The crowds of Santa Carla’s boardwalk parted around the monster among them, like fish darting away from a shark.
It hadn’t been like this before. People had avoided him, sure, but out of contempt for the scruffy runaway he’d once been—like even sharing the same air ran the risk of catching whatever it was that had pushed him out of society’s warm circle of firelight, out into the dark.
Then Max had come to him, fed him the blood, and now everyone who saw him knew, instinctively, to be afraid.
David never thought it would be so lonely.
He arrived at the video store before he’d actively made the decision to go. The hollow ache in his chest eased as he spotted Max behind the counter: his maker, his teacher, the one person in his life who had ever given a shit about him.
But as he drifted closer, Max looked up and barked, “I told you not to come in here,” a blustering order from the small man he pretended to be.
David flinched back, and Max gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod—apologetic, understanding, and a warning not to linger.
Because there couldn’t be any kind of connection between them, not in public. It would raise too many questions, ruin the careful cover that Max had constructed.
He kept telling David he would have brothers soon. But they had to wait for the right time, the right candidates—more runaways that nobody would miss.
David hated waiting.
He turned and left the video store with a smirk, only letting his face fall once he was back out on the boardwalk. And then he stopped dead in his tracks.
There was a stranger among the strangers, a pale figure in the tanned, bustling crowd. It was a young man, maybe about David’s own age; pretty, but in a cold and distant way, like a statue. He was dressed like a prep school student, like a respectable young man, but he moved stiffly—holding himself apart from the people around him.
He looked up and met David’s eyes. In that moment, each of them recognized exactly what the other was.
They weren’t quite the same—two different breeds of the same monster. Max had told him as much: that there were different clans, different bloodlines. And he’d warned David to stay away from them, because the only real threat to a vampire was another vampire.
The stranger turned away, sidling through the crowd toward some unknown destination, and David followed.
The stranger had to know David was there, but he never once looked back as he made his way up to Hudson’s Bluff. He seemed to be looking for something, and eventually he found it: a passage that led to a massive, buried ruin. The remnants of what, a hundred years ago, had once been a luxury hotel.
“Nice place,” David remarked, too loud in the hushed space.
For the first time, the stranger spoke: “It used to be.” There was a mournful air about him, a sense of disappointment. “It must have been destroyed in the earthquake.”
“Earthquake?”
The stranger turned to look at him then. “1906,” he said, like he was pointing out the obvious. “The earthquake that flattened San Francisco.”
“Right.” David vaguely remembered hearing something about it in school, back when he actually went to school. Despite how young the stranger looked, he seemed … ancient. And sad. “Did you come here, before?”
The stranger shook his head. “My father did.” He studied the ruined walls, like he was searching for something. “There’s supposed to be a photo …”
He made his way through to a half-collapsed room that had once been the hotel bar and knelt to dig through the rubble. David wandered over and watched, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat.
With a quiet noise of satisfaction, the stranger unearthed a dusty picture frame. The glass was broken, but the photo inside was largely intact: a yellowing, black-and-white group shot from some fancy dinner way back in the day. One of the men in the photo bore a striking resemblance to the stranger.
The stranger touched a fingertip to the man’s face with a desolate expression David had come to know well.
“I’m David. What’s your name?”
The stranger looked up at him and blinked, as if he’d forgotten for a moment that David was there. Then, he said, “Edward.”
David took a step closer. “Edward.”
Edward stood, back up to his full height—maybe two or three inches taller than David. They were standing a little too close, now.
A sudden, mad impulse compelled David to reach up and touch Edward’s face. His cheek was cold beneath David’s fingertips, colder than any living thing should be—but he wasn’t living, was he? Not really.
Edward made a noise low in his throat, eyes fluttering shut.
David’s fingers trailed down the side of Edward’s neck; his skin was soft, but there was an odd resistance to it. Like living marble. There was no pulse at his throat, and yet something thrummed beneath David’s fingertips. Not blood—something else.
Closing the distance between them, David leaned in to brush his lips lightly over Edward’s neck.
Between one second and the next, Edward’s hand was pressed tight to the back of David’s skull, fingers clutching at his hair. He made no attempt to pull David away, no attempt to stop him as he drew closer. His throat convulsed, and whatever it was that moved beneath his skin throbbed against David’s lips.
He opened his mouth; his fangs extended, and he sank them into Edward’s throat.
Edward moaned—a high, shocked noise—as David’s fangs pierced his flesh and sank deep. It was entirely possible that nothing had ever penetrated that marble skin of his before this moment; it had to hurt, but maybe the pain was so bright and unfamiliar it was almost like pleasure.
Something that wasn’t quite blood flooded into David’s mouth, something that burned and warmed at the same time, like whiskey. David groaned as he drank it down and wrapped his arms around Edward, drawing him in tight and holding him still.
There was a clattering noise as the picture frame fell from Edward’s grip and tumbled to the floor. He grabbed at David with both hands, keeping him close, even as his knees buckled and went out from under him. David eased them both to the dusty floor and knelt with Edward in his arms, fangs still buried in his throat, swallowing mouthful after eager mouthful of that strange, burning ichor.
But soon the pain overwhelmed the pleasure, and David had to wrench himself free of Edward’s neck. He threw his head back, gasping around the incredible burning in his mouth, his throat, the pit of his stomach.
Edward whined—desperate, frustrated—and nuzzled against David’s bared jugular, teeth scraping gently at his skin. They weren’t pointed, not like David’s, but they felt as sharp as razor blades.
“Do it,” David gasped, “come on, do it—”
He wanted the sweet agony of Edward’s teeth in his throat, wanted to feel his blood gush hot into Edward’s mouth. Wanted Edward to hold him still and take what he wanted from him.
Edward’s teeth set firmly against David’s skin, jaw tensing, ready to bite down—
—and his hands tightened convulsively around David’s shoulders, inexorable strength shoving him away.
David went sprawling across the floor, shocked and disoriented.
Edward stared at him from where he knelt, gasping, on the floor with one hand clasped to the wound in his own neck. There was an aching, confused longing in his eyes.
That burning ichor still dripped from David’s lips, smeared down his chin. He wiped some of it away with his thumb—then, with perverse delight, met Edward’s eyes and sucked it clean.
A quiet moan escaped Edward’s throat, but his expression shuttered into cold, firm rejection. He fumbled for the fallen picture frame and, holding it close, staggered away and out of the ruined hotel.
David watched him go and, for the first time, fully understood what he saw: a creature of denial, of self-imposed suffering. A man with all the pleasures of the world at his fingertips, too much of a coward to seize any of them.
What was the point of being immortal, if you were going to live like that?
A crazed laugh worked its way up David’s throat, echoing through the ruins of luxury around him. Edward could endure and abstain and martyr himself all he wanted. David was going to have fun.
And he was going to live forever.
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