It had been a year. A whole year, trapped in this horrible pseudo-castle full of dust and regret. He was making her wear the dress again, the moth-bitten flapper dress that made her look even younger than she was. It stank of formaldehyde.
Tonight was the night she was going to get away. That was Nadine’s hope, at any rate. At midnight, she would be fifteen, and her hope was that this milestone would provide her with a chance to escape.
He’d said it would be forever, when he’d taken her. She hadn’t really believed him. He’d be bored before then, surely, she’d rationalized. But though it’d only been a year, it already felt like forever. Perhaps she shouldn’t have expected much, from a man named Archibald who looked like Dracula.
“I’d like to see my birthday fireworks tonight,” she announced, hoping he couldn’t tell how desperately she needed him to agree.
“Your birthday…? Oh! Yes, very clever. Birthday’s tomorrow, is it? I suppose we might be able to manage that.” He was patronizing her again, the way he always did, lounging on the dusty couch and reading a book with a shirtless male model on the cover. It had been amusing, the first time, the sight of a man in a cape reading a cheap romance paperback, but now it was simply a relief. It was better that way, when he was ignoring her. He curled his fingers lazily, a summons, and she felt herself getting pulled towards him as if by a thread. Nadine didn’t bother trying to fight those, anymore; it simply upset him, and then she’d spend hours with him crying bloody tears into her shoulder, wailing about how she must despise him. She did, but she’d have to lie anyway, because the alternative was even more crying.
Nadine didn’t even flinch anymore, when he hiked up her dress to sink his teeth into her bruised hip – it had never healed enough to scar, was always sore and aching. One hand wrapped around her waist, and she realized he was holding his book behind her back so that he could read it while he fed.
You’re such a fucking asshole, Archie.
“There’s a hill that overlooks town,” she said instead, “where we should be able to get a good view of the fireworks. Teenagers usually go there to make out, so it’s relatively secluded.” Archibald’s teeth slid out of her flesh so the he could give her a stern look, her blood still on his mouth and dribbling out the circular wound.
“Nadine,” he scolded, “you know we can’t be out where there are people.” This said, his tongue traced its way up her thigh to clean the trail of blood, lapped at the holes in her skin where it would continue to bleed for a while yet. She’d become very good at not letting him know how dizzy it made her, lest he have another pity-party about how dreadful he was.
“There won’t be many people,” she assured him. “Everyone tries to keep it a secret, so the cops won’t come, and it will be dark. Everyone will be too busy with each other to notice us.”
“I suppose I can make an exception for your birthday,” he decided, still licking at her hip. “I won’t be making a habit of it, however.”
You won’t have to.
“Thank you, my lord.” He loved it when she called him that, when she lowered her gaze all demure; he let her dress fall, setting his book down.
“I’m sure you have better ways than that to show me how grateful you are.” He was trying to purr, she could tell, but he only sounded smarmy and awful instead as the invisible thread pulled her down and landed her on her knees. If she hadn’t been determinedly looking demure, green eyes hidden behind her thick lashes, they’d have rolled right out of her head.
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“Is it all that you’d hoped?” Archibald asked, half-simpering, one hand on her shoulder. He was patronizing her again, but it would be over soon. There was a couple in their car getting dressed, clearly getting ready to leave; at the bottom of that hill was the bad side of town, the side that didn’t get included in pictures of the view.
“Yes, thank you,” she assured him, though she’d barely looked at the explosions in the sky. She reached into the bag he’d allowed her for a snack, trying and failing to keep her heart from racing.
“Feeling romantic already?” he hissed into her ear, and she was both grateful and repulsed by how little he knew her.
“There’s something I’d like to show you,” she declared, technically true, and he allowed her to pull away from him, put some distance between them.
“Oh?” He cocked his head to the side, clearly amused, as if she were a dog about to do a trick.
“Yes.” And with that, she upturned a bag of rice between them – not as large as she would have liked, but large enough. He stared at it, taking a moment to process what exactly she had done.
“You bitch,” he hissed, clearly itching to chase her even as he fell to his knees, fingers moving from one grain to another as he began to count them all. She didn’t bother taking time to gloat as she sprinted to the car of the couple she’d been scoping out, pounding on the driver’s window and giving the teen within a heart attack. As soon as he’d rolled down the window, she leapt in – thankful, not for the first time, that she was so thin. With much screaming and yelling and flailing of limbs, she managed to get the door open and kick the boy out, starting the car as she closed the door again. She was halfway down the hill when the girl in the passenger seat bailed, having apparently figured out that screaming would do nothing in the face of inertia.
It was sheer luck, when the car crashed into the bar by the train tracks, that Nadine emerged unscathed, slithering out the open window the same way she’d gone in. Her glasses had been lost somewhere in the car, but she’d have to look for them later. It hadn’t actually gone very far into the building, so presumably the people within wouldn’t hold it against her too badly. She needed to hurry; Archibald was quick, after all, even when it came to counting.
“Did you just crash a goddamn car into my bar?” She scrambled to her feet, looked over the car at the presumed proprietor. Old, scarred, well-muscled, he didn’t look like he’d put up with a lot of bullshit. Then again, he was a bit blurry – maybe he was just fat and baffled.
“Do you know anyone that kills vampires?” she asked, cutting straight to the point as she scrambled over the mangled hood to reach him. He was not, in fact, fat.
“What?” She could see him softening as he got a better look at her, at her short and bouncy black curls and stick-thin legs, her childish figure under her shapeless dress, as tall as she’d ever be at 5’4”.
“Vampires,” she repeated, passing him now to look around the corner and into the door to the place. “I have a vampire problem. This seemed like the sort of place that would have people who kill them. Do you kill them?” She turned back to look at him over her shoulder, and he was looking between her and the car.
“I don’t – get inside, then, for fuck’s sake.” He ushered her inside, the hand on her back light, as if he was afraid he’d break her.
“If you can’t kill vampires, I don’t know that I’ll be that much safer inside.” No one inside seemed to have taken much notice of the bumper poking through the wall, preoccupied with drinking and in one case punching each other.
“What’s that about vampires?” She didn’t jump when the man appeared by her side out of nowhere – Archie did that trick, too. Assuming he’d been doing a trick – maybe she just hadn’t seen him, without her glasses. The proprietor’s hand went to her shoulder protectively, and she could feel the calluses on her skin. Whoever this guy was, he did not seem well-trusted.
He seemed to fancy himself a cowboy, with a tanned leather jacket with fringe and a Stetson, five o clock shadow and beat up boots under wrecked denim. “Do you kill vampires?” she asked, though the height of one thick eyebrow spoke to her disbelief.
“You got a vampire needs killin’?” There was a half-smoked hand-rolled cigarette hanging from his lip, and Nadine rose up on her toes to snatch it from him, taking her first drag in what was almost a year now. Her head swam, and she couldn’t help smiling at the pleasant ache in her lungs.
“Hopefully he’s still up on the hill,” she shrugged, exhaling smoke as she spoke. “If he hasn’t finished counting rice yet. Easy enough to find, since the motherfucker looks like Dracula.” The proprietor’s hand was still on her shoulder, an unspoken bodyguard, and she took another drag.
“I’ll have him dead by sunrise,” the cowboy assured her, pinching the cherry of her cigarette to put it out before ruffling her hair and stepping outside.
Goddamn patronizing motherfuckers.
“Who the hell was that?” she asked finally, shrugging off the unnecessary hand and spitting the cigarette butt to the floor.
“Jed,” he said simply, passing her to slide behind the bar as she followed. “He’s one of those self-hating hybrid types. Only ever hangs around long enough to start trouble.”
“Ah.” She pulled herself up onto a barstool, tried to look like she belonged there. “One of those.” She had never actually heard of those, but his tone suggested that this was a type, and she always liked to seem knowledgeable.
“Yup. You got a name, little girl?” He slid a glass of tonic water in front of her, and she picked it up and examined it with a touch of disdain.
“Dean. You got the gin half of this equation, big man?” The bartender scoffed, but did not provide the asked-for liquor.
“Name’s Chris. Dean’s a bit of a tough name, for a kid.”
“I’m fifteen,” she said flatly, “and I’ve been fucking a vampire for a year. I think I’ve earned a drink and a cigarette.”
Chris said nothing, but he did pour some gin into her glass. She sipped it, and did an admirable job of not making a face. “This vampire of yours hard to kill?” he asked finally, handing her a cigarette.
“If you weigh over a hundred pounds? Probably not.” Nadine leaned forward to let him light her up, taking a long drag.
“I’m assuming that’s not your car.” Chris pointed to the bumper through the wall, and she looked over her shoulder at the damage.
“Nah. I should probably get my glasses out of there before those kids come down here looking for it.” Chris barked an order at one of the patrons, and in no time at all her glasses were delivered, only one crack in the right lens. “Could have been worse,” she observed, trying not to let it bother her as she put them back on. “Thanks.” She felt almost herself again, drinking and smoking, as if she hadn’t spent a year as a doll on a pedestal.
“You sure you’re okay with Jed killing your vampire? Hard not to get attached, after a year.”
Nadine wasn’t sure she was in the mood for a bartender playing psychiatrist, but she probably didn’t have a lot of options. “Eh. He didn’t age well. Might have been upset if it had happened early on, but not now.”
That was a lie, of course. When they’d first met, Archie had just been her getaway. He could’ve died at any point and she’d not have cared, so long as he’d gotten her to safety first.
The door slammed open: the cowboy was back. Nadine drank down the rest of her gin and tonic, face twisting as it burned down her throat. “Dead already, or did you give up?”
“Dead,” Jed confirmed, and Nadine wondered what it had looked like, how it had happened, what he had said. She didn’t ask.
“Awesome.” She took another long drag of her cigarette, but then he was there again, putting it out. “That shit was old the first time,” she snarled, attempting to smack his hand away. When he grabbed her wrist instead, Chris grabbed his, and she watched with detached bemusement as they stared each other down. With her glasses back, she could make out Jed’s face a bit better – he looked older than Archie had, younger than Chris, though looks were almost always deceiving. Late twenties, early thirties, he might have been handsome if he hadn’t been halfway to turning his skin to tanned leather.
“Let the girl smoke,” the bartender said finally, lighting Nadine’s cigarette back up. She sucked on it gratefully, turning it away from Jed to make it slightly more difficult to put out.
“She’s too young,” Jed grumbled, releasing her wrist. “It’s bad for her.”
“She’s old enough,” Chris rebutted, relaxing now that Jed appeared to have surrendered. “and there are worse things. Let her have something that makes her happy.” Jed did not seem pleased by this, but accepted it, taking a seat just a bit too close to Nadine for comfort. He smelled like smoke and whiskey and something sour, none of which was as sexy as it sounded.
“Could I get a Rob Roy?” Nadine asked, sliding her glass back across the bar.
“You like Rob Roys?” His voice spoke of more amusement than disbelief, replacing her glass with a new one and providing the asked-for drink.
“More’n gin and tonic, apparently.” She sipped at the beverage, finding it more agreeable than the last one, noting out the corner of her eye that Jed had asked to keep the bottle of whiskey.
“You a babysitter now, Chris?” Jed asked with a sip from his bottle, and she turned to level him with a glare, exhaling smoke through her nostrils like an angry dragon.
“You got a problem with me, asshole?” she demanded, jabbing a cigarette in his direction.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he confirmed, setting the bottle down and giving her a glare of his own. “You’re a kid playing at being grown, and if you don’t cut that shit out you’re going to get yourself in a whole world of trouble. I’m sure you think this is loads of fun, but this ain’t a fucking game you’re playing here.”
“Fuck you,” she spat, taking a long swig of her drink. “I am done – fucking done – with patronizing old assholes treating me like I don’t know what the fuck. I am fifteen, goddammit, and maybe you were busy playing with dolls and sucking your own dick at fifteen, but you can go fuck yourself. Fifteen is fucking old enough. Fourteen was enough to live with a hundred-year-old shithead, fourteen was old enough to suck vampire dick in a dead woman’s dress, fifteen is old enough to crash a car, fifteen is old enough to order a hit on somebody. Fuck you for thinking I haven’t earned a goddamn drink and a cigarette when you can’t even bathe yourself.” Having said her piece, she retreated back into herself, elbows on the counter and sucking discontentedly on her cigarette. Jed seemed to consider this disrespect to be beyond the pale, storming out of the bar without another word.
“That might not’ve been the cleverest thing, ki – Dean.”
“You gonna lecture me too, Chris?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Jed’s just got a temper and holds a grudge.
“Good for him.” Chris took her shortness as a cue to leave her alone, which it probably was. Not that Nadine wanted to be alone, but she wanted a specific kind of company that she couldn’t quite pin down. Her hip still ached, and she wondered if it would ever heal. It was tempting to shave her head again, just so her hair wouldn’t smell like old. She was free, now, she was supposed to be doing all the things she couldn’t have before. “I’m… I’m gonna go,” she muttered, finishing off her drink and sliding off the barstool. The cigarettes and alcohol were perhaps not a good idea after a period of forced sobriety and blood loss, but she did her best not to make it obvious how off-balance she felt.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” The concern on the old man’s face was genuine, but she waved him off.
“Course it’s not. Never stopped me before.”
“You’re free to stay here as long as you need.” Nadine did not bother to acknowledge this, stumbling out of the bar and into the dark of night. What she needed now was sleep, far away from vampires and their overstuffed unwashed comforters.
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When Nadine awoke, curled up next to an abandoned train car, someone was trying to pick her up. “Fuck off,” she tried to snarl, too bleary to actually be threatening as she waved an arm at the blur.
“It’s just me,” said the voice, and she realized it belonged to Jed, though his tone was different than before. Placating, like he was trying to calm a spooked horse.
“Is that supposed to help?” Nadine scoffed, finding her glasses in the grass and sliding them back on. It took her a moment to realize what had changed. “Did you leave to take a shower?” she asked incredulously, trying to pretend there wasn’t heat rising over her cheekbones. Jed, it seemed, cleaned up nice. Ashy blonde hair, brown eyes, strong jaw – his eyes had looked sunken, before, but now she could see it was just the light casting shadows beneath thick brows. He looked… smouldery. Attractive and male in all the ways Archie hadn’t been.
Goddammit you drunk asshole why the fuck are you pretty.
“Yeah,” he admitted, having the audacity to look adorably bashful. “I know I’ve got a bit of a temper, so I thought I should leave – figured as long as I was gone I might as well try to clean myself up. I… forget about that sort of thing, sometimes.”
“And you were trying to pick me up because…?”
“It… didn’t feel right, leaving you sleeping out here. I wasn’t trying to hunt you down or anything, it just happened. You’ve… got a distinctive smell.” She could see the glint of sharp white teeth as he spoke, fangs less dramatic than Archie’s had been, but fangs nonetheless. Her hip still ached.
Nadine sighed, held up her arms like a child waiting to be carried – which, theoretically, she was. “Are you kidnapping me to somewhere with a shower so I can get rid of it?”
Jed hesitated for only a moment before gathering her up in his arms – very large, very warm arms. She didn’t bother resisting the temptation to wrap her arms around his neck, to rest her head on his shoulder and close her eyes to pretend that he was hers. “You can shower back at my room, if you want,” he acquiesced, and she wondered why she didn’t notice earlier how lovely and gravelly his voice sounded. It rumbled in his chest magnificently, like his ribcage was an amplifier, and she resisted the urge to press an ear to his sternum.
“I want,” she breathed, and the way she said it probably made it a bit too obvious she wasn’t talking about the shower, but… well. She could hardly be expected to be a nun.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he observed, perhaps uncomfortably, his stride surprisingly gentle.
“Dean.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fuck you.”
“What’s your real name?”
“None of your fucking business, Jed. It can be Dean if I want.”
“You got a real filthy mouth, Dean.”
“I do a lot of filthy things.”
“That is not even close to what I meant.”
“Mmmph.” Emboldened by his discomfort, she drew herself closer to his chest, wrapped her arms tighter around his warmth. It had been so long, now, since she’d been with someone warm. She hadn’t realized what a difference it made, to feel warmth and a pulse instead of cold dead flesh beneath her skin.
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Nadine emerged from the bathroom in nothing but her skin, and Jed turned away so quickly he should have had whiplash.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, and she took his hoarseness as a good sign. She bent a knee and crossed her arms over her chest, a nod in the direction of propriety.
“I don’t have any clothes,” she explained flatly, watched impassively as he swore and scrambled to retrieve something, anything, from his bags. Finally he threw a shirt blindly in her direction, which she slipped over her head more languorously than was strictly necessary.
“Did he do that to you?” Nadine pulled her head free of the shirt’s collar to find Jed holding the hem above her hipbone, brown eyes fixed on the angry wound.
“Every day around noon,” she confirmed with a shrug, pleased that he was close enough to see with her natural vision. His heavy brows were furrowed, his normally shapely lips a fine line.
“And the dumb fuck never thought to heal you?”
“I’m sure he thought of it. Just never saw much point, when he’d only be opening it up again.” Her wide mouth couldn’t help but curl into a small smile at the anger written on the stillness of his face. She rose to her toes again, this time to grab the brim of his Stetson in her fingertips, depositing it atop damp black curls. “It’s a good thing I had a handsome cowboy to kill him for me.” He released the hem of the shirt to fall down to her thigh, perhaps realizing what it might look like. “And anyway,” she added, hat falling crooked on her forehead, “he could have killed me.”
Jed responded to this defense with an unhappy grunt, sinking one of his fangs into the pad of his right thumb. “Drink this,” he commanded simply, offering the digit and the blood welling thereupon.
“Is that the hand you jerk off with?”
“Don’t be a goddamn pervert –”
“– just shut up, stick it in my mouth and suck?” she finished dryly. Before he could protest, she ran the tip of her tongue over the droplet, slid her mouth over the rest of his thumb to suck gently at the wound.
“You only had to lick the damn thing,” he muttered, a visible flush to his face. To this she merely shrugged, making purposeful eye contact as she continued her ministrations. He hesitated just a moment too long before he pulled his hand away, sliding his thumb over her lower lip as he did so. “You can’t – you shouldn’t do shit like that.”
“I’m sorry,” she lied, pulling the Stetson from her head to drop it on the floor. “It’s just been so long since I’ve been with someone warm. Someone alive.” She slid the hem of her shirt slowly upward again, just at the one side. “You did heal me,” she offered, dropping the cloth after just long enough to see the freshly scarred skin.
“You’re too young for me, kid,” he rejected gruffly, and Nadine’s eyes followed his despite his attempts to avert them.
“Would Chris have tried to protect me from you, if I were too young?”
“Chris can go fuck himself.”
“And he will,” Nadine agreed, stepping closer, her hand finding his arm with a feather-light touch. “That doesn’t mean you have to.”
“I can’t…” He trailed off, closed his eyes, but didn’t brush her hand away. She took this as her opening, closing the gap between them and sliding her arms around his waist. He stiffened, but she only squeezed harder, pressing her chest against his abdomen and clinging desperately.
“You don’t have to,” she murmured, even as she was appreciating how wonderfully solid and warm he was. “Just hold me. Please? Just for tonight. Just one night with someone living, someone safe.” It was an agonizing moment before he relaxed in her arms, one hand moving to run through her hair.
“Just one night,” he repeated quietly, and she smiled into his shirt.
Nadine Pascal-Said 