Chapter 1
“You best watch out for her,” Andrea warned. “She’ll play dumb sometimes, but she’s very smart. Approach her without a hint of fear, that’s the only way to win her over.”
Aaron was looking at the two vials of gold liquid as he listened. “I’m better prepared for this than you think, Andrea.”
“Are you going tonight?”
“No, tomorrow. I have to tie up some loose ends first.”
“That would be wise.”
Andrea put away the box of vials and Aaron handed her the cash. He’d been working nights to afford everything he needed to find Josie and bring her home. He’d also forced himself to learn to deal with less sleep while working out for the better part of six months. His physical strength was already where it needed to be to deal with whatever these creatures threw at him.
“You may find becoming one of them will be harder to escape,” Andrea went on. “Their lifestyle is very attractive to some people. Not everyone gets to be one of them. The freedom and strength might go to your head.”
“I promised my mother I’d come back with Josie. I’m sacrificing a lot. I have to come back from this as human or what was the point of it all?”
“Don’t come back here after you’ve changed, either. I don’t want you leading them here.”
Aaron left the gloomy shop after thanking Andrea and promising he’d not see her again until his ordeal was over. He’d met her almost a year ago when he’d been searching for Josie on his own.
Josie had gone missing the day after her fifteenth birthday, and he’d already left for college that month. Now Aaron was dropping out of his classes, and was on his way to break up with his girlfriend Carla so he could dedicate all his time to finding Josie. He couldn’t have a single tie to his old life. Crossing over meant he wouldn’t exist in this world anymore. He’d be dead to everyone. Dealing with the process of coming back wasn’t on his mind.
Carla was sitting at his desk in his dorm room when Aaron got back at around midnight. She was livid he’d not taken her out like he said he would.
“What the hell has been up with you?” she demanded. “I saw a message on your phone last night. Who the fuck is Andrea?”
“No one,” he said as coldly as he could.
“You’ve been skipping classes, you’re never around when I need you; some reason you think you have to go running at three every morning, like you’re trying to impress somebody. Just admit you’re cheating, would you?”
“Believe whatever you want, Carla.”
She got up and made a scowl. “I know your sister disappearing messed with you, but you used to be a really sweet guy. I refuse to believe I did something to change that. Or maybe you were an asshole the whole time and I didn’t see it.”
He shrugged. “Guess I was.”
His eyes refused to regard her pretty mouth. He liked her a lot, but she couldn’t be around him anymore. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t kill her himself, much less land her in trouble with his future cohorts.
“If you call me, I won’t answer. Have a nice life, Aaron.”
She walked out as he grabbed his bag to start packing what he needed. The rest of his night was spent putting his things in boxes and writing an email to his mother that he’d found out Josie had headed to the city, so he was going to search for her there. He’d promised to go back to college next semester. She’d given Aaron about a hundred dollars already, plus he had another five hundred to pay for his transition.
Two hours of sleep was all he allowed himself. He downed another energy drink around five and went to the boxing ring where he trained every day to build his skills. He couldn’t afford to bulk up on protein shakes or illegal substances, he had to stay lean to stay agile, a heavy body full of muscle would be far too slow on its feet.
Elliot was laying into one of the bags across the room when Aaron arrived. There were only a few other older guys training and the ring was empty. Elliot stood at Aaron’s height, and was in the same weight category as him. They trained together, still Aaron wondered if he could take down a more heavyset opponent now he was stronger than he’d been a year ago.
As he was strapping his fists, Elliot came over, taking a giant swig from a bottle of Gatorade.
“You look like hell,” he said to Aaron.
“Never felt better. Can we do this?”
“Sure, but I’ll knock you out if you’re not concentrating.”
“Shut up and get in the ring.”
Aaron pulled off his hoodie and climbed in under the ropes. Elliot was already perspiring from smacking the bag around, and Aaron was running on more adrenaline now he was closer to giving up his life. He learned to fight for Josie, after he’d not once gotten in any scraps in school. Passive and cowardly weren’t words he could operate on, fear was only going to land him in the shit.
Elliot dodged Aaron’s first few punches. He knew not to expend too much energy at the start, it was better to wear the opponent down until they were too tired to fight, then lay into them and have them prone to finish them off. His new enemies weren’t going to go down that easily, they had endless strength, some kind of otherworldly resistance to basic force. They weren’t going to tire as quickly. He had to become one of them to stand any chance of survival.
Aaron was patient, seeing Elliot getting breathless and sick of dodging punches. He took a shot, landing Elliot in the gut with too much power and winding him.
“Screw you, Aaron!”
“You’re fine, you pussy. Get up.”
“No, I’m done. You’ve made your point.”
Trying not to get irritated, Aaron let Elliot off the hook.
“What are you training for? Some underground fight club?” Elliot pushed. “Don’t get me involved in your shady shit.”
“Trust me, this is beyond shady what I’m about to get into. You won’t be seeing me for a while.”
“Mobsters? Drug dealers? Someone going to kneecap you over a debt?”
“Forget it. You’re safe, that’s all you need to know.”
Aaron took off, the same time wishing Elliot had landed him in the jaw so he could get used to the taste of blood in his mouth. He didn’t sufficiently protect himself in these fights so he’d know what pain really was. His masochism was key to building his strength and resistance.
He spent the rest of the day anxiously going over his plan as he wandered around in the daylight. Aaron was more removed from life than he had been before he left high school. Hooking up with Carla had been a dumb idea, yet in his depression, he’d wanted to be close to someone.
Something had happened with Josie before she ran off, but he couldn’t gather what it was. Grilling her friends and hacking her social media accounts hadn’t revealed a single thing. She’d covered her tracks so well, it was easy to think she wasn’t going to come back with him when he found her. He didn’t want to force her to go back to their mother, but he had no choice. Aaron’s current stepdad, Vincent, showed up as Aaron was leaving home. Josie hadn’t gotten along with Vincent at all, and trouble escalated after Aaron left for college. All the same, she needed to be home, not running the streets with a gang of undesirable dead things.
It was difficult for Aaron to eat anything. He’d taken to appetite suppressants in the last month, morbidly wondering what it would be like to crave blood instead of food. He drank coffee and kept walking, not bothering to take snapshots of the beautiful colours around him that would soon be gone from his existence. He hated who he’d become. It didn’t matter how necessary it was, and he wasn’t expecting forgiveness from Carla or anyone else.
Around nine that night, Aaron left a note for his roommate that he could sell his stuff. He’d already pawned his laptop and anything else of value so he had extra cash on him. He wasn’t taking much on his journey. The only thing he really needed was the money and the two vials from Andrea.
His target was a girl named Ivy. He’d been stalking her for several weeks. She was going to be his key to the world Josie had disappeared into. Her activities suggested she was more amenable to speaking to the living. It made sense why Josie had been lured by them but he had to believe she could be persuaded to leave.
Ivy hung out at a video arcade near the projects. There were more kids there than anyone would expect. Some of them never seemed to go home, they were always there whenever he passed on one of his many recon missions. Ivy was pressed up against the Street Fighter machine, slamming the buttons and almost growling at the screen. Her matte black hair was in a loose ponytail and she was wearing baggy green army pants with her usual black hoodie. She was attractive in an odd kind of way; if she’d been alive, he would have asked her out.
Aaron moved up behind her and put his lips close to her ear. “I heard you can tell me where the wild things are.”
He stayed close to her shoulder, aware she could spin about and crush his windpipe with her delicate hand in a nanosecond.
She smirked instead. “What’s the magic word?”
He flicked the wad of cash in front of her eyes and she stopped playing to snatch it from his fingertips. Finally, she kicked at the machine and the game ended.
“Keep up with me. If you lag behind, I won’t wait.”
Not even looking at him, Ivy marched out of the arcade onto the street. Aaron was quick enough to almost match her pace. He wasn’t the weediest guy in the world to begin with, he’d been on the basketball team for most of high school, so he had some agility. But Ivy was twenty times stronger than him, even though she was easily half his size. She’d knocked out a burly kid before she’d killed him; Aaron had witnessed this a few weeks back on one of his stalks. She could make short work of him without losing a breath.
The club where she and her friends spent their evenings was a block from the arcade. Ivy led Aaron down to the outside entrance of the basement, stopping at the door before she unlocked it.
“I take it you know what you’re getting yourself into?” she asked.
“I do.”
“There’s no going back.”
“I know.” There was, not that he was about to admit to it.
“You’ve said all your goodbyes?”
“Only to the ones who mattered, yeah.”
Ivy got close up to his face and smiled as she scanned his eyes. “I don’t smell a scrap of fear on you.”
She glanced at his mouth like she wanted to kiss him and he concentrated on slowing his heart rate down.
“I hope we can play tonight. What’s your name?”
“Aaron.”
“I’m Ivy. Don’t talk unless anyone asks you a question. I’ll get you a drink when we’re inside, and you’ll make yourself at home.”
Aaron matched her smile with ease before she unlocked the door. It wasn’t like him to be this arrogant towards a girl. Part of his breakup with Carla was to test himself to see if he really could be horribly mean if he tried. Ivy’s own ego was evident in the face of it, and this proved to him she wasn’t easily swayed by any emotion. But then, what predator would be?
The basement steps were directly on the other side of the entrance; had it been dark anyone could’ve fallen and broken their neck. The passageway was lit by a row of malfunctioning florescent lights that flickered intermittently. The walls were grimy, and music was pounding behind another heavy door. Ivy took out another key and let him through.
He wouldn’t have called it a lair. It was a series of messy basement apartments, and all manner of shady-looking individuals lined the walls or wandered in and out of the main corridor.
“What do you think so far?” Ivy asked casually.
“Nice,” he lied, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dimness.
She took a left down another corridor and went through an open door into one of the apartments. Red neon lights, clearly stolen from various stores, were placed at odd intervals around the room. Pointing at an empty sofa, Ivy waited for him to obey her command. He sat and made himself comfortable, his angst barely masked.
There were others milling around the room. Aaron figured out the music was coming from another apartment down the corridor. Thinking on it then, he’d been to worse places for parties. Lamps with missing shades and clusters of candles that had fused themselves to whatever surface they’d been placed on all added nicely to the drug-den ambience.
Ivy returned with a glass and handed it to Aaron. “It’s just vodka with a sedative. Helps the process.”
He hadn’t accounted for the possibility of being drugged, now panicking that she’d kill him once he passed out. Same time, it was too late to back out, and not playing along would just as easily get him slaughtered.
Drinking the vodka quickly, Aaron told himself to pay attention to his reactions. A tall black kid in a short leather jacket entered the room and approached Ivy.
“Did he pay?” the kid asked her.
“Yeah, in full. It shouldn’t take long.”
“This is the last one, you know,” he said to her sternly. “We’re at maximum occupancy.”
“I got it, Charlie. It’s not like I have a brood, is it? Most of my children run off and play elsewhere. Besides, I like him. He’s cute.”
Charlie sat at the other end of the sofa and stared at Aaron. “How’d you get the intel?”
“I had money. And I knew who to ask.”
Aaron kept his eyes on Charlie, only losing his concentration when Ivy straddled Charlie and got up close to him, whispering something in his ear. Charlie smirked.
“Yeah, I thought so too,” he answered with a smile.
If this had been happening years ago, Aaron would’ve gotten the hint and moved on. He was being mocked, but he couldn’t appear to know this. He didn’t even ask if they were going to share the joke.
“This isn’t kid’s stuff, Aaron,” Charlie told him. “It’s messy. If you don’t like it, too bad. No refunds.”
“It’s what I want. I’ve thought it through.”
Ivy smiled again and pushed herself off of Charlie after she whispered one more thing to him. She then pulled Aaron off the couch and led him out of the apartment.
“You up for a fuck tonight, Aaron?” she asked, still holding his hand as she dragged him along.
“Hadn’t counted on it. Why?”
“I said I hoped we could play. I won’t be rough, I promise.”
He stopped and yanked her in close. “Can’t say the same.”
Ivy cocked one eyebrow at him and smirked, then unzipped her hooded jacket and pulled it off as she let go his hand. She dropped the jacket lazily on the floor.
They continued through another apartment to a small bedroom, where she locked him in and pressed him against the door. His skin felt scorched and there was barely any air in the room. Ivy gave him a slow, pulsing kiss as she brought his hands to her middle. Her perfume was somewhere between sweet and musky, and she tasted like cherry lipgloss and vodka. She wasn’t all skin and bones; she had enough flesh where it counted, her skin oddly flushed and warm when he’d expected it to be icy. But she was already blowing all his previous expectations out of the stratosphere. The sedative was starting to kick in and his eyes rolled back in his head just as her lips brushed his neck.
“It’s a just little sting, like a needle. After that, it’s a lot more pleasant.”
Her teeth only grazed his skin a moment as the tip of her tongue marked the spot she was going to attack. It felt like a love bite at first; a dirty little tease that suggested she was a poser and not what he thought she was. She wasn’t going to kill him, she was just messing with him, but now he was too wasted not to enjoy it.
Realising too late this was all to lure him into a false sense of security, Aaron went to catch her out on her duplicity just as she went at him with her fangs. The shock of the pain woke him up as she slammed him hard against the door.
Beyond the pain was a weird pleasure in her feeding. His free hand slipped into her silken hair and loosened her ponytail. He opened his eyes to see the room spin like he was drunk, and he felt the weakness go from his head straight down his spine to the small of his back as his insides turned to liquid. Her bloody mouth was in his vision. She tore into her wrist, stepping back as he dropped to his knees, and she brought her wound to his lips.
Aaron tasted metal and salt as he drank, and he forced himself to swallow for as long as her offering was there. She was laughing, seeming to get her own enjoyment from his feeding. Before he could glut himself, she yanked her wrist away, and he impulsively reached for it like a child who’d had its bottle confiscated.
She backed away, sitting on the bed and waiting for him to crawl to her. He lunged at her once he was close, aiming for her neck, but she pulled back, denying him again. With her next kiss, she bit into his tongue until the blood trickled down from the corner of his lips.
This wasn’t how he’d imagined it. It wasn’t romantic or terrifying, just blindingly exhilarating. She was biting into his shoulder and drawing more blood. Her nails scratched his skin as she tried to pull his shirt off. After that, the haze and the heat were welcome, and they all but wrestled with each other, his strength finally matching hers.
Aaron continued biting and drinking, his veins swelling as his body was waking up to its alteration. She ripped into his chest with her teeth, matching his aggression. She seemed impossible to weaken and she refused to be his prey. He wasn’t about to become hers.
He forgot his reasons for being there completely, his prime directive suddenly rendered moot. She had as much opportunity to ruin him, and she did at last, forcing him down and taking control as she went at his neck again.
On the other side of this, the scratches and puncture wounds felt more succinct. His chest locked up and he stayed still, waiting for the panic to end. She kept beside him and licked his wounds until he passed out.
