honestly i didn't notice the vampire thing but maybe i should have (part 3 of 3)

She went to work in the morning, because she honestly didn’t know what else to do. She was so tired and shaken that she considered calling in, but she honestly didn’t want to hang around her apartment and just wait for something bad to happen.

At absolute best, it would be a waste of a day off, and she only had 13 of those left for the whole year. At worst, he’d know where to find her.

Claire stared into her coffee.

‘He already knows where I am. Because my asshole supervisor put my name and face on the school website.’

If that fucker didn’t kill her before Thursday, when all the teachers were back from vacation, she was going to have to figure out a way to snub her supervisor by not giving them a souvenir when she gave everyone else a souvenir. She had hundreds of triple ginger snap cookies, and none of them were going to Mr. Nishida.

Out of miserable curiosity, she searched her own name and the city where she worked to find the photo. It didn’t take long. Claire sat back in her rickity chair and thought about quitting.

‘If I die, they better not use this in my obituary.’

That was, like, a double faux pas. It was wrong to post a photo of someone without their permission, and it was even worse if it was an unflattering photo. And secretly taking photos wasn’t super cool in the first place.

Were vampires actually, like, stronger than other people? Maybe she wasn’t doomed. She was pretty ripped, actually. The guy had survived that jump, but all that proved was that he was durable. So what, she was also durable. And he clearly didn’t have night vision or exceptional grace, or he probably would not have broken the cat poop flowerpot.

‘How legit are the traditional vampire powers and weaknesses?’

Claire did a search on her computer, just to have a list to look at. She took notes, because it made her feel better to have something solid to look at.

Okay, the garlic thing was legit and terrible. But she could still eat it if it was cooked, thank god.

Sunlight? Well. She hadn’t burst into flames or anything yet, so she was leaning towards no. …but maybe big hats and keeping up on her sunscreen would be good ideas, just in case. 

She crossed her legs and leaned back again. Her chair made a violent squeal. She wondered how she would even go about seeing if she had the power to become a bat.

‘…Not at work. What if it worked? ’

It would be a fucking legendary way to quit, that’s what. Same for the ‘turning into smoke’ thing. There had been more than a couple times when she’d wished she could lose all her body mass and become a being of pure energy.

Claire filed it as an option. And then she tried to get through the rest of the list. But it was just so damn hard when she was equally tired and wired from her 4th cup of coffee to keep awake at her desk.

Somehow, she got through the day without thinking too much about what if she’d eaten her mother. She ate snacks out of her desk, because she had not been in any frame of mind to cook that morning and she didn’t want to go buy anything. She hesitated to leave at 3:50 when her shift ended. It took supreme willpower to walk up the stairs to her apartment. She held her breath when she opened it up. This time, she checked everywhere, even under the couch where there objectively was just not enough room for a person to hide. She checked the windows, again. Still locked.

Once she was certain that the house was empty, she sank down on her bed. She was twitchy, but just… so tired. She set her alarm for 7:15 so that she’d have time to get to practice and then laid down on top of her comforter.

And she was just out.

Claire woke up with her alarm. She sat up slowly and blinked around her room. She was honestly kind of confused that she had managed to sleep. She was still tired, but she definitely felt better than before.

Was being able to sleep in the daytime a vampire skill?

She grabbed her sports kit, filled a bottle with the vaguely cold water that came out of her tap, and made it down to her car with time to spare. She definitely hadn’t had enough to eat to fuel a workout, so she stopped at a convenience store and got a sandwich to choke down as she drove.

It was a Monday. Mondays meant new techniques for the week. The gym was mostly empty for once. There was one other woman, and two male blue belts.

‘I bet I can guess how teacher is going to partner us up for practice today,’ Claire thought dryly.

She changed clothes, stretched, and did her best to focus on what her teacher was demonstrating.

And sure enough, she was put to work with Natsumi-san. She minded it less than she used to- Natsumi was improving pretty fast. In a couple of months, she would probably be a decent sparring partner. She needed to be walked through the movements a good 10 times, but she was committing to them and using a decent amount of force when she was supposed to be choking or flipping Claire. It was better to have a partner with enthusiasm and low technical skill than someone who knew techniques but was just going through the motions.

It was an easy day, honestly. When it was her turn to take the active role, she never got any resistance from Natsumi. She only ever practiced the first variation, because Natsumi apparently didn’t remember the defensive move that would trigger the second variation.

Still. She could feel that she wasn’t at her best, and it was frustrating. It felt like she was trying to move through pudding- she could see what she wanted to do, she knew that she’d done it before, but she couldn’t get her body to respond as fluidly as it was capable of. She punished herself in the cooldown, lifting her torso way more than necessary when doing triangles just to feel the burn in her abdomen.

Natsumi thanked her for practice and went into the tiny, hot dressing room to change, but Claire lingered and did a few stretches. She eyed the blue belts. One of them wandered near the teacher to ask a question, so she pounced on the other- Mr. Kuwabata- to request a spar.

It went alright, she supposed. He was stronger and more skilled than her, so he tried to play to her level. For the first few minutes, she got a few good moves in, including an arm bar and a few escapes via vigorous shrimping.

Kuwabata said something encouraging after they finished, though she didn’t know what exactly he’d said she did well. Her teacher made a noncommittal noise at that. The other blue belt said something with a laugh that she was pretty sure meant that it had looked like he’d been bullying her.

‘It probably did. I mean, he was being nice, but we are not on the same level even when I’m at my best.’

She sighed. She looked at her teacher. It took a while for him to rephrase his critique so that she could understand, but apparently it was about her breathing. She was panting, which wasted energy, made it easy to predict when she would move, and gave her opponent information about when to try to go on the offense.

So. Breathe quietly, basically.

She drove home and arrived around 10. She checked her apartment. She stripped and started the washing machine with all of her sweaty gear. And she took a fast shower.

She barely managed to dredge up enough fucks to give to put on a bra, a shirt she’d wear to work tomorrow, and a blue pair of shorts. She slowly confirmed that she had enough alarms for the morning- 3- and opened up her messenger app.

Claire swallowed. Her mouth, as always, was dry.

‘I could try to call Mom. If she picks up, then I’d know.’

But if she didn’t pick up, Claire would definitely not be able to sleep.

‘How many days would it take for someone to find a body out of state, id it, find out who to contact, and call a relative who lives overseas? Would someone have contacted me by now?’

Pretty much no one in her mother’s family had her contact information, to be honest. And her mother’s sister- ha! She would not answer the phone if police called. She’d assume they were looking for her daughter.

It could take a while for that information to make it to Japan, is all that she was sayin’.

She couldn’t make a move on it. She didn’t want to affirmatively know that something was wrong. She didn’t want to do anything weird and suspicious like contact a relative out of the blue.

Claire let her phone drop the half a foot to land with a soft thump on her rug, even though the bedside table was right there. She rolled the other way, hugging her pillow. And- like magic- she fell asleep.

It was still dark when some lizard instinct woke her. She just felt wrong. Claire sat up, instantly alert. With far too much clarity, she could see her dark bedroom. Her eyes were drawn to her mirror. She waited without breathing.

The surface warped.

She didn’t know what she was looking at. It must have been a dream.

It pulled out, like hot glass bubbling out a pipe. And – a foot, a leg, a hand, an arm.

Claire scrambled out of bed. Her body had made the connection before her mind accepted what she was seeing.

So apparently there really was something connecting vampires and mirrors, but it wasn’t that vampires couldn’t be seen in them. Or maybe that was still true for old-fashioned mirrors with silver backings, but-

She swept two seashells and a bottle of lotion off the top of the little box drawer she kept on her bedside table. She was stepping forward and swinging it into the fucker’s face as he emerged from the mirror. It connected solidly, with a truly satisfying crunch. There was a casualty as a drawer flew out, flinging green tea face lotion and other toiletries to thwack against the window.

He stumbled backwards, into the mirror again.

She dropped the drawer on her bed and grabbed at the standing mirror. She laid it down flat on the floor and kneeled on top of it.

‘You don’t look strong enough to dead lift me, fucker.’

Claire realized that she was baring her teeth.

There was a jerking motion beneath her. It happened once, twice. And then it stopped. She stayed there, feeling adrenaline pump through her body. She realized that she was controlling her breath into near-silence, and was separate enough from her mind to be proud.

There was a clatter at the other end of the house-

‘The mirror over my sink.’

She leapt up, trying to think of what to do. He couldn’t possibly know the layout of her house that well- rush him in the dark? Flip the light on to disorient him when he opened the door to her room and attack him then?

That would backfire. She’d also be trying to adjust her vision. She turned on the light and waited by her closed door, heart pounding. She picked up the drawer set again, leaving all the drawers themselves on her bed. No use flinging lotion around.

He didn’t open the door. She was still adjusting to the light when a dark cloud began seeping into her room, around the cracks under her door.

…He didn’t want to get hit in the face again. And he couldn’t see what she was doing. She flung the closet door open, yanked out the vacuum, and plugged it in with shaking hands. She mentally apologized to her neighbor for the noise and turned it on.

The first bits of smoke went in immediately. Then they went taut, like a rubber band. She gripped the vacuum tighter, a little worried that it would be ripped out of her grip. But the smoke gave first, ripping. Part of it rebounded into her living room. Part of it disappeared into the vacuum.

She heard a heavy creak and coughing on the other side of the door. She kicked it open, brandishing her vacuum. It was still whirring, which was as close to a battle cry as she could make at this hour. She had no idea what time it was.

Claire got one good hit in, and then he caught the vacuum. He looked down at her, severely unamused.

He did not look like a substantially inconvenienced vampire. He wasn’t missing any pieces from her vacuuming, he had no bruises or other injuries from being clocked in the face twice. She silently chalked up a point to vampires being sturdy.

She gave him a queasy smile. She turned off the vacuum.

Claire barely had enough time to grab her phone and keys before he started to drag her down the stairs. She grabbed her wallet on reflex because she needed her license to drive, but she sincerely hoped that no one stopped her. She didn’t think that would end well.

He made her drive to the beach. She was pretty sure he was going to kill her.

They parked the car. Her hands were shaking. He took her keys, made her leave the wallet, and forced her to start walking. It took a while- she didn’t know how long, to be honest, but the creep made a pleased sound and lifted his head to look at something.

There was a man sitting on the wet sand, staring out in the sea. He was sitting so that the water washed up over his legs. His shoes and jacket were folded on the dry sand about 10 feet further up the beach. He looked up placidly when they walked over. He looked like he might be 40 years old or so, with deep laugh lines and a white polo shirt on. He’d popped the collar all the way up. She was fixating on the wrong things.

She opened her mouth to tell him to run away, and then she realized that he was waiting for them. His eyes were glazed over, his expression absent minded. He was holding a kitchen knife.

Horror crawled up her spine and walked spindly fingers on her neck.

‘How did he do this? He made this poor man bring the weapon we’re going to kill him with?’

“Hello again,” the fucking sociopath with a grip on her arm said. He sounded friendly. “Kill yourself- how do you say that in Japanese?” He shook her arm.

Claire shook her head and tried to back away. Her brain was screaming. She couldn’t watch this. She definitely couldn’t contribute to this.

“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?” he sounded amused. His fingers were going to leave bruises. When she didn’t say anything, he shook her again, roughly.

“I’m not telling you,” Claire admitted. She wasn’t collected enough to lie.

“Ah, good.” He let her go, and then he casually pushed at her chest. She stumbled backwards because she wasn’t ready for it. He was looking down and pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Your language skills will come in helpful, when you decide to be sensible.” He held the phone up to his mouth. It made a familiar ching. “Kill yourself,” he repeated.

There was a pause. ching. Then the translation application repeated it in bright, stilted Japanese.

Thump, thump. Her head was light and floating and totally silent except from her heartbeat when the unfamiliar Japanese man obediently brought his own kitchen knife to his neck. She cringed away. She wanted to scream, but it was stuck in her throat.

His legs were twitching. She focused on them. She couldn’t look away, but she couldn’t bear to actually look at where the blood was coming from.

There was nothing dignified about the way a vampire feeds, apparently. She heard sand crunch and water slosh around when the creep knelt down. And then wet sounds of slurping and licking.

‘This cannot be happening.’

She was too horrified to look, but something drew her eyes inexorably upward. The poor stranger was staring empty-eyed up at the moon. His body was being held so that it was mostly in the ocean, hefted over the monster’s knees to keep the blood from mingling too much with the saltwater. She saw, but couldn’t quite register what he was doing.

“Friendly tip.” He smacked loudly. His face was filthy when he looked up at her. “Keep the blood in the water, dilutes it, makes it much less likely that a crime scene will be identified. Stick the knife deep underwater in the sand, at least 40 feet from where you let go of the body.”

She didn’t say anything.

She could see that he frowned at her. But he ducked his head back down and kept drinking, so she thought she was safe.

Claire might have dissociated a bit. But she was suddenly very aware that he was coming at her, fast. She stepped backwards, twice, away from the surf- but he caught her.

He grabbed her arm with his bloody hand and then put the other on the back of her head to keep her still. And then he shoved his thumb in her mouth. His fingernail tore at the inside of her lip. She could feel his knuckle. She could taste blood. Her reflex was to swallow and she nearly did. She held the impulse and yanked herself down and back to get out of his grip. He let her go, or maybe he wasn’t strong enough to hold her with one hand.

She spat it out as much she could, but she could still taste it. Oh, jesus. Her mouth filled with new saliva and she kept spitting. She stumbled to the shore and tried to rinse her mouth out with saltwater. It tasted terrible, but it wasn’t warm human blood.

He laughed.

She spun around so that he could watch him.  

“Oh, that was barely anything, you big baby.” He licked his filthy hand again, keeping eye contact.

She hated him.

“Search up the time for sunrise tomorrow,” he ordered pleasantly. “I want to double-check. It’s around 5. You won’t want to be out here at that time any more than I want to.”

It was better than him forcing more blood down her throat, so she did it. “5:37”, she reported.

She might have lied about sunrise, if he hadn’t already known the general timeframe.

‘I barely had any blood. The sun wasn’t bothering me before, so maybe I’m still fine. If it would really get rid of him, maybe it would be worth the risk.’

He hummed. “I thought you’d lie,” he said. “But that sounds right.” He wiped his hand on his jeans and held up his phone. He unlocked it to show to her that he’d already searched the information. “Maybe you’ve got some sense.” He tucked the phone back in his pocket on reflex.

She didn’t even pretend to smile. She just looked at him, hoping he’d see what a little worm she thought he was. …Had he had that window on his phone still open just to show her? Or did he assume he was going to have to check it multiple times so that he didn’t forget?

‘…It’s really important information,’ Claire thought. ‘But he wasn’t 100% sure about it, even though it was the last thing that he searched up?’

She thought about that while he slurped up more and more blood. The sound was making her sick. She closed her eyes and wavered. She tried to think about being somewhere else.

Her whole body flinched. He was walking towards her. Claire tensed, but she didn’t run. She’d seen how fast he was. It wouldn’t end well for her.

“You’ll have to hold this for me.” He had a cocky little smile as he dug his phone and her keys out of his pocket. He was cocky because he knew she would do what he told her to. He held it up for a second to look at what he’d searched earlier. “5:37,” he said under his breath. And then he looked towards her and held out them out.

‘He’s going to leave me alone with his phone? Oh. He cannot possibly be this stupid.’

But he was. She reached out and accepted his phone. His still-unlocked phone.

Without giving her a backwards glance, the dumbest vampire on the whole fucking beach hefted the leaking body over his back and began swimming out into the ocean. She watched him go for a moment, keeping her thumb on the screen so that it didn’t deactivate. Then she opened up General, Settings, Time and Date. She changed the Time Zone setting to set the time back by an hour. Then she put it in her pocket and did the same with her phone, just in case.

‘He has shit judgment. And he thought he was going to be my vampire mentor?’

He took a pretty long time swimming the body out. When she heard splashing coming back, her phone said it was 3:04. Her pulse jumped. She looked out for where he was. It was hard to see in the dark, but he had gotten misplaced in the tide. It would take him a few minutes to get back to her.

‘It takes 35 minutes from my car to my apartment. And it was maybe a 10 minute walk to the car. Maybe 15 minutes.’

In other words, they’d need to leave in the next 15-20 minutes to be reasonably safe from sunrise.

‘But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I want to keep him on the beach as long as possible.’

Her heartbeat was going way too fast. She needed to calm down, or have a plausible reason. …or maybe it was fine and he’d expect her to be scared when he got back anyway.

‘If I can avoid it at all, I don’t want him in my car. I don’t want a body in there. So I need to keep him from turning back until… about 5:30, to be safe.’

Jesus. She needed to stall him for nearly an hour and a half.

…The best case scenario was that she ended up disposing of a body and then dragging herself to work. The worst case scenario was that he realized she was trying to trick him and killed her.

She might be able to figure out how to deal with a body. But still, it’d be way better to keep it out of her personal property.

“Did you miss me?” He trudged up to her and shook his head. She flinched away from the spray of sea water. “You have a towel, sweetheart?”

Not with her, but she had several in her car. Of course she did. She was always ready to go to the beach. She had two grills, a beach tent, a shade umbrella, and two large tarps in her car, along with a beach emergency bag that included seashell tiaras, a bikini, tongs, and a set of a cutting board and knife for grilling vegetables.

“No,” she said. If they went back to the car now, they’d probably just leave.

He made an exaggerated sound of disappointment, but he didn’t blink at the lie. He’d just been saying shit to be stupid then. “What a shame. Guess I’ll have to dry this way.” He shrugged off his shirt.

Claire cringed. She felt a little shaky from built-up adrenaline. She wanted to run and hide but she had to stay firmly put to have any chance at getting away.

He handed her his shirt and commanded, “Wring that out.”

She had to grit her teeth hard. But she did it. And then did the same when he handed her his jeans. That took a lot longer. He could have helped, or at least taken back the damp shirt. But of course he didn’t. He just stood there and watched with that stupid little smirk.

‘I need to say something. I have to have a reason to stay out, and I have to do it before he suggests leaving so that it isn’t obvious that I’m stalling.’

…If there was one thing that was universally true about mediocre men…

She swallowed. She finished twisting the hems of the jeans dry and looked up at him, just for a moment. “How…” Her mouth was so dry. “How did you do that, earlier? Get the man to come to the beach, I mean.”

He made a delighted sound and stepped into her personal space. She tolerated it, but it was fucking hard not to struggle when he pulled her chin up to make her look at him. Claire gave an involuntary jerk, but it wasn’t enough to break his grip.

“You want to be able to do that?” he cooed it at her. “I can teach you.”

His breath stank. It was hot against her face. She squirmed back, just a bit, and closed her eyes. He shook her. His grip on her face tightened, forcing her to do what he wanted. “No, no, look at me.” His voice was sharp for just a moment, then it smoothed out again. He gave a laugh, but it sounded forced. He was trying way hard to seem cool. “Persuasion,” he cooed. “When you’re stronger, I can teach you to hypnotize and convince with your voice. You can make humans your servants.”

What a creep.

“So you found that man earlier today?” she asked. It wasn’t just to keep him talking. That poor man deserved to be remembered. Someone should know what had happened to him.

“Yes.” He breathed on her face again. She didn’t think he was doing it on purpose, but the smell was making her stomach turn. “I just…” He started walking his hand up her hip. She put her hand on his forearm by reflex and then froze, because she had been about to use his arm as leverage to throw him over her shoulder. She wanted to do that, very much. But it would show her hand. Too early.

He mistook the movement for some girlish protest, and the sick fuck seemed to like it. He hooked his other hand around the back of her shorts’ waistband and used the force to gently steer her body closer to him.

Her face was hot with absolute fucking hatred.

‘I’m going to see him dead.’

He licked her fucking ear.

“I found him walking his bike home from a bar.” He sounded delighted by his own cleverness. “Overworked salaryman drinks too much, bikes to the beach, body is never found. Obviously, the poor drunk idiot wanted to go for a swim. Shame.”

…That only worked if the blood in the sand was never found. And it probably wouldn’t be, she supposed.

Pretty neatly done. She hated him, but he had a routine down. The only suspicious thing was that he’d killed two people in the same city. That would raise eyebrows, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t impossible, but it was worth noticing.

She didn’t notice him do it, but he was pulling a phone out of her shorts pocket. She looked down to see him type in 4-5-6-7 to unlock it, but then he held it up and turned the screen away. She couldn’t see what time it said, but she froze.

This was it. If he had a decent internal clock, he’d know that it was wrong and they’d leave immediately. If he didn’t…

“3:18”, he said. He didn’t seem to think it was off. He put the phone back in her pocket, because he didn’t have anywhere dry to put it.

‘4:18,’ she thought. ‘I need just a little bit more than another hour to keep him out of my car. An hour and 12 minutes. But only another 20, 30 minutes so that the sun rises while we’re in the car.’

That would be dangerous, though. He seemed spiteful enough to grab the wheel.

Her heart was pounding.

“When should we leave, do you think?” he asked.

She had caught onto him well enough by now to know it was a test. He already had a pretty good idea, but she could lowball it. “It took about half an hour to drive here,” she said quietly. “So we should be back to the car around 5:00.”

“And 10 minutes to get back to the car, right?” He kicked at some sand, wandering away from her. “So to cut it close we should turn back from here around 4:50. To be safe, around 4:40.”

Her tension eased, just a bit. If he stuck to that plan, he wouldn’t even be thinking to head back until it was actually far too late at 5:40. And he had to do the math aloud. That made it seem like he didn’t do this much, she noted. So if there was some way to know the time was wrong- intuition, moon position- he didn’t seem to be aware of it.

That fit. He was a lonely loser. He usually had nothing to do, once he’d finished getting off on killing people.

‘So he’ll probably want to stay out as long as he can.’

“I don’t want to put that wet shit back on.” He stretched, with his back to her.

‘Walking further away from the car wins twice. It costs time to do, and it’ll add onto the time spent walking back.’

What was down that end of the beach? She strained to remember. Something, anything that she could suggest to get him to walk that way…

There was nothing, except a place to grill, clusters of pine trees… some rocks… If they walked half an hour they could make it to a convenience store but she definitely didn’t want to be seen so close to a crime scene.

“There’s not much wind,” she said. The words came out stiff. That was probably fine. “Your clothes will dry faster if we move. Or hang them from something.”

He hummed, noncommittally. But- the direction he’d started walking was away from the car. So she looked like she was being obedient when she walked towards him. Her heart was absolutely going to kill her from stress but- yes. He started walking, not quite letting her get in front of him.

They walked. It seemed to both take forever and to definitely not use anywhere near enough time. She couldn’t guess if it had been 40 seconds or 4 minutes when he broke the silence. “Was I right? You were turned very recently, weren’t you? You don’t know anything.” The last part was a little scornful.

She didn’t really know what to say. The truth- no idea on timeframe, how, or why- would not appeal to him.

‘If he wasn’t asking me this, I’d wonder if the creep did it to me.’

“Last week,” she said. She had to clear her throat. “In the United States.”

“Denver?” he asked, sounding interested. “I don’t know of anyone hunting around there. It’s not good for you to eat that shit.”

…what?

‘Is he saying that you don’t want to drink blood from someone who has been smoking weed?’ she wondered. “Wouldn’t be it much grosser to drink from someone who smokes tobacco?” Claire asked. She didn’t mean to actually sound curious.

He snorted. “It’s not an issue of taste. But the drugs are going to make you sick. Even alcohol- I had that man wait for hours before I could have a taste, so that it could metabolize.”

…This was interesting information. “Do other drugs work the same way?” she asked. “Like, if someone was taking a lot of medicine, would you get sick from it?”

“Definitely,” he agreed.

And she had an epiphany. Claire licked her lips, wondering how to phrase this. “You said that I’m a very weak vampire,” she said slowly. “That’s because I haven’t drank much blood?”

He stopped and faced her. His eyes were glittering. “You’ll be so much better after you do,” he promised. He was totally serious. “You won’t believe how good you’ll feel once you’re satiated. You won’t care about the human cost then.”

That was a gross way to say that. And a disgusting sentiment.

‘But makes it sounds a lot like I definitely didn’t drink enough to hurt anyone.’

She managed a weak smile and a subtle enough forward motion to prompt him to keep walking without making it obvious that she was doing it.

The floodgates had been opened. He only needed that smallest sign of interest to unload on her- he had clearly been waiting on an audience. He went off on tangents, waxing poetic about the natural high of killing and then his frustrations about being unable to turn another vampire, because he couldn’t restrain himself. Once he’d had a taste, he’d drink too much, and there was never enough time for the disease to incubate.

‘It’s transmitted via saliva,’ Claire realized. ‘Or other bodily fluids, I guess. So when would I have had an open wound that saliva could enter?’

…Oh, Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ in a dump truck.

‘The only time I had a cut in Chicago was from that stray cat,’ she realized. She felt a bit faint. ‘Did I seriously- did I for real catch vampirism from a cat? I’m never going to be able to admit that. I’d sound crazy.’

It was after that that she’d had symptoms.

‘And it fits the other theory.’

So her vampire origin was either getting scratched by a vampire cat who had licked her claws, or getting scratched by a regular cat who had blood on her claws from scratching a vampire. And the transformation had been triggered when she consumed Mom’s potato blood. Because of course she had lied about adequately cleaning that knife and cutting board. She’d probably put the bloody potato in the roast because she didn’t want to waste it, and lied because she thought everyone else would be a whiny baby for not wanting to eat traces of her blood.

There was no dignity to any of this. But if she survived, she was like 80% certain that she could get a response back from her mother. Jesus, no wonder she’d felt like she was dying after drinking that. Mom was on so many medications. And she’d been drinking while cooking.

A weight came off her shoulders. She hadn’t killed anyone. No matter what happened, the creep at least couldn’t blackmail her. She had nothing to hide. Her hand twitched upwards, but she controlled it before she reached for her pocket.

‘Still can’t call the police. He’s a worm, but he’s good at that hypnotizing thing. Maybe some people without vampirism are resistant, but I don’t want to risk them.’

The only thing that would make this worse was raising the body count. Or getting him an ally. She might be as strong or stronger than one sniveling vampire was- but a Japanese policeman would be in way better shape than she was.

She wanted to look at her phone, more than anything. But if she was nervously checking the time, it was a lot more likely to prompt him to worry about it and turn around faster.

“Maybe you just don’t have that natural aggression,” he babbled. God, she hated the smug sound of his voice. “You’re too gentle. It’s cute.”

‘…What the fuck would he know?’ Claire thought, rebellious. ‘I can kick some ass when I want to. Is he choosing not to remember how I said hello, house invader? I came swinging.’

He probably did prefer not to think of that. He had an ego.

“I don’t like to see people hurt,” she said. If he had any brains at all, he would consider that a worrying statement for his conceit that she would follow him around forever.

He laughed like it was the best thing he’d ever heard. “Aww,” he crooned. He reached back and ruffled her hair.

She endured it silently. She was enduring a lot silently, holding his wet jeans and t shirt while he ambled down the beach in his boxers and waxed poetic about what he could teach her.

“-so, anyway, the last bitch I found doing her grocery shopping.” He laughed. This was clearly supposed to be funny. “So I walked up to her, told her to leave her cart full of, like, pizza rolls and we’d go do something better. I had her drive me to her house, and-”

Claire focused on her breathing. She couldn’t listen to him recite how he hunted the people he’d tried and failed to make his companions. She had noticed that it was always a woman, though. She wished that she could avoid thinking about that.

‘Even if we turn back now,’ she thought viciously, ‘he’s done for. There’s nowhere to hide from sunrise in my car. We don’t have time to get back into my apartment before daylight.’

She berated herself for the thought a moment later. She couldn’t get cocky. He had been a vampire far longer than she had, and he was annoying enough that surely someone had tried to kill him before now. He might be able to come up with a solution if she didn’t trap him well enough.

The more he talked, the more it felt like she had a moral duty to see him dead or die trying. He was a self-centered monster with absolutely no empathy and a pile of bodies wherever he went.

“When are you planning to move on?”

Claire blinked. “What?”

He looked down at her with a superior little smirk. “Come now. You can’t live in that apartment forever. Now that you can’t go to work, eventually someone will try to repossess it. It’s connected to your real name. You’re so stupid, it’s adorable.”

She looked at him like he was the dumbest slug she’d ever encountered. She had the sense not to say that, though.

‘He hasn’t noticed that I can still go out during the daytime,’ Claire realized. ‘…He never actually paid attention to me. He’s assuming he knows what’s going on and trying to sound superior.’

“I’ll take you back to where I’m staying.”

All the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She couldn’t control her shudder.

“It’s easy,” he added scornfully. Because he thought the problem was that she thought it would be hard? “You can enter any human’s home you’ve been invited into before, or any vampire’s home if you know where it is. I have multiple residences, of course, but I’m primarily in a place in Australia.”

‘I always knew that country was full of fucking bullshit.’

He rattled off an address. It meant nothing to her, but she remembered it. It was hard not to, when she was fixated on the fact that his plan was to take her back to his home and trap her inside with him for 13 hours of daylight.

‘If it came to that- I would open a door or curtain or something,’ she thought grimly. ‘It won’t, though. It won’t.’ Her heart was beating way too fast. She felt twitchy and itchy and she wanted to scratch off the skin where he’d touched her and breathed on her.

“What time is it?” There was a distinct whine to his voice. “Show me,” he demanded.

Moment of truth. She took a phone out- his, she realized. She handed it to him. He touched the screen. She waited. He didn’t say anything before handing it back to her.

She dared to turn it so that she could check the time before she put it back in her pocket. It said 4:22.

’15 minutes.’

“Why are you smiling?” His voice was sharp- of course it was, he’d noticed something for the first time in his life. Good for him.

“No reason,” Claire said. She slipped her phone away. “Walk another few minutes and then turn back?” She pretended to check the clothes slung over her other arm. “They’re getting a lot dryer.”

“I asked you a question, you bitch.” He grabbed her upper arm and her hip. He thought he was intimidating.

Claire looked up at him. She thought of all the self-defense movements from practice that basically started off in this position. She put her hand on his forearm, twisted so that her back was against his front, and grabbed his upper sleeve of the same arm with her free hand. She squatted, and pulled his arm over her shoulder at the same time that she used her hips to lift his torso. He went flying over her shoulder to land on his back, textbook-perfect. And he was a dumbass who didn’t know how to break his fall, so he had no chance of being ready to counter when she sat on him, used one thigh to crush his neck, and rotated his torso to the side so that she could arm bar him. He squawked. She’d dropped his clothes at some point.

“You’re such a little bitch,” she said calmly.

He cursed at her.

She pulled her heels tighter against his side and lifted her hips to put more pressure on his elbow joint. This was the point when her partners would always tap out.

He was too stupid and too proud. He struggled, which was a really bad idea. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he promised. His free hand slapped ineffectually against the sand.

“You ever actually killed anyone?” Claire asked. It might have been a bit of a taunt. “I don’t think so. I think that you’re a pathetic coward, and you know it. If you couldn’t just whine and get people to do what you want, you’d never get anything done.” Her grip on his forearm was pretty damn tight. “You want to try me?”

“You bitch!” He wheezed and tried to swing to kick her.

She lifted her hips a little bit higher. She dislocated his elbow- or broke it, she wasn’t really sure. There was a popping sound and a jerking movement that the joint was just not going to recover from. While he shouted, she let his torso hit the ground and spun so that she had mount position. She grabbed his other arm at the wrist and snaked her free hand underneath his arm to get a grip on her own forearm. “From here,” Claire warned, “I can dislocate your shoulder.”

She didn’t, though, because she didn’t have to and she wasn’t a sociopath. With one functioning arm, chances that he’d be able to get a dominant position over her were really low. She waited. He struggled and cursed, but it was turning to sobs.

She waited.

He wailed. Snot was running down his face.

It was hard to feel any sympathy. He’d killed two people in the last 24 hours, and he’d have killed her too. Because it made him feel good to do it.

“The problem with people like you,” she said, “is that you’re completely fucking mediocre and boring and shit. But you can’t handle reality or improve yourself, so you need to go on a power trip to convince yourself that you’re just better than everyone else.” Her jaw tightened.

It had probably been 5 minutes by now.

She wished that she could check her phone. But it would be cocky to think she could hold him with one arm and half her attention. She probably could, but it was better to wait out the clock.

His sobs turned into sniffles. He was keeping his injured arm very still.

They were silent for a long time before he mustered himself enough to try reasoning with her.

“You don’t have a plan, do you?” He tried. “You can’t just keep me here. But you beat me. If you get up and go home, I’ll never bother you again.”

He thought he could bargain with her?

‘I watched you kill a man,’ she thought incredulously. ‘You sent me a picture of a dead man yesterday, just to scare me. You tried to blackmail me by convincing me that I was just as bad as you, and you wanted to keep me captive. But you think I could stand to let you walk away?’

She was not especially brave. But she liked to think that she would choose what she was doing now, even if she wasn’t pretty sure that she would survive sunrise.

“You go your way, and I’ll go mine.” He sniffled. “We need to leave soon, to get inside in time.”

Claire pursed her lips. She thought about telling him the truth- there were less than ten minutes until sunrise, surely. It was better not to tell him. He’d get more desperate. And it might be a little crueler to deliberately ensure he was terrified up until the end. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “Where would you go?”

“Far away,” he promised. “I’ll never bother you again. I’ll never come back to Japan. I never should have followed you.” The honesty in that last thought soured his tone, just a bit.

‘He’s spiteful. And he couldn’t stand thinking that I’d outsmarted him. He’d probably hypnotize someone and send them after me.’

“Tell me a little more about vampirism,” she said. She didn’t know if she’d have another chance to learn. She’d need to either avoid or be ready to counter other vampires if they were like him.

“I’m 67 years old,” he said. It took a moment to get the non sequitur. “I still look like I did in the 80s. Most of us are travelers, it’s better if we have different techniques. Less chance of humans catching on. Hide in areas near organized crime, it’s easier for a person to go missing without questions. The, uh. Smoke. It took me 20 years to be able to do that. You have to hold your breath for it to work and believe that you can be insubstantial.”

Noted. “How do I find other vampires?”

‘If they all suck like you, I’m going to buy UV plant lights and just bust around passing out ass-kickings.’

Might need some backup for that, tbh.

“I have an address book,” he said helpfully. “When you let me go, I can give it to you. It has everyone I know of in it and their territory. There’s a few in New York, I know one in Chicago, and there’s around 20 operating in Finland for some reason. I have a lot of names. So I can avoid anyone who I have problems with. But you’re new, you can try to contact anyone.”

She resisted the urge to ask if the vampire in Chicago seemed like the type of person to bite cats.

“The book is at your place in Australia?” Claire asked.

“Yes,” he said. His body twitched. “I can get it in two minutes, it’s right in the room with my mirror. Oh, you should only have one, so you know where anyone will come in.”

That was actually rather helpful. And it probably shouldn’t be in her bedroom. Ugh. “Is there anything else that’s true about vampire myths?”

“You can turn into a bat,” he said. “The trick is-” He shuddered.

She waited. His face was contorting. She really wanted to be a bat. She considered gentling her grip, but it really wasn’t a good idea. “Yes?” Claire prompted.

He wheezed. He was spasming.

She frowned down at him. His face was rapidly purpling, but she wasn’t anywhere near his neck. He wasn’t choking.

It looked like there was a spark on the side of his face. Sweat was pouring off of him into the sand.

It wasn’t hot out. It was-

Oh. Shit.

She scrambled off of him. She was a little afraid that it was a trick, but he continued to twitch on the ground. Smoke was rising.

She glanced at the skyline over the ocean, and then remembered that direction was west. She looked the other way.

“5:37,” Claire said. She didn’t quite dare take her eyes off him long enough to check her phone.

He gasped- and burst into flames.

She startled backwards.

The fire went out pretty quickly. It left a considerable pile of ash. She saw something glinting in it. When Claire bent to cautiously examine, she saw a coin.

She frowned at it.

…He’d only been wearing boxers. Had he been keeping a coin in his underpants? Had he eaten it at some point?

There was no dignity to vampirism at all.

She didn’t want to touch it, so she left the pile of ash. She took his clothes, because her fingerprints would be all over them and there was a nearby crime scene. Claire hustled back to her car and dug into her emergency beach kit for sunscreen. She smeared it all over her face and body with shaking hands, because she had the slightly warm uncomfortable feeling that she normally associated with a mild sunburn.

The feeling subsided when she had her sunscreen on.

…Good. That was good to know. She flicked on her headlights, because it was still pretty dark out, and she drove home. She showered. She tied up the damp clothes in a plastic bag to deal with later. And she got a solid 2.5 hours of sleep before she had to go to work.

XXX

Epilogue

Two women came walking down the beach in mid Fall. It was chilly, but a sunset yoga class was beginning to gather 40 feet further down the sand. They were both wearing sunhats and long sleeves, which was not particularly unusual in Japan. One of them stopped.

The other tilted up her sunglasses to peer around. “This is where?” she asked.

The first young woman nodded. She was looking at a sign. It was new, with stern black and red kanji on a white background.

“What does it say?” She let her sunglasses fall and tilted her head towards the sign.

“I can’t read all of it,” the first one said. Her tone was very neutral. “But I think it says that it is forbidden to dump out your BBQ here. It’s fine to grill here, but you need to take the ashes off of the beach.”

“Ah,” said her friend. “That makes sense.”

They started walking again They set down their yoga mats near the other women. “Hey, Vicky,” said the first woman. “How long do you think we should wait until we go visit our friend in New York?”

“At least a few more months,” Vicky said decisively. “Maybe over summer vacation. We have a lot of break time then, long summer days to enjoy outside…”

“Winter is a really good time to work on jiu jitsu. I think I’ll have my blue belt by summer,” her friend concurred in a mild tone. “Alright. We have time.”

“Plenty.”