When she was a little girl, vampires had been costumes for Halloween. They were the bad guys in movies, plastic fangs and polyester capes. They were Muppets on television, endlessly counting.
Now she was the one that was counting. Fifty-seven days. Eighty-eight days. Eighty-eight nights.
“Matilda?”
She looked up and saw Dante saunter up to her, earbuds dangling out of his ears like he needed a soundtrack for everything he did. He wore a pair of skin-tight jeans and smoked a cigarette out of one of those long, movie-star holders. He looked pretentious as hell. “I’d almost given up on finding you.”
“You should have started with the gutter,” she said, gesturing to the wet, clogged tide beneath her feet. “I take my gutter-dwelling very seriously.”
“Seriously.” He pointed at her with the cigarette holder. “Even your mother thinks you’re dead. Julian’s crying over you.”
Matilda looked down and picked at the thread of her jeans. It hurt to think about Julian, while waiting for Mardave and Ben. She was disgusted with herself and she could only guess how disgusted he’d be. “I got Cold,” she said. “One of them bit me.”
Dante nodded his head.
That’s what they’d started calling it when the infection kicked in—Cold—because of how cold people’s skin became after they were bitten. And because of the way the poison in their veins caused them to crave heat and blood. One taste of human blood and the infection mutated. It killed the host and then raised them back up again, colder than before. Cold through and through, forever and ever.
“I didn’t think you’d be alive,” he said.
She hadn’t thought she’d make it this long either without giving in. But going it alone on the street was better than forcing her mother to choose between chaining her up in the basement or shipping her off to Coldtown. It was better, too, than taking the chance that Matilda might get loose from the chains and attack people she loved. Stories like that were in the news all the time; almost as frequent as the ones about people who let vampires into their homes because they seemed so nice and clean-cut.
“Then what are you doing looking for me?” she asked. Dante had lived down the street from her family for years, but they didn’t hang out. She’d wave to him as she mowed the lawn while he loaded his panel van with DJ equipment. He shouldn’t have been here.
She looked back at the store window. Mardave and Ben were at the counter with a case of beer and her wine cooler. They were getting change from a clerk.
“I was hoping you, er, wouldn’t be alive,” Dante said. “You’d be more help if you were dead.”
She stood up, stumbling slightly. “Well screw you too.”
It took eighty-eight days for the venom to sweat out a person’s pores. She only had thirty-seven to go. Thirty-seven days to stay so drunk that she could ignore the buzz in her head that made her want to bite, rend, devour.
“That came out wrong,” he said, taking a step toward her. Close enough that she felt the warmth of him radiating off him like licking tongues of flame. She shivered. Her veins sang with need.
“I can’t help you,” said Matilda. “Look, I can barely help myself. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I can’t. You have to get out of here.”
“My sister Lydia and your boyfriend, Julian, are gone,” Dante said. “Together. She’s looking to get bitten. I don’t know what he’s looking for … but he’s going to get hurt.”
Matilda gaped at him as Mardave and Ben walked out of the store. Ben carried a box on his shoulder and a bag on his arm. “That guy bothering you?” he asked her.
“No,” she said, then turned to Dante. “You better go.”
“Wait,” said Dante.
Matilda’s stomach hurt. She was sobering up. The smell of blood seemed to float up from underneath their skin.
She reached into Ben’s bag and grabbed a beer. She popped the top, licked off the foam. If she didn’t get a lot drunker, she was going to attack someone.
“Jesus,” Mardave said. “Slow down. What if someone sees you?”
She drank it in huge gulps, right there on the street. Ben laughed, but it wasn’t a good laugh. He was laughing at the drunk.
“She’s infected,” Dante says.
Matilda whirled toward him, chucking the mostly empty can in his direction automatically. “Shut up, asshole.”
“Feel her skin,” Dante said. “Cold. She ran away from home when it happened and no one’s seen her since.”
“I’m cold because it’s cold out,” she said.
She saw Ben’s evaluation of her change from damaged enough to sleep with strangers to dangerous enough to attack strangers.
Mardave touched his hand gently to her arm. “Hey,” he said.
She almost hissed with delight at the press of his hot fingers. She smiled up at him and hoped her eyes weren’t as hungry as her skin. “I really like you.”
He flinched. “Look, it’s late. Maybe we could meet up another time.” Then he backed away, which made her so angry that she bit the inside of her own cheek.
Her mouth flooded with the taste of copper, and a red haze floated in front of her eyes.
Fifty-seven days ago, Matilda had been sober. She’d had a boyfriend named Julian, and they would dress up together in her bedroom. He liked to wear skinny ties and glittery eye shadow. She liked to wear vintage rock T-shirts and boots that laced up so high that they would constantly be late because they were busy tying them.
Matilda and Julian would dress up and prowl the streets and party at lockdown clubs that barred the doors from dusk to dawn. Matilda wasn’t particularly careless; she was just careless enough.
She’d been at a friend’s party. It had been stiflingly hot, and she was mad because Julian and Lydia were doing some dance thing from the musical they were in at school. Matilda just wanted to get some air. She opened a window and climbed out under the bobbing garland of garlic.
Another girl was already on the lawn. Matilda should have noticed that the girl’s breath didn’t crystallize in the air, but she didn’t.
“Do you have a light?” the girl had asked.
Matilda did. She reached for Julian’s lighter when the girl caught her arm and bent her backward. Matilda’s scream turned into a shocked cry when she felt the girl’s cold mouth against her neck, the girl’s cold fingers holding her off balance.
Then it was as though someone slid two shards of ice into her skin.
The spread of vampirism could be traced to one person—Caspar Morales. Films and books and television had started romanticizing vampires, and maybe it was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.
Crazy, romantic Caspar decided that he wouldn’t kill his victims. He’d just drink a little blood and then move on, city to city. By the time other vampires caught up with him and ripped him to pieces, he’d infected hundreds of people. And those new vampires, with no idea how to prevent the spread, infected thousands.
When the first outbreak happened in Tokyo, it seemed like a journalist’s prank. Then there was another outbreak in Hong Kong and another in San Francisco.
The military put up barricades around the area where the infection broke out. That was the way the first Coldtown was founded.
Matilda’s body twitched involuntarily. She could feel the spasm start in the muscles of her back and move to her face. She wrapped her arms around herself to try and stop it, but her hands were shaking pretty hard. “You want my help, you better get me some booze.”
“You’re killing yourself,” Dante said, shaking his head.
“I just need another drink,” she said. “Then I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “You can’t keep going like this. You can’t just stay drunk to avoid your problems. I know, people do. It’s a classic move even, but I didn’t figure you for fetishizing your own doom.”