Short Fiction: American Vampires: Chloe

When I was seventeen, a junior in high school, I wrote a novella called American Vampires. I published it when I was a freshman in college. It was not ready, and that was a huge lesson. I was impatient, there were tense issues, it was full of typos. But I loved that story and somehow other people did too, because it became the publishing service’s single best selling horror book. The book followed a girl named Delilah, an addict, bitten by a vampire during her attempt on her own life, waking up into a life she didn’t ask for. One novella became a trilogy rapidly expanding in scope. Even though I was in school for writing and learned all the mechanics I needed there, for which I am forever thankful, I learned the most as a developing writer by writing that first long form work, learning to balance characters and story threads and the thrill of surprise when a character does something you didn’t plan for them to do.

But you don’t need to know any of that. The character this story revolves around appeared in one scene in the second book, in which vampire hunter Roland Kane burns down a vampire strip club, and the POV suddenly shifts to one of the dancers as she burns alive. This story picks up immediately after that. This is a novelette about objectification. It’s about a sex worker whose life revolved around her body and her beauty and who does not know how to navigate the world when those things are taken from her. It’s about revenge, not in practice, but in the raw, primal need to put the world back in order after it has taken everything from you. It’s about Chloe. I love her and I hope you like her too.

ONE

Nothing but smoke. Rubble. Catastrophe in the middle of an open area, set against the woods. The flames are dying down. The sky is a milky dark. No sounds other than the crackling last gasps of the fire.

Then, something pushes through the rubble. Itself cracked and blackened and billowing with smoke, almost indistinguishable from the rubble around it. A HAND.

A woman, half charred, claws her way out. Her voice, at first, is a low gasp. Slowly, steadily, as she claws herself to freedom, it rises into a SCREAM. Once there, it’s all she can do.

She was sure she was dead. When the fire started, it was her first thought. “My God, this is it. I’m dead.” It was all she’d had time to think. It hadn’t even been the flame that sparked the thought, the certainty in her. It had been him. The look in his eye when he lit the match. So satisfied, so assured in what he was doing. That was when she knew she was dead.

And now that she was alive, there was no time to celebrate. She couldn’t even think about that. Chloe could barely even think at all. Only minutes ago (or had it been hours?) half her body had been engulfed in flames. And now, all there was, was pain and the utter disbelief that she was alive and everyone else was dead.

She looked down at her hands. One was covered in soot, but otherwise intact. The other blackened, charred, scarred beyond recognition. Her screams eventually began to subside, replaced with a hollow breathing. She hadn’t even realized she was screaming until she stopped. But this was not acceptance. Only awareness.

Her eyes did not leave her hand. Slight wisps of smoke began to stream from her fingers. Through the cracks in her burnt flesh. The pain didn’t even register. Her whole body was in such pain now, she had no more room for anything new. Because of that, it took her a second to register what was happening.

Her eyes turned instinctively upward. Through the darkened trees, which only last night had seemed so beautiful, she saw a cruel and amber light. The sun was just beginning to break through the trees.

Chloe looked around, frantic. She was in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing on this road for miles. That’s why the Red Eye had been here to begin with.

Still, she whipped her head around, searching for anything that could possibly be used as a shelter. It was no use. She couldn’t get to anywhere safe in time. Her body was covered in burns as it was. She was barely alive. She wasn’t going anywhere. Except…

With a creeping dread, Chloe turned back toward her only option. The pile of rubble from which she had just crawled to freedom, a place that had been her business, her home, for over forty years. Vomit rose in her throat at the thought.

Then came another thought, almost serene: she didn’t have to. She didn’t have to do any of it. She could sit here, wait for the sun, and that would be that. She’d burned enough, hadn’t she? What difference would a little more make? It would be so easy, she thought, just to sit here and die.

But then she thought of the man again. The cowboy with his satisfied smile. The pleasure he had taken in believing he had killed her and all of her friends and coworkers. No. She couldn’t survive this just to lay down and die.

Chloe, shaking with disgust, crawled back toward the collapsed building, back through the outpouring of smoke, pulling bits of the fallen roof back over her as she did. She pushed through all of this to freedom only minutes ago. Now it was her only protection from the sun.

She pushed herself further down into the decay and saw the scene staring back at her. It, too, was just as she’d left it.

A naked woman looked back at her with empty, dead eyes. She had been torn in half, her back twisted when the bar collapsed. There was a hole in the rubble above her. Small, but it was enough. Sunlight had begun to stream in.

That was all it took.

The woman burned away to ash, carried out of the bar on the back of the wind.

Chloe couldn’t bear to look. She turned away and shut her eyes, pulling herself under the remains of a table, curling up in the darkness, closing her eyes to the horror and heat.

She closed her eyes and all she could think of was him, the man who had done this. The one who had ended her life.

And all of the things she’d do when she found him.

TWO

Montana, 1975.

Chloe nearly missed the turn and now that she found herself on that long dirt road, she could see why. It was so isolated, surrounded by trees on all sides, unpaved and unmarked, she could barely even see it now. The only sign of light up ahead was neon, flashing red. It led her to the bar like a moth to a flame.

The sign read, “THE RED EYE.” All things considered, the name amused her quite a bit.

The truck came to a stop outside. Chloe got out and gave it another look. Her hair was shimmering blond and curled. Eyes wild and green. Her jean jacket, though faded, was new. It was her favorite, and she usually wasn’t the sentimental type.

She stepped inside. The place went dead, or at least uneasy, as soon as she did. That didn’t faze her much, she’d seen all of this before. Even as she continued toward the bar, she stared.

The dancers on stage hadn’t stopped their routine, but it felt automatic, which impressed her, really. They hadn’t broken their rhythm at all. It was like they had one eye on business and the other on her. She supposed it was almost mutual.

The bartender, a huge bearded, tattooed man, stepped forward. His name tag read “Zeke.” “You lost, sweetie?” He asked.

Chloe smiled at the pet name. It was a well-practiced smile that hid her disgust. One she had mastered long before she ever became a vampire. “No, I definitely think I’m in the right place,” she said.

“Oh, I think I’m going to see some ID.”

“You sure about that?” Chloe asked.

“I reckon.”

Chloe sighed. “Suit yourself.” She turned away. When she turned back to him, her eyes were red.

He was satisfied. “Very well, then.”

Chloe gestured to the sign out front. “Name’s a little on the nose, isn’t it?”

“Only if you know what you’re looking for,” Zeke said. “Most people don’t.”

“Fair enough.”

“What about you?”

Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Me?”

“You know what you’re looking for?”

“Hopefully,” she said. “Gainful employment is what I’d like. Well, as gainful as it gets for people like us, anyway.”

Zeke muttered under his breath. “You know, if I hire every vampire in the area, we’ll have shit for clientele. Population’s not exactly booming around her to begin with.”

“It’s Montana,” Chloe said. “The only population booming around here is elk.”

“You’re funny. That’s good. Not from Montana, I take it?”

“I didn’t come here to give my life story, I came to beg for a job. So unless that’s an official interview question…”

“It is.”

Chloe nodded. “California. Originally.”

“What drove you away?”

“What else? The sun.”

“You wait tables?”

Chloe wrinkled her nose. “No offense to the staff, but I don’t think that’s how I want to spend my immortality.”

“Okay, then,” Zeke said. “Since you’re calling the shots, what do you have in mind?”

Chloe’s eyes drifted toward the stage. She watched the girls move under the lights, all those eyes on them. They were in complete control up there. Of themselves and everyone else.

“I want to dance,” she said.

THREE

Now.

She left the bar after sunset, wrapped in the tattered remains of an old blanket. Like the other girls, she had slept in an apartment under the bar. Now that was gone, too. Her life. Her friends. Her home. And, of course, her face. But that would heal. It had to, right? That’s what vampires did. They healed.

Chloe needed to find somewhere to go before the sun came up. But that was easier said than done. She didn’t have anyone. The only people she’d ever felt comfortable getting close to had been here.

Well, thinking about it, that wasn’t necessarily true. She had an idea. Not a good one, granted, but bad ideas were the only kind she had left. She might as well start getting used to them.

There was a guy. A client. One of the only regulars she’d ever had. He’d started asking for her by name twenty years ago. He was forty now and still came to watch her dance all the time. Duddy wasn’t a vampire and, by all accounts, had never wanted to be one. She had assumed it was exoticism for a long time, and maybe it was, considering that he was even drawn to vampire bars in the first place, and the knowledge he’d had to have known to get there. But all of the dancers had been vampires, and yet he had only ever had eyes for her.

Chloe had never bothered to ask why. For a long time, she simply didn’t want to know. After a while, she just thought it would ruin the unspoken agreement between them. That was what she had liked about Duddy. As crazy as it sounded, between a stripper and her horniest client, there was respect. She had grown to love dancing for him. At first she thought it was the attention she had loved, the hunger in his eyes when he looked at her. The fact that he had eyes for her alone. But it wasn’t that at all. It was the way he respected the agreement between them. His eyes, her movement, it was a business transaction. And in that business, they had been partners for decades.

But she had never looked like this. That was what she was so afraid of now. She had thrived on his objectification. Now her body, her livelihood, was burned beyond recognition. Half of it at least. But what other option did she have?

She called him. His voice was nervous, which she hadn’t heard in a long time. But it wasn’t shyness.

“I heard about the fire,” Duddy said. “Chloe, I… God, I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not,” she said and realized now for the first time just how much it hurt to speak. “I’m not. But I think I’m the only survivor. Duddy, that was my home. That was everything I had.”

“You don’t need to… to sell me,” he said. It was the most assured she’d ever heard him. “You have done so much to keep me going over the years, you don’t even know. If you need shelter, you can stay as long as you need.”

“Duddy, you should know, I don’t look the way I did.”

“I know,” he said. “I can imagine.”

“I really don’t think you can.”

“You’re the same to me,” he said. “And you’ll heal, right? Vampires can come back from almost anything. You’ll come back from this. You just need time.”

Chloe walked to Duddy’s. She knew the way well. Only this time, she did not walk with the confident stride she’d had only days ago, one that she had not even stopped to realize she had lost. It hurt to think about that, but so did everything else. Everything hurt. Her body felt as if the fire had happened only minutes ago. Whatever stunted her healing had also stunted her pain, as if she were trapped in that one moment.

And she was. She knew that. Chloe saw the fire every single time she closed her eyes. She saw the fire, she saw the girls. They were so strong and yet when she saw them now, they were screaming, writhing, utterly helpless. When she closed her eyes, she saw him: the vampire hunter. She had never encountered one before, but she had known they existed for some time. Stupidly, she never took the idea seriously, never thought to be afraid. It sounded absurd. Chloe had heard that vampire hunters were funded by the Catholic church. That, she didn’t have much trouble believing. Maybe she could start there. Find out who he was, the cowboy with the cold stare that had ended her life and turned her into… this.

The pain had become unbearable. She needed to do something about it. There was only one thing she could think of that would offer, she suspected, even a moment of relief.

A man had noticed her about half a block back. He’d been following her. Discreetly, she was sure he thought, but she had picked up on him right away. He had caught the good half of her face in a street light and that had been enough for him, apparently.

Chloe’s body burned with a different kind of fire now and she realized that she hadn’t eaten anything since the night before the fire. The hunger was overpowering, but it was a welcome feeling.

“Hey, honey,” the man said. “You sure you want to be out walking alone out here?”

Chloe said nothing and kept walking.

The man came closer. He looked at the tattered blanket she’d covered herself in and smiled to himself. “What’s this you’re wearing? You homeless, girl? Tell you what. If you want, I can give you a nice place to stay. And a big meal.”

She smiled at that. She couldn’t help it. “You can?” She said, sweetly, voice angelic and small as she could make it. “Really?”

“Oh, I can.”

“I don’t know. I really better get back to the shelter.”

“You think you’ll be missed?”

“No,” she said, after a second. “How about you?”

She turned toward him, ready to pounce, but stopped seeing the change in his face. His eyes had turned from lust to disgust almost immediately. “Sweet Jesus,” he said, repulsed, backing away.

Chloe looked down. “Wait, I…”

There was nothing she could say to keep him where she wanted him. Whatever seduction tactics she’d used on prey in the past, they were gone. Stripped away, like everything else she’d ever had.

“No,” the man said, holding her away with one hand, as if consciously trying to ward off a monster. “No, I made a mistake. I’m sorry, I… I really should be getting home to my wife.”

It was funny how men stopped lying the second they decided they didn’t want to get you into bed. Chloe looked around. The street was empty. This wasn’t usually her way, but she didn’t see any other option. So she had to work with what she’d been given.

The man turned away to leave. She pounced as soon as his back was turned, latching onto his back and digging her teeth into his throat. He screamed. She had to admit, she loved the sound. This was the first moment she’d enjoyed since the fire and she let herself relish it.

Chloe tore hungrily into his neck. Bit a chunk out of his throat and swallowed a flap of flesh and skin along with his blood, which now spurted from the wound. She held her mouth open to catch it, like a drinking fountain.

She didn’t even realize how hungry she had been. It took her a while to drink her fill. Once she had, she simply wiped her mouth and continued on her way, leaving the man alone on the street in the empty gutter, just as he had assumed her to be when he mistook her for helpless and vulnerable. All things considered, this was a much needed reminder to herself, even more than her victim, that she was not.

FOUR

Chloe could see the look in his eyes, the horror, the revulsion, as soon as Duddy opened the door. But he hid it well. He respected her enough to do that. “Come on in,” he said.

His apartment was very much a bachelor’s. Not the worst she’d ever seen by any stretch. He had too much money for that. Clearly enough to hire a maid, though she hadn’t come by in a while. And she wasn’t picky at this point. It could have been covered in mildew and still easily better than the husk she had just slept in.

“What do you think?”

Chloe tried to smile. It hurt. “Just the way I remember it.”

“Thanks. You can sleep in the main bedroom, if you want. I’ll take the loft.”

“Please, Duddy. You don’t have to be a gentleman with me, you’ve done more than enough.”

“Less sunlight, actually,” he said.

Chloe nodded. “Oh. Right.”

“So now what?”

Chloe turned toward the bathroom. “Now comes the hard part,” she said.

“We still haven’t hit the hard part?”

“Not yet,” she said, turning back to him. “I still haven’t looked in a mirror.”

“Oh.” He was quiet for a second. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

Chloe looked down. She wasn’t. Not at all. But she also couldn’t avoid them forever. That was a stereotype about vampires that remained unfortunately false. “I have to be,” she said.

Without another word, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. For a few moments, everything was quiet.

Duddy waited through the deafening silence.

And then the screaming started.

Months passed and Chloe’s body had not even begun to heal.

This was her nightmare. Her body had been both her pride and her weapon for most of her life. She knew she was supposed to take pride in her scars, and truthfully, they looked beautiful on other people. But she could not look at herself without thinking of what she had lost. She could not bear to look at herself at all anymore, and yet she had studied every inch. The creases and cracks in her skin, she knew them all. But she didn’t know why. That had become her new obsession.

“You need to talk to someone,” Duddy said, as if reading her mind.

Chloe continued staring out the window, hoping to look into the darkness and, as always, only getting caught in the image of herself. “You know a vampire therapist?” she asked.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

“I’m adjusting. At least, I’m adjusting as much as I can.” She looked down at her scarred hand. “As much as anyone could.”

“But you’re not healing,” he said. “It’s been months and you haven’t even started. Your skin is still blackened, it’s like it happened today.”

“I can see, thank you.”

“I’ve noticed. You don’t seem to look at much else anymore.”

Chloe narrowed her gaze. “I liked you better when you were a client.”

“I think putting you up in my own home for months allows me to use the word friend,” he said. “And as your friend, I am concerned. Whatever’s happening, we both know it’s far from normal. And you need to talk to someone. Don’t give up. Don’t just sit here and wallow in misery. Your body isn’t healing. It should be. Don’t you want to find out why?”

“Of course I do. But it’s not exactly like I can look up a vampire doctor, is it?”

Duddy looked off, distant, as if finally thinking of something.

She noticed. “What is it?”

“I think you might be onto something,” he said.

He retreated into the back room, into his makeshift study, without another word. Chloe could hear him shuffling around, searching for something.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t reply. After a few seconds, he returned with a name written on a piece of paper. “Found it.”

“Found what?”

“You don’t get to be a human who knows about a vampire strip club, let alone knows vampires exist, without picking up all kinds of other things as well,” Duddy said. “Sometimes I heard things at the Red Eye and I wrote them down. Figured they might be useful later. I hear stuff, pick up on all sorts of details that most people miss. How do you think I even found out about the Red Eye in the first place?” He looked down at the piece of paper in his hands. “But this name, this one really struck me. Harold Hopewell.”

“It doesn’t exactly strike fear, I have to admit.”

“Harold Hopewell is exactly the kind of person you just described.”

“A vampire doctor?”

“Sort of. He was a doctor. He was also an occultist. His research into the afterlife and the nature of life and death, galvanism and even witchcraft, it made him a disgrace in the medical community. He lost everything. But he’d already found what he was looking for.”

“And what was that?”

“Vampires. He began studying them, apparently. And so, yes, he became a vampire doctor. Someone to turn to when things don’t go exactly as they should.”

“Things like healing?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. I didn’t even think until you mentioned it, but he sounds like exactly what you’re looking for.”

FIVE

1988.

The young man was nervous. Sweaty. Chloe had seen it plenty of times, especially with guys like this. They were always so anxious that it looked like they were about to pass out, and sometimes they did. Maybe they believed themselves to be unattractive. That was often the case, but she found more often than not that it wasn’t the body that made them unattractive, it was them. The absolute certainty of failure and loneliness, the only way they ever carried themselves. “You don’t have to be nervous around me, Dudley,” she said, her voice as smooth and comforting as she could make it.

“Duddy,” he said.

“What?”

“My friends call me Duddy.”

“Then I’ll call you Duddy, too,” she said. “Because I hope we’re going to be friends.”

That made him look like he was going to pass out. Especially as she removed her coat to reveal her small black bra and thong.

Duddy took her in for a moment without saying a word. There was a hunger in his eyes when he looked at her, a determination and such a clear want that was attractive, though she was sure he had no idea.

He slipped two hundred dollars across the table. A moment’s pause, then he slipped two hundred more.

Chloe smiled. She had seen this before too, but usually with the other girls. Guys would sometimes double their pay on the very first meeting, as a way to show that this — to them — was more than a dance, that they planned on a longterm investment.

Chloe was happy to oblige.

She took the money and started to dance. Writhing, moving her hips. Before now, it had felt ridiculous any time she danced outside the club. On the stage, under the lights, it was a show. In a house, dancing for one man, you were just flailing your naked body in front of a stranger. But she didn’t feel that way now. Not when she saw the way he looked at her.

His eyes never left her once. He saw nothing but her.

Dancing like this, even just for one person, even for a customer as well paying as he might be, Chloe felt like she owned the world.

Now.

Duddy was half asleep in the dark when Chloe entered his room. He sat up, startled and confused. “Chloe? Is everything okay?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s tough adjusting to this day time/night time schedule, completely screws with my nocturnal nature.”

“That’s great,” Duddy said, still nodding off, “but some of us have to work in the morning.”

“Stay up with me. Please. Just for a little while.”

Duddy nodded. “Okay.”

“You thought I was beautiful, right?” Chloe asked. “Before… all of this.”

“Of course I did. You know I did.”

“Tell me.”

He looked up at her as she sat down beside him. There was something very vulnerable in her eyes. Something he had never, ever seen until recently.

“You were the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my entire life,” he said. He looked down, embarrassed. “For a long time, I thought maybe it was love.”

“Was it?”

He was surprised by her bluntness. She noticed. “I…”

“You can tell me,” she said. “I won’t be embarrassed and I won’t run away. You can be honest with me.”

“I don’t know,” Duddy said. “I don’t think so. Maybe it could have, but I realized eventually that I don’t think I wanted it to be. It was much better between us, what we had. Me as a client. Maybe even a business partner, in a sense. I wasn’t just watching you dance, you know. I was watching you. The way you moved to the rhythm of my attention, the way you channeled lust into, I don’t know, agency? Ownership? You held my gaze and I don’t think it was just to earn a living, or to feel good. Maybe it was the power of being wanted, and of wanting. But I was right there in it too, making something out of nothing more than writhing and watching.”

“I never knew you to be so poetic,” she said, sliding closer.

“Chloe…”

“Make love to me,” she said, running her hands across his chest. “Please. Right now.”

“Chloe.”

The tone in his voice was different now. She could see him squirm at her touch. And she understood. Sex, seduction, the techniques were so old, so ingrained in her that for a moment, she felt she were ages ago. Looking at her hand on his chest provided a sobering reminder of the present. Her stomach twisted in knots as she pulled herself away. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you wouldn’t.”

“Wait, you don’t have to go.”

She got up and turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and left the room.

SIX

Dr. Hopewell was just as glad to see her as Chloe had suspected. For a man obsessed with vampires, she supposed she was irresistible. Whatever was happening to her, whatever had delayed her healing process, she was an anomaly. His office, such as it was, looked like a run-down veterinary clinic. She guessed it probably had been, once upon a time. Now, all but abandoned, it saw a more nocturnal kind of clientele.

Hopewell was a slender, almost skeletal man with slicked back, receding hair. “You’re fascinating,” he said, softly, looking over her body.

“I don’t feel it,” she said.

“Oh, you are. Your body, your burns. They look as if they happened this morning.”

She felt a sting in her gut, just hearing that. “You’re telling me there’s no progress at all.”

Hopewell either didn’t hear the pain in her voice or didn’t care. “None whatsoever,” he said, too enthusiastically. He paused for a second, thinking about it. “Tell me,” he said, “have you ever cut your hair?”

Chloe looked confused. “No. Why?”

“Never?”

“I’ve styled it plenty of times over the years, but no, I never cut it. I like the length.”

“Ah, there it is. So you are aware that it never grew?”

“What are you saying, that if I cut my hair it would never grow back?”

“It’s a theory,” he said. “But I think the rest of you is the proof.”

Finally it hit her. The truth she’d known all along, deep down. “You’re telling me I’m going to be like this forever.” It wasn’t a question.

Hopewell answered it anyway. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I believe that’s the truth.”

She’d been dreading the news for so long, yet having finally heard it, all she felt was numb. “Oh God,” she whispered.

“There’s a beauty in it,” he said. “I know that you cannot see it now, but believe me, there is. You are unique, an absolute rarity. Your scars make you a species unto yourself. You may be the only one of your kind.”

“There’s no beauty in this,” she hissed. “I’m a monster.”

“If Bram Stoker is to be believed, miss, you’ve been a monster for a very long time.”

She turned away. “I don’t understand how this is even possible.”

Hopewell smiled. “This is precisely what has led to my fascination with vampires. Why you deserve further study. Do you know what unique creatures you are? You are the crossroads between the natural and the supernatural. A virus, yes, but a virus born of mystical origin. How does a germ crafted by magic even spread? Is it magic? Or some dark, conscious, otherworldly thing, duplicating itself, over and over? There are no answers, and each question is more exhilarating than the last. It looks like science. Bite means transmission, which means transformation, and so on and so forth. But it isn’t. Magic is by its nature chaotic and so, every once in a while, on those unbelievable occasions, there are gaps. You, Chloe, are one of those gaps. According to everything we know about vampires, you should not exist. Yet you do.”

“You’ve really thought about this,” she said.

“I have.” Hopewell grinned. “And it is also why I can never, ever let you leave.”

Chloe stared at Hopewell blankly. “What?”

“You heard me,” he said. That same grin was still plastered to his face. “You’re the find of a lifetime. In thousands of years of vampire history, we have no evidence anything like you has ever even existed. I can’t simply let you go.”

She glared at him. “You think you can stop me?”

“I’m positive I can,” he said. “You’ve been drugged since you arrived. I’m surprised it took you this long to notice.”

“You think I can’t take you?” She said, struggling to get off the table. “Despite what it might look like, I’m not half dead. I’ve sustained injuries after the fire and I healed from those just fine.”

“All the more reason to study you, keep you under close observation. I need to know. Don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“Was it the fire itself that blocked your healing, just that once? Or was it the magnitude of the injury? Or was it that for that one moment, your metaphysical nature just happened to be looking the other way?”

“Here’s a fun thought: I don’t fucking care.” She got to her feet, wobbly, and tried to push her way past him. “And if you don’t let me go, you’re going to realize what a dumb idea it was putting yourself down here alone in a room with a killer.”

“Yes,” Hopewell said, derisively. “You look like quite a threat. Thankfully, so am I.”

Three men entered the room, each armed, each dressed all in black body armor.

“One can’t be too careful these days, can they? You don’t get to be where I am without picking up some very eccentric things on the black market, especially hired help.”

Chloe found herself struggling to stand.

“Now, you’re not leaving here. You might as well just get used to that idea. But you will be going to my, shall we say, facility. Where I can hopefully study you a bit more in depth.”

“If you lay one hand on me…”

“You can’t even walk at this point,” Hopewell said. “Trying to threaten me would just be, well, unseemly. Embarrassing for both of us, so let’s just skip all that.”

She started to collapse. Hopewell signaled for two guards to grab her before she hit the ground.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll feel much better when you meet the others.”

“Others?” Chloe found herself asking, but did not wait for a response. As soon as the question escaped her lips, she finally fell into the darkness.

SEVEN

The place stank. That was her first thought. It was dark, too, but that, she supposed, was just to save on energy. Vampires could see in the dark, as she knew Hopewell was well aware. Hopewell, God. It took a few seconds for her buzzing brain to remember everything. He had drugged her. Taken her somewhere, but she didn’t even know where. It looked almost like a bunker. Old medical equipment littered the floor, no doubt from previous experimentation. Dried blood covered the walls. The place looked almost splatter painted. The thought should sicken her, she knew, but she found herself ambivalent to it. Chloe didn’t care what had happened here to anyone else. She cared about what could happen to her.

A moment later, she finally recognized the row of cages beside her. There were other people down here. Three of them, it looked like. The one gawking at her now was skinny. He reminded her of Shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoons, if he were strung out on something. “Oh look,” he said. “She’s awake.”

“Her name is Chloe,” Chloe said, getting to her feet.

“Doug,” he answered.

“Of course it is.” As she said it, she could see now that his eyes had changed. It revealed him to be a vampire, but it also revealed something else. His eyes were more orange than red. They were almost to what she had always seen a vampire’s eyes to look like, but not quite. It fascinated her so much, she didn’t even realize she was staring.

“Right,” Doug said. “The eyes. They’re what got me down here, but I guess you could probably figure that out.” He took in the sight of her and nodded to himself. “I guess I got off pretty easy, all things considered.”

Doug pointed to the cage beside him. “That’s Renee,” he said.

Chloe looked at her, but could see nothing abnormal. “I don’t…”

“See any defects?” Renee finished for her, knowing the only thing there was to say. “Yeah, I guess I got off lucky too, though it really doesn’t feel like it, come feeding time.” She smiled wide to reveal what a very normal looking mouth. She had no fangs. No gaps in her teeth, either, where fangs would be.

“Did you lose them?” Chloe asked.

Renee shook her head. “Never had them. Never even knew I was supposed to until I met another vampire. I probably spent forty years thinking fangs were just another invention of the movies. Imagine my embarrassment when I found out the truth.”

“But how?”

Renee shrugged. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I don’t know. I don’t think any of us do. That’s why we’re here.”

“If you don’t mind,” came a raspy voice from the last cell in the lineup, “some of us are trying to sleep.”

“That’s Isaac,” Doug said. “Don’t mind him.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Isaac said, getting to his feet. It took him a minute. His skin was like tissue paper, almost translucent in the dim light. His body was wrinkled, almost skeletal, but there was a sharp awareness in his eyes.

“Let me guess,” Chloe said, “you begged to be turned on your death bed? Got right up to the end and just couldn’t dare to take that one last step.”

Isaac chuckled. “Oh, how very wrong you are. That’s almost funny.” He sighed. And coughed. “No. I am eighty years old.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said.

“That’s just the thing,” said Isaac. “I am eighty. I became a vampire when I was twenty.”

Chloe’s eyes widened, stunned. “You aged?”

“Every single year. Just like a normal human. Imagine what my body will be like after I push beyond that human lifespan? I can already barely get myself around. What happens when I’m two hundred? Hell, what about three?” His quivering, spindly fingers curled around the bars of his cage. “So you see, you’re not the only one who got the short end of the stick.”

Renee looked over Chloe’s scars. “What happened to you, anyway?”

Chloe looked down. “I got set on fire,” she said. “I didn’t heal.”

“How long ago did it happen?” Doug asked.

“About six months.”

Doug shrugged. “Maybe you’ve got hope, then. Maybe it’s recent enough that it can be reversed, right? Maybe you can still heal.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “Maybe.” But having seen the rest of them, the gaps, as Hopewell had called them, she finally realized what a fantasy that was.

Some time passed. She had been pulled from her cage and strapped to a gurney. Now, Hopewell wheeled her into an musty old room he’d turned into a makeshift lab. Wherever it was, it looked like even Frankenstein would think twice about conducting an experiment. It was disgusting. The smell of filth and decay was absolutely overpowering.

Hopewell noticed her recoil at the stench and grinned. “You get used to it,” he said. He locked down the gurney after he finished wheeling it against the wall, and patted her on the stomach. She winced. Her arms and legs were strapped down, but she tried. They had to give way eventually, and when they did, she’d tear his throat out.

“So tell me,” Hopewell said to her, ignoring the look in her eye, “how are you enjoying your stay?”

“When I get out of here, I am going to kill you with my bare hands.”

He turned away to look over his notes, barely acknowledging her threat. “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing for both of us that you’re never getting out of here.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He ignored her and continued to go about his work. That, she had to admit, made her nervous.

“What are you doing?”

Hopewell shrugged. “I’m doing all I ever said I would. I’m conducting a study. I told you, my intentions are not malicious, Chloe. I simply want to study what you are and how this, whatever it is, works.” He sighed. “So I’m going with what I think is a pretty obvious test.”

“And what’s that?”

He stepped over to the window and tapped the shade. “Your body has refused to heal your burns. Seems to me the most obvious thing would be to see if it can heal new ones.”

Chloe struggled against he restraints.

“And if not,” Hopewell said, gesturing to the unscarred half of her body, “maybe we can at least even this out.”

He lifted the shade and let the sunlight pour in. Chloe screamed in agony as her body began to blister.

EIGHT

Chloe had no idea how much time passed down there in the bunker that was Hopewell’s lab. She looked down at her skin, pink and peeling, but healing. As relentless as he was, some part of her had to admit that he was giving her the answers she was looking for. Now she knew that her body could still heal, at least heal new injuries. And that fascinated even her, she had to admit. Why only that injury, at that moment, of that magnitude, to be imprinted on her forever? But that also came with the certainty that she would, in fact, be stuck like this forever. She had no idea how she could live like that.

Although, if she never got out of here, she supposed she wouldn’t have to.

And really, what reason was there to leave? Yes, he was going to kill her, but why live? Like this, for eternity? She didn’t know if she could do that.

She may have even decided to die right there in that moment if it weren’t for the thought of the cowboy and his self-satisfied smile.

No.

Chloe did not particularly want to live, but she did want that man to die. At this point in time, if she wanted to survive, she would simply have to trade one desire for the other.

She turned her head to the side as Renee was thrown back into her cell, sobbing, her mouth welling up with blood.

Chloe looked on, horrified at the realization. The bastard had pulled her eye teeth out.

Renee sat there, holding a hand over her bleeding mouth, saying nothing.

Hopewell had strapped the girl to a table just like he’d strapped down Chloe, and he had ripped out her teeth just to see if they would grow back as fangs.

He had done that and he had done who knows what else to the rest of them, or to however many had come before. Vampires had died down here, she knew that much. She could smell it all over the walls and floor. How long had he been doing this?

She didn’t know. But he planned to keep doing it, that much was obvious. Over and over until there was nothing left of them. They weren’t even lab rats down here, not really. They were flies he continued to pull the wings from, ones he knew would regrow the wings as he did.

Okay, she thought. Maybe the cowboy wasn’t the only person she needed to kill after all.

NINE

Two of Hopewell’s hired hands pushed Isaac into the doctor’s office. Hopewell was reading something, something he’d no doubt picked up only a moment ago for effect, just so he could play at being aloof. It didn’t work, but he played the part anyway.

The guards forced Isaac into a chair and closed the door behind them.

Isaac looked around. “You idiot,” he said. “You locked us in a room together? No guards for protection? I’m going to tear your fucking throat out.”

Hopewell put down his book. “By all means, take your shot. I’ll get you a cane.”

“Fuck you.”

“Even if you killed me, there are guards all over the hall, you’d be dead by the time you opened the door and you know it.”

“I swear to God, the moment will come, and I’ll tear you limb from…”

“Why don’t you have Alzheimer’s?”

Isaac stopped dead, absolutely thrown by the question. “What?”

“Why don’t you have Alzheimer’s? You should, shouldn’t you? Or something else, just as deteriorating. Your body is aging, why not your brain? How is that even possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know. None of you know anything about your defects. It’s not very much help to me, but it does give me an exciting blank canvas to work with.”

“You really get off on this, don’t you?”

Hopewell just lowered his eyes at him. “That really should be obvious by now.”

“You sick fuck.”

“Of course, maybe you do. Maybe you put on this grumpy, ‘nobody talk to me’ attitude because if they got close enough they’d be able to see that you have absolutely no idea who you are. Does that sound right to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Isaac said, his voice almost a growl.

Hopewell smiled. “Yes, that’s precisely my point.” He looked over a few pages of notes on the desk in front of him. “How about a little memory test? If your brain isn’t wasting away just as much as your body, then you have nothing to worry about, right?”

“I’m not going to run on a wheel for your amusement.”

“Let’s start with an easy one.”

“I told you…”

“What’s your name?”

Isaac blinked. “What?”

“What’s your name, Isaac? You can at least answer that, can’t you? Because you know Isaac’s just the name you came here with, not whatever you were before.” He gestured downward. “You’ve even got it written down on your sleeve.”

Isaac looked down.

“That’s what I thought,” Hopewell said. “You know, I’m here to help you. Really. And personally, I’ve always found pain to be a perfect way to jog the memory.”

TEN

It was hopeless. Day after day, night after night, they were tortured. The only way she knew the passage of time was Hopewell, like clockwork, wheeling her into that room every single day and exposing her to the sunlight. One test was never enough, he had said to her. One test could always be a fluke. And if her body had stopped healing once, who was to say that it couldn’t simply happen again, for any reason?

Chloe had to admit that she was afraid of that as well. Or she had been. Now, there wasn’t much sense in being afraid of anything. This wasn’t science for Hopewell, she knew now, it was therapy. Vampires were the perfect outlet for his psychopathy. He could cut them open as much as he wanted. See what made them tick, remove organs, do whatever he saw fit, then sew them up, wait for them to heal, and start all over again.

Chloe had wanted to fight, to push for her freedom, to embark on a revenge that was building and building within her mind. But now she feared it was pointless. None of them were ever getting out of here.

The guard must have seen the despair in her eyes as he made his rounds. He couldn’t help but smile at it. “Christ, you’re an ugly little thing, aren’t you?”

“Leave me alone,” she said, turning away.

“Oh, I wouldn’t talk to me like that if I were you.”

“I imagine you wouldn’t do a lot of things if you were me,” she said.

“You’re right,” he said. “Looking the way you look, I’d have walked into the sun ages ago.”

Chloe slammed her body against the bars. “Fuck you!”

The guard grinned wider, getting as close as possible. “Go ahead, make a move,” he said. “There are cameras all over this place. They’d come for you in a heartbeat. And I’m the one with the gun, let’s not forget. I’m not the half-dead thing in a cage.”

A moment, then Chloe smiled.

His grin disappeared. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh,” Chloe said. “I think I’ve got one word that’s going to make all that macho bravado disappear in a single second.”

The guard was unimpressed. He rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, and what’s that?”

Chloe held up a gleaming object in her hand. “Keys,” she said with a smile.

The guard looked down at his belt. Sure enough, his keys were missing.

By the time he looked back up, Chloe had already unlocked the door to her cage.

He moved for his gun, but she was on him in an instant, slamming him into the wall and tearing into his throat, blood filling her hungry mouth.

She threw the body into the cage and locked it behind her when she was done.

Chloe unlocked the other cages as quickly as she could. “Come on,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. He was right. The other guards are going to be down here in a second.”

Doug was hesitant to leave. “Then what chance do we have?”

“A big one,” Chloe said. “Hopewell’s not paying for an army here, he’s paying for posturing. Because at the end of the day, no matter how many of them there are, they are human soldiers with human weapons, and I’m pretty sure some of them were just mall security guards. And we’re vampires.”

“Defects,” Doug said.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You’ve got orange eyes, it’s not the end of the fucking world.” She started moving without waiting for them to catch up. “Now come on, let’s go.”

As expected, more guards appeared at the end of the hall. They raised their weapons. “Get back in your cages! Now!”

Chloe kept walking.

“I said now!”

She didn’t waver. The guard fired. It hit her directly in the stomach. “Fuck!” She hissed. Then she looked him in the eye and spat blood into his face.

They all opened fire now. Chloe moved in a blur, taking them down one by one.

More guards appeared in the doorway. Chloe turned back to the others and glared. “You know, I could use a little help.”

Renee nodded. “Oh. Right. Sorry,” she mumbled through a wounded mouth. She lunged at the new guards as they continued firing wildly.

Isaac swiped at one guard, moving slowly. He got hit with a bullet and froze. Chloe looked at him, concerned. Seeing his eyes now, she realized that it wasn’t pain that froze him. It was something else. He didn’t even know where he was.

The guards sensed it too and focused their fire on him. They kept shooting directly into his heart. Round after round. Isaac fell to the floor.

Chloe didn’t need to watch it happen to know that he was dead.

The rest of them, however, were not a match for her. Let alone for Doug and Renee. The three of them had been abused down in that hole every single day, and all of that rage, that frustration, that agony had finally bubbled to the surface. She’d had more than enough. And the fact that she had even retained her own mind was victory enough. She supposed in some way, she had the cowboy to thank for that.

She couldn’t wait to thank him in person.

But vengeance would come later. All she could think at the moment was that she had a much more pressing appointment to keep.

Chloe kicked down the door of Hopewell’s office. The doctor jumped back, startled. The persona he’d put in place for them had completely disappeared. The man looked absolutely terrified.

“W-where are my guards?”

Chloe blinked at him. “Where do you think?”

“Oh my God.”

She smiled. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

He stammered, holding up a shaking hand as if it would keep her back. “You have to understand… you’re an anomaly… there’s nothing else like you. It begged for study.”

“Oh, I know,” Chloe said. “And I think in a sick way I’m even grateful for some of it. You answered questions about me, about whatever happened, that I didn’t even know how to ask. I appreciate that.” She stepped closer toward him.

Hopewell was sweating with fear. His back pressed into the wall. He had nowhere to go.

Chloe pushed a foot into his chest, holding him in place. “But let’s be honest with each other, doctor. This wasn’t science you were doing here, not at all. At best, I’d say it was a fetish. And it’s over now.”

Hopewell’s lips quivered. His throat was dry. “What are you going to do to me?”

Chloe smiled before she bit him. She pulled back and wiped the blood from her mouth. “Oh, just a little experiment,” she said.

With the help of Doug and Renee, she threw him into the same room he’d used to torture her for so long. She ripped the blind from the window and locked the door behind her.

Hopewell began to wake up as she closed the door, the terror and realization building in his eyes.

“Who knows, doc? Maybe you won’t burn.” Chloe looked down at her own scarred hand. “Stranger things have happened, after all.”

ELEVEN

Duddy locked the car and carried as many grocery bags as he could fit into his arms as he walked back up the steps toward his apartment. He hated to make two trips. He set one bag down on the doorstep as he fumbled for his keys, almost worried for a moment that he’d lost them, even though he knew he had just locked the car. Funny how his mind got away from him like that sometimes.

He opened the door and as he stepped inside, something picked him up and slammed him into the wall.

“Did you know?” Her eyes were blazing red.

“Chloe?”

She slammed him into the wall again. Harder this time. “Did you know?”

Duddy could barely comprehend what was even happening. “Chloe, where have you been, I…”

“Did! You! Know!”

“No! I… I don’t know what you’re talking about! I swear to God.”

She could smell the fear on him. The confusion. She knew he wasn’t lying. Chloe put him back on the ground and couldn’t help but laugh to herself. “Well, then you’re just a really shitty friend.”

Duddy picked himself up, still confused. “Chloe, where have you been?”

“That doctor you sent me to? He imprisoned me. Experimented on me. I don’t even know for how long.”

“Three weeks,” Duddy said. “You’ve been gone for three weeks.”

Chloe’s eyes widened. “God, is that all? It felt like years.”

“I’m sorry,” Duddy said. “I told you, I just overheard his name. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I believe you.”

“What are we going to do about him?”

Chloe smiled at him. “Thanks, Duddy, but trust me, that’s already taken care of.”

Duddy looked at her, surprisingly intense. “I know I can’t begin to make this up to you, but I do think I can try. I did some digging. When you were gone. Pulled every resource I could. Wanted to surprise you when, if, you came back. And I think maybe you need it now more than ever.”

“What is it?”

“I found him, Chloe. I found the man you’re looking for.”

He dug into his wallet and handed her a picture of the cowboy. Chloe felt her body go numb.

“The man who set the Red Eye on fire. The man who did this to you. His name is Roland Kane.”

Roland Kane. She held the name in her mouth. It tasted like blood, and in that renewed hunger, it tasted like hope.