The Worm in Every Heart

Weeks after the bulldozers have come and gone, he may well reach into a pocket for change, but find only some small shards of glass, instead: the remaining traces of that bottle he found on the floor of Maris’ bedroom, after the ambulance had already taken you away—old, and rare, and blue, and broken.

And empty.

Fly-By-Night

EX-STAFF SERGEANT (USMC) Sonia Kopek was sitting by the window when they brought the vampire in. It was 8:30, a typical Monday night at Douglas Bell Memorial—residents drugged and gibbering, new entries being booked, interns slipping on vomit between the front desk and the nearest supply cabinet. The vampire was naked, dripping wet, skin like ice, handsome. Had long hair, which struck Sonia a bit faggy, but whatever turns you on. One cop kept the vampire in an arm-lock, nunchuks tight around his free wrist, while the other signed the log-book. When he was done, he gave it to Maunderly. As his hand went by, the vampire snapped at the cop’s knuckles with broken bone-needle teeth.

“Motherfucker!” the cop exclaimed.

The vampire’s eyes burned, like irises on an autumn bonfire. Hot and acrid, with that faint blue tang of sex. Sane and insane alike shrank—hushed, scalded—from his gaze.

But none of them seemed to notice he cast no shadow.

Except for Sonia.

Thin, plain, wire-boned Sonia, huddled into her straitjacket like a rhesus monkey waiting for today’s injection. Her thorn-crown hair stood straight up, mocking gravity. A half-moon gouged above her left cheekbone added extra emphasis to her bruisey, all-pupil, blank Belladonna eyes. Craziness aside, they remained her sole ornament. Black glinting gems; cow-velvet stupid, Halidol blind.

Ah, che bella donna!

She snorted at the thought.

La pauvre ragazza ‘e pozza, more like.

The cops threw the vampire to Essen and Grillo, who—smooth as tag-team wrestlers—let his momentum carry him back through the violent ward’s doors before following.

“Evening, Sonia.”

Dr. Tau.

Not too bad a guy, as shrink buttheads went, if a little green for his own good. He had new shoes on; alligator. They complained as he squatted, flipping to her chart, ballpoint poised. “We cut you loose last week, right? So what was it this time?”

Sonia cleared her throat, noisily.

“Cops say you threatened to blow up a restaurant. Feinberg’s, on West? Told them you had a bomb or something.” He waited. Then: “You really think you were going to get away with it, Sonia? Or did you just sit down and wait for them to bring you back here?”

Sonia grinned, an uneven scribble of teeth.

“It’s hard to run with a grenade down your pants,” she said.

Dr. Tau sighed.

“Okay—you’re back on the Fourth, all right? No privileges. Tell the truth, you’re damn lucky no one bothered to press charges once they found out you were a Section Eight.” At the end of the hall, the vampire had begun to scream—a string of intricate curses, so refined they barely sounded like English. “Sonia. Sonia, you hear me?”

Sonia closed her eyes. She remembered a movie, from when she was twelve; Christopher Lee’s beautiful black-and-white face, his eyes red stones. Chin slicked brown with blood. Then Zia Tatya, incensed by her son-in-law’s blasphemous choice of family entertainment, running down the rules in mid-pirogi-dunk: “Such things exist, fool, and have no cure. Never trust a man whose eyebrows meet, whose palms are hairy, with red hair, born with a caul, a man with no shadow.” Years later, in the sewers of Dar ‘es Alaf, she’d come suddenly nose-to-nose with one more civilian the clean-up team had missed. A monobrowed boy barely her age, dead so long his puke had turned to dust.

Sonia?

With effort, she got her eyes open again.

“Perfectly, doc,” she said.

* * *

The vampire sat propped up against the Quiet Room’s wall, as far from the window as he could get. A hospital gown dimmed his luster somewhat, as did the mottling of bars the nearest streetlamp cast across his face. His hair, still wet, hung straight and red. No visible scars. An amber spray of freckles, inappropriate to his pallor, punctuated his left shoulder blade.

“I know what you are.”

The vampire turned, hissing—his teeth naked in the dark.