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“About the boy?”
“About how you are going to help us.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“Because you owe me, you ungrateful fuck. And if you don’t”—she smiled, revealing creamy-white teeth and two sharp gold incisors—“I’ll make sure the whole damn town knows what really happened twenty-five years ago.”
7
Barbara didn’t like the dark. It seemed a fool-ass thing for a grown woman to admit. Right up there with believing in the Closet Monster and the Boogie Man.
But just because a fear was foolish didn’t make it any less real. And it wasn’t an irrational fear. It was primal. Darkness meant you couldn’t see the predators coming.
In the city, it was easier. That old adage about the city never sleeping was true. There was always a haze of illumination. Bars, traffic, streetlights. Here, it was different. Night came down hard and fast. Even the town’s omnipresent Christmas decorations couldn’t ward it off.
She was back upstairs at just past ten thirty. She took her towel and toiletries and washed and brushed her teeth in the small bathroom. The tiled floor was freezing even through her thick socks, and she hurried gratefully to her room. Barbara wondered briefly if anyone was in the other guest room, then dismissed the idea. If they were, she would have heard them by now.
Once she was settled under the heavy quilt in bed, she plugged in her phone and set her alarm before turning out the lamp. Then she lay there, unable to sleep. As always. For someone who hated the dark, it was kind of ironic that Barbara spent so many hours staring into it. Her mind was in a free ramble. Churning over what she had learned today and that damn cellphone footage.
Marcus was dead. That was a fact.
But the footage was staged. She was certain that was also a fact.
Had Marcus intended to film his own murder?
But then, why worry about a dirty jacket?
Or was it a “turning” that had gone wrong?
Like before, with the Danes boy.
Teenagers didn’t change that much. They were attracted to darkness, flirting with the forbidden. Over the years, plenty had run away to join a colony. Being “turned” seems romantic when you’re young. Living for ever, being an outcast.
But while relationships between consenting adults and colony members were not illegal, “turning” a minor was, even if the colony member was underage themselves. Turnings could easily go wrong. The process involved biting—infecting—the human, who then needed to consume vampyr blood plasma to complete the process. But it was risky. Like asking a starving bear to nibble your finger. For an inexperienced vampyr, the hunger was hard to control. There were many cases where humans bled out and others where they rejected the blood plasma, ending up in a half-turned state, neither vampyr nor human.
Of course, the danger only made it more attractive to some. Like Todd Danes.
Barbara needed to talk to the other boys. Find out what they knew. They were Marcus’s friends. They had access to his “other life,” the one his parents were unaware of, or blind to. Talking to their teachers might be a good idea too.
She had a feeling that these requests would not go down well with Chief Nicholls, or the town. And then there was Colleen Grey. An interesting one. Barbara would like to find out a little more about her role in Deadhart.
It wasn’t so unusual for a small town like this to have its own chapel or pastor. A lot of towns near colonies did. Since the Vampyr Protection Act was signed into law in 1983, religious opposition had been growing. Churches had mobilized in protest against the “spawn of Satan.” As with so many things in life, battle lines had been drawn, between the right-wing evangelicals who believed that vampyrs should be hunted down and killed (because that was what Jesus would want) and the “woke” liberals who believed that minorities should be protected and respected. Age old. Barbara had seen it with race, homosexuality, women’s rights, abortion, trans rights.
While the VPA was welcomed in most states, it was different in the small towns, the appropriately named Bible Belt. Barbara had some sympathy. She’d grown up in a small town herself (Colleen had been right on that one). And the fact was, colonies didn’t tend to settle near big cities. It was easy to be liberal when the wolf wasn’t at your own door.
But then, it wasn’t Barbara’s job to judge or theorize here. It was her job to make a decision. Was Marcus’s murder a Colony killing or not? And right now, she just didn’t know.
She sighed and checked her phone. After midnight. She should really try to get some sleep. She turned over and closed her eyes.
Something knocked against the wall next door.
Her eyes shot back open. Was someone using the bathroom?
She held her breath, listening for the toilet or shower.
Silence. Then two more knocks.
It could just be a drunk from the Grill. The stairs to the guest rooms were at the side of the bar. The rooms had locks, but anyone could walk up and enter the bathroom. However, the Grill closed at eleven. Even with stragglers, it should be shut by now.
