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GREYSON SLID OUT OF his car and stretched. An ice-cold wind blew, hissing ominously as it seeped through cracks around windows and rushed between buildings. But it didn’t quite reach the alleyway in which he stood. There, the pungent odor of urine, rot and vice hung heavily in the air. A thick layer of grime covered the bricks of the buildings on either side of him. It coated everything in his field of vision like a thick, black mantle. Mixing with stench of trash on the sidewalks and the potpourri of fetid scents swirling around him, the air turned the alleyway into a suffocating tomb. But Greyson didn’t care. He had a single purpose. A single destination in mind. And this putrid Boston backstreet was the pathway to it.
He’d driven for more than three hours to reach the place Dario had told him about, a place where their kind gathered in secret to socialize. If you could call what they did socializing. What Greyson had found early on was that all most vampires did when they gathered together was brag about their most recent conquest: how many they’d killed, who they’d killed, how they’d killed him or her, and how quick and easy it had been. Murder was what it had always boiled down to in his mind. So the displays he’d witnessed had been sickening. The boastfulness and arrogance of vampires had been too much for him. When they weren’t congratulating themselves about how they were the superior species, they were bickering about who among them was truly the best. Egocentric to a fault, each had thought he or she was the alpha among the group. Their mindset had led to long-winded, asinine arguments that resulted in a lot of blustering and at times, bloodshed. Greyson had never wanted to be a part of the life he’d been doomed to. He’d never wanted to be a vampire, and he’d certainly never wanted to fraternize with them. As a result, he’d avoided vampires for most of his six decades as one. Yet here he stood, in a narrow alley more than three hours from home, with the express purpose of hanging out with them. He’d endured the brutal, blazing light of day as he’d traveled along Interstate 84 and Interstate 90 to get to Boston, Massachusetts. The only aspect of the trip more torturous than enduring daylight would be the company he was about to keep. Had he lost his mind? He wondered. Maybe he had. But he hadn’t known what else to do. He’d needed to get away.
He’d been unable to sleep. He’d tried. He’d tossed and turned for hours, switching positions at least a hundred times until he’d given up and gotten out of bed. He’d paced about his small apartment, replaying the events of the entire night in his head over and over again. His focus had remained on the end of the evening. The part when he’d turned Alex. Guilt over what he’d done had overwhelmed him. He’d sworn to never do to another what had been done to him. He’d made a promise to himself. A promise he’d broken when he’d seen her still form enshrined in freshly fallen snow like a mythical princess, her life seeping from her with each second that had ticked by. Had he made the right choice in saving her? Had he saved her for purely selfish reasons? He’d agonized over the answers to those questions all night. He agonized over them still. After all, had he left her, the part of her that remained eternal would have ascended to a better place. She’d be at peace. But in one, swift, selfish moment, he’d stolen not just her choice to live as a monster or die a human, but he’d stolen her soul. He’d damned her in two ways. He’d condemned her to hell on Earth, living out the rest of her days as a blood-drinking fiend, and he’d condemned her to hell once her time had expired. Vampires could die. They had vulnerabilities. Though they were few, they existed. And when her time on Earth ended, she’d be cast to the one place where all soulless monsters reside for eternity.
“What have I done?” he asked no one and gripped his head in both hands.
He turned back toward his car. For a moment, he contemplated returning to New York, going to her home and telling her everything. She deserved to know. But he stopped with his fingertips resting on the door handle. He realized the instant that he’d envisioned the two of them in the same room at the same time and conversing about how he’d bitten her and changed her from human to monster that there was no way he’d be able to go back. Not now at least. She’d find out on her own soon enough. Without an inkling of the changes that were taking place, she’d never believe him anyway.
Abandoning his idea, he released the door handle and marched headlong toward the thick metal door. Creaking on its hinges, the door resisted at first before opening, protesting with a cranky screech before slamming shut behind him. Over the threshold, Greyson stood in a dark, dank corridor with a staircase. The staircase led to a lower, underground level, at the bottom of which waited another door. The door to a lounge known to vampires only and simply named “Inferno.”
Greyson tried the handle of the nondescript gray door, but it was locked. He rapped it with his knuckles. A rectangular slot he hadn’t noticed upon his initial inspection opened. A pair of glittering amber eyes locked on him. Not a single word was exchanged. The door unlocked and it parted, soft light, music and voices spilling from inside. He quickly stepped through the entrance and found himself in Inferno.
Scarlet lightbulbs mingled with just a few halogen incandescent ones and filled the space with inviting light. A long bar of sleek, dark wood ran the length of the room. High-back leather barstools lined it. Opposite the bar were leather booths that sat along the wall, and in the middle space, there were high-top tables. At the far end of the rectangular room was a pool table and a dart board. A group of four vampires played pool while a few others threw darts. The rest sat around tables or at the bar. To Greyson’s shock, the overall ambience was mellow. No one shouted or pointed angry fingers. Not a single voice was raised, in fact. Temporarily tuning in to the conversations, he learned something even more astounding. From what he could hear, no one bragged of their last kill.
Greyson wasn’t sure what to make of the situation before him. His kind—vampires—appeared to be acting normal. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps they’d evolved in the last few decades. The notion once seemed about as possible as pigs sprouting wings and flying. But now, it seemed slightly less so.
Shaking his head, he muttered to himself under his breath, “My money’s still on the pigs.”
“What about pigs?” the woman behind the counter leaned forward and asked him. She arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she drilled him with a gaze as piercing and lethal as a finely honed blade.
“Huh?” Greyson had forgotten he was in the presence of vampires, a species with senses heightened far beyond the range of human comprehension. He also realized how stupid and odd his comment must have sounded. “Oh, no. Nothing,” he fumbled without knowing what else to say or how else to cover what he’d said.
She continued to stare at him wordlessly.
He shifted uncomfortably. There was no way in the world he was about to offer up an explanation for his comment.
“Okaaaay,” the woman said finally and flipped a lock of her long, raven hair over her shoulder. Spilling like a banner of pure silk, her hair trailed to the small of her back and was unlike any hair he’d seen on a human to date. “I’m Elysium. And I’ve never seen you in here.”
“I’m Greyson.” He didn’t offer his last name. She hadn’t so he followed suit.
A jet-black brow twitched. She studied him intensely. “One?” she asked after several awkward moments.
Greyson moved closer to the bar, pulling out a chair and settling into it.
Elysium’s lavender eyes skimmed him from head to toe.
“One what?” he asked, unsure of what the heck she was talking about.
“Drink. Do you want one?” she spoke slowly, over enunciating each word mockingly.
He felt a flare of annoyance and was sure it registered in the color of his irises as they transformed from grey-blue to liquid silver. Elysium rolled her eyes and laughed at him. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. It is a bar.”
“Panties in a bunch?” he echoed her sarcastically.
She shook he head at him. “Whatever, Greyson.” The way she said his name made it sound more like a curse word than a designation. “All I meant was there’s no need to be so sensitive. This is a bar. A bar is a place where people drink, right?”
“Yes, it is,” he replied in the same tone she’d used.
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” She raked a hand with talon-like fingernails through her hair. “So, one?” she tried again.
“Sure.” Greyson nodded.
Elysium sighed exaggeratedly and mumbled, “That didn’t take forever or anything,” knowing fully he’d hear her. Then she spun, glided to a nearby refrigerator and worked so quickly her movements would’ve been a blur to the human eye. She returned within seconds with a tumbler filled with garnet-hued liquid. Scythe, as it was known, was the only drink that could intoxicate a vampire. It looked like a Bloody Mary to the untrained eye. But the only similarity came in the “blood” portion of the name. A Bloody Mary didn’t contain a single drop of blood, whereas Scythe was a concoction that contained a highly concentrated shot of tainted human blood. The tainted blood had the equivalent impact of Everclear, a 190-proof grain alcohol that had been banned in at least nine U.S. states. Processed with sulfur and tannin, the tainted blood had to be stored frozen. Greyson hoped it would have the effect alcohol had on humans. He wanted to dull the ceaseless angst he felt. Elysium plunked the drink down before him. “Here you go,” she said. “Enjoy.” She’d expelled the word, a word meant to be an expression of well wishes, as if she hoped he’d choke on it.
Seems I’m not wrong about vampires at all, he thought. At least not where Elysium’s concerned. He chuckled to himself and she gave him a dirty look. Surely she hadn’t read his thoughts. If she had, he guessed she’d lunge across the bar and gleefully gauge his eyeballs out of their sockets. He wanted no part of that. He liked his eyeballs right where they were so he smiled at her pleasantly. “Thanks,” he said then lifted the glass of Scythe to his lips, inhaling the sharp scent as it settled on his tongue and burned down his throat. He took a long drink, ignoring the burn and swallowing hard until the entire glass was emptied. He returned it to the dark wood of the bar, feeling a pronounced sense of warmth diffuse through his chest. It relaxed every muscle in his body, blunting the sharp edges of his emotions. He liked it, liked the feeling. It slowed the ceaseless whirring of his brain. And if one managed to slow it, another would slow it further.
He cleared his throat to get Elysium’s attention.
At the end of the bar and chatting with a few others, Elysium heard him. She looked over her shoulder at him and did a double take.
“Another,” he told her as soon as he’d caught her attention.
She nodded and obliged, delivering another tumbler of Scythe when she returned.
He immediately lifted the rim of the glass to his mouth and allowed a generous amount to spill down his throat. He hadn’t had Scythe since he was first turned. He’d forgotten how similar the effect was to being intoxicated as a human. The effect of alcohol lasted far longer for a human, though. The chemicals of a vampire’s brain balanced themselves too quickly for the effect to last. Whatever the length of time he was afforded he’d take. Any break from the agony of guilt was welcome. So far, the Scythe had helped quiet the guilt-laden mental chatter somewhat. That was what he needed. He needed to turn down the volume of the voice in his head—his voice—that shouted at him, endlessly chastising him for what he’d done to Alex. He needed the quiet so he could figure out what to do next, how he could help her at the very least.
Greyson emptied his second drink.
The clack of the tumbler hitting the bar drew Elysium’s attention. She floated his way.
“Another, please,” he asked. His head felt fuzzy and his body felt warm. An involuntary smile curled the corners of his mouth. The more he tried to straighten his expression, the wider the smile grew.
“You might want to slow down,” Elysium warned.
“Not tonight.” He shook his head vigorously to punctuate his point. But the motion made him a little dizzy. “Whoa.” He watched as the room spun a bit.
“Yeah, I think you should slow down for sure.” Elysium nodded and winked, suddenly far nicer than she had been before.
“No way. I don’t want to think. I just need a couple of hours to not think.”
“Scythe certainly helps with that. That’s for sure.” She made an expression that resembled a smile. “I’ll get you another, but promise me you’ll sip it, okay?”
“Okay,” Greyson agreed. But he wasn’t sure he’d meant it.
Elysium placed his drink in front of him, only this time, she didn’t disappear. She remained and studied his face again. “I’ve never seen you in here before. Are you new?”
“No, well, kind of. I don’t live around here. And I was only turned about sixty years ago.” Greyson shrugged.
“You’re a baby,” she mumbled with a laugh. “So if you don’t live around here, what made you decide to visit Inferno?”
Greyson gulped his drink.
“Hey! I said sip. You need to sip that!” Elysium pointed a finger at him.
“Okay, okay.” Greyson dipped his head. When he lifted it, he wore a plaintive expression. “Sorry.”
“Just take it slow. And tell me, what brought you here?”
“I haven’t been around any like us in a long while,” Greyson admitted.
Elysium’s gaze scanned the crowd, her eyes resting for a moment on a pair of male vampires that had just walked in, clad head to toe in black and both sporting manes of long hair. To Greyson, they were clichés personified. They might as well have worn long capes and blurted “I vant to suck your blooooood!” when they’d swept in.
“You haven’t missed anything.” She returned her attention to him and rolled her eyes. Apparently she agreed with him about his clichés-personified thoughts.
“I suppose not.” A chuckle escaped Greyson.
“So you came for the Scythe?” She dropped her chin and leveled him with a look that challenged him to lie to her.
“No I really came for both. But the idea of numbing my brain for a bit was appealing.” The words flowed from Greyson, freer than they ever had before.
“Numbing your brain? What does that mean?” Elysium leaned her elbows on the bar and seemed like she was genuinely interested.
Greyson took a long sip of his drink. Elysium didn’t comment. “Yeah. I have a lot going on in there.” He pointed to his head. “Lots of stuff tangled up.”
“I understand that.” She shook her head and made a tsking sound. Her gaze grew unfocused and distant for a moment, as if she were recalling an instance of feeling similar to him. “Want to talk about what’s bothering you?” she asked with sincerity ringing in her tone. She stared right at him. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you have,” she started and Greyson immediately prickled. He wasn’t in the mood for the ego of an elder. The old I’ve-seen-far-more-and-far-worse-than-anything-you-have speech. It wasn’t a pissing contest. One person’s hurt or experience doesn’t discount another’s. It’s all about perspective. “And I’ve learned to be quite a good listener,” she finished.
Listener? Did she just say ‘listener’? If she did, then that would be a first for a vampire, he thought. Vampires were notoriously bad listeners in addition to the long list of other bad traits they possessed. Perhaps he had jumped the gun. Perhaps he’d been wrong all along. Perhaps every perception he had about his own kind was a misconception. “Thank you,” he said and heard how surprised he’d sounded.
“Don’t sound so shocked.” She laughed. “Or you’ll hurt my feelings and I’ll be the sensitive one of us.” She gestured between them.
“Fair enough.” He nodded.
“Now shoot. What’s troubling you?” Elysium leaned forward and listened as he explained what had happened the night before. He told her everything that happened from draining and killing the nurse to rushing to the diner and finding the two men about to assault Alex. He told her that he’d changed Alex to save her life and that he’d felt nothing but guilt and agony since. All the while, Elysium listened with a passive expression on her face. Long after he’d finished talking and finished his tumbler of Scythe, she still wore that same passive expression.
Squirming in his seat, Greyson looked at her. “Feel free to talk any time now.” He’d never blathered on to another vampire as he had to Elysium. The Scythe, the burden of carrying around such heavy grief and her friendliness had opened him up. It made him nervous and uncomfortable. He’d hoped for relief but as of yet, none had come. Just the blank stare of a fellow vampire.
When Elysium finally spoke, she rolled her hand forward and said, “And?”
“And what?” Greyson replied.
“You stopped in the middle of your story. I’m curious to hear the rest of it.” She splayed her hands on either side of her waist.
“There is no rest of the story.” He shrugged.
“So what’s the problem? I don’t get it.”
Greyson took a breath and was about to speak but Elysium halted him with a stern look.
“You were with this girl and you turned her. You kept her from dying,” she ticked off on her index finger then moved to the next. “You still have a shot with her and she’ll live for centuries rather than decades.” She ended her count on her ring finger. “I really don’t see what you’re upset about here. You did her a favor.”
Greyson’s heart began to pound and his frustration began to mount. He’d explained everything, yet it seemed Elysium didn’t understand. Had she not been listening after all? He wondered.
“No, I didn’t,” he protested.
“So you didn’t save her from death?” Elysium snapped heatedly, her hands planted on her hips.
“I did bring her back, but I didn’t save her.” Thoughts floated around in Greyson’s mind. Elysium was twisting them, muddling them along with the Scythe. Frustration mingled with anger and Greyson felt a surge of rage.
“She’s not dead now, right?”
“No.” Greyson rubbed his temples. “But that’s not the point.” Elysium wasn’t listening. She refused to understand his point. She refused to understand all that he’d explained. He’d unloaded his feelings and now it seemed she was refuting them. His feelings weren’t subject to rebuttals last he checked. He wasn’t looking to be let off the hook. He’d come to Inferno to escape and shut down his mind. For respite. He’d also come in hopes of seeing change, of seeing that his kind had changed or evolved. For Alex’s sake, he’d wanted to believe he’d have something to offer her other than eternal damnation.
“You’re wrong,” she spat haughtily. “That’s exactly the point. She’s alive and better than before right now. She’s one of us. You gave her a gift.” She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know what you’re griping about.”
“I didn’t turn her as a gift. Our life isn’t a gift,” he said through his teeth. He struggled to harness the storm brewing within him.
“What?!” Elysium backed away from him with her upper lip curled in disgust and her features screwed up. “Are you crazy? You most certainly did give her a gift!”
Instigated by her reaction, a storm of words rained from him. “No! I’m not crazy, Elysium!” His voice was a clap of thunder that silenced the bar. “I’ve condemned her to a life of murder! You see that as a gift?” He’d caused a tempest. All eyes landed on him.
Elysium stabbed a finger at him, her eyes twin vortexes of hostility as she parted her lips to undoubtedly unleash a diatribe, but she was interrupted when a deep voice from behind rumbled, “What is going on here?”
Greyson spun, turning toward the sound and found a male, one who gave the appearance of an elder vampire who garnered the respect of others.
“Maxim,” Elysium acknowledged the man with a revered tip of her head. “This idiot is whining about turning some young girl he clearly likes, crying that he condemned her to a life of murder!” She’d mocked his words with her tone as she’d spoken the last half of her sentence, taunting him as a child would.
Maxim, unfazed by her immature behavior, turned his head so that he only looked at Greyson. Eyes as dark as volcanic glass were rimmed in ruby red and a whisper of silver dusted his temples. Both were marks of age. “How old are you?” Maxim demanded without the pretense of pleasantries.
“Eighty-five,” Greyson replied stonily. “I was turned at twenty. Been a vampire for sixty-five years now.”
Maxim’s bow lifted. “Sixty-five,” he repeated with a dramatic nod of his head. “Certainly old enough to know better and realize you, too, are a murderer.
“I’m aware,” Greyson replied and wondered whether he’d slipped into an alternate dimension. One where his words were incomprehensible. The effects of the Scythe were waning along with Greyson’s patience.
“If you’re aware then what are you complaining about?” Maxim craned his neck forward, an expression of exaggerated confusion wrinkling his forehead. “You’ve given this girl the gift of immortality.”
Maxim was wrong. She wouldn’t be immortal. Only an absolute ego maniac would claim immortality. Death came for every being. Every species died. And no gift had been given to Alex, unless the shackles of bloodthirst was a gift.
“This,” Greyson gestured to Maxim then to himself. “Is not a gift.”
Anger struck like lightning, bolting through the man’s face and transforming it to a mask of monstrous rage. The ruby rings around his black irises widened, spreading until his eyes were the color of blood. “You insult yourself and you insult me. You insult all of us,” he growled. “What are you doing here? Why did you come to Inferno?”
Greyson’s jaw was clamped so tight his molars ached. When he finally spoke, his voice was a low, hoarse sound ripe with the promise of violence. “I wanted to see if there was any decency among us. If our kind held any redeeming qualities. And I believe I got my answer.”
Maxim’s hard gaze had sought to bore a hole into Greyson’s skull halted and a faint expression of recognition flickered in his dead eyes. “Wait a second.” He clapped his hands together in front of his chest. “What is your name again?”
Again? The word implied that he’d told Maxim his name already when in fact he hadn’t. “Greyson Black,” he said.
Maxim’s face smoothed and laughter as bitter as acid spewed from him. “This man,” he announced to everyone in the bar. “Is Greyson Black, the one Dario always tells us about!” His comment drew uproarious laughter. “He only kills bad humans!” The malicious laughter grew deafening.
The laughter stretched something so thin it snapped within Greyson. He lunged at Maxim. In a second, he had him pinned against the far wall. Plaster rained from overhead at the impact and a formidable dent had formed behind Maxim. Maxim quickly wrenched himself free and tried to hit Greyson. The punches came in rapid succession. Greyson blocked each blow, feeling just a puff of air glance the shell of his ear rather than a fist hammering it. Gripping the sides of his head Greyson threw him to the floor. Floorboards yielded and he sank into the crater that had formed. Greyson flew atop Maxim, grabbing a light fixture and hurtling it at him just before he landed atop him. Stunned and slowed momentarily, Maxim hesitated. And Greyson capitalized on it. He drilled him in the head again and again, the punches filled with energy that came from a part of him he couldn’t identify. All he knew was that he liked the violence of each blow. He wanted to feel it, to smother the other emotion—the stronger, uncontrollable one that’d kept him up all night and all day—but not even the wrath he was venting on Maxim could take his mind off the pain deep in his chest. His knuckles split and bled. They’d disappear within a minute or two. But would he ever be able to recover that way from what he’d inflicted on Alex? The question haunted him as a flurry of arms jerked him backward and off of Maxim.
Suddenly, bodies slammed into him from every direction, choking the air from his lungs and exploding against his skull in a supernova of agony. The sounds of snapping bones, quick grunts of breath and the muffled noise of flesh striking flesh echoed along with immediate and excruciating pain that stabbed through every part of him. Greyson hissed just before he finally blacked out when a powerful blow connected with his temple.
When consciousness returned to him, Greyson found himself just outside the locked steel door to Inferno. Straining to see through swollen slits, he realized he’d been tossed out. Rolling over, he felt the odd sensation of fractured bones fusing back together and torn flesh knitting. He rose up onto all fours before sliding his legs beneath him and standing. He looked down at his blood-stained clothes. His wounds had already healed for the most part. Eyes that had been swollen shut had deflated, returning to normal and all that was left in the wake of cuts and bruises were small, rust-hued smudges where blood had once been. Greyson shook his head and walked up the flight of stairs and out the door with the corroded hinges. Stepping over the threshold, the putrid, stifling odor was not what greeted him first. It was the sight of a man and woman in the alleyway, walking near his car. They both stopped and stared at him, but not as typical human beings would upon seeing a paranormal creature covered in blood. They didn’t radiate fear at all.
Freezing in place, Greyson stood motionless. Using his heightened senses, he listened for their pulses. Expecting a wild thump, he was shocked to hear even, steady rhythms synced to perfection and matching that of resting athletes. Their scent was off, as well. Lacking the notes unique to humans, he couldn’t classify them. And they certainly weren’t vampires, either. Suddenly worried, Greyson was on guard. He had the feeling he was in the presence of something neither human nor vampire. Another species entirely. A species that didn’t fear his kind as an innate predator.
A devastating jolt of electricity swept over his skin and a foreboding, almost surreal hush hung in the air. Greyson realized in the seconds before the man and woman turned and walked woodenly from the alley that for the very first time since being turned from human to vampire, he was afraid.