Chapter 1
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Johanna is Dead
"Are you in one of your moods again?"
It was Sydney's idea to hunt on a night that it rained. It was autumn. The days were growing shorter, and it worked to their advantage. People were in their homes, and even if they weren't, the impenetrable darkness gave a hunter cover. "What makes you say that?"
"You picked the gloomiest time of day to hunt."
"It's not gloom. It's camouflage. And that's not how my 'moods' work."
"Maybe for you it's camouflage, what with that goth girl look you have going on."
"Oh please, I'm not wearing as much black as I could." Sydney wore dark jeans, her black canvas jacket, a gray cardigan, a gray infinity scarf, and black boots. What her style lacked in creativity, it made up for in simplicity. Fewer choices meant greater ease. "Do you remember cousin Cody? That was goth."
"Whatever. Wearing clothes like that, it's no wonder you get into your moods."
Sydney thought that it didn't work that way, but she let the comment go. She didn't like to get distracted when she was hunting. She researched the target, who was due home at any minute.
He was a man in his fifties, medium height, and over two hundred pounds. He lived alone with two cats and spent his evenings watching home makeover and baking shows. The man seemed sad and lived alone next to an abandoned church. She sensed that he preferred the company of men and was lonely. His home had the frilly and pastel decor of the elderly women from the nursing home where Sydney worked. His blood smelled like ranch dressing, overcooked chicken, and artificial sweetener. It wasn't a scent that excited her hunger, but Sydney and her sister, Aidan, were going hungry, and they couldn't be picky. Prey was scarce for reasons that no vampire could explain. He was the first viable target she's had in a good long while, and she has already spent too much time tracking him.
Sydney and Aidan crouched on the roof of an apartment building across the street from the abandoned church, waiting for him to pull up in front of his house with buckets of Popeye's chicken. Every night he settled in front of the TV and ate his dinner. Sydney remembered those days. Before she turned, when she and her fraternal twin were still human, they ate TV dinners, while their mother Rowena worked a second job. It wasn't until after she turned that she understood it was a pathetic way to feed. A fresh kill was much better than a microwave dinner. Humans didn't know what they were missing.
"You didn't pick another vegetarian did you?" Aidan asked.
"I already told you. I'm off the vegetarian diet."
"Thank Christ, I thought you'd never get past that phase."
"They're easier to track," Sydney said with a shrug. Usually tracking was her favorite part of the hunt, but she wasn't herself last winter. A kind of fog descended over her. She had those periods in her Before Life, too, and she'd hoped she left them behind when she turned. But seven years later, it still found her.
"You didn't have a lot of energy because you were eating vegetarian."
"That's not how it works."
"Still didn't help."
Aidan’s head perked up. “Do you smell that?”
Sydney's blood rushed. Her vision and hearing became sharp. She heard the rain rush through the storm drains. She picked up a police siren three, maybe four miles away, and then blacked it out, an unnecessary distraction. A woman laughed at the television on the first floor of the building, while her cat defecated in its litter box. Sydney honed in on the woman walking down the street. She was young, the cells in her body still ripe. The odor of hormones was almost noxious. She was probably ovulating. Based on her bitter, earthy scent, Sydney could tell that she was vegetarian except for the occasional fish or lean chicken. There is another scent, maybe evergreen or juniper or -
"Gin," Aidan says.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Really? Gin?"
"Yes, gin. she got an early start.”
"It smells like some kind of pine to me."
"It does, and underneath that is the unmistakable odor of alcohol."
Sydney closed her eyes. She blocked out all other senses, the sirens, and the traffic, the purring cat on the first floor, and the litter box that hadn't been cleaned in three days. She shut it all out until the woman's juniper scent was the only thing in the world…and then she nearly threw up. "Jesus, she's practically bathing in it."
"Told you."
"That's what I get for getting distracted."
Aidan nodded at the house. "Your boy is here."
The man stepped out of his silver Buick, a bucket of fried chicken cradled in one hand. He rushed through the steady rain to his front door. He went inside, and a light came on in his living room.
"Finally, we can get out of this crap," Aidan said. "What's our way in?"
"He leaves the back door unlocked, but let's give him a few minutes to settle in."
The man lived in a quiet neighborhood, which meant no witnesses. He was a loner, and loners made the best targets. If Sydney learned one thing from these hunts, humans had power as a herd.
She first saw him at a bakery in north Portland. He sat at the table next to hers as she enjoyed a pour-over coffee. Well, enjoying it as much as a vampire can enjoy something that tasted like dust. Since turning, the taste of human food tasted like nothing at all. Neither good nor bad, just nothing. Sydney didn't miss the taste of coffee, but she missed the aroma. It triggered the delightful memory of the first cup of the morning and the promise of a new day. And it made for a good hunting ground.
The man looked dapper in a turquoise collared shirt and light gray slacks. He sat straight up and sipped his coffee, glancing up each time the bell twinkled on the front door. With the outfit and his anxious expectation, Sydney gathered that he was on a first date. An hour later, the man still sat at the table with an empty coffee cup in front of him. Shards of a sweetener package littered the table, and he no longer glanced up when the bell tinkled.
Alone and lonely, Sydney thought. Perfect.
A blue glow flickered from the man's living room window. He was probably halfway through dinner by now. She didn't know the man's name, and she didn't want to know. Celine taught them not to get attached. It ruined the appetite.
Sydney crept down the side of the man's house with Aidan following close behind her. She stopped when she saw a glow on the back lawn. Peeking around the corner, Sydney noticed that the back door was open. She waited, saw nothing, and entered the house.
The kitchen was tidy except for half-empty containers spread across the counter. She moved stealthily to the door leading through a dining room and into the living room. That was when she saw what she least expected: an overturned ottoman, a half-eaten chicken leg on the floor, the prey splayed out on the carpet, and another vampire eating her dinner.
"What the shit?" Aidan said.
"Who the hell are you?" Sydney said.
He was tall and lean with shaggy brown hair and was young when he turned. He sucked at the man's gaping neck, his face covered in blood. He looked up at Sydney as he fed, but he didn't respond to their questions. A dark red patch bloomed on the carpet.
"This is disgusting," Sydney said.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Aidan said, pulling the collar of her jacket over her mouth.
Sydney stepped slowly forward and raised her hands. "Take it easy, okay. You're making a huge mess, and you're going to attract the wrong attention. Are you in some kind of trouble? Are you one of Celine's children?"
The vampire continued feeding. The vertebrae in the prey’s neck cracked.
Aidan touched her shoulder. "We have to get out of here before someone notices."
Sydney started to follow Aidan out of the house but stopped. She turned back toward the other vampire and kneeled on the floor. "You have to be more careful than this," she told him. "Didn't your guardian teach you how to cover your tracks? Who's child are you?"
The vampire looked up at Sydney and spit out a piece of cartilage.
“You know what Johanna will do to you if you get caught, right?”
He gulped and wiped his mouth with his forearm. He took in the gore surrounding him and said, "Johanna is dead." Then he dived his face into the man's neck and fed like a pig in a trough.
Aidan tugged at the back of Sydney's scarf. "Come on. We've got to get out of here."
Sydney and Aidan were exhausted when they got home. They traveled to Lents only to return to their home in inner southeast Portland without feeding. Several weeks had passed since their last feed, and their energy was diminishing.
At home, Sydney sat across the table from Aidan feeling hollow inside. Her gut ached as hunger rumbled through her.
"What are we going to do?" she said.
Aidan looks up at her knowingly.
"No," Sydney says.
"It makes sense."
"Except that's my job."
"Those people are old, Syd. They die in their sleep all the time. Nobody will notice."
"Nobody notices when they die in their sleep, but they will notice when they've been drained of their blood."
"We agreed, Syd."
"Only in an emergency."
"This is an emergency."
"And what happens if we get used to it? What if it becomes a habit?"
"It won't. We're careful. We always are," Aidan said.
"Don't feed in your neighborhood or district, and don't feed in your place of work. Those are the laws. We can't break them. You know what Johanna does to hunters who break laws."
"Johanna's dead."
The statement fell like an ax on Sydney's neck. "She's not dead. She's missing."
"Missing for a year? Not likely. A hunter got her. She's dead."
"You don't know that."
"Yeah, you're right," Aidan said. "I don't know that, but what I do know is that we haven't fed this month. It's been almost four weeks, and we're low on energy. I tried to throw a guy out of the club the other night, and he pinned me to the ground. I've never let myself get that weak. If I can't fight some dumbass drunk, how am I supposed to hunt, Syd?"
Sydney didn't answer.
"Where'd that scavenger come from, Syd?"
"Who knows? We're bound to come across one from time to time."
"It's a lot more than that. Max and Ruby both ran into scavengers last week. The Calgary nest reported seeing them, too."
"I forgot about that."
"So did I, until tonight," Aidan said. "Johanna disappeared, and now this? Four scavengers in one month? In seven years, we haven't had a single one. Now, we have three. What's going on?"
"I don't know. Maybe those things come in cycles."
"Damn it, Sydney!" Aidan slammed the palms of her hands on the table. "It's not a coincidence, and it's not something that happens. Our leader has been missing for a year, scavengers are coming into our city, and we are going hungry."
"I thought you didn't like Johanna."
Aidan sighed. "I don't, but she's still our leader, and you have to admit things have been a little chaotic since she's been gone." She leaned in closer to Sydney. "We have to deal with this."
It didn't seem fair to Sydney. She only just recovered from last winter when her mind went to a dark place for months. She couldn't get out of bed or dress. She couldn't hunt. Aidan, who was never any good at hunting, had to hunt for them. She bottled the blood, an intricate and messy process, for Sydney. She had little energy. The darkness took it all, and it wasn't fair. She was just now getting her vitality back, and their world was in a goddamn crisis.
"You don't want to eat those old people," Sydney said. "They smell like rotten eggs. We'll figure something out. I promise.”