Page 24 of The Baritone's Rival

Oscar took in a breath and moved a few inches away from Trent. Trent didn’t blame him. With the gravity of the situation, it had been easy to forget the big day hanging over their heads.

“This is stupid,” Trent said. “Only three vampires saw me, and two of them are dead. They have no reason to come after me. I’m going home to my apartment.”

Anthony looked back and forth between Freddie and Trent. He scratched absentmindedly at his forearm.

“I don’t like it. We might have killed Charles Azarian, but who knows the damage his escaped sycophants could do. And his sire Gabriela is still out there somewhere. It would be safer?—”

“It’s his choice,” Oscar said. He flashed Trent a tentative smile. “Trent’s decision is final.”

There was something about that smile. It called to Trent in an unsettling way. Oscar should have more cause to smile, bigger smiles, wider smiles. Oscar should lean back and shake out his long brown hair as he laughed. He could picture it. He imagined being the reason for it, and the image stirred up an odd sense of longing.

What was wrong with him? He needed to get home to his apartment and study his music.

His teacher sat there in unhappy silence. Freddie nodded. “The car will take you home.”

The ride was blissfully quiet.It was unsettling to be driven by a stranger that he couldn’t see, his face obscured by the dark glass of the partition, but it was also a long way home from the Upper West Side. He was grateful to not have to ride three separate trains to get there.

When he arrived in Crown Heights, he stepped out onto the tree-lined sidewalk in front of his old brick apartment building. It was a behemoth, taking up two street numbers. For the most part, the neighborhood was quiet.

He shouldn’t complain. It could be a lot worse. Housing in New York was notoriously expensive. He was able to live alone, due to the money his mother had left him when she?—

He really needed to stop letting his mind drift in that direction. Images of her had been popping up recently, and worse, memories of his stepfather and his old life. Seeing so many vampires in one day…

He slipped his key into the lock. The door was a huge wooden monstrosity sporting what must be hundreds of coats of white enamel. He was sure that there were even a couple layers of lead paint from the ‘50s in there somewhere.

He stepped inside, and the ancient parquet floor of the entryway creaked under his footfalls. The apartment had been listed as a one-bedroom, but that was charitable. There was barely a quarter of a wall between the tiny kitchen and the tiny bedroom, and the “living room” consisted of a four-foot square area to the left of the stove.

He didn’t mind. It was his, his sanctuary from the world outside. After the tumult of his teenage years, and the anxious searching of his undergrad, he needed an oasis. A place to shut out all the demands, all the ambitions, all the competitiveness, and just be.

He also didn’t want anyone to see him when things got bad. Like now.

Trent double-checked the door. He felt the old beasts of desperation and loss stir inside him. And terror, that was a big one.

As he always did when haunted by his memories, he set his single, beat-up upholstered chair in the center of the tiny living room, facing the only two windows. He surrounded himself with what weapons he had.

Several wooden stakes, lighter fluid, a blowtorch, and a machete. A strange collection of items to the uninformed, maybe.

Trent breathed in and out slowly, calming his quickening heart rate. The first tendrils of panic reached out from the center of his chest. Not an assault just yet, but an incursion.

Trent knew it was ridiculous. He was safe. He had killed a vampire earlier in the day and fought off two others. But logic didn’t help his brain. Here, alone in his apartment, with the night creeping in and the memories of his childhood scratching at the door of his mind, the terror was a living thing, a writhing, tortured beast.

The old hurt was always there, waiting to overwhelm him. At moments like this, he found it hard to hold on to himself, onto the successful up-and-coming opera singer in his mid-twenties. He was once again a teenager, watching his father die of a heart attack. Seeing his mother fall in love, so soon, with a man who turned out to be a monster. One of the undead.

Being thrust into a world of vampires that would eventually take the person he loved the most from him. Could anyone blame him for becoming an expert at killing them?

His breath quickened, and he surveyed the room, attempting to ground himself. The thin, ratty carpet under his feet. The faint smell of fish wafting through the vents from the apartment down the hall. The moonlight shining in through the windows, casting shadows on the floor. A flicker of movement in the dense leaves of the oak tree outside.

Wait.

Was it just a trick of his mind, or was it something more? Something, or someone, dangerous?

Taking a stake in one hand and the machete in the other, he gripped his weapons and waited for a siege. He hoped it was nothing, a bird or an errant eddy of air molding the leaves into unexpected shapes.

His anxiety, the specter of his past, screamed that this was a potential threat. But as the minutes went by, there was no other sign of a watcher. His shoulders relaxed, and terror, his old monstrous friend, died down, leaving only boredom.

He was too wound up to sleep. If he turned on the light to study, he wouldn’t be able to see out into the thick night. Instead, he let his mind wander.

For some reason, it kept coming back to one thing. Oscar.

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