Real Vampires Don't Sparkle (14 page)

“Turn human again.”

Quin raised himself up, resting his weight on his elbows.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice clear and tight in the darkness, shining blue as the edge of a freshly honed blade.

Matheus pressed hard against the wall, crushing a few mushrooms.

“There is no going back. You’re never going to be human again.”

“But—”

“Matheus, stop it. You’re going to torture yourself if you keep thinking that.” Quin paused before adding, “I’ve seen it before.”

The lack of regret in Quin’s tone halted any more questions. The cold, simple sentence served as a brick wall to further conversation.

Matheus rested his chin on top of his knees, quiet until Quin lay back down. If Matheus concentrated, he heard water dripping in the walls. Two drips; one with a four-beat rest, and the other with seven. Matheus counted to twenty-eight, marking the time when the drops coincided.
Eins, zwei, drei, vier
, he thought before forcing himself to continue with
five, six, seven, eight
. Numbers clung in the grooves of Matheus’ mind, long after he’d overcome everything else. Even after ten years, he still began with
eins, zwei, drei
.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I didn’t have much of a life anyway.”

“I know. I watched you, remember?” Quin shifted, his back sliding over the tops of Matheus’ feet.

Matheus poked his big toe into the hard spinal muscle, then unsuccessfully dodged the flick Quin aimed at his knee in retaliation.

“Quin, why are we here?” Matheus asked. “Tell me there is a point to all this.”

“There’s a point.”

“And?”

Quin flicked him again.

“They threw grenades at us. Grenades.”

“You’re going to have a very unsatisfying life if you obsess over reasons for everything,” said Quin.

“I watched you kill five people.”

“And, most likely, you’ll see me kill a lot more.”

Matheus shook his head.

“People die, Sunshine. It’s what they do. Some people die sooner than others, but everybody goes in the end. I’m not going to worry about a handful trying to kill me anyway. I kill to eat, to survive, and I don’t see the point in feeling guilty about that.”

“You enjoy it,” said Matheus.

“Sometimes,” said Quin. “Depends on who I’m killing.”

Matheus plucked another mushroom, squishing the spongy stem between his thumb and forefinger.

“What about me?” he asked.

“What about you what?”

“Did you enjoy killing me?”

“Honestly?” Quin paused. “No. Killing someone who’s fainted feels a little like cheating. Not much sport in it at all.”

Matheus threw a mushroom at his head. He smirked as Quin’s return shot splattered on the wall a good six inches from his head.

“Why kill me at all then?” Matheus asked. “The real reason, this time.”

“I can’t tell you now,” Quin said, clearly annoyed as a second mushroom bounced off his forehead. “It’s too…maybe one day.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Matheus picked another mushroom. The sun didn’t rise for another two hours. He needed some way to occupy himself.

“The next mushroom you throw is going somewhere extremely unpleasant,” Quin threatened.

“New Jersey?” Matheus asked.

Matheus opened his eyes at sunset, his face mashed against the rough stone floor and a heavy weight on his back, impacting his ribs into a solid mass. He pushed himself onto his elbows, rolling his neck back and forth. The symptoms of life were hard habits to break. He looked over his shoulder at Quin, then elbowed him in the chest.

“Hey,” Matheus said.

Quin didn’t move. Slackness loosened his features.

Matheus pressed a fingertip to Quin’s cheek. The flesh molded into an oval depression before slowly resuming a normal shape. He was dead, Matheus realized.

Well, of course he’s dead
, Matheus thought, making a face. They were both dead, when it came down to nuts and bolts. Quin just had less mobility at the moment. Matheus tried to inch away as much as the small confines of the cave allowed. He might be a hypocrite, but knowing that didn’t stop the gut-sinking realization that a dead thing lay next to him.

A dead thing that blinked at him. Matheus relaxed his arms, dropping back to the cold floor. He turned over to face Quin.

“Urgh,” Quin groaned.

“The sun’s gone down,” Matheus said, pointing out the obvious in the face of Quin’s inability to rise and shine.

“Ger dobit.” Quin groped along the floor, searching for something before recognizing his situation and giving up.

“You’re so articulate. You must get all the pretty boys.”

Quin gave Matheus a dark look. Closing his eyes, he folded his arms over his chest. Matheus wondered if he intentionally chose the creepiest position possible, or if that came naturally.

“Are you going to get up?” he asked. “I know the stone floor is comfy, but don’t we have things to do?”

“
Si vos errant meus filius, vendideram in meretricis antes vestri decimus natalis,
” Quin said without opening his eyes.

“Really? You can’t manage a ‘good morning,’ but you reel that off?”

With a long, sustained sigh, Quin raised himself into a sitting position. He looked around the cave, at Matheus, then down at his feet. He blinked a few times, then slid, like a trickle of molasses, down the wall to pool on the cave floor.

“
Bonus oriens
,” he said, his eyes drifting closed. “
Vos somnus puteus
?”

“
Ego dormivi quasi mortui.”
said Matheus. He raised his eyebrows at Quin’s astonished stare. “Twelve years of Catholic school.”

“Your accent is terrible and the grammar is off,” said Quin.

“You try learning with an armed nun hovering over you.”

“An armed nun?”

“Those whippy metal rulers,” Matheus said. “They could take a finger off.”

“Poor baby,” said Quin with a faint grin.

Matheus glowered at him. “Latin’s a dead language, anyway,” he said.

“Bite your tongue.” Quin sounded like a shocked grandmother.

“That’s English you’re speaking,” Matheus said. “The language that sidles up to other languages in dark alleys, mugs them, then rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary. It’s the bitch-whore of languages and it owns the world. Suck on that, Rome boy.”

Quin groaned, turning to bury his head onto Matheus’ shoulder.

Matheus’ nerves felt as though someone had dipped them into a pail of dry ice. Usually, Quin limited his touches to the kind practiced by pre-adolescent siblings or extreme violence designed to make a point. This was…different.

“You would be a morning person,” mumbled Quin.

“It’s night,” Matheus said through numb lips.

“Same annoying behavior.” Quin slid his palm upward, resting it in the center of Matheus’ chest. Dirt crusted Quin’s nails, packed underneath the tips. They were slightly too long for current fashion, trimmed with square, coarse cuts. Matheus bet Quin had never chewed his nails in his life.

“Sorry.” Matheus fought the urge to push Quin’s hand away, not because the contact bothered him, but because it didn’t. Matheus didn’t think of himself as homophobic, but he drew the line at cuddling with other men. The strange connection he shared with Quin had to be the reason he wanted to curl closer.

His gaze moved up Quin’s arm, over his shoulder and up the sweep of his neck. He examined Quin’s ears, flat and neat against the fine curvature of his skull. Matheus pinched his forearm, his nails leaving tiny half-moons in his skin.
Yes
, he thought,
definitely the connection, nothing else.

“I’m going to get some air,” Matheus said.

Quin made a noise in the back of his throat and curled up until his chin touched his knees.

Matheus shook his head.

“Pathetic,” he said.

“Fuck you,” said Quin.

“You wish.”

Quin responded with a physical gesture Matheus didn’t recognize, but assumed was obscene. He replied with a more modern version of his own, but Quin didn’t notice, busy trying to pull the stone over his head á la blanket.

Matheus wiggled out of the crack into the claustrophobic passage that twisted and bent its way to the main cavern. He emerged with a fresh collection of scratches, the soles of his feet raw. The main room formed a shallow half-egg shape, hidden underneath an overhanging ledge. A natural path zigzagged down to the riverbank. Leaves, wet from an earlier rainstorm, littered the ground, a slick coating for Matheus as he skidded haphazardly down.

He paused at the bottom, sticking his feet in the river and letting the cool water wash away the stinging heat. The clouds had cleared away, leaving behind a dizzying amount of stars. Matheus hadn’t seen that many since he was a boy, twenty years at least. A long stretch of flickering points streaked across the center of the sky, the edge of the Milky Way a cross-section of time and light. The night sky never looked like this in the city. Maybe nature had its upside. He could buy a cabin and—

Something slimy brushed against Matheus’ ankle, and he jumped, landing hard on his bottom. He waded out of the river, doomed to spend the night with wet pants. Who the hell was he kidding? If he wanted to look at stars, Kenderton had a planetarium. Matheus nudged at a pebble with his toe. He wondered how much longer Quin planned to lounge about. The moon had begun to rise. In a couple of hours, Matheus wouldn’t be able to see the Milky Way at all. He poked at another pebble, rolling it next to the first and beginning a mini pebble pyramid. Behind him came the sound of soggy footsteps. Matheus turned.

“Oh, so you finally decided—” Matheus cut off as a pair of hunters leapt toward him, grabbing at his arms. He screamed, and jerked one arm free in a quick, snapping motion.

The hunter swore as he clutched at Matheus’ shirt. He hooked one leg around Matheus’ ankle. All three went down in a jumble, water and sand splashing up around them.

“Get his wrists!” someone shouted as Matheus struggled to stand. One of the hunters drove his knee into the base of Matheus’ spine. He leaned forward, all his weight pressing Matheus into the silt, while the other hunter twisted Matheus’ wrists until the bones shrieked.

“Where’s the gag?” he yelled.

Matheus arched his neck to the brink of breaking. He spat out a mouthful of sand and mud, and drew in a huge breath.

“Quin!” he screamed. “Quin! Get your ass—”

A hunter jammed a gag into his mouth, homemade, wooden with leather straps, marred with teeth marks. Matheus felt sick. Plastic zip-ties bound his wrists together. The other hunter lifted his knee, and hauled Matheus upright. Two men stood on either side of him, one holding a broadsword a half-inch away from Matheus’ Adam’s apple. Four more ranged in front of them, hands ready on their crossbows.

“Where’s the other one?” asked the hunter on the left.

“He’ll be around. He won’t go too far from this one.” The speaker walked forward, letting his crossbow swing loose at his side. Late forties, gray hair cut high and tight. A necklace of fangs rattled around his neck, the kindergarten art project of a future serial killer. Some of the fangs still had a rust-colored crust around the root.

“How do you know?” asked the man with the broadsword. He reeked of cigarettes. Matheus recognized him as the smoker from the cabin.

“I told you, if you want to play the game, you have to pay attention. This one,” the man nodded at Matheus, “is fresh-turned. No way his master is going to let him wander away. Not an old one like Quin. The young ones, they don’t understand the old traditions.”

He shot a look at the hunter to his right.

Matheus growled through his gag. He threw himself backward. The hunter holding him let him fall, then delivered a trio of quick kicks to his ribs. Choking, Matheus rolled onto his stomach, saliva dripping out around the gag. Someone reached down, and grabbed his bound wrists, forcing him to stand. The sword kissed the skin of his throat. Matheus froze, his eyes going wide at the older hunter. The man gave him a dismissive look, then turned away, pointing up the steep hill.

“Set up camp over there, on high ground,” he said. “Send a party into the cave. At least three men.”

Half the hunting party split off, including the sword bearer, and headed for the narrow path. Matheus screamed through the gag. He hurled his weight to the left, knocking the hunter into the river, and tangling his feet around one another. Stumbling backward, he tried to turn, tripped up by his own unruly limbs.

“Stand back,” said the older hunter as Matheus found his equilibrium. The man about to grab Matheus stepped back with a smirk.

Matheus barely had time to process this before something struck him in the chest.

His body went rigid as every nerve overloaded, overwhelming pain blocking out the entire world. Matheus’ reality compressed to the wild, jittering tension of his muscles. He thought he shrieked for the hunter to stop, but he didn’t possess enough control to force out the sounds.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he slurred around the wooden gag. His cheek pressed into the wet dirt, his legs splayed out akimbo. He didn’t remember falling. A tired ache vibrated deep in his bones; the shock had torn out any muscle fiber he’d possessed. Twisting his eyes up to the hunter took more effort than Matheus had ever exerted in his life.