“Like a nutbar anti-vamp protester with fake vampire teeth,” Freitas said.
Isabel ignored her. “But most of the Nocturnal Urges vampires probably had alibis too,” Isabel mused.
“Just being at work wasn’t enough, because I was working on one of the nights that someone was killed,” Ryan said. “The night Isabel came to Nocturnal Urges for the first time.”
Duane’s head lifted and Isabel saw him staring at Ryan.
“So it must have been possible, at least, for the killer to sneak out,” Ryan continued.
“Osborne. Caught him. Watch the news,” Freitas said.
“But does it make any sense?” Ryan asked. “What good does it do to frame vampires for murders? We are already hated, already suspicious in the eyes of the humans.”
“He’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic, Callahan,” Freitas said.
“Did he drink the blood?” Ryan asked.
Freitas stared at him. “That doesn’t prove Osborne didn’t do it,” she said, but the protest in her voice was weak.
“This is crazy,” Fiona protested. “None of my people would hurt a mark. Why would we? It only hurts business!”
“But these weren’t ordinary marks,” Isabel said. “They were jerks, men who messed around with the vampires. Someone was…protecting them?”
Isabel turned to look at Brent, who immediately grew pale.
Well, pale for a vampire
, Isabel thought.
“Not me, no way!” Brent said, holding up his hands. “I told the detective, it goes as far as the street, no farther!”
“He kicks them out, he doesn’t kill them,” Fiona said.
“True,” Ryan said. “I know Brent, he couldn’t hurt a fly. He drinks cow’s blood from the butcher’s. He can’t bite a human, even a willing one.”
Brent looked down at his feet in embarrassment. Ryan put a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing to be ashamed of, man.”
Duane downed his drink and stumbled past the bar, toward the door. But Ryan called out after him. “Please, sir, don’t move.”
Isabel stared at Duane. “Ryan, what are you doing?”
“Mr. Russell,” Ryan called, and his voice was more insistent.
“Fuck you,” Duane growled, and kept moving.
“Duane!” Ryan shouted, running toward the door. Duane turned on him and swung a drunken punch, his face contorted with fury. Freitas was already moving to separate them, with Brent right behind her. Isabel shouted something—she wasn’t sure what—but suddenly everyone was still.
Duane stood alone in front of the bar.
Elyse held his neck between her hands.
“Elyse, please,” Ryan pleaded, his voice trying for that calm tone Isabel loved so much, but there was a ragged edge to it she had never heard. “Let him go.”
Elyse’s nails dug into the skin on either side of Duane’s neck. Isabel clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified at the look of stupefied terror on Duane’s face.
“He’s evil, Ryan,” Elyse spat. “He’s just like the others. He’s a bastard and he deserves whatever he gets.”
Freitas had drawn her gun, but held it carefully down by her side. “Miss, let’s talk this out, okay?”
Elyse hissed at Freitas, her pretty face contorted into a rictus of hate. Freitas stepped back, her free hand held out in a calming gesture.
“Elyse, this isn’t the way,” Ryan said. “You can’t get your revenge by killing him.”
“Don’t pretend you care,” Elyse snapped. “When he’s gone, you can be with your pretty little human. No messy entanglements.”
Isabel felt as though she were still a few pages behind. “You wanted Ryan?” she said. “Then why did you help me find him?”
“Stupid girl!” Elyse growled. “He can have you. He can have any human he wants. I don’t care.”
“She doesn’t love me,” Ryan said dully. “She hates me. She’s killed all these people, oh God, those poor men, because she can’t kill me.”
“Why?” Isabel asked.
“He made me into this!” Elyse hissed, baring her teeth an inch from Duane’s throat. Duane was too petrified to move. “He turned me into this thing, forced me to live an eternity like this!”
Ryan stepped forward. “Elyse, I can never get your forgiveness,” he said, his voice broken. “But this man has done nothing to you.”
“Do you think that matters?” Elyse spat.
Ryan took another step. “He’s not me, Elyse. If you want me, come for me.”
Elyse grinned, a horrible, sadistic smile that bared her white teeth. “First him. Then her. Then you,” she cackled.
“Not happening, hon,” Freitas said, edging closer.
Elyse hissed again.
“Please, Elyse,” Ryan said. “This can still end well.”
Elyse smiled, and for a bare instant, Isabel caught a glimpse of the sane woman still inside her, a woman filled with despair. “No, it won’t,” she said, and lowered her teeth to Duane’s throat.
Duane screamed. Ryan leapt forward, pulling Duane away just as Elyse’s teeth grazed into his throat. As Ryan and Duane fell away from the bar, Elyse leapt up onto the bar, still hissing.
Freitas shot Elyse twice, and still she held on, screeching out her hate as she tried to jump down toward Ryan. Freitas shot her a third time, and Elyse tumbled to the floor.
Isabel ran over to Ryan and Duane. “I thought bullets don’t kill them,” she said breathlessly.
“They don’t,” Freitas said, training her pistol on Elyse’s bloodied, twisting form. “It just slows them down.”
Brent knelt beside Duane, pressing a handkerchief against the bloody wound. Duane was conscious, staring at Elyse.
Ryan crawled over to Elyse, kneeling beside her. “What would you have?” he asked, his voice filled with a terrible sadness.
“You know,” Elyse whispered.
Ryan glanced up at Freitas, who stepped back. Then he turned to Elyse, and lowering his head, sank his teeth into her ivory-pale neck.
Elyse cried out, a terrible wail of misery, horror and sadness. It seemed to fill the room, echoing beyond its walls, a sound that brought tears to Isabel’s eyes and echoed inside her chest, where she was conscious of her heartbeat as never before.
Ryan drank, and Elyse’s voice began to fade. Slowly, it disappeared, and her shaking ceased.
Ryan lifted his head, and turning away, wiped the blood from his mouth. Then his shoulders began to shake and Isabel went to him, drawing him into her arms with all the strength she could muster. She held him, let him grieve, and because he mourned, she mourned with him.
* * * * *
If Isabel never saw the inside of the police station again, it would be too soon.
“You might have shared all this stuff with me before, you know,” Freitas said.
“Turn in someone who might be innocent, just to save my own skin?” Ryan said. “Not very gentlemanly. I suspected Elyse, but suspicion is a long way from proof. And I did not want to believe her capable of such horrors.”
“A few things I don’t understand,” Isabel said to Freitas. “You knew Elyse worked the same schedule as Ryan. Why arrest him and not Elyse?”
Freitas rolled her eyes. “As I will no doubt be explaining at my next personnel review, for the fiftieth time, I did not arrest Ryan. I brought him in for questioning at an ungodly hour because I thought it would be quiet that way. And yes, that means someone in my department tipped the TV news crews, and yes, that’s a conversation I’ll be having with my higher-ups.”
“But why Ryan?” Isabel pressed.
“History,” Ryan said. “My murder conviction.”
“Elyse,” Freitas said, nodding. “I apologize, Mr. Callahan. Your file wasn’t entirely clear on that point.”
“She came across in the mid-1950s, but we did not see each other again until she came to Nocturnal Urges two months ago,” Ryan said. “She told me my sentence had been commuted. But she had never forgiven me. She hated what she was, and hated me for making her into a monster. I tried to help her, wanted to help her, to atone. She took out her fury on all men for the sins of one.”
Isabel placed her hand on Ryan’s. “You are not a monster,” she said softly. “You loved her, and that’s all that matters.”
Freitas stood up. “If you don’t mind, I have about a year’s worth of paperwork to file,” she said.
Ryan stood as well. “Will you get into trouble for allowing the bite?”
Freitas smiled, a tired, sad smile that mitigated her cop’s eyes. “What bite?”
Isabel took Ryan’s hand, and smiled at Freitas. She walked through the police station at Ryan’s side, and when they stepped out into the faint pearl-pink rays of the rising sun, she stepped close to him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
Together they walked away from the sunlight, into the shadows between brick and stone, disappearing into the darkness together.
About the Author
Elizabeth Donald’s first published work was a two-sentence essay in the Westfield (Massachusetts) Evening News titled “Why My Mom is the Greatest”, which took first place when she was ten.
Since then, she has made her career as a journalist and fiction writer. Her short stories have been published by: De Novo Studios, The Murder Hole, Thirteen Stories and DogEar Magazine. Her web column, Scarlet Letters, has won several national awards, as has her work as a journalist. “Nocturnal Urges” was her first published novel.
Elizabeth welcomes mail from readers. You can find her website and email address on her
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