Betsy would have wrapped me in cotton wool to keep me safe if I hadn’t threatened to start fiddling with her husband’s motorcycle and blame the results on her. As it was, she parked me on the couch in front of the television the moment we were back at her house, filled me full of Gatorade and chicken soup, and dosed me with pain meds at precise intervals to keep me woozy.
I took advantage of her husband’s fancy cable package to search for documentaries on vampires, though Betsy rolled her eyes in exasperation when she found me watching one. It took a whole day and a half before I started going stir crazy. I needed to be at my cabin with the notebooks that had been stashed in my tattered backpack and recovered by the searchers. I couldn’t afford to waste any time before showing progress for Dragomir; the longer I waited, the longer he’d wait before looking for Jamie. And he wanted to see progress in a week. If I couldn’t offer anything, did that render the deal moot?
The vampire gave me no mental hints either way, which grew supremely annoying. He weighed in whenever he damn well pleased, but not when he could actually be helpful.
Limping through her house was a poor excuse for pacing, particularly with crutches, since she had three cats who darted around my feet like they were hell-bent on breaking my other leg. When Betsy’s mother called with a dishwasher emergency that threatened to flood her whole kitchen, Betsy packed up her bag and gave me a dark look. “Don’t you do anything crazy while I’m gone, Ada Lovelace Montgomery.”
I winced at her using my middle name, but managed to paste an innocent, cooperative smile on my face. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Bets.”
She saw right through it and sighed. “At least you can’t get far on that fucked-up leg. Call me if you get stuck anywhere, hear? And try not to break anything else.”
“You know you love me,” I said. “And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Bets. I really do.”
She grabbed her bag as her phone rang again, no doubt her mother with more panicked details of the slowly-rising flood in her kitchen. Betsy gave me one more glare before heading out the door, trying to calm her mother down while juggling her keys, phone, bag, and coffee cup. I waited a whole fifteen minutes after she left before I heaved myself off the couch and limped around to put on real clothes instead of the pajamas I’d been living in.
I moved slow as everything ached and throbbed; putting on my shoes was a real trick since I had a hard time bending either leg. Still, though. I needed to taste fresh air. I needed to see the sunlight. Although… I’d transferred out of the hospital in the dark, and hadn’t been outside since. What if I had too much of Dragomir’s blood in me and I burst into flames? What ratio of vampire to human blood caused combustion? Was there a middle ground? Would I get pleasantly toasted or start smoking or lose a couple of fingers to ash?
Still no answers from Dragomir the Great, just a vague annoyance that I kept thinking things at him.
Once I got outside, it didn’t take long to realize I’d grossly overestimated my own endurance. I got exactly two blocks onto Main Street from Betsy’s house before I grew light-headed and my legs wobbled. I hadn’t been great about tracking the painkillers and when I needed to take them, so they could have worn off or maybe finally kicked in. I braced against the corner of the hardware store and concentrated on breathing as a cold, clammy sweat broke out all over me. Definitely a strategic error in leaving her house, probably just in getting up off the couch.
My vision darkened around the edges and the potential for fainting lingered too close for comfort. I focused in on the bar, only a few feet away, and stumbled inside to the table closest to the door. I gripped the edge of the table and collapsed in the chair, shaking and panting for breath. Luckily an extra chair meant I could prop up my bum leg. The bar tilted around me and sparks floated in front of me as the bartender hustled over with a little more energy than normal.
“Good grief, Ada, what are you doing up and about? We heard you was half-dead and all the way crippled.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” I said. I managed an almost-smile, even as a black splotch obscured her face in my vision. “But do you mind getting me a water? I’m moving a little slow.”
“Sure thing, honey.” She retrieved a glass and a pitcher, leaving both on the table, and eyed me closely before she sauntered off to where the town’s resident alcoholics watched everything with bleary expressions. “Just holler if you need anything else.”
I could have used a beer, though my better sense prevailed since I didn’t want to kill more brain cells by mixing strong opioids with alcohol. Despite what Betsy and the detectives thought, I didn’t really have a death wish. I missed the vampire blood, though, even with the creepy-crawly feeling of deliberately consuming someone else’s bodily fluids. Dragomir’s whiskey-and-blood cocktail worked better than everything the hospital gave me. I sighed and covered my eyes so the swimming room wouldn’t make me nauseated.
At the rate I moved, my plan to hitchhike back to my cabin wasn’t likely to reach fruition. Plus I’d forgotten my wallet and keys at Betsy’s house, along with my clothes. Getting a ride from someone at the bar wasn’t the best idea, though they were all probably soberer than I was.
Sipping water cleared the cotton from my mouth and throat, though my hands kept trembling as I held the glass. I really didn’t want to call Betsy for a rescue; sitting for a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt anything, even if I couldn’t tip the waitress. If I waited long enough, maybe she’d give me a ride home and I could get some cash from the coffee can near the door.
The familiar, hushed sounds of the bar – sports on at a low volume, clinking glasses, murmured conversations – hit me like white noise and opened up an intellectual playground as my thoughts wandered uninterrupted.
Everything I’d read about vampires since fleeing Dragomir’s cave — fiction and legend alike — suggested they were evil creatures with base instincts and insatiable hunger. Dragomir confirmed as much through his stories, even with the occasional examples of accidental morality sprinkled throughout the centuries, though he obviously hadn’t meant to. The only thing protecting humans was the vampires’ inability to walk in the day — and maybe how many vampires hung out in high schools and fell in love with teenage girls.
I’d searched out the various scientists who participated in some of the ‘vampire math’ that Dragomir referenced and read the majority of their research even outside the vampire-specific models. They made reasonable arguments and gave me a better foundation for arguing with myself over how much to help Dragomir and what the moral responsibility would be for doing so. And I integrated some of their models in how I calculated predation and reproduction in some of the larger cryptid populations, so maybe it was a win-win.
Of course, it also annoyed the shit out of me that multiple papers about fictional vampires and their projected over-hunting of humans could get into peer-reviewed journals but my work on evidence of multiple relic hominids in the Appalachian Mountains only earned eye-rolls. I actually had evidence, albeit circumstantial at best. The stronger I built my case, the sooner I’d be able to write that iron-clad defense of cryptozoology and all the hours I’d spent in the rain and cold tweezing strands of hair out of prickle bushes.
I frowned into the water and wished it was gin. Maybe vodka. Maybe some of the moonshine the locals produced out in the mountains. The last jar I’d gotten, filled with peach slices, lasted me a whole winter until I had to use it for lamp fuel. I’d have to stock up before the weather turned for good. It would have been damn useful as an antiseptic and pain killer after Dragomir re-broke my leg and I had to drag my ass through the dirt. Next time I went hiking, I’d carry a second canteen full of moonshine just in case.
I’d need more of it depending on how my work with Dragomir played out. I shivered and a clammy feeling slid down my spine. Having to dull the unease of turning my back on the human race wasn’t a great sign at the start of a new research project.
So what if he saved my life with the expectation that I’d do something for him in return? I’d have expected nothing less from any humans I ran across. Everything in society was transactional, whether people wanted to admit it or not.
But he offered me an exquisite solution for both Jamie and the cryptids. If Dragomir found Jamie, I wouldn’t need to bring in the documentary crew and all the cryptid hunters in order to uncover evidence on where my brother went. No cryptid hunters meant the cryptids could remain secluded and safe until I proved their existence and got the park designated as a protected area for endangered species. The only price was Dragomir’s immunity to the only real weakness I knew of for vampires.
I rubbed my temples. I had to treat the question as one of those moral case studies at school, when we had to sort through how much research one could conduct on undergrads before it became ethically questionable. The answer was “a lot” but in this case… I couldn’t be cavalier. The impact would be so much more widespread than stressing out some undergrads. Approaching the question unemotionally was imperative to understanding the real issue and what made me uncomfortable with the thought of helping Dragomir. I couldn’t afford to let my heart overrule my logic – at least not at first.
Even though nothing related to my brother could ever be truly unemotional.
I set aside the potential for finding Jamie and instead assumed some other benefit accrued to me for finding Dragomir’s cure.
Something didn’t feel right about him wanting to walk in the daylight. If he was the apex nocturnal predator in the area, there wasn’t much reason for him to go about in the day unless he intended to hunt then as well. His prey would be humans, most likely, or maybe some other day-walking targets. Except, over the years, he’d hidden himself well enough from humans that they had not uncovered his existence and likely posed no real threat to him, even at night.
Unless they’d discovered his existence and Dragomir killed them to protect himself.
But helping him meant finding Jamie. Maybe saving Jamie and bringing him home. What was the price of having my family back? What would be the real penalty for helping Dragomir? It wasn’t like he’d go hunting through Chilhowee. No one I knew would be affected. Or was that wishful thinking? If I could even extract a guarantee from him that no one local would be harmed, were vampires required to keep their word? Or was that only evil elves in fairy tales? Would we even agree on what constituted ‘harm?’ I needed more time to research.
On the surface it should have been easy.
Just like with those damn moral case studies – on the surface there was a right answer. There was an obvious “good” option, the only acceptable answer to give. And yet… it was seldom that clear-cut in the real world.
My gaze drifted unseeing across the bar. I didn’t know what the penalty would be for helping Dragomir, but I could guess what the penalty would be for refusing to help. Debts had to be paid and he’d expended effort to save my life. What if I told him I wasn’t going to help at all? “Thanks for the blood and I’ll see you around?” He didn’t strike me as the altruistic sort.
I poured myself more water, though I had to use both hands to steady the pitcher. The universe wanted to make a point to me, it seemed, about my own frailty and the utility of vampire blood. Dragomir could have fixed me right up. Surely something that could save lives and heal wounds so completely was on the side of good. Right?
My personal sense of ethics had never troubled me before. There was no reason to let it start now, right as the best opportunity to find Jamie presented itself. I’d gotten no solid answers in over a decade of searching for cryptids and my brother – and then a damn mythical creature showed up with the keys to solving the mystery. What were the odds?
A snakeskin chuckle preceded a dry Deus vult before Dragomir’s presence faded back into daylight silence.
Deus vult. Well, Deus didn’t vult in my world. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Dragomir was just fucking with me, which weighed in the “don’t help him a damn bit” column. I sighed. I really shouldn’t have gotten so excited about studying a vampire.