Page 4 of Nosfer-Meet You

Juliette looks over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow at me, like she’s only just noticed what I’m doing. “Home,” she says.

I stare at her for a few moments, expecting her to say more, but she doesn’t. Maybe her English isn’t up to snuff. Or maybe she just wants me to shut up. But I don’t want to be stuck in some vampire lass’s sewer hovel. I want to be back on the surface where I belong, but without the crossbow wielding lunatics hunting me. I can’t believe I’m about to reject a girl trying to take me home with her, but…

“No offense, Juliette. But, uh, I don’t think I want to go home with you. I want to go topside and get the hell out of town, you know?” I say as we turn another corner in this sewer maze. There’s no way I’ll remember how to get out of here on my own, so I need her on my good side.

Juliette looks over her shoulder again and rolls her eyes. “Non,” she says. “You come with me.”

I shake my head. “No, I want to go home. Up there.” I point to the ceiling, hoping she’ll get my point. But Juliette just stares hard at me, then stalks forward, ignoring me again. This is getting on my nerves.

“How long have you been living down here, anyway?” I ask as I continue to follow her. By now, I’ve given up on doing the crab walk and try my best to not stray too close to the edges. At least the alcohol is mostly out of my system, but I’m a little lightheaded and definitely in need of some nosh. “Your clothing looks ancient, so probably a while, yeah? But you speak French? You know this is an English-speaking island, right? Why be here and not, like, back in France?”

Mystella is a moderately-size island the size of Sardinia but with a wildly different climate. For one thing, magic rules here, and that includes the weather. While you might get an island as cold and rainy as tits like the UK, where I’m originally from, you might find one more temperate in nature. Why couldn’t I have been born in the Bahamas? Seriously, what rotten feckin’ luck, right?

But Mystella doesn’t operate like that. It’s… an anomaly. Like it’s existing outside the natural laws or something. In the span of twenty-five kilometers, you can find mountains, tropical beaches, swamps, deserts… everything here. And up until recently, the humans who have always lived here had no idea that their home was so weird. Most didn’t even realize there were monsters living among them, either. That’s been changing. Slowly. And I’m not even sure we’re moving in the right direction, but things are definitely changing.

Juliette stops so abruptly I collide with her back and let out a small “oomph.” Then she whirls around and glares at me. Her ruby red eyes are so dark, so vicious, I actually lose the ability to speak for a few moments. They sharpen on me like a pair of twin daggers, and she points a bony finger—which is more like a claw, honestly—an inch from my chest.

“Disrespectful punk,” she spits out. Then she stabs me in the chest with that claw, and I wince. “I am Nosferatu, you stupid little boy, and I live where I please!”

Stupid little boy? Huh. Well, that’s a new one. Even if she did manage to break the skin with her claw, it wouldn’t injure me. Not when vampires have such fast healing. Unless we’re decapitated, immolated, or staked, of course. Those we can’t come back from.

Nosferatu are a myth, though. A legend. Stories made up to frighten children and religious nutters out of their minds. They’re not … they’re not real. They’re not like regular vampires, who can still pass off as human. They’re literal monsters with the fangs, claws, and abilities to match. Here in Sugardove City, everyone grows up with the tales about the deadly Nosferatu, so despicable and depraved that they were more monster than the men they barely resembled. They devoured everything in their path until a group of paladins took them out with cleansing holy fire, rendering them extinct.

They should be extinct, if they ever existed at all. I mean, let’s be real. A lot of people were really into metaphors back then. For all we knew, the “Nosferatu” were really just the plague.

I stare down at her. Man, she’s tiny. I could probably lift her with one arm and toss her into the water if I wanted to. I’m not going to, but I could. She’s certainly hideous enough to be a Nosferatu, that’s for sure, but…

“They’re not real,” I say, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “Stories.”

“Non,” she hisses. “We are real.” Her hand balls into a fist, and she brings it to her sternum. “I am Nosferatu, even if you do not believe me.”

I raise my hands in defeat. “Okay, fine. You’re whatever you say you are. I believe you believe you’re Nosferatu.”

Juliette finally spins back around and leads me down the sewer grates until we reach a series of stairs leading down to more gross, greenish brown water. She lifts her skirts above the water and wades through like it’s nothing.

I cough into my fist and linger behind on the last step. “Yeah, no. I’m not going in that again.”

Juliette wades to the other side and up the stairs. She turns around and waits for me, but I don’t follow. I can’t. Not again.

“Come,” she says, beckoning to me like I’m a dog. “Come on, Scotty.”

I shake my head. “No. It’s disgusting. Lass, are you daft? Like, actually daft? You live in the sewer and look like the poster child for⁠—”

Juliette disappears into a cloud of smoke.

It billows over the water in a rush, and I stagger backward, nearly tripping over my own feet as I try to get away from whatever the hell this black smog is. I punch it with my hands, but it’s no use. It envelops my entire body until I can’t see anything but darkness. It’s a good thing I don’t need to breathe to live, because it’s suffocating.

When the darkness finally dissipates, I realize I’m on the other side of the sewer and Juliette is standing next to me, leaning over her bony knees.

I peer down at her, blinking. “H-Hey. Are you okay? What just happened?”

Some vampires, depending on their age, have special powers. Some of us can fly, for example. But that’s only the reyt old ones. And most vampires don’t live long enough to develop those kinds of powers because we end up staked. Or killed by a rival vamp. You know, normal things.

But Juliette must be old. No, she’s got to be positively ancient to be able to turn into smoke and float around like that. And judging from the way she crumpled up like a little ball on the ground, it probably took a lot out of her to do it, too.

Shit. Now I feel bad. Wincing, I tap her gently on the shoulder. Tap tap. Tap tap.

“There, there. I’m, uh, sorry for being so difficult,” I mutter.