Alyse left for home shortly after they reached an accord, assured Johnathan wouldn’t decapitate or skewer Vic without good reason. She might refer to herself as a “near spinster,” but her absence from the pastor’s household for any length of time was too apparent. Johnathan admittedly regretted her departure. She made him uncomfortable, but she was human.
And Vic was not.
The knowledge sat between them, unseemly, unsightly, and now, painfully obvious. Johnathan mentally berated himself for missing the blatant little signs, though he suspected he hadn’t noticed them before because they weren’t there. How was Vic in such control of his hunger? How did he conceal that preternatural grace so well?
A quiet tension wound through Johnathan, but he kept his face carefully blank. Would a more seasoned acolyte of the Society have picked up on the signs? His gaze strayed to Vic’s fingernails, not only glossy and well-manicured, but without a hint of dead man’s hands. How did the fiend hide one of the key physical signs of vampirism? The internal differences were another matter, but the discolored nails were a surefire sign, a signature of vampiric nature that kept the Society from unfortunate mistakes. A vampire might try to disguise the discoloration with dyes or ink, but that itself was a tell for further scrutinization.
No, Johnathan was certain his fellow Prospectives would take one look at Vic’s hands and dismiss him as a potential vampire. That was a small comfort, but the mystery of it was a constant distraction from the true matter at hand.
Johnathan drummed an annoyed beat on the table.
Vic eased back in his chair with fluid grace, studying Johnathan in turn. His clothing was barely rumpled from their brief scuffle, the homespun linen shirt plain but well made, neatly tucked into a pair of loose dark pants that tightened around the man’s thighs as he crossed his legs. The top buttons of his shirt were undone in careless contrast, a seemingly conscious choice that displayed the full breadth of Vic’s pale throat. The easy elegance made Johnathan even more awkward and uncouth in comparison. His oft-hemmed and patched Society hand-me-downs were thoroughly wrinkled between outrunning beasts and wrestling vampires.
Vic’s long fingers played along his jaw, drawing Johnathan’s gaze. “If you were any more bottled up, I’d expect steam to come streaming out your ears. What’s wrong with you?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. If they were going to be working together, there had to be a level of trust and openness between them. Johnathan would take whatever intel the vampire gave him in good faith, and it would remain in good faith unless he felt like explaining the origins of such knowledge to his superiors.
“Your hands. How did you manage to make them look so…pink?”
Still pink, since Vic bled like a stuck pig from the creature’s claws, which meant he’d fed since then to replenish? With Johnathan in the house? Had he fed from Alyse? The woman didn’t have the slightest weakness in her gait, hale and flush without a hint of blood loss. How was the fiend doing it?
“You mean, why don’t I look like an animated corpse?” The vampire raised a brow.
Johnathan flinched. “Not in such impolite terms. But it is the most obvious sign of your condition.”
“My condition?” There was a lilt of amusement in Vic’s voice as he ran his splayed fingers over his full mouth. “You make it sound like a bothersome cough.”
“I’m not used to discussing such matters openly.” Johnathan shifted in his seat. “With one of you.”
A smirk hid behind Vic’s fingers. “Tit for tat. I shall answer your inquiry if you answer mine.”
Johnathan went still. That was a dangerous offer, for both of them. “Maybe another time,” he murmured.
Vic stared at him, taken aback. Johnathan’s answer surprised him. “A man whose curiosity is tempered by what? Fear?”
“I’m not afraid,” insisted Johnathan. He wasn’t, not really. Truly, he wasn’t. There were simply elements of his past that should stay buried. He wasn’t afraid.
Vic’s eyebrow rose so high it disappeared into his hairline.
“I’m not,” snapped Johnathan.
The fiend leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. There was a gleam of interest in his gray eyes. A strand of auburn hair fell from its queue, brushing along the sharp angles of his cheekbones as he tilted his head at Johnathan. “Now what would I do with your secrets, John?”
Johnathan shifted, uncomfortable with the way Vic looked at him, the tone of the fiend’s voice. Far more discomfiting was the flutter in his chest. Much as he despised vampires, certainly this one, an odd warmth rose along his skin when Vic’s gaze roved over him.
Johnathan swallowed hard and huffed through his nostrils, shaking off the fleeting feeling. “Fine. Three questions, three answers.”
His gut churned. This was a bad idea.
Vic leaned in. “I don’t take blood from the vein,” he said with a conspiratorial wink.
Johnathan blinked. “Oh come now, you can’t leave it at that, and I’m not going to waste three questions on how you feed.”
Vic’s expression couldn’t be mistaken for anything but delight. “And you are clearly more than a pretty slab of muscle.”
The description made him blush, but also made a muscle jump between his shoulder blades. Sir Harry used to call him pretty, one of the many descriptors he used for Johnathan. It was definitely confusing to hear the word now because, for some reason, he liked hearing the word from Vic’s mouth.
“This is better explained with visuals than words.” Vic rose to his feet with a flourish and flowed from the room in full predatory grace.
Johnathan’s gaze locked on those familiar movements. He swallowed through the sudden painful tightness in his throat, quick to reassert a passive mask when Vic sauntered back into the room with a roll of bulky leather. However, he could not conceal his perplexed expression as the vampire unfurled the roll to reveal a collection of instruments, familiar yet not.
Johnathan picked up one of the glass tubes with care, examining the curiously fat needle. “It’s hollow,” he said.
A hollow needle that fed into a glass vial, a syringe, though he’d never seen one with a needle like this. The plunger served the twofold purpose of creating suction for extraction and pressure for injection.
“What is this?” A note of curious wonder tinted Johnathan’s voice, and the vampire grinned.
Another oddity of the vampire clicked into place. Vic’s fangs were smaller than most, fine delicate points that blended in his smile, their size seeming almost human at first glance, which is why Johnathan hadn’t noticed them until he’d had cause to look for them.
“It’s a syringe.”
Johnathan made a face. “I meant this part, dolt.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” said Vic. “The hollow needles were developed in Europe in the last couple of years, but they aren’t quite commonly used in the Americas yet. I purchased them from a fine German merchant, with a hefty commission for future stock.”
Johnathan stared at the device. Summoned from the abyss of a dream, a hazy memory rose from the other night, one so convoluted it took him a moment to unravel its meaning. “You inject the blood directly to your vein, by way of your thigh.”
Vic nodded. “I wondered if you’d ever remember that.”
“I didn’t quite remember until now,” Johnathan admitted.
Vic tapped a needle against the pad of his finger. “It gives me easy access to the femoral artery. I’ve found this method maintains a great deal of vitality over traditional methods of consumption. Hence the lack of dead man’s fingers.”
“Don’t you still hunger?” Johnathan blurted.
“That counts as two.”
“Bugger.”
A small smile played on Vic’s lips. “I find myself driven by…other appetites.”
“Other appetites. What other…oh.” Johnathan’s blush burned up through his ears.
The vampire chuckled. “How did the Society snatch up someone like you?”
Now Johnathan was truly puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
Vic opened his mouth and paused. He closed it with an audible click of teeth, pondering how to explain. “You’re bright red at the hint of intimate relations, but you were completely unfazed by the torn-open body of a young woman. What sort of upbringing did you have before the Society brought you into the fold?”
Just the sort of question he wanted to avoid. “Not a pleasant one.”
Vic snorted. “Oh, come now, you berated me for being vague.”
Johnathan’s jaw tightened. Dr. Evans lectured at length that the key to lies was partial truth. “My guardian was a violent, controlling brute who kept me half-starved to draw sympathy when we begged for scraps.” It was truth, though incomplete in the details. “The Society saved me from a life of starvation and abuse.”
“They do like to present themselves as the white hats,” said Vic. “Swooping in to save the local youths from lives of petty crimes. Teach them to kill vampires without questioning orders, like a pack of well-trained dogs.”
“Vampires are monsters,” Johnathan said, choosing to keep the fact that his guardian had been of Vic’s ilk to himself.
Vic settled into that preternatural stillness his kind were infamous for, an unreadable expression on his face, though Johnathan thought he saw a shadow of sadness there. “I am a monster to you?”
The affirmation sat bitter in his mouth. It was a simple matter to say yes, but he was in a far from simple situation. “Why did you save me?”
The vampire grinned. “A question for a question is cheating.”
“Maybe I can’t answer one without the other,” said Johnathan. “You play human better than any vampire I’ve ever seen, but you exposed yourself to save me from our mystery foe.”
Vic rolled his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Not necessarily. You might have explained it away as a trick of the mind. People are very good at deceiving themselves. Or perhaps I had no choice. You caught me healing.”
Johnathan couldn’t stop an incredulous snort. “You let me catch you healing.”
“Your certainty in my skills of deception is heartening, but this is the truth.” Vic looked away, appearing almost flustered. If he was human, he might have blushed. “I was caught off guard. You could have left me there, in the road—”
“I’m not some coward who abandons his comrades at the first sign of blood,” Johnathan snapped.
“Of course not. You’re the sort to risk life and limb to carry them to safety, even if they are a stranger to you. Whether you realize it or not, it is something most of your Society brethren would not do.” Vic’s elegant hands flexed into fists against his thighs. There was an odd lilt to his voice.
Johnathan looked at him sharply, wondering what emotion he’d heard in those words, before the vampire cleared his throat.
Their gazes met, a wariness in Vic’s eyes that sent a frisson of curious shock through Johnathan’s mind. Flustered as he was, he let the insult to the Society pass, though it made him wonder how many encounters Vic had with them to judge them so harshly.
“I’ve been assigned to root out the evil hunting this town,” Johnathan offered. “It was my duty to protect you. To protect everyone.” Though he was far from equipped to do so.
“It was bravery,” said Vic. “Stupid bravery, but bravery.”
Johnathan sighed and looked away, uncertain how he should react to such sentiment. He pulled the sheaf of Alyse’s notes toward him, a welcome distraction from the odd tangle of conversation with Vic. He blindly stared at the girls’ names, their descriptions, beneath the weight of Vic’s studying gaze.
“You didn’t answer my question. Am I a monster to you?”
Johnathan didn’t look up. “You didn’t really answer mine.”
Vic snorted. “I would hate to be the one to interrogate you.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of Johnathan’s mouth. “I haven’t made up my mind yet. I shall inform you when I’ve compiled all the facts.” Begrudgingly, Johnathan also found himself piqued over his shifting opinion of Vic’s humanity.
“Ah well, do let me know when you decide,” said Vic.
“I assure you, you will be the first to know,” said Johnathan.
“I hope that revelation comes without decapitation.”
“We shall see.” Johnathan frowned as he read over the notes. Not one but two sets compiled by Alyse and the vampire, both far more invested than he expected. Vic kept meticulous, detailed notes in elegant script, while Alyse’s looped handwriting tacked on several additions in regard to the girls outside of Cress Haven. He read the description of Mary Elizabeth and the first girl to die in Cress Haven, Lydia Fairchild, over and over, until the oddity clicked in his mind. “What happened to their parents?”
Vic shook his head. “What do you mean?”
Johnathan slid the notes across the table, squinting over them in the candlelight. “You have recorded a full account of their deaths, autopsy details, all the peculiarities of how they were found and what happened to their bodies, witness accounts of who found the bodies and where they were last seen alive, their clothing and appearance. I must commend you; I don’t think half the law officials in the city would put forth so much effort.” He pressed his forefinger against the paper. “But none of these witness statements include family. These are not poor, destitute women who might not be missed. These girls were found in fine dresses, carefully curled hair. Daughters of well-to-do men. Where are their families?”
A crease appeared between Vic’s brows. “That is a glaring detail to miss.”
“Neither you nor Alyse mention their families,” said Johnathan. “This one, Lydia Fairchild, was local, but no one mentioned her when we found the other body.”
Vic pursed his lips. “I believe Lydia Fairchild’s status was listed as missing. There could be no body left to recover.”
Indeed, there was the note in Alyse’s looping cursive. If her body suffered the same fate as the girl in the morgue, there would be no reason for the villagers to think otherwise. If they’d discovered her body in the aftermath, no one would think it more than the leavings of some careless campfire. Still, the fact no one mentioned that she had gone missing was another point of contention.
Johnathan paused. “Actually, no one in town has appeared overly concerned about the murders and missing girls.”
“I…I didn’t notice as such,” said Vic, though the vampire appeared to mull over the observation. “I don’t think I’ve been worried about it as much as I should have either.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
Vic rolled his eyes. “Well, it does now.”
Johnathan hesitated. “Do you think it’s people deceiving themselves, explaining away the unnatural?”
“No, this—this is something else. It’s not easy to deceive the senses of a vampire.” Vic rose, a thoughtful expression on his face. “There’s someone we need to talk to, but it might take a couple days to pin them down.”
The vague statement irritated Johnathan but he left it alone for now. There was a more pressing question to answer. “In the meantime, we need to find out why these parents aren’t fighting for their girls. We need to talk to the families.”
“Then we start local,” said Vic. “With the first victim in Cress Haven, Lydia Fairchild.”
Johnathan nodded. “Let’s go.”
“What? No.” Vic pulled a face. “It’s the middle of the night, John.”
He blinked. Was it really? He’d lost track of time in the aftermath of their encounter and revelations. It felt like days passed rather than hours. The reminder allowed the events of the night to catch up to him in a punch of exhaustion. He pinched the bridge of his nose, the sharp spike of pain behind his eyes insistent. He needed rest.
“Right, right, on the morrow then.”
“You, get some sleep, and that is an order.” Vic made for the front door.
“Where are you off to?”
“Don’t trust me?”
“Not even a little,” said Johnathan.
Vic’s smile was close lipped. “I told you, I need to find someone, but I have to do so alone. And I can go with far less rest than you. Good night, John.”
Johnathan stayed where he was long after the door creaked shut, lost in his thoughts. It was the town’s apathy that bothered him. It felt like a symptom of the creature that hunted Cress Haven, a dangerous one. If nothing else decided him before of his inadequacy to deal with their foe, it was this detail. If the vampire’s mysterious contact failed to pan out, there was only one other source of information and manpower capable of rooting this monster out, one he knew they couldn’t ignore. The Society taught them to hunt vampires, but Dr. Evans must have seen and dealt with many odd creatures during his tenure.
Johnathan swore as he dug for a fresh sheet of paper. He spent the better part of the night starting and stopping the letter. It was a seemingly impossible task to put his predicament into words, while also protecting the pact he’d made with the fiend. And Johnathan found he did want to keep his word to both Vic and Alyse, to protect them from the attentions of the Society, though he wasn’t certain of his feelings on the matter.
He finally finished his carefully worded report just before dawn, managing to strip off his filthy coat and shirt before crawling to bed to the first hint of birdsong. Vic still hadn’t returned. Johnathan fought the pull of sleep.
He held up his hand, studying the blackened wound. In the course events, he’d failed to mention the change to the vampire. Despite his palm’s rather grisly appearance, the lack of pain led him to often forget about it, with so much else to preoccupy his mind.
He sighed, letting his arm flop back down to his side. He would have to bring it to Vic’s attention sooner rather than later. As it was, he’d forfeited a solid rest to write the damned report that he dreaded sending. Johnathan hoped his exhaustion would, at least, grant him a dreamless rest.
He wasn’t that lucky.