Sunshine

It was weirdly something like looking through an aquarium at a lot of fish. The fish were whizzing around like crazy—cannonball fish—but I could see them individually, a little, and they did look like distinct and specific little whizzings-around instead of like chaos. This was interesting, although it didn’t really get me any farther; they were still moving too fast for me to track a pattern or make my way among them. But this wasn’t as sick-making—or as terrifying—to watch or to think about. Presumably this was a good thing. But I remembered the quality of the terror, and wasn’t sure that not being terrified was wise or sane.

What we were looking for was behind the whizzing things. And that was still just as sick-making, just as terrifying. I didn’t like this animated three-dimensional map. Here be dragons. Much worse than any dragon, which are pretty straightforward—and straightforwardly alive—creatures that merely suffer that little character defect about liking to eat human flesh. Here be horrors indescribable. I barely sensed the dreadful loom of it—the differentiation of it from its manic pinball machine guard system—before I was repelled, repulsed, hurled away more violently than Con had thrown me the other night…except it was Con, this time, who caught me.

I was flopped against him, his arm round my waist, my ear pressed to his silent chest. I grabbed at his other arm, steadied myself, balanced again on my own feet, which seemed very small and very far away. “Have I given us away? Con, was that live?” The world still spun. If there had been anything in my stomach but tea (the muffins were a long time ago) it might have come up. As it was, the tea sloshed vindictively a few times and subsided. The chain burned round my throat.

“No,” said Con. “My Sunshine, you must learn moderation. This is not an enemy you can defeat by rushing his front gate.”

I made a little choking noise that might have been third cousin twice removed to a laugh. “I had no intention of anything resembling gate-crashing. I thought I was just looking. Except it wasn’t, um, looking.”

“No,” said Con. I could feel him thinking. “If you were a new—one of us—there are things I could teach you. I do not think I can teach a human these things.”

I sighed. “I believe you. Like seeing in the dark probably doesn’t bother you because you don’t spend a lot of time seeing in the light, right?”

“I am sorry.”

As partners we left a lot to be desired. “Was that him?”

Con’s eyes blazed briefly. Vampire eyes catching sight of their chosen prey. Don’t look. “Yes.”

“Can you—can you track him any better from what I—sort of—showed you?”

Con’s face arranged itself in one of its invisible-to-the-naked-human-eye almost-expressions. I guessed this one was irony. Note: existence of vampire irony. “I am not sure. It is certainly a signal we want to take heed of. How we take heed without jeopardizing ourselves unnecessarily I do not yet know. Remember that was not live, as you put it. It was only your memory—your exegesis—of what you saw.”

I shivered.

“I believe you were in less danger, even last night, than you may fear. What this is is a little like…what are those machines with the strange radiance, which attract insects to their deaths?”

“Zappers? Bug zappers. Bug flies in—zap.”

“You were zapped. The machine does not register the—bug. It merely zaps. I use these zappers also.”

“Vampires don’t use bug zappers?” I said, interested. There’s nothing like an immediate death threat to make you crave a little superficial distraction. I’d observed this phenomenon before. “All that hanging around out of doors after dark you guys do?”

“No.”

“Wrong kind of blood?”

“Vampires do not—er—register on insect radar.”

“Oh.” At last: a really good reason to want to be a vampire. I was one of those people you invite on your picnic or your hiking expedition, because the bugs will all crowd around me and leave everyone else alone.

Sunshine, get a grip. “Um. This isn’t the first time I’ve been…well, let me tell you the rest of it.” I did. “So last night was the third time and the worst. You don’t think he might be using a sort of fancy zapper that says, ‘Hey, boss, this bug keeps coming back’?”

“I think I will ask you not to go near that place again for the time being. Even if this Pat asks you to try.”

“It’s not Pat I’m so worried about,” I said. “It’s the goddess of pain.”

“Ah.” His expressionlessness took an ominous cast.

“Con,” I said nervously.