After some kind of time there began to be half-recognizable ordinary things in the careening entropy: a street lamp. A corner of a dilapidated building with a revolving door, one of whose panes was broken. A stop sign.
A road sign: Garrison Street.
We were in No Town.
As we went on (“on” still used advisedly), we flickered more clearly into No Town. Sometimes we took a step or two on broken pavement as if we were actually there. Maybe we were.
There were now other people sporadically present also. I didn’t like the look of any of them. We passed several nightclubs with people wandering in and out. There were bouncers at the doors of some of them, but that mostly wasn’t the style in No Town. If you could walk, you could walk where you wanted to. Even the seriously flash spartan clubs, the places where people who lived in downtown high-rises went when they wanted to feel like they were slumming but were still willing to pay thirty blinks for a short glass of wine to prove they were slumming only because they wanted to, had more subtle ways of getting rid of you.
Meanwhile, outdoors, if you fell down, you lay there, and people still ambulatory stepped over you: horizontal bodies were part of the ambience. Maybe you got rolled, while you were lying there being ambient. Maybe you got taken home for dinner. To be dinner. It wasn’t a good place to linger in for anyone—anyone alive, that is— but there was another myth, that if you were high enough, the suckers would leave you alone, because your blood would screw them up. I don’t think this is something I’d want to rely on myself. There are ne’er-do-wells among the Others like there are among us humans, and my guess is there are suckers who have developed a taste for screwed-up blood. Also, if you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything, right? And a still-breathing body facedown in a gutter is real easy to, you know, catch.
I was having trouble staying upright as we winked back and forth between worlds. If when visible I was staggering a little, I would fit right in.
I was a little afraid I might see someone I knew. Gods and angels, never underestimate the power of social conditioning; even under the circumstances, when I was fully expecting never having to face or explain anything to anyone again after the next few minutes or hours or time-fragments splintered by chaos-space, I was worried about this, that I might see Kenny, or his friends, or some of the younger, dumber regulars at Charlie’s; or even what remained of a few of the guys my age I knew who hadn’t got back out of drugs again. What was I afraid of? That they might see me too—holding hands with a vampire? That I would look as if I was merely under the dark and going to the usual fate of a human seen in the company of a vampire? I was supposed to care?
I didn’t know what any humans might be making of us. But I began to see vampires looking back at us. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing them. I didn’t know if this was because they weren’t bothering to try to pass, or if I just knew a vampire when I saw one these days.
I didn’t notice when the first one did more than look, when the first one came at us. I didn’t notice till Con had…never mind. He did it with his other hand, and with the hand that held mine, jerked us back into chaos-space. He wiped the splatter of blood off his face with his forearm, except there was blood on his arm too. I was afraid I’d see him lick his lips. I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t watch long enough. Maybe, you know, used blood isn’t of much interest. My hand trembled in his: in the hand of my lethal vampire companion.
I was alive, human, with a beating heart. I was all alone.
The next time there were several of them. This time Con jerked us out of chaos-space, because he then had to let go of my hand. I was glad I didn’t have to find out what would happen if I got left there alone without him. I wasn’t glad for very long.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do: note to myself, in my next life, get some martial arts training—get a lot of martial arts training—just in case. Again, as with the first vampire who attacked us, something happened—quicker than I could follow—quicker than I wanted to follow, and I yanked my gaze away, afraid of what my dark vision might make out for me. There was blood, again, but there was also at least one vampire left over while Con was otherwise engaged, and he was looking at me. I looked at him, not thinking about anything but my own terror, my eyes wide open, open so wide that they hurt. He met that gaze—hey, he knew a human when he saw one, and he knew he was a vampire—and I saw him falter, and then Con had turned from whatever he was doing and…took care of that one too, too fast for me to look away. I think I probably cried out. Jesse wasn’t going to rescue me, this time. I wasn’t going to come to myself with human arms around me and a human voice shouting in my ear, It’s all over. You’re all right.
There was now quite a lot of blood, and…bits and pieces. I had blood on me too. Con seized my hand again, and said sharply, Come. I didn’t dare look in his face. There would be no comfort, no reassurance, in the face of any vampire. When I took a running step to keep up with him, my shoes slipped. In the blood. There was so much blood on our hands that as it dried, our fingers stuck together. The meaty smell was a miasma, a poison gas.
We didn’t duck back into the chaos-space. I had half-forgotten my alignment, but it was now as if it was tied to me—or I was tied to it. It was pulling us along, through these dark broken streets where the shadows lay twisted and crumpled like dead bodies, pulling as if we were on a leash. I wanted to untie it, but I couldn’t, I mustn’t— I wanted to—no, it was too late; even if I had funked it now, at the last minute, after the last minute, all it would do now is get us killed. Sooner.
I could hear them—someone—keeping pace with us—why didn’t they close in, cut us off, attack us? Con said quietly, as if there was no urgency whatsoever, “Bo will not be able to say your name. Either of your names.”
What? Sunshine. Rae. Daylight names. Old vampires can’t say daylight words either? The very old vampires that can’t go out in the moonlight that is only faint reflected sunlight? The academics would have said Con counted as very old, and he didn’t even wait for full dark: twilight was good enough for him. And he called me Sunshine. There are different ways of being what we are. Apparently Bo hadn’t aged so well. Something to talk to the academics about. Variability of Aging Among Vampires. Usage of Certain Words Pertaining to Daylight by Aged Vampires. Maybe I could get my pass into the Other Museum’s library after all. No, wait. I was about to die.
I didn’t immediately see what good Bo’s not being able to say my name was going to do me. Bo wasn’t going to need to say—or know— my name to kill me.