Dryden screamed and moaned at the sunlight touched his skin. His flesh felt hot and tight and, as he landed, his bones seemed brittle and sharp jutting against his muscles. He screamed as if his last breathe until he drew in another and another. He was conspicuously not on fire and, though the sun's rays felt more light those of an industrial spotlight. As the bones slowly mended over the tens of minutes he lay there, he covered his eyes with his arm. He was going to have a killer sunburn, but he definitely was yet to turn to fire and dust.
What blood he had in him had faded fast in healing from his second story fall. He would need to remember this. He needed to feed soon and copiously. But first, he needed to figure out where he was and how to get to Roselyn first.
He could barely keep his eyes open, the light was so piercing. He squinted his eyes into the smallest slits he could. The world blurred, but he could see well enough to navigate toward a road that would take him back toward civilization. Around him, all he saw was farmland and trees, splotches of green in his limited vision. He imagined that he was in a city or some mountain fortress, somewhere befitting his wretched species, and so winced at how pastoral his prison had been. All the scents of the word rushed to meet and accost him. He could not stand the aroma of overgrown grass, the disgust of the fresh cow pie his foot landed in as he trod across the field.
"Damn it!" he yelled too loudly.
Once on the road, all he could smell was exhaust. This thrilled him, it meant rescue was near or would be coming soon. True to this assumption, a half dozen cars passed this pale, bloodstained, disheveled man before a trucker carting hay picked him up. Dryden moved to sit in the passenger seat, but the driver did not need vampire-enhanced senses to detect the earth bouquet of fresh feces. "Truck bed, buddy, or no ride."
Dryden sighed, not excited with any more time spent in the sun. "Fine, whatever. How far away it Red Hook."
The driver gave him a long, skeptical look. "Bud, you're in Red Hook. This is Route 9."
Dryden looked around. "I am? Where's Main?"
"About a mile, I guess." Seeing that Dryden was still climbing into the back of the truck he shouted, "You're hitchhiking to go a mile?"
"Beats walking," Dryden assured him, covering himself with stray hay.
Back on Main Street, Dryden moved from awning to awning. By now, his skin was red and blistering as though he had fallen asleep on the beach. He could hardly look at a person without feeling horrible hunger pains. While he was more than willing to drink the mugs of blood Seth had provided him, it was beyond his ken to attack someone and drink their blood. Somewhere in him, part of him disagreed. Part of him wanted to tear throats out and bath in the fresh gore, but there was something in him that held this back, some whispered words with the texture of feather tips and ash.
He rang Roselyn's bell a dozen times before someone buzzed him up. Even knocking on her door upstairs hurt, the skin flaking off his knuckles. "C'mon! Let me in!"
The door opened not to his ebony love, but a thin and pale girl looking at him with sleepy eyes. Shane, Roselyn's disquieting roommate, stood studying him.
"You look like hell, Dry."
"I… I feel like it. Where is Roselyn?"
Shane looked around the apartment from the doorway. "Not here…" her eyes looked distant for a moment, then she continued confidently, "She is out looking for you. Where have you been? It's been days and she's been calling your phone constantly."
Days? He didn't remember how many, but that seemed possible. Without sunlight or any celestial bodies, it was difficult to differentiate one day from the next. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
She cocked an eyebrow. "If you say so. You've got a pretty bad sunburn," she said, touching his reddened face. Both started bad, he because of the pain and she because where she touched left a fingerprint of healed, white skin. "Do you want calamine lotion or aloe?"
"That would be great," he thanked her. He moved to enter the apartment and found he couldn't.
"Oh, that's too bad. I don't think we have either of those… but I could go get them from the drugstore."
"That would be great."
She stared at him. "Would you like to come in?" she asked him after he stood there stupidly, looking into the apartment with distress.
"Yeah, great, thanks," he said, shutting all the windows in the living room and collapsing on the sofa.
"He fell out the window?" Ash asked him again.
"Jumped. He jumped out the window," Seth repeated.
"And you let him?"
"I didn't let your pet do a goddamned thing! He jumped. He wasn't… right."
She turned on him, finally interested in something coming out of Seth's mouth. "Not right? In what way?"
"He didn't lust. He drank the blood, but he otherwise just sat there and asked questions. He wasn't properly evil."
"You're sure?"
"I talked of killing everyone he ever loved and he didn't even snicker! He seemed irritated at the thought."
She glared at him and, to his shock, began laughing. "You haven't been outside yet, I take it?"
He shook his head.
"There are no ashes or burn marks. He didn't dust."
Seth looked out of the broken window he was repairing with plywood. True to her words, the ground, while dented and bloody, was fresh.
"Go find him," she ordered. "Bring our peculiar new child back here so we can test further."
"How can I? He has had all day to find a place to hide."
Ash scanned the room for disturbances and noticed that the mattress was askew. She reached under and pulled out the letter. "Oh, this is just precious. Just lovely. I'm pretty sure Dryden has gone no further than 113C Main Street, don't you?"
Seth read the letter over and laughed as he had not in a decade. "What an idiot. But I am still not hearing you convince me why I should retrieve your lost puppy.
She slid her hand from his chest to perineum, not missing an increasing inch. "When you get back with my prince, I'll let you put it anywhere you like. You can cut new orifices in me and have those, if you'd like." She squealed and writhed at the mere thought.
He relented with a kiss, stepping away from her nimble hands before he lost all concentration. "You are lucky you look so young."
"And I always will."
The lotion was colder than anything Dryden had ever felt. When he looked in the mirror to apply it, it was several moments before he realized that he had a reflection to which to apply it. He had been grossly misinformed as to the nature of vampires. His skin was tomato red and ached to touch. Even smiling hurt, not that he felt he had much of an occasion to do that. He checked for fangs, which were present but not nearly as pronounced as he expected.
The lotion spread, his face evened to a swirling pink. He could see every pore, every imperfection on his face. He decided that maybe vampires didn't avoid mirrors because they cast no reflection but because they became so unflattering to one's ego.
Shane tried offering him what hospitality she could and was kindly enough not to burst out laughing when he exited the bathroom. She offered to make him something to eat, but the he started at her offer and profusely insisted against it. Shane did not think that her culinary skills were quite bad enough to warrant that, but she didn't argue.
As night fell, Dryden seems to improve measurably, growing stronger and more enthusiastic. He left despite Shane's assurances that Roselyn would be back at any minute and really wanted to see him. She even stood in the doorway but Dryden managed to lift her off of her feet and place her in a chair to clear his way.
Shane wasn't stupid, and her gift for recognizing daemons was helpful enough that she noticed there was something wrong with him. A sunburn plus his hesitancy to enter the apartment until properly invited plus a mysterious new strength suggested he really had become a vampire, somehow. Shane rolled the idea of vampires around in her head and decided, if the world could include resurrected girls, it certainly could include them. She was a bit sorry he'd been killed and turned into the undead, of course, but didn't seem particularly rapacious or violent and so didn't imagine she had much to fear from them.
Roselyn would not be pleased. A boyfriend who thought he was a vampire might be cute to her, but one that actually needed to suck blood and apparently handled sunlight poorly was quite another thing. Fashion aside, Roselyn was descended from sun worshipping people and would be devastated if she could no longer have picnics in the late afternoon followed by acts of wanton lasciviousness until the sky blushed pink and gray. Shane was not eager to be the one who conveyed this information to her.
Helpfully at this point, a knock came from the door.
"Dryden?" she called, opening the door and hoping for the best.
The man behind the door, an few inches taller than her and every one of them glowed with a kind of subdued murder. "I take it my errant brother has been here?"
"I'm sorry, we don't except solicitors."
He clucked his tongue. "While I would not expressing rule out soliciting for your services at another time, I have other needs at the moment. May I come inside?"
"No," she answered simply.
"Pardon me?"
"I said no. You are expressly not invited into this space. I know what you are."
Seth shook his head slowly then held a cloth up to her nose. "One more question then: Does this smell like chloroform to you?" he asked, then caught Shane in his arms and carried her nimbly down the stairs.
Red Hook is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is published by Cave Drawing Ink and syndicated throughout the internet.
