out in me." The encounter with Michael at school didn't help. I may have lost him. Ironic when all I want is to protect him.
"Then why come here?" Victor asks.
"To mourn. To forget. I can be sad here, and no one will see that maybe I'm not as strong as everyone thinks."
He walks past me and lowers himself onto the ledge, his legs dangling over the side.
"I'm sorry you lost your parents, Dawn."
"How can you be sorry? You didn't even know them."
"But I know you. And I'm sorry because I can tell there are pieces of you missing. I wish I could fill them somehow. But I also know that those scars you feel inside are the things that make you strong. They make you who you are. Your parents' lives define you as much as their deaths."
"Sometimes I'll go a whole day without thinking about them. I feel guilty about that."
"You shouldn't. I've lived long enough to know that all things fade in time. All things turn to dust. Buildings. Monuments. People. Even memories. The pain you feel, that anger, that hopelessness … they'll disappear in time. One day you'll understand their sacrifice, and then you'll feel that spark of hope again."
My parents were so sure the world would turn out to be a safe place for me, a better place when they were finished with it. But then they died, and I couldn't tell a single difference they'd made. I'm only seventeen; how can I even begin to do a better job than they did? At times it feels impossible. But then I realize their legacy for me wasn't a better world; it was raising me to be strong and confident and smart, and then I decide I have to try because I can't let them down.
"It's really coming down now," Victor says, as a crack of thunder rolls through the sky.
Scooting nearer, I join him at the very edge. My own feet hang over. Eighteen stories up.
"You'll catch me if I fall, right?" I ask.
Victor smiles. "I'll catch you before you even slip."
I believe him. A few inches from certain death, in a bad storm, and I feel completely, totally secure.
"Why are you so different, Victor? Any other vampire would've taken my blood by now. Probably would have killed me. Why not you?"
He's quiet for a moment, and so still. I wonder what he's thinking. Is the question so hard, or does he not trust me completely, the way I've begun to trust him?
"I like you, Dawn. I've seen a lot of humans, from far away and up close. I've never met one like you. I think you're the closest thing to a sunrise I'll ever see."
My heart squeezes in my chest. The feelings I've been walling off come crashing in. But maybe here, in this building, I can let down my guard a bit. It's a dangerous thing to do, especially with a powerful vampire involved. But I'm already at the edge; what's another risk?
"I like you, too," I admit. Even though I know I shouldn't. I should want Michael here, but it feels right that it's Victor.
"I'm glad you can't resist my charms," Victor says with a smile. Then he turns serious. "I know I've complicated your life, Dawn. But you've complicated mine, too."
"How's that?"
"I'm always fighting my baser instincts. We can dress well, conform to proper manners. But at heart we're monsters—just like you accuse us of being."
"You're not," I rush to assure him. "You rescue people—Vivi and me. You help vampires. Granted, by breaking the law and stealing blood, but your intentions are good." I can't believe I'm striving to convince him that he's not evil. "You're not a monster, Victor."
"I wish that were true. But when I'm around you, all I can think about is … the temptation of you."
My chest tightens, and I work hard not to let fear sneak into my voice. "My blood?"
"I'm a vampire. Blood is the first thing we scent, the first thing that draws us to humans. I fight it. But I can't deny it's part of who I am. I would never take your blood, though. No matter how strongly it calls to me. You have to believe that."
"I do." My voice lacks conviction. We've never discussed the differences in us except in anger. To admit to them now, in this place, is scary. Makes the differences more powerful, because I wish they didn't exist.
"It's not just your blood that tempts me," he admits. "In four hundred years, I've never dreamed. Vampires don't. But after I saved you on the trolley that night, you invaded my sleep. In my dreams, we're the same. We can touch, kiss, love. And every dream ends with us … being together forever."
"I'm mortal. I don't get forever. Not unless I'm turned, and I'd never… I'd never willingly—"
"I know. It's just a dream."
But I can see in his eyes how he wishes it weren't. There's something developing between us that I don't understand, that I never wanted. His nearness makes my heart pound, my skin grow warm. Maybe it's just this building, but here I consider that impossible things could actually become possible.
"Is it scary? Being turned?" I ask. "Hypothetically speaking."
"I wasn't turned, so I can't speak from experience, but from what I understand it isn't. I'd take your blood, give you mine. And then you'd die. It wouldn't have to hurt. You'd just… wake up and be everlasting."
Victor and I are so close together that if I shift my weight even a little, I could touch him. It would be easy to nestle my face against his shoulder. To draw comfort from him.
"I should probably take you home," he says.
I look out and realize that night has fallen.
Victor starts to get up. A loud crack of thunder makes me jump, and I slip. But as he promised, Victor grabs my arm before I can even inhale to scream, and he pulls me up and away from the ledge. So quickly that I bang into his chest. He's staring down at me, his arms circling me, clutching me to him. He's so warm and solid. Part of me longs to stand here forever, locked in his embrace.
"Thank you," I whisper.
His gaze drops to my mouth. I'm barely breathing. Just waiting. Not even sure what I'm waiting for. I can't deny the attraction I feel, even though I know it's dangerous. But sometimes I can almost forget he's a vampire.
Then, as quickly as he snatched me from death's door, he releases me, steps back, and shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. I'm disappointed; an emptiness worse than anything I've ever felt washes through me. First Michael rejected me, and now Victor is. For some reason, the second one hurts more.