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The spread of vampirism could be traced to one person—Caspar Morales. Films and books and television had started romanticizing vampires, and maybe it was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.
Crazy, romantic Caspar decided that he wouldn’t kill his victims. He’d just drink a little blood and then move on, city to city. By the time other vampires caught up with him and ripped him to pieces, he’d infected hundreds of people. And those new vampires, with no idea how to prevent the spread, infected thousands.
When the first outbreak happened in Tokyo, it seemed like a journalist’s prank. Then there was another outbreak in Hong Kong and another in San Francisco.
The military put up barricades around the area where the infection broke out. That was the way the first Coldtown was founded.
Matilda’s body twitched involuntarily. She could feel the spasm start in the muscles of her back and move to her face. She wrapped her arms around herself to try and stop it, but her hands were shaking pretty hard. “You want my help, you better get me some booze.”
“You’re killing yourself,” Dante said, shaking his head.
“I just need another drink,” she said. “Then I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “You can’t keep going like this. You can’t just stay drunk to avoid your problems. I know, people do. It’s a classic move, even, but I didn’t figure you for fetishizing your own doom.”
She started laughing. “You don’t understand. When I’m wasted I don’t crave blood. It’s the only thing keeping me human.”
“What?” He looked at Matilda like he couldn’t quite make sense of her words.
“Let me spell it out: if you don’t get me some alcohol, I am going to bite you.”
“Oh.” He fumbled for his wallet. “Oh. Okay.”
Matilda had spent all the cash she’d brought with her in the first few weeks, so it’d been a long time since she could simply overpay some homeless guy to go into a liquor store and get her a fifth of vodka. She gulped gratefully from the bottle Dante gave her in a nearby alley.
A few moments later, warmth started to creep up from her belly, and her mouth felt like it was full of needles and Novocain.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“Better now,” she said, her words slurring slightly. “But I still don’t understand. Why do you need me to help you find Lydia and Julian?”
“Lydia got obsessed with becoming a vampire,” Dante said, irritably brushing back the stray hair that fell across his face.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “She used to be really scared of vampires. When we were kids, she begged Mom to let her camp in the hallway because she wanted to sleep where there were no windows. But then I guess she started to be fascinated instead. She thinks that human annihilation is coming. She says that we all have to choose sides and she’s already chosen.”
“I’m not a vampire,” Matilda said.
Dante gestured irritably with his cigarette holder. The cigarette had long burned out. He didn’t look like his usual contemptuous self; he looked lost. “I know. I thought you would be. And—I don’t know—you’re on the street. Maybe you know more than the video feeds do about where someone might go to get themselves bitten.”
Matilda thought about lying on the floor of Julian’s parents’ living room. They had been sweaty from dancing and kissed languidly. On the television, a list of missing people flashed. She had closed her eyes and kissed him again.
She nodded slowly. “I know a couple of places. Have you heard from her at all?”
He shook his head. “She won’t take any of my calls, but she’s been updating her blog. I’ll show you.”
He loaded it on his phone. The latest entry was titled: I Need a Vampire. Matilda scrolled down and read. Basically, it was Lydia’s plea to be bitten. She wanted any vampires looking for victims to contact her. In the comments, someone suggested Coldtown and then another person commented in ALL CAPS to say that everyone knew that the vampires in Coldtown were careful to keep their food sources alive.
It was impossible to know which comments Lydia had read and which ones she believed.
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Runaways went to Coldtown all the time, along with the sick, the sad, and the maudlin. There was supposed to be a constant party, theirs for the price of blood. But once they went inside, humans—even human children, even babies born in Coldtown—weren’t allowed to leave. The National Guard patrolled the barbed-wire-wrapped and garlic-covered walls to make sure that Coldtown stayed contained.
People said that vampires found ways through the walls to the outside world. Maybe that was just a rumor, although Matilda remembered reading something online about a documentary that proved the truth. She hadn’t seen it.
But everyone knew there was only one way to get out of Coldtown if you were still human. Your family had to be rich enough to hire a vampire hunter. Vampire hunters got money from the government for each vampire they put in Coldtown, but they could give up the cash reward in favor of a voucher for a single human’s release. One vampire in, one human out.
