“Cam? Is that your partner?” I ask, wanting to keep the conversation going even though I’m reeling from her story. I had my own suspicions about Bane, a feeling I just couldn’t shake. I knew there was good under the surface, part of himself he was trying to keep concealed, but this girl just blew my mind wide open.
“My son, Cameron,” she says, smiling as soon as his name crosses her lips. There’s a sudden lull in the music, and the bar is starting to fill up again. She climbs off her stool, resting her hand on my arm.
“Bane even found me a babysitter who doesn’t mind staying with Cam until near dawn. I’m telling you, ever since I met him, he’s looked out for my son and me, he’s been like a guardian angel. I just wish he’d find a good woman to look after him.” She winks and scurries back behind the bar, heading toward a group of girls waving empty cocktail glasses over their heads.
I slip off my stool, heading in the direction I watched Bane disappear. He’s been gone for almost twenty minutes, and my curiosity and boredom are getting the best of me. Well, that and maybe after hearing Candy make him out to be some kind of knight in shining armor, I want to look into those stormy eyes and tell him the gig is up. I know what he’s hiding beneath the cold dark exterior so he might as well drop the act. I push open a door I’m sure leads to an employee-only area, poking my head in before the rest of me follows. Boxes are stacked against the wall to my right, a hallway to my left carries on for a while before ending. I pass two bathrooms, a small break room, and an impressive office before I hit the last door. The one I’m sure has to be storage space. I’ve worked in a few bars over the years, and regardless of size and style, every single one of them had dry storage for shelf stables and cold storage for beers, mixers, and other perishable crap. I push the door open and walk into a large room.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the walls, additional units are positioned in rows, and all of them are stacked with boxes of napkins, straws, and cups. There’s another door on the opposite wall, obviously a walk-in cooler. I can tell the room is empty. The air is still and silent, aside from my own footfalls against the concrete floor as I cross the room. I tug the handle on the door, ready to hit Bane with a dose of sarcasm about leaving a girl at a bar to take inventory, but as soon as the cooler comes into view, everything changes. I freeze, fingers still clutching the handle. My eyes sweep over the floor, or more accurately, the bodies piled on the floor. I narrow in on a blonde girl in a leather cropped jacket, she looks right around my age, and her black fingernails and gray chucks hit a little too close to home. My racing heartbeat fills the room, and I pull my eyes away from the body, shifting my attention to the figure standing over the horror scene- Bane.
“Piper, this isn’t what it looks like,” he says, holding his hands up in front of him.
“It looks like you’re standing over a bunch of blood-drained bodies,” I say. My voice is shaky as I back away from the cooler, stumbling on the corner of a storage rack, but catching myself at the last second. A box of stirrers falls from the shelf, and in an instant, Bane is there. He grabs the box, slipping it back onto the rack and looking into my eyes with the same intensity he did in my apartment.
“Just calm down and hear me out.”
I can feel my mind relaxing at the sound of his words. The smooth honied tone of his voice pulls me in, tempting me to look past what I saw, to let him explain it. But I know the truth, something this horrible can’t be explained away. No amount of smooth-talking or supernatural suggestion can erase seven blood-drained bodies.
“No,” I seethe, blinking away the haze and raising a hand defensively. “Stay the hell away from me.”
He takes a step back, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling loudly.
“I didn’t do this. I’m just keeping them on ice.”
That sounds totally reasonable. The freezer full of corpses doesn’t actually belong to him. He’s just keeping them safe. No. I definitely have to get out of here. The connection I felt and the good I was so sure I saw in him is heavily outweighed. I take a deep breath and another step backward.
“I can’t handle this right now, Bane. I’m still getting used to being a vampire, controlling my own thirst, and balancing all of this with my actual life. I can’t deal with whatever the fuck you’re doing here. I need time,” I snap, biting down on my molars and willing myself not to cry. Not here, not now.
He nods his head, and I take that as my cue to leave, using my vampire speed for the first time to disappear from his sight and club. I don’t stop until I’m home.
The second my door is closed and locked behind me, I notice two things at once. First, my hunger is back with a vengeance, my stomach is screaming at me, and I can practically hear my veins scraping together in search of blood to circulate through my starved organs. Second, Banes’ power really worked.
Kit
* * *
Now: October 30th
“Fuuuuuuuck,” I groan as I come to with a splitting headache and the sour taste of vomit in my mouth. I open my eyes and realize I'm in my apartment, and by the look of things, the sun is coming up. I blink and rub my eyes, clearing the haze that settled while I was asleep. Then I see her, jump to my feet, knock into the coffee table, and fall back onto the sofa where I started out. Piper is sitting in one of the chairs on the other side of the coffee table, her arms are crossed at her chest, and she looks thoroughly displeased as she stares at me, blinking every so often but never shifting her gaze. I’m still trying to process the last thing I remember from last night. The flask full of blood that I gulped down, but I'm coming up blank. Piper has done some weird shit over the years, but this takes the cake. I don’t know how to rationalize this one. I rapidly drum my fingers on my thigh as I stare at her, searching for words, Any. Fucking. Words, I tell my brain, just say something, anything.
“So…you didn’t relapse then?” I ask, finally settling on a good starting point.
“No,” she says, shifting her posture slightly.
“Well, uh. That’s good,” I say after a beat of silence. I have no idea what is going on, but this is weird, Piper is really weird, and I just noticed that my heart is racing and my breathing is kind of erratic, what’s up with that? I stare at her, silently demanding answers to the questions I don’t want to ask. “You look a little bit on edge,” I say after another awkward minute of complete silence.
“You drank my blood.”
“Right.” I nod my head, shifting my eyes from side to side because my best friend just said the words 'you drank my blood,' and now I’m kind of wondering if she’s been skipping her therapy appointments, and this is a cry for help. “Do you want a drink? We can talk this over, lay all of the cards on the table and figure out what the next move is,” I say as I stand up and turn toward the kitchen.
“I do want a drink, Kit, but what I want more than that is for you to sit back down.” Her cold, sharp tone stops me in my tracks. I sit back down, staring at her through wide eyes.
“Piper, what’s,”
“Stop talking. Stop moving. Do whatever you have to do to make your heart stop racing because if you don’t, I’m worried I might hurt you,” she snaps, cutting me off mid-sentence.