Gabe could do nothing for a moment but curl up on himself from the pain. A moment was all it took for the vampire to take control of the situation, aiming Gabe’s own crossbow at him. The wooden spike in it was the very same one Gabe shot the vampire with. It glistened with blood. Stupidly, Gabe wondered if that particular detail qualified as irony.
“You fucking asshole!” the vampire shouted at him. “I went out of my way to spare your stupid life, and trust me, it was far more inconvenient than getting rid of your stinking carcass would have been. The minimum courtesy would dictate that you at least leave me the hell alone. This is just fucking rude!”
“I’m a slayer,” Gabe explained through gritted teeth. Really, what the hell did this weirdo bloodsucker expect of him?
“Oh, you mean a single-minded moron, with the mental capacity of a charging rhino? That’s a fine excuse.” The vampire’s eyes flashed with fury.
Gabe had absolutely no answer to that. Still crippled with pain, he tried to curl into a tighter ball—he needed to protect his most vulnerable parts long enough to regain control of his body. He had his arms over his face and neck but looked up when he heard the sound of wood smashing against brick. It was his crossbow shattering against the wall. He watched openmouthed as the vampire, his shirt soaked in blood, stepped over him and walked into the apartment, slamming the door.
Gabe heard no sounds other than the usual hum of the city as he lay on the ground, utterly bewildered. He’d stumbled into terrain more unfamiliar than the forests of the Carpathian Mountains. Since he saw no indication of the vampire returning, and because, frankly, he started to feel stupid, he cautiously stood up. His balls were still plenty sore, but he’d live. The sensible thing was to leave, perhaps regroup, and make new plans. So naturally, he did the opposite. He told himself he should go after the wounded vampire and stop it from alerting others. Curiosity might have also played a role in his decision.
Gabe tried the door, and it yielded. Walking in, he found himself in a large room that served both as a living area and kitchen. The space looked a lot like an IKEA showroom. It didn’t even surprise him anymore. The vampire was bleeding onto a beige couch, arms cradling his stomach, face half buried in the cushions. He was obviously in pain—pain that Gabe caused. It made Gabe feel uncomfortable. He was a hunter, not a torturer.
He couldn’t find any of the familiar fury in himself, only emptiness and an inexplicable sense of remorse. Strictly speaking, undead or not, this guy had never done any serious harm to him, in spite of ample provocation. No vampire had shown him mercy before, and this turn of events left him disoriented.
The vampire didn’t even look up. “What the fuck do you want? Finish what you started?” He sounded bitter and somehow disappointed.
“Hey, you’ll heal, right?” Gabe heard himself say. He knew they healed fast—another reason to kill them quick.
“What the fuck do you think hurts so fucking much?”
“For a small guy, you curse a lot.” It felt strange to have a conversation with a vamp, as if they were two regular people.
“What does one have to do… Oh shit, shit, shit—” The guy…vampire doubled over in agony, his face twisting in pain. Human instincts overriding five years of training, Gabe dropped to his haunches and put a hand on the guy’s back in a comforting gesture. He was at a loss. This was not how these things were supposed to go down. Life used to be simple; his job was to make the undead dead, and their job was to fight back and die. Everything had gone off-kilter now. He didn’t have it in him to slay a vampire that didn’t try to do the same to him. He’d never had this problem in the Old Country.
The slender figure on the couch, racked with pain, was all wrong, making Gabe feel all wrong too. Not knowing what else to do, he stroked the guy’s back, even made some nonsensical shushing sounds, as one would to soothe a sick child. The shivers running through the vamp’s body subsided, and slowly his breathing returned to normal.
“I should’ve disemboweled you last time,” he muttered.
“You’re just saying that. Entrails make a big mess.”
Gabe felt the body under his hand shake, and he realized it was from laughter.
“Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”
“Sorry.”
The guy cracked an eye open and looked up. He was pale, even for a vampire.
“I’m Harvey,” he said weakly. He moved his hand as if for a handshake, but seeing it covered in blood, he pulled it back.
“Gabe.”
“Gabe, I need to feed.”
With the sudden agility of a man who’d just about stepped on a rattlesnake, Gabe snatched his hand away and sprang to his feet.
Harvey pursed his lips. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. Just get me a bottle from the fridge, okay?”
After a moment of hesitation, Gabe edged to the refrigerator, keeping an eye on Harvey. When he opened the door, he saw about a dozen plastic bottles filled with liquid the color of rusty tap water. Definitely not blood. He saw an already half-empty bottle, so he grabbed it.
Harvey downed the liquid in one continuous gulp. He let out a relieved sigh. “That hit the spot.” He dropped the bottle on the floor and squinted up at Gabe. “You stink,” he said.
Without clarifying if he meant it literally or figuratively, he closed his eyes, and his body went limp.
Gabe instinctively reached to check for his pulse, but stopped mid-gesture. Harvey hadn’t died. He was already dead; undead, anyway. So he’d probably gone to sleep. Weird. Gabe waited for a few minutes, but when nothing happened, he wandered around the apartment. It proved to be disappointingly ordinary. In the bathroom, soap and shampoo lined the brim of the tub and a blue towel hung from the rack. Gabe found a double bed and a dresser in the bedroom. On the nightstand sat a clock and a book. He checked the cover:
The Little Prince
.
He walked back to the main living area and took a good look around. The kitchen area at the far end was separated from the rest by a breakfast counter. The living area had a table with four chairs, an L-shaped couch and a plasma screen on the wall across from it. Bookshelves covered one of the shorter walls. The books turned out to be a motley collection of nutritional guides, biochemistry textbooks, a thick medical dictionary, numerous paperbacks about herbs and holistic medicine, and a few volumes of detective novels. A pint-sized Buddha statue sat between James Elroy and Agatha Christie.
Talk about eclectic taste
, Gabe thought. The grinning fat man seemed to mock him.
On the kitchen counter stood an array of jars and containers with labels that meant nothing to Gabe. An open notepad lay next to them. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the messy handwriting and seemingly random jumble of numbers either.
The only thing in the fridge, aside from the bottles of strange liquid, was a jar of horseradish. However, a couple of full ice trays sat in the freezer. After some searching, Gabe located a plastic bag. He wrapped a few ice cubes in it. Moving an armchair opposite to the couch, he settled down. With one hand, he held the ice to his aching nuts; with the other hand, he hung on to a wooden stake. Just in case.
Watching the sleeping vampire, Gabe felt the tension slowly seep out of his body. So far this had been the second weirdest day of his life, but as his mother used to say, strange was just something you haven’t gotten used to yet. Without meaning to, he fell asleep.
Chapter Two
Gabe awoke with a start. The first thing he saw was a pair of brown-green eyes. Harvey sat on the sofa, observing him intently. They glared at each other for a few tense seconds before the vampire lowered his gaze—all the way to Gabe’s crotch. Gabe followed it to see a large wet spot there. Sometime during the night, his grip had loosened on the plastic bag, and the melted ice had soaked into his pants, creating the most embarrassing wet patch ever.
“I have a dryer you can use,” Harvey said, snickering.
“It was ice. You have sharp knees.”
“And you have sharp sticks.”
Gabe didn’t know what he was supposed to say, so he shrugged.
Harvey made a dismissive gesture. “Good thing you’re a lousy shot.”
“You moved.”
“Ah! My bad. Is that how hunters do it? Ask the deer to hold still?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure—” Gabe caught himself. “Are you always this mouthy?”
“Why? Anything wrong with my mouth?”
“Aside from always flapping?”
“Yes, aside.”
Gabe’s gaze was drawn to Harvey’s pursed lips. No, there was nothing wrong with them. They were exceptionally fine. And it wasn’t just those lips. For someone covered in dried blood, Harvey looked…nice. Gabe remembered the stake he’d been holding when he’d fallen asleep—it was gone. He patted his cargo pockets, but they were empty as well.
“I put them away,” Harvey explained. “In case you woke up in a homicidal mood. You seem very impulsive.”
“Where—”
“They’re safe, don’t worry. May I suggest an official ceasefire? No slaying each other for a while. What do you say?”
Gabe screwed up his brows. “It’s highly unorthodox. Why would I trust you?”
“Why would I trust
you
? I’ve abstained from killing you or even feeding on you twice so far. You, on the other hand, have shown far less self-control. You really don’t have the moral high ground here.”
“But you are—”
“Don’t start with that whole bloodsucker bit. It’s getting old. You could try to be a little less dogmatic.”
“Okay, fine,” Gabe replied gruffly.
He didn’t like being told off on an empty stomach. Having a regular conversation with a vampire—one that didn’t even involve threats of vivisection—was weird enough. Uncle Miklos was probably spinning in his grave.
A cautious smile spread across Harvey’s face. It was a remarkably nice smile. Harvey pushed himself off the couch. “I’m gonna take a shower. Feel free to use the dryer, and if you don’t mind, throw the cushion covers in the washer while you’re at it.”
He tottered off. Gabe shed his pants and put them into the dryer. Next he peeled the covers off the cushions. The blood had dried into them, and he doubted it would come out, but he dutifully put them into the washer anyway. He found the detergent in a cupboard after some searching. He also found his confiscated stakes in a drawer but left them there for the time being. He sat back on the chair, self-conscious about being in his underwear.
Harvey, the friendly vampire, took his time. When he came back, he wore clean jeans and shirt, and smelled of soap and shampoo. He moved with the slow, cautious motions of a convalescent, but his voice was cheerful.
“I’d offer you something to wear, but nothing I have would fit you. Would you put this over the couch?” He handed Gabe a batik throw of some Indian design in yellows and greens.
Gabe did as asked, but while bent over, adjusting the thing, something made him glance up. He caught Harvey’s eyes on him, possibly checking out his ass.
What the hell?
Harvey snatched his gaze away and started opening cupboards. “Would you like some coffee? I think I have a jar of instant around here somewhere. Ah, here it is. I’m afraid I have no milk. Or sugar.”
“That’s fine. I prefer it black, anyway.”
While the water boiled, Gabe retrieved his pants. They were mostly dry.
Harvey handed him a cup of coffee and a handful of power bars. “I found these in your bag.”
Shit
. Gabe completely forgot about leaving it behind the Dumpster. Harvey must have searched his hiding spot.
“What did you do with it?”
“It’s under the bed. I figured better to have it out of sight.”
Harvey parked himself at the other end of the couch, folding his legs under him. He was certainly limber. Pointedly not thinking of Harvey’s flexible limbs, Gabe quickly devoured three power bars. He was hungry.
Harvey eyed him with a glare of disapproval. “I know I gave them to you, but you really shouldn’t eat those things; they’re full of high fructose corn syrup.”
Gabe washed down the last of his corn-syrup-and-granola with the coffee. It had the flat flavor of instant, but he’d had worse. He was glad for the familiarity of the caffeine in his unconventional situation.
“You’re the strangest vampire I’ve ever met,” he admitted.
“Met many?”
“Plenty enough.”
“Killed them all?” The edge of a razor glinted just below the teasing tone.
“Every single one,” Gabe duly admitted.
“Here in Chicago? Or some other city?”
“Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria. Thereabouts.”
Harvey’s brows inched up. “Oh. So not in the US at all?”
“None yet. I spent the last five years in Europe; only got back a few weeks ago,” Gabe said, shifting in his seat. He found the line of questioning decidedly uncomfortable but was compelled to explain himself. “The vampires my uncle and I hunted were different. They were hard to find, always hiding in catacombs, abandoned subway tunnels and the like. Europe has tons of those. The moment they noticed us, they attacked without fail.”
“That sounds positively medieval.”
“They smelled worse than dead things.”
“You’re making this up.”
“No, it’s the truth.”
Silence settled over them while Harvey digested Gabe’s words. Gabe sipped his coffee and studied his host. At that moment, Harvey looked more like a regular guy than a vampire. His short black hair lay slicked back, still half wet. Studying Harvey’s features individually, Gabe noticed only Harvey’s lightly slanting eyes were clearly Asian. All the rest could have been Caucasian, but when put together, the Asian influence was impossible to miss, even if you ignored the eyes. Not that they were easy to ignore; they shone with inquisitiveness. Gabe got the impression he was being dissected and judged. A strange sensation under the circumstances, especially since he had his own curiosity to satisfy.
“What’s that stuff you drink?” he asked.
“Ah that. It’s sustenance—a nutritional blend specifically formulated for vampire needs. My own invention. I’m thinking of calling it
Harvey’s Milk
. What do you think?”