The door was open before I’d turned the engine off. He stood staring at me in disbelief, looking a complete mess. And that was hard to accomplish for someone so composed and gorgeous. I dreaded to think how wrecked I must have looked in comparison.

We stared at each other for a long while. I wanted to rush into his arms, but I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was, and another part of me wanted to run away again. He took a step towards me, but wavered and stopped.

“I can’t leave without answers,” I said.

He nodded solemnly and gestured me through to the living room. Leon disappeared up the stairs. The room stank like a grotty old bar; alcohol mixed with cigarettes and the rotting souls of those who’ve hit the bottom. It was usually such a neat and clean place. He hastily cleared up the discarded whiskey bottles, straightened out the furniture and emptied an overflowing ashtray.

I had no idea where to even begin with the things we needed to talk about. How to pick one question out of the swirling mass running riot through my mind?

“So…” I said.

“So…” he replied.

Something occurred to me then. The speed that Leon had gone up the stairs, the way he moved. The way he looked. The way they all looked.

“Fuck me. How could I have only just realised? You’re all vampires?”

He stared at me like I was ridiculous. “Of course. My Cell, and… well, we’re not the only vampires on earth. Obviously there are others, too.”

“Cell?”

“I called it a gang in an attempt to sound more normal to you. Some of us call our groups a clan. We use Cell.”

“So, the other… Cell. Alex—”

“They’re extremely dangerous, Jess. I fear more for what they might do to you than what I myself could do.”

“Why don’t you get along with your brother?”

He frowned and lit up a cigarette. I’d never seem him smoke before.

“It’s a long story,” he said, blowing out smoke. The smell wafted straight towards me and poked at the cravings I thought were long gone.

“I’ve got as long as it takes,” I replied, leaning back in the chair for emphasis.

He exhaled noisily, “Well, it kind of ties in with how we became vampires. And with what I used to be. What I should be. Do you really want to hear that, too?”

“I’m not leaving again until I know everything.” I crossed my legs for further insistence.

A foggy glaze settled in his eyes as he stared off into space for a while. Then he thrust his cigarette towards me. “I can hear you thinking about me smoking and how much you want one. Take it would you, tonight doesn’t count. It’s going to be a long one, so just smoke. You can quit again tomorrow.”

The first couple of drags made me cough, but then the heavy smoke sank deep into my lungs in a disgusting and heavenly, tension-releasing wave. I gagged and savoured in equal measure.

He watched me with a hint of amusement before starting his story.

“In 1890 our parents died. Alexander and I were orphaned at the age of eleven.”

I burst out laughing and spat the whiskey he’d just given me.

He scowled and rolled his eyes.

“What?” I yelled. “That isn’t funny? You start a conversation by casually telling me you were a boy in 1890 and I’m supposed to take this seriously?”

“Yes. Our parents were wealthy cotton farm owners in Texas.”

Nothing. Not even a hint of amusement on his face. Fuck this.

* * *

“So, you’re telling me you’re… wait…” I tried the math, but my muddled brain wouldn’t cooperate. “Over a hundred years old?” I couldn’t take that in. I didn’t want to.

“That’s right.”

“Over. One. Hundred,” I repeated, as if saying each syllable a little slower would help it sink in.

“So, anyway, our parents left a lot of money behind, but we were young and had no other family to take care of us. We were put into an orphanage temporarily while something more permanent was being worked out. But a man called Tobias arrived and took us away. He was wealthy and charismatic. He never really said how he managed to obtain us, but I think he was paying the staff to hand over children. We weren’t the only ones.” He rubbed at his arm before continuing.

“He was a vampire, forming his own Cell in New York, after a lot of issues with leaving the Bael. He wasn’t too selective about who he chose, mainly adults and a few children. But he needed twins for the Elwood Legacy to pass on, do he sired us, made us into vampires. Vampire children continue to age until they hit around eighteen to mid twenties, then it stops. No one knows why, but it’s frowned upon to turn kids these days, so the experiments have all but stopped—”

“Experiments? On kids? That’s disgusting.”

“Yes. Are you going to keep interrupting?”

“Maybe. If I want to. Do you have a problem with that?” I dared him to get impatient with me right then. And what the hell was an Elwood Legacy? Like, a family fortune to be inherited?

He sighed and went on, “We lived a normal vampire life, killing as we needed. Would you like to make any comment on that before I go on?”

“Not right now.” I stubbed out the cigarette and took another. I didn’t want to comment on that at all. Ever. The use of past tense was encouraging, though.

“Alexander took to the lifestyle with joyous enthusiasm, but I was never happy. I mean, I enjoyed the killing, it’s impossible not to, and I was good at it. I did awful things. But, well… something happened, and…” he paused, rubbing a palm against his forehead. “I realised that I was hurting innocent people, and I wanted it to stop.” He moved to get himself another drink. A haunting ache had flashed in his eyes, clear as day. This story pained him.

I didn’t want to push him, despite the thousand things that I wanted to ask right then. I bit my tongue and waited while he rubbed at his head some more.

“It changed me,” he said the words with bitterness. “I began trying to control my urges and found that sometimes I could. I practiced and practiced, so much so that the pain of abstaining left me weak and drained. But I kept going.

“We’d grown to think of Tobias as our father. Alexander was particularly close to him. They bullied and tormented me for my weakened condition and inferior state of mind. But when Tobias saw me come out the other side and grow strong again, whilst still withholding my instincts, he started questioning himself. He’d never even considered it before, he didn’t think it was possible to fight the darkness inside. He just lived true to who he was and accepted it gladly.”

I held up my hand, pausing him. My reactions to his words were veering off on so many tangents. One question would come, then another and another. Too fast. Too hard for me to focus on what he was saying. These were the longest speeches he’d ever given.

He waited, less than patiently, tapping his foot and watching me through jaded eyes. I shouldn’t have looked at them. They were like bait. I wanted to be pulled into them and get lost there. He blew out his cheeks and released his gaze on me, turning his attention instead to a faded black and white photograph on the mantle. Him, Alex and another man.

“By now, Tobias was amazed, fascinated. He began to see me as the stronger brother, not the weaker one. We’d sit for hours talking and I started training him with my techniques in control. Alexander was jealous, pushed out. We tried to educate him too, but he had zero interest in controlling himself and was furious with us. He left home. The rest of the Cell were just as appalled by our actions and left, too. It was just me and him, but we were at a degree of peace. Until the Elwood Legacy and the Bael came to bite us on the ass.”

“The what, and the what?” I asked.

“We’d become complacent about it all. But they found us and I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t do what they wanted. They killed Tobias.”

He’d been gazing into nothingness as he cast his mind back all those years. His face was impassive this time, but the hurt showed in his body language. A familiar sight, one I’d seen in my own mirror. Losing a father and not being able to hide the guilt. I wanted to hold him, to ease that pain.

He snapped round to face me. “Don’t feel sorry for me. It’s my fault. Alexander blames me for changing Tobias, making him weak, for refusing the call of the Legacy; for everything.”

“I don’t know what this Legacy thing is, but you can’t blame yourself for choosing to be a good person.”

“That’s not what I mean. I know that’s not my fault, but I should’ve been there to help him and I wasn’t. Anyway, I’ve told you enough about that. But, by the way, I’m not a good person, Jess. I’m a vampire. I’m bad.”

“I don’t believe that. Anyone that actually calls himself bad out loud is just a wannabe,” I said with a grin, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Would you like me to demonstrate?” He gave me a callous look that made my heart stop dead. His whole face changed, with small veins appearing all around his eyes and popping out in his neck.

A snarling smile twisted his face, allowing the glimpse of two sharp teeth.

* * *

“Shit! Dammit, I’m sorry, Jess,” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “That was out of line.”

Mercifully his face had quickly returned to normal. I didn’t ever want to see that other, terrifying face again. How could features so beautiful turn so ghastly? I shook my head, hoping to dislodge the memory.

Despite the feeling that I was standing over a precipice and about to fall, I still struggled with the idea of him being bad. Now would have been a good time to leave, but there was still so much I wanted to know. Besides, I didn’t think I could leave. I was so caught up with the intensity of the direction my life was taking, the adrenalin was too addictive.

I wasn’t a big believer in love. Once I would have laughed at the notion of love at first sight, but now I wasn’t so sure. It felt like I loved him. I understood what it was to desire someone so much that they absolutely consumed your whole being. Maybe I was still getting love and lust mixed up. I don’t know. All I did know was that I felt as if I would cease to function if I lost him.

And that thought was fucked up enough to make me want to smash my head into a wall. To wake up and get a grip.

“Why do you and Alex live so close if you hate each other so much? This place is tiny, it doesn’t make sense.”

“I chose to come here when I started up a new Cell, one that wanted to live the way I do. I picked this island precisely because of its smallness. Less people means less temptation. I rejected the notion of running from the Bael any longer, I was sick of it. Let them come. I loved no one. They had no power over me. Alexander took it upon himself to move here to torment me. And to keep me in his sights. He sees it as his duty to make me bond and if he can’t have that, then he’ll settle for making me suffer. It’s fun for him, he enjoys trying to fuck me up. Payback for our childhood.”

“You could move?”

“I told you, I’m done with running. This is my home. I can handle whatever shit he, or anyone else, throws at me.”

“Wait.” A cold dread filled my stomach. “That whole thing about me moving out of my motel, because I was in the other gang’s territory – that’s other vampires. Your brother, the badass vampire who doesn’t care about anyone but himself and likes to cause you pain? I was in the motel all that time with him around?”

“I tried to get you to move out.”

“You didn’t try hard enough,” I shouted, jumping out of my chair to pace the room.

“Do you not know how obstinate you are? I couldn’t force you. I made sure someone was watching you all the time. I’d have been there in an instant if necessary. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” He put a hand on my arm to halt my pacing. His touch was so wonderful, my heart instantly decided none of this had happened. It begged me to forget all this shit.

“Not even myself,” he whispered, his mouth brushing my ear.

“You had me followed? You were spying on me?” I tried to pull back.

“I had you protected. That’s different.” He pressed in closer.

“Sometimes, when we’re close like this, you tense up. Is that because…” I didn’t want to ask, but it slid out anyway.

He inhaled deeply, right along my neck and his grip tightened on my arm. “I’m hungering for your blood,” he said, all husky and aroused.

“Shit on a fucking stick! Go ahead and tell it like it is why don’t you!” I shoved him away as hard as I could and he complied, relinquishing his usual strength and backing away, hands held up.

“You don’t want the truth? I thought you wanted answers, so I’m giving them to you.”

“I know…I do. But you can stop that feeling, the hunger?”

“No, I can’t stop it. But so far I’ve managed to resist it. I won’t lie and say it’s easy.”

“But you’re surrounded by people every day.”

“I don’t want them all. Each vampire is different, only attracted to a certain type of scent. A bit like you not being attracted to every man you see. If I find myself in the proximity of someone that appeals to me then I put distance between us. But with you, your scent, it’s much stronger to me than anything I’ve encountered before. Couple that with how fucking hot you are, how inspiring and exciting I find you, your radiant glow… I can’t stay away. Even though the pain of resisting is like acid in my veins.”

I shrank back into myself. Was I feeling guilty for the way I smelled?!

“All the times you would see me and I’d disappear, I was gradually acclimatising myself to you. Getting used to being near you. The night you joined our party on the beach I was starting to think I’d be OK, but then there was your dancing and the fight after. It felt like you were deliberately testing me. I was angry that you came so close to me, I wanted to make the decision when that would happen. And angry that you started flaunting it like that in front of me, pushing me to the edge.”

“About that… the fighting with Mulletman. What exactly happened, after?”

“They’re still alive, if that’s what you’re asking. For now.”

I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t want to know that answer, not with that ‘for now’ tagged on the end. I watched his hands for a while, transfixed by them.

“So why do you resist? If it’s what you are?” I asked.

“I don’t want to be what I am. I don’t want to kill people. I strive to live in the light. Or at least, in the grey, rather than the dark.”

Relief flooded over me in a delightful wave. I knew he wasn’t bad really, I couldn’t have fallen for a killer.

“What do you eat then?”

He looked at me in surprise. “People. I’m a vampire.”