Page 18 of The HalloQueen

I turned and gently set her back down on the couch and tucked her into her soft blanket. I wrapped it under her feet and then wondered if she was the kind of mortal that needed to have their feet covered to sleep or if she was the kind who felt suffocated if her feet weren't in the open air. I decided I’d rather her be covered and she could uncover herself later if she wanted or got hot.

Tim immediately jumped on her and curled up in the little hole that formed between her bent knees and the back of the couch and began purring as if the evening had turned out exactly how he wanted it to.

“Yeah, well, that makes one of us, Tim.” I watched her for a few moments more and when she wiggled into the couch further and sighed, I knew I could leave. “You’re on guard duty,” I said to the cat, “Don’t let me down.”

I left out the front door, unhappy that I couldn't lock the deadbolt from the outside, and settled for pressing the lock on the doorknob before closing it. I had to hope that would be enough for one night. I could've stayed and stood guard, but honestly, after overindulging in her energy, I was feeling a little drunk myself and I wasn’t sure that I would've been any help if, gods forbid, something did happen to her. Knowing instinctually that I should find a bag of blood and my bed to call it a day, I began to run back towards the shopping district.

It only took a few minutes to run the several miles thanks to all the energy coursing through my system and I was hardly fatigued when I reached the shop. I unlocked the door and stepped in, locking it behind me. Being a vampire, you’d think not a lot would creep me out, but something was unsettling about being the only one in the mall with the light of the moon casting strange shadows on the Halloween decor. Logically, I knew I’d be able to smell if anything or anyone was here, and if they were, they’d be dead before they even realized I was, but a shadowy grim reaper statue is enough to give anyone the creeps.

The shop was inside of an abandoned department store so there were huge expanses of space that weren’t being used. The Halloween section was made of faux walls of stretched fabric and PVC pipe, and behind the curtain by the cash register was what most people considered to be the stock room. Which, I guessed it was, but it also led to where I slept. I’d gotten back from Paris looking for Monique and Yusuf to find someone else living in the row house that we’d owned for years and years. I hadn’t quite been willing to accept that I needed a new place to live on my own, and with them having squandered or stolen most of our money I had the proud distinction of being a homeless vampire. Yes, I could cash out some of my private assets and settle somewhere, but settling alone sounded…horrible. I couldn’t commit to a place unless there was a reason to, so, there I was, sleeping in the empty half-lit skeleton of a home textile area on an air mattress, with a mini fridge full of blood.

It was enough for me. I’d hung up my clothes on the abandoned racks and the store had its own bathroom. I’d end my nights by going to the 24-hour gym located in another old department store to shower and burn off some energy, and then I’d watch cooking shows on my tablet until I passed out. It was September so I could run the Halloween store halfway through November, and then if I wanted to stay I could turn it into a Christmas shop - toys and ornaments or some shit, or I could move on. The option of being able to do either appealed to me, but it meant that I needed a more concrete plan or destination come Mid-January.

The plan had been to go back to France to look for Monique and Yus again, but when I’d spoken with the Coalition in Paris a few weeks before, they’d said they were still checking in and paying their dues, so they had no reason to divulge where they were. The only way the Coalition would violate the privacy of a member was if that vampire was becoming a danger to the mortals or not being subtle enough to keep us hidden. I’d hesitated staying in the Coalition when we’d left Paris and came to Boston, but now I was thankful that Yusuf had insisted we stay above board; at least I knew they were alive. Thanks to Yusuf keeping us up to date on our dues and that I’d proven that Monique and Yusuf took off and left me in the lurch, I was able to collect the stipend that everyone paid into.

It was an idea they’d stolen from the American idea of Social Security or Unemployment Insurance, we all paid dues to the Coalition to keep us safe and informed, and in turn, they managed assets and accounts that would help house injured vamps, the ancients trying to pass into the Undead, and the abandoned. Which was now me. Because that wasn’t a blow to my ego.

Sometimes I wondered if being Undead would be easier than the bureaucracy of being Other. As a vampire, I wasn’t mortal and therefore couldn’t live a “normal” life, but because I wasn’t Undead, I had to follow all the rules laid out by mortal society and ours. It could be stifling at times.

So, I was homeless, unsure of what the future held, and at almost 500 years old I was watching cooking competitions alone while drinking blood from an insulated water bottle. Living. The. Life. But now there was Annabel.IsAnnabel. Could I turn this misery into something that would be worth staying around for? The Coalition frowned upon dating mortals, but if I claimed her, if I never hurt her, they wouldn’t have a reason to separate us, right?

The way she smelled. The way she felt. The way her energy poured out of her as if it was from a bottomless cup…merde. That was how I took so much she fell asleep - I got so lost in her that I hadn’t considered where she’d bottom out. I cringed just thinking about how confused she was going to be when she woke up. I had left her dressed and on the couch in hopes she’d realized we hadn’t slept together and that she was safe, but mortal women weren’t exactly known for their level-headedness.

Fuck, the way she had ground into my cock and the softness of the skin on her neck. The way my fingers could dig into her hips…the way she molded against my chest. I was powerless against her. I lay on the air mattress and imagined her in enough detail that the scent of ginger and citrus began to waft over me and my body started to quake. I needed to fly.

Sometimes I could burn through the energy while in my body by fucking or running, but I’d taken too much from her and the other mortals at the bar and the magic was vibrating within me trying to escape. I removed my clothes and lay them on the bed before stretching tall above my head. With a crack and a shudder, I took flight, my raven’s wings booming with each flap in the cavernous space. When my magic gets to be too much, the only way I can expel it is to use it. I found that using my raven could burn through substantially more energy than anything else.

While the Undead were stuck as annoying little bats, only a few inches across - hardly big enough to eat a bug, vampires could turn into any kind of winged creature. While I was a raven, Monique had been a barn owl and Yusuf was a hawk. Some vampires only hunted for blood in their animal form, but you typically had to kill multiple creatures to slake your thirst, whereas you only needed a little from a mortal and it wouldn’t kill them, but neither sat well with me. I found that a nice delivery from the blood bank where a mortal was given a cookie and sent on their way sat better on my already questionable conscious.

As I soared around the empty space I felt my head begin to clear. If there was one thing I’d learned in my many, many years, it was that magic and immortality were about balance. Because we leave an imbalance in the world by not passing on, our existence is delicate. We must take energy, but not so much that it is wasted. We must take blood, but not so much that we need to take life. We must use magic, but not so much that it damages ourselves or the world around us. When a vampire begins to throw off the balance, the process of becoming Undead begins. It can be that they aren’t feeding at all, or that they’re feeding too much. Same with magic, or energy, or a number of other things. It was all about balance. The start of the transformation could be stopped with the right help, but typically no one realized they were falling until it was too late. To be a vampire was a far greater gift than to be Undead.

We got to live fairly normal lives as long as we helped maintain said balance, whereas the Undead were sick. They could never see the sun. They could never feel. They could never love. They were dark, sad creatures who were ill with bloodlust and fear. An Ancient once told me that an Undead drinks so much blood because some part of them thinks that if they absorb enough humanity they can come back as one of us, but to be Undead is irreversible. True Ancients are rare, as eventually, the will to survive falters, and vampires either transition or ask to die. I’d assisted one Ancient in his passing, and I hoped to never have to do it again. To see someone who doesn’t need air cease to exist is a heady thing. It isn’t like what you see in movies where their chest stops moving and their eyes glaze over and the mortal passes to the other side. No, the Ancient just…ceases to exist. As Annabel would say, they poof.

I pushed myself harder, soaring, flapping, weaving through pillars and up and down the unused escalators while lost in thought. Lost in the existential crisis of my own half-life. Just the idea of becoming Undead was enough to terrify me, despite sometimes being depressed enough to think it would be easier. To lose what little I had left of myself… I’d already lost so much.

After my energy settled, I flew back to my bed and shook myself back into my body, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. I would need to be careful with my beautiful Annabel. I couldn’t lose what little I had left because of overindulging in her intoxicating energy. It was with the troubling debate swimming through my mind of what I could do with her energy, versus what it could do to me, that I collapsed into the mattress and fell asleep.

9

ANNABEL

Iwoke up with a start. The sun was shining on my face through the windows whose curtains had never been closed. Stretching, I saw that Tim had made quite the nest beside me and I scratched his ear. “What the hell happened last night, Tim?”

I sat up and immediately laid down again. Oh, that’s what happened. My head was pounding like a full colonial fife and drum corp was trapped inside of it. I covered my eyes with the heels of my palms and waited for the world to stop spinning. Then I cracked one eye open and reached into the pocket of my skirt hoping that my phone was still there, but I discovered that it had fallen on the floor beside me. The battery was dead. Awesome. I didn’t even know what fucking time it was. I slowly sat up again and saw that I was, indeed, still fully dressed, complete with stockings. The projection screen was down and I could see my boots by the front stairs. Did I just come home wasted and fall asleep watching TV?

The last thing I remembered was that I’d left the bar and gotten into a ride share with…Thomas - the guy from the Halloween store. I stood and hobbled toward my front door and saw that it wasn't locked so I slammed the deadbolt over with a flinch. My space buns were still half on my head and the rubber bands were killing me. Did he just bring me home and then see I was wasted and escorted me inside before he left?

I went to the kitchen to look for toast and saw all the evidence I needed. There were two half-drunk glasses of wine on the counter. He had been in my house. But I was dressed. But…god I’m such an idiot! Anything could have happened to me! I never got drunk enough to blackout, it’d never happened once in my entire life, not even in college. Someone must have slipped me something. Someone must have - Oh. No.

I ran to the half bath located under my stairs and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I gasped for breath, but heave after heave tortured me. I didn’t typically drink enough to even end up sick. Especially on nights like last night where Shannon and I were technically “working”.

Once I thought I could stand without ruining the carpets, I flushed the toilet and grabbed my phone, beginning the arduous journey of slowly heading upstairs to plug it in. I walked into my bedroom and was relieved to see that nothing was out of place there. My bed was still made, complete with my squishy ghost stuffy proudly in the center. It looked exactly the same as it did when Shannon and I got ready last night. I removed my soiled clothes and dropped them in the hamper, noting that there wasn’t so much as a rip in any of them, and threw my tights into the lingerie bag before I plugged my phone in and headed to the bathroom.

“Jesus Christ,” I said to no one when I saw my reflection in the mirror. My hair was in such a state that I thought I’d have to cut the bands off, and my previously smokey eyeshadow looked like I had two sparkly-purple black eyes. I reached into a drawer and grabbed an envelope opener, a trick I’d learned from my moms, and wove it under the rubber band, pulling it away from my head to slice it. I had to unwind the rest of it by hand and I groaned when the bun finally fell flat. I repeated the process on the other side and then massaged my scalp with my fingers.

“Oh holy shit, that’s good.” The feeling of loosening the tension against my scalp was almost orgasmic, and I finger combed through it and climbed into the clawfoot tub so I could take a shower.

When I rented this house I was so excited to have a real clawfoot tub. Like, hello cottage core life, but when I quickly realized it was also the only shower kit in the house I discovered that clawfoot tubs are actually the worst. I had to have two curtain liners inside the tub to wrap around the circumference and the plastic constantly stuck to my skin. A thin woman may not have a problem with it, but I take up the entirety of the space available and the feeling of the soap-covered curtain liners touching me freaks me out. I also hadn’t managed to take the time to have a bath in the damn thing yet. Who has the time to sit in their own body-filth soup for an hour?

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