Real Vampires Don't Sparkle (30 page)

“How did you end up here?” he asked, trying for a change of subject.

“I was at university, bored out of my mind and I heard about Zeb. So I dropped out, booked a flight, and spent about three years tracking him down.” Bianca paused, plucking a strand of hair off her tongue. “My parents were furious. Still are, but at least we talk. Christmas and birthdays, mostly.”

Matheus nodded. Bianca’s parents embodied well-bred British-ness. That both their children eschewed such values baffled them. He liked Bianca’s parents. They hadn’t liked him, but they were scrupulously polite, following a set script for each interaction. Matheus appreciated their consistency. He never had to wonder what to say next.

“I found Zeb, obviously, and begged him to let me stay. That was another year. Alistair was the one who got me in, really. He snuck in examples of my work and left them where Zeb would find them.” Bianca shrugged, ringlets brushing the tops of her shoulders. “It was a bit tense at the beginning. Your kind and my kind aren’t exactly copacetic. But we worked things out, and I think he’s rather fond of me now.”

“Then you are still human?” Matheus asked, as if the heat of her skin hadn’t answered the question. Something nudged at him, though. The hunger failed to rise. Eleanor hugged him and Matheus thought of takeout, but Bianca didn’t inspire the same dinner-lust.

“Mat, I was never human.” Bianca smiled at him, softer than usual, tinged with something he couldn’t identify. “Remember how once a month I wouldn’t go out and you couldn’t come over?”

“I thought you had your…thing,” Matheus said. “Lady thing.”

“You can say period, Mat. The word’s not going to bite you.”

Matheus adopted the time-honored tradition of men everywhere and pretended he’d briefly gone deaf, but had now miraculously recovered. “So you were…?” he trailed off.

“Temporarily furry,” Bianca said. “We can change at will, but a…a reset is required once a month.”

“Your parents, too?” he asked. “Stephen?”

“My parents, and Stephen, too. My whole family.”

“Your grandmother?”

“My grandmother is part of my family.”

“But I met your grandmother. She thought I was the gardener.”

“I’m not sure how the two are related,” Bianca said slowly.

“I just—” Matheus pushed his fingertips against his eye sockets. Visions of bad Claymation and awkward CGI spooled through his mind. He shouldn’t be surprised. He was a walking, talking, blood-drinking corpse. Why shouldn’t there be people who sometimes sprouted some extra body hair and howled at the moon?

“I didn’t even know you existed,” he said.

“I wanted to tell you, but, you know, your father.” Bianca patted his knee. “I have to say, you did get the ultimate rebellion. He would be livid.”

“No kidding,” said Matheus. He lowered his hands, blinking at the rush of light. Then he snorted. Apparently, a rush of light had been downgraded to a single forty-watt bulb. The invention of electric lights must have been hell.

“Does Quin know?”

“About my father? No, and he’s not going to. The last thing I need is to be sent back in tiny pieces.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know. My father isn’t a sharing kind of man, but I still heard things.”
Sometimes from the basement,
Matheus added silently. “I don’t think he’s very popular.”

Bianca twisted and untwisted a curl around her index finger. “There are rumours,” she said, her eyes fixed in the middle distance. “People going missing, stuff like that. We’ve kept out of it so far, but he’s making people nervous.”

“Yeah,” said Matheus. “That sounds familiar.”

A heavy silence settled between them. Bianca seemed removed, lost in some meandering thoughts of her own. Her hair made a faint
scritch-scritch
as she continued to wind and unwind her much-abused ringlet. Matheus loosened the knot in his tie.

Overhead, a door slammed, followed by heavy footsteps increasing in speed. Matheus and Bianca exchanged glances, then stood up as one. Bianca opened the library door in time for Matheus to see Zeb hurrying down the hallway, Quin close behind him.

“No!” Zeb yelled.

Alistair emerged out of one of the other doors, looked at the scene in the hall, and disappeared again.

Coward
, Matheus thought.

“You’re being ridiculous,” said Quin. “The book is dangerous.”

“I will not hand over my life’s work to a—a—jackanapes!” Zeb wrenched open the first lock on the front door. His hands shook, fumbling over the metal tabs as he moved downward.

“You’re putting all of us at risk. You know what’s happening in Europe.”

“Damn Europe!” Zeb undid the last lock, yanking at the door.

Quin slapped his hand against the wood, putting his face an inch away from Zeb’s. “It’s started here, Zeb,” he said, so quietly Matheus could barely hear him. “Right now, they’re just fumbling around, but if they get the book—”

“Remove your hand,” said Zeb.

Matheus and Bianca stepped into the hall, watching the standoff.

“Someone is going to talk. If you won’t let me destroy the book, at least let me protect it,” said Quin.

“
I
protect it.” Zeb jabbed a finger into his own chest. “It’s
my
work.”

“For Christ’s sake, Zeb, I don’t want to steal it.”

“Leave. Get out. Go away.”

“Fine,” Quin snapped, jerking his hand away from the door. “Sunshine, we’re leaving.”

“Sunshine?” Bianca repeated, raising her eyebrows at Matheus.

Matheus scowled.

Bianca grabbed his hand before he could move. “Come see me?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Matheus.

“Matheus,” Quin said. He stood by the now-opened door, his muscles locked with fury.

“Take this with you,” Zeb said, thrusting the small box at Quin. “I don’t need your bribes.”

Quin shoved the box into his pocket. He stalked down the porch steps and across the cluttered lawn, knocking open the gate with the palm of his hand. Matheus hurried after him, reaching the gate just as it swung shut.

“What was that about?” Matheus asked once they were both in the Mercedes.

Quin switched on the radio, cycling through the stations until he found one blasting out aggressive horns and piano. Matheus dubbed it NPR emo. He drove aimlessly, taking turns on whims, wondering why these particular sounds connoted anger and not glee or confusion or hunger. Why did minor chords indicate melancholy? Music made no sense to Matheus. He understood lyrics, but how a series of harmonic resonances related to emotion, he just did not get.

After a few minutes, Quin turned off the music. He wiggled, digging the box out of his pocket.

“Here,” he said, tossing it into Matheus’ lap. “I don’t need this anymore.”

Matheus picked up the box, cracking it open with his thumb. A jade trinket rested on white satin, looking just as it had the night Matheus lifted it from the auction house vault. A flat, ovaloid disk, about two inches in length, with a circle the size of a dime near the top. Faint grooves indicated the piece had once been worn on a cord. A pictograph marked the center of the disk, the carving worn with age. Matheus closed the box with a snap and set it in the center console.

“All that and you didn’t even need it,” he said. “So glad I committed a felony for you.”

“I did extort you,” Quin said. “You didn’t volunteer.”

Matheus snorted.

“Yeah, that always works as an excuse. Cops are very understanding.” He merged onto Bennett Drive. A train rattled overhead, the last of the night. Unlike New York, public transit here stopped running after one in the morning. “Why did you need this? It’s not valuable.”

“Do you know what the symbol is?” Quin asked.

“No,” said Matheus. “Our East Asian specialist thought it was from one of the early Sino-Tibetan languages, but she wasn’t able to pin it down.”

The road dipped, leading into a multi-laned tunnel. Trapped by concrete walls, the sounds of engines echoed, rising into a monotonous whine. Yellow reflectors marked the walls and the lanes, with sickly overhead lights tinting everything green.

“It’s not human,” Quin said. “It means Protos. The first.”

“First what?”

“Of us, our kind. It’s a legend.” Quin sighed, shifting lower in his seat. He’d wrapped his hand around the bar over the door again; the other curled in his lap. “Humans grew arrogant, out of control, so the deity of your choice—it changes with the teller—touched Protos. He, or she if you prefer, rose from the dead and spread his children over the world, so the humans would know fear.”

Matheus processed this.

“Isn’t Protos Greek?” he asked. “It sounds Greek.”

“It is,” Quin said. “Ancient Greek.”

“So if Protos is from Ancient Greece, then—”

“He’s not. Or she’s not. The legend started much earlier. There are lots of names. Protos is just the most common.”

“You don’t sound like a believer.” Matheus signaled a lane change, taking the exit to the surface while the rest of the tunnel curved to the left. The exit deposited them next to the park, with theater district up ahead.

“Zeb is,” said Quin. “He’s obsessed with Protos and his or her descendants.”

“You don’t even know if Protos is male or female, but you know he has descendants?”

Quin shrugged.

“Patriarchies say he’s a man. Matriarchies say she’s a woman. Some people believe he was both or neither. There are a lot of stories, and they don’t always match up. But most agree that Protos turned nine followers. Zeb is trying to trace individual genealogies back to Protos through one of the original nine. His house is full of artifacts relating to him. Or her.”

“So you were trying to bribe him,” Matheus said, turning down a side street. The backsides of theaters, grey, dirty, and plain, lined the road, all the glitz and glamour reserved for the entrance. The public never saw the reality behind the pretty front.

“It was a gift.”

“You say to-
mah
-to, I say to-
may
-to.”

“Stop,” said Quin. He looked over his shoulder.

“What?” Matheus asked. “Why?”

“Just stop.”

Matheus pulled up behind a parked box truck and turned off the engine. Farther up the street, a couple stood beside the exit of a theater, huddled over a small book. The man kept pointing up the street, while the woman shook her head and tapped the book. Their sensible sneakers and emblazoned sweatshirts branded them as tourists. As Matheus watched, the man threw up his hands, and began stomping down the road. The woman shoved the book into her purse and hurried after him, one arm wrapped around her stomach. They passed the Mercedes, still arguing. Quin twisted around to watch them.

“Wait here,” he said.

“What are you going to do?” Matheus asked as Quin popped open his door. “Quin?”

Matheus climbed out the Mercedes, but stayed between the open door and the body of the car. Quin moved toward the couple, sticking to the shadows, fluid, silent movements that impressed Matheus despite himself. Ten feet separated Quin and the couple, too caught in their bickering to notice the danger behind them. Without thinking, Matheus began to call out to them, only to have the words dry up as three indistinct figures darted out of a narrow alley between theaters, dragging the couple into the darkness.

Quin plunged after them. High-pitched, animalistic squeals escaped into the street; a woman’s shriek, nothing like the cinematic peal of a horror movie heroine, but darker, wilder, messy with half-formed words.

Matheus pressed his fingers against the slick paint of the Mercedes, the edge of the door biting into his palm. Another scream, deeper this time, feral. Matheus took a step away from the car, looked around, then looked back at the street. Where was everybody? Someone must have heard the screaming, a night-owl working late in one of the theaters, cab drivers waiting for the bars to empty, random, roaming insomniacs,
someone
.

The woman stumbled out of the alley, half-dragging, half-carrying the man with her. His arm swung at his side, the elbow bent in the wrong direction. Blood ran down the side of his face, and he walked as though drunk. He pushed away the woman and fell onto his knees, vomiting in the street. She tugged him upright, holding onto the man with one arm as she searched his pockets. Matheus caught the beginnings of a 9-1-1 call before ducking into the car. He watched the woman pull the man toward the bright lights of the main street, the phone held to her ear with blood-covered fingers.