Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

N  I  N  E

B I R T H

Gabriel lived only a few blocks away in a stylish modern apartment on a quiet little street where there seemed to be no danger at all. Gabriel was easy to talk to. Sunny opened up to him about everything, life in California, the Marines and how he had loved his friend Blake who was quiet and calm and now that he thought about it, most likely gay. He talked about how he had crossed the country, yes, looking for what had happened to his friend, but also because there was something he was missing, and he didn’t know what it was. Sunny loved Brad and Nehru, but he had never been able to tell them everything. Brad had just texted, and Sunny replied that he was safe. For their own safety, and Dan’s, he had said nothing about the journals and now, with Gabriel, who had been pursued by the same thing he sought, Sunny opened up about Dan, his journals and David, and Gabriel shook his head, looking afraid, but had said, “I want to not believe. But after what I’ve seen, I sort of have to.”

Gabriel had half a bottle of wine and a little bit of pot, and after both were consumed, they began making out on the sofa and all the fear and tightness that had been in Sunny rolled away. Gabriel took him by the hand and led him to the messy bedroom of a twenty something who, even now, pulling off his sweater and unbuckling the belt to his jeans, hadn’t planned on bringing anyone back tonight.

“Oh, God,” Gabriel murmured.

They were good to each other. Sunny was a tender kisser and now their tongues touched and for the longest time they stood half dressed in each other’s arms, kissing gently, hands lowering to caress each other before at last they went to the bed and continued undressing. There was no hurry. It had been late when they met, it was later now, and no one had to be anywhere.

The gentle lovemaking grew fiercer, and it was different from being with Nehru and Brad who were almost like teachers or older siblings. Part of him wondered if he was cheating on them. No, but that was foolish. They would want him to find his own happiness. And maybe Gabriel was it. This was how it was with Jack or Mitch, another boy, just learning, a mirror image of embraces, kisses, shocked entrances and raptures that lasted through the rest of the night. Perhaps the energy of the sex came from the joy of being left alive when so many had not been. When Sunny thought they were done, they began again, and then again and then again, and now they lay together in the bed heaving, Sunny on his back and Gabriel on his side, curled close to him.

“Shit, Sunny,” Gabriel murmured, stroking his hair, and kissing him softly, encircled by Sunny’s arms. Gabriel was so warm, so comfortable and so smooth that for a moment Sunny completely missed the next thing he said:

“I was thinking about killing you, but I’m glad I didn’t.”

By the time Alexander Kominsky understood what Gabriel had said, the young, dark haired man, the warm and beautiful boy he was lying with also said, “It is, in my mind, the biggest crime to waste blood, and I had already eaten, hence the scream. So I wondered what to do with you. Letting you go wasn’t an option, no. And then you knew too much. But the thing is, you see the thing is, you have heart, Alexander Kominsky. You’re a real prince.”

Sunny was gauging how long it would take for him to get to the door and out of the apartment, and thinking these were probably not real options, but instead he said:

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what you need to understand now and forever,” Gabriel’s voice had become only a little firmer.

“What we just did was no joke. I wanted us to make love. I wanted it. Just like you. I…. it’s stupid to say I’m in love with you—as stupid as it would be for you to try to run,” Gabriel said as a very firm grip, a throat crushing grip came to Sunny’s neck.

“You’re here because you don’t belong in the mortal world. You belong with us. You will be,” Gabriel said, “with us.”

Parts of Dan’s journal went through Sunny’s mind. Rosamunde, and the seduction of the bed, and why had he managed to forget those things? He wasn’t terrified while Gabriel kissed him gently. He almost invited the mouth sucking on his throat that had sucked on his throat before. He would have been embarrassed to start screaming or try to run, only he had no idea how much the bite would hurt, or how, when it began to hurt it was because he was already half drained, or of the strange burning through his arteries and veins of this new fluid or of the coming weakness, the heaviness, in Gabriel’s surprisingly strong arms, and at last… the darkness.

They lay face to face, side by side, still almost touching. Beyond the heavy curtains of David Lawry’s bedroom, the first traces of morning could be seen.

“The first time,” David almost whispered.

“First time?” Tanitha sounded sleepy. Her sleepiness made him drowsy too.

“That you have stayed till dawn.”

David yawned as he smiled, and Tanitha smiled too, pressing her back to him, burying her face in the pillow as his fingers lightly tangled themselves in her rich dark hair.

“Well, I imagine,” her voice came muffled from the pillow, “this calls for some sort of celebration.”

David wasn’t sure how serious she was, but because she had come closer, he drew closer.

“I suppose we could go out for breakfast if—”

“Either one of us felt like getting up and getting dressed to go to breakfast?”

“Yes,” David admitted. “There is that.”

“Or,” Tanitha continued, “we could cook breakfast here—”

“If either one of us was a cook.”

Tanitha turned around, stretching, thrusting her arms out like a cat.

“I’ll have you know I am a very good cook.”

“You are?”

“Just not when I don’t have to be. And certainly not at seven in the morning.”

Some time passed, and beyond the curtain there was a hard orange glow to the sunrise.

“I was afraid,” David said.

Before Tanitha could ask of what, he said, “Of being with you.

“Being with anyone, really,” he continued while she turned to look at him.

“It has been so long. And… my confidence hasn’t been where it was.”

Tanitha never spoke to fill space, but her eyes said everything, and David nodded to the only poster on his wall.

“The knight,” Tanitha acknowledged.

“Sir Lancelot,” David said, “who I admit I don’t know much about. Just… He looks a bit like me, reminds me of me. How I’d like to be. Protecting people. Dashing. Kind of a hero.”

“I think,” Tanitha spoke slowly, her hand delicate and deeply bronze, caressing his very long fingers, “that is exactly what you are. A good man, with the gentlest touch.”

“I lost my mind, Tan,” David said. “Last year I went crazy. My mind cracked, and I feel so fragile, more fragile than I ever felt before. When I fell on my face and started screaming there was nothing heroic about that.”

He was surprised when suddenly Tanitha began to laugh. It was not loud, and somehow, it was not mean. It was low in her throat and continued on and on and finally she said, “You should read…. You should read more. Or know more, at least.”

“Eh?”

“Lancelot loses his mind.”

“What?”

“The greatest knight in his world, when his world grew too much he lost his mind. But he did not have the grace or sense to check himself into a hospital. He just went mad and ran around howling in the forest for years.”

David propped himself on his elbow, listening.

“Eventually, through the love of others, he regained his mind, and lost the shame he had.”

It was a moment before David said, “I never… I never heard that story.”

While David sat up, still thinking, Tanitha turned around and pressed herself deeper into the blankets.

“You should read more,” she said. 

Because it was his day off, they did go to lunch, and then they went around downtown looking through some of the shops, and in the back of his mind he thought how women were supposed to like this thing and men were not, except that everything was interesting with Tanitha Tzepesh, and she was that best of things, not clingy, but also never distant. When she was around, she gave everything. When it was time to go, she said so firmly and kissed him, walking off into the rest of the day.

As David went home to find himself a life without this woman for the next few hours, it occurred to him that he had no idea what she did. All of the usual questions: What do you do? What’s your family like?—all disappeared in her presence. Even now, he realized he should care about these things, but didn’t really. And in her presence he was never able to pretend.

David watched a little bit of television, and then surprised himself by falling asleep on the sofa, and when he got up he felt pleasant. His place felt like home. He wasn’t lonely and anxious as he had been in Lassador. He thought about his mother frying porkchops and how crispy they had been, the border of hot fat, how golden brown they were, with mashed potatoes. He longed for them so powerfully it hurt, and he was surprised when tears came to his eyes, a sharp deep cut of sorrow, and then he laughed, suddenly happy, and the sorrow was not gone, not exactly, but he was not hurt anymore.

He had been putting so much aside, putting those last days of caring for her, his secret grief and even more secret guilt away. He visited his anger at his sister, and even the anger at a woman, a mother, who had left no life insureance, no instructions, and was perfectly fine with leaving him to handle all aspects of her death. As afternoon deepened to evening, for the first time David Lawry felt himself living with all of his feelings, and he understood for the first time, that they were not too much to bear.

He found himself taking the long way. He was going to Rawlston, but he wanted to travel through Lassador. He wanted to travel up the state road as it turned into the South Side. He wanted to see the neighborhood he’d grown up in, cared for his mother and nearly lost his mind in. He wanted to see the spire of Saint Ursula’s in the east and had no idea that the night before a friend of his had come there looking for trouble. Downtown the old hotels, the Amtrak station in the distance, the bridge into the north side, old Saint Ignatius, Ontario Hills. He wanted to see all this before high up north he drove into the east, and through subdivions and half farm houses happy in their loneliness, he headed to Rawlston.

At the Grey Note a jazz band was playing, and Nehru, in an Hawaiian shirt, brought David a drink, and said, “It’s good to see you, but when you came I hoped Sunny would be with you.”

“Whaddo you mean?” David said, taking the drink and nodding his thanks.

“Sunny’s a grown man,” Nehru said. “We don’t ever want to be clingy. He texted around two or three in the morning, the usual time he comes home, and said he was fine. But we haven’t heard or seen from him sense.”

“Oh,” David said, making himself take a sip of the boilermaker.

As the peace he had been in that seemed so stable cracked in front of him, David heard himself lie and say, “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Nehru nodded and seemed as convinced of this as David was. So David said, “I am a detective. It’s my job to see what could go wrong. It’s my job to be pessimistic. Do you mind if I go up and look through his room?”

Nehru shook his head.

“I don’t even think the door is locked.”

There was a sort of disappointment David felt coming up the back stair into the set of rooms that made an apartment and a half. Last time he’d been here had been his first great day and he had had been drunk with Dan and loving life. He’d fallen asleep in a beer stupor only to wake up with the sun in his eyes. Now, he was genuinely afraid for Sunny, and the place was empty. The light suddenly turned on in Sunny’s room seemed too harsh, and the place needed a cleaning. He rifled through Sunny’s clothes and his few bags, through the chest of drawers that had been used first by Dan and then by him and, at last, found what he was looking for, Dan Rawlinson’s journals.

When Nehru came upstairs, and asked him if he’d found anything, David said, “I might have. If you don’t mind, I’m thinking of staying here tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Nehru said. “You gonna be up a while?”

“Probably.”

“I’ll put some coffee on for you.”

“That would be great.”

Nehru nodded and turned to leave.

“Nehru?”

The handsome man nodded.

“He’ll be alright.”

Nehru nodded, let out a breath and turned for his apartment to make coffee.

David had gotten a text from Tanitha and returned it, telling her he was in Rawlston for the night. He was halfway through a cup of coffee when he stopped reading and put the book down.

It wasn’t the first time he’d stumbled into a terrible place where he didn’t know what to do and could only stare at a wall. It had felt that way the day a doctor told him in no uncertain terms his mother would be dead in a day. Now he stopped staring at the wall and the open door to the hallway. He lifted the notebook and read again:

It was opened by a Black woman, and I hoped she wouldn’t say something rude like the woman before. But any hope I had didn’t matter because she was so beautiful, and so strange. Her eyes were blue as her skin was dark, and black hair fell down her back like, well, I’ts stupid to say it, but like an Indian princess. She was exactly as tall as me, and I first thought she had on a costumewondered if she wasn’t in a costume. It was a red dress with a huget dark blue shawl around her shoulders.

And she was still looking at me.

I said: “Trick or treat!”

“Who is it?” a voice came from down the hall.

The woman opened the doo widerr, turned around and called, “Trick or treaters! One trick or treater.”

There was silence, and then laughter, and then the voice said, “Well, then you have to bring him in.”

The woman nodded and did so, closing the door behind me.

The foyer was paneled and polished wood, and I could see a large old timey living room off to my right, and I sniffed the air. “Is that coffee?”

“We’re just getting up,” the woman said. “Would you like a cup?”

I looked at my watch..

“You will not be late to meet your friends again,” she said, gently to me. “Come. I am Tanitha.”

David sat on the bed, still feeling every part of his body, feeling his breath move slowly through him, thinking if he moved at all, the whole world would shatter. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. Thinking was beyond him. But in the end he had to move. He had to pick up the journal and read.

“Are you witches?”

“Well, you already know we aren’t,” Tanitha said.

“Then…” I was lost, “what are you?”

“You are the one who came here and knocked on our door with that lame line,” Tanitha said, “knowing full well there’d be no candy here tonight. And yet you came, so the better question is who are you? And what did you come here for?”

“I…” I started. “I… Came to find… I dunno.”

“You do know,” Kruinh said, softly.

“Something more,” I said. “I came to find something more.”

Kruinh nodded.

“That is what we are,” I said. “We are that something more. Or part of it.”

If anything was unnatural, or was different than what he had experienced before, it was her. He could not even think her name. He pushed his phone away, somewhere between sickened and terrified to look at it, for the last message had come from her. He blew out his cheeks and ran his hands over his jeans then got up and went down the hall. Brad and Nehru’s apartment was the first door at the head of the stairs and it was divided between their large bedroom and living room and kitchen and then a small hall with a bathroom and a big room and back enclosed porch for the kids who had a little door that opened on the other end of the hallway. Across from it David had seen, just down the hall from him, another door, which was to the private bathroom for Dan and Sunny’s apartment.

Without knocking, David came into Brad and Nehru’s to get another cup, and Brad was there, his grey and black hair sticking up as he smoked a cigarette.

“Learn anything?”

“Maybe,” David shook his head.

“I know I said I’m not worried,” Brad said. “But it’s been a whole day, and I am.”

“I know,” David said. “Me too. I’m putting out a ping on his last text to see where it’s from. I’ve already put out a search for him.”

“You have any idea where he is?”

“Not yet,” David said. Then, “Well, I do because I know what he’s looking for. I just don’t know where he thinks what he’s looking for is.”

“He got agitated the other night,” Brad said. “When we were talking about the boy that got killed in Germantown.”

“Thank you!” David said. Then he said, pointing to the pack of cigarettes.

“May I?”

“Be my guest,” Brad held the Winstons out to him.

I banged on the door rapidly, and it was opened by a tall, brunette vampire with dark Mediterranean features and wide dark eyes, a look of both concern and suspicion on his face. I stood blinking at him, and he said, “Can I... help?” Then… “Who are you? I know you are not human?”

“I’m as human as you,” I said. “Please, I need Kruinh or Tanitha.”

The elegant vampire in pants and dress shirt who looked as if he was on his way to a business meeting eyed me cautiously but said, “Come in.”

Myron was outside waiting, when this very serious looking vampire closed the door, and I wondered if Tanitha and Kruinh would even remember me then moments later, Tanitha came down the stairs into the foyer, her shawl wrapped around her but her eyes were wide as she looked me up and down.

She flung out her hand and scared the shit out of me, shouting:  “Tazi kŭshta da bŭde vidyana zavinagi i nikoga da ne e skrita ot teb. Zashtoto si krŭv ot moyata krŭv!”[1] 

And then she said, “From now on this house is always open to you, Daniel. What has happened to you? You have been…” she came nearer, passing the other vampire, and seized my chin, “made.

“Who did this?” she wondered. There were, after all, not that many vampires.

“Rosamunde—”

Before I could finish, both she and the dark haired vampire hissed, and Tanitha swore, “Kuchka ot yamata na ada!

They were all worried. Worry was an insufficient word. Troubled was a better word, irritated even better. Angry, afraid, agitated . So, in the end, David left the door open and went to the apartment across the hall to keep vigil with Brad and Nehru and hope for the sunrise. Only in the sunrise could something be done.

He wanted to show them the journals. He wanted to tell them everything, but what would they think?  Would they think he was foolish and Sunny was foolish and Dan was out of his mind or having them on? And where the hell was Dan?

Or was showing Brad and Nehru the journals just too much? Was it opening the ordinary world to horrors they didn’t need? Hell, David thought, he knew he didn’t need them! They didn’t make his world any better. He hoped for faith, signs of God, signs of wonder and beauty and what he got was shit like this? Vampires! Fucking blood drinkers! What the….?

As the apartment filled with grey smoke, three thoughts went through Davud Lawry’s head.

Why did I not have the courage to open those journals before?

If he had read them, he might have known Sunny was on his way to Germantown. Hell, in a way, he’d already known, hadn’t he? He would have gone with him, kept him from whatever he met.

And David thought, There is an enemy, a killer with a purpose, and we never knew what that purpose was, but now we do. The enemy had a name: Rosamunde. It didn’t answer why Blake and the others had been killed. Were they signs or just food? Surely if there were such creatures in the world then they fed regularly, and they would have done it better than this?

Tanitha.

Tan… was the third thought.

Would that she was a witch, whatever a witch was.

Tanitha was a vampire.

David was so angry he wanted to slam his fist on the table because he knew two things were true.

One: Sunny Kominsky was dead by now.

Two: and only in very recent times had his mind made accommodation for such a possibility:

    

Sunny was now a vampire.

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[1] “This house be forever seen and never hidden from thee. For thou art blood of my blood.”