The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

“So what’s everyone’s story?” Levy asked while Anne was cooking dinner, “And do you all eat all the time?”

“C’mon,” Dan said, “Food is delicious.”

“But you still kill people, right?”

Dan looked at him in disbelief.

“What?”

“The way you said it was like you’d be disappointed if we didn’t.”

“But you do?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. Then, “Yes, Levy. We kill people.”

“Like, how often?”

“See what you did? You just asked me one question and I’m trying to answer it, and then you ask me another. So which one do you want to know?”

“The first.”

“Alright, well, that’s Laurie, and you know Laurie. He’s friends with Chris and Lewis. Lives in Chicago.”

“Is he really old?”

“He’s about one hundred and seventy.”

“Wow.”

“And her, the one with the big eyes and the tea colored hair who kind of acts like everyone’s mother—”

“I heard that,” Anne said.

“That’s Anne. As a vampire she’s not old. She’s been one pretty much as long as me. But like, she was really old when she was made.”

“Then why isn’t she old now?”

“Because when you are made, you sort of go back to being the full maturity you would be before the body begins to deteriorate.”

“Oh. So like, she was like an actual old person?”

“From what I’ve been told. But really, you’d have to ask Sunny.”

“And Kruinh made all of you.”

“No,” Dan said. “Kruinh made Chris. Kruinh is Tanitha’s actual father. His wife, Elizaveda was her mother. David was made by Tanitha. Laurie was attacked by Evangeline who was made by Rosamunde and Kruinh instructed Chris in Making him to save his life.”

“Who is Rosamunde?”

Dan cleared his throat.

“Rosamunde is Kruinh’s niece, and so she belongs to his clan and whoever she makes belong to Kruinh. She made me, and she also made Sunny.”

“Was it to save your lives?”

“That….” Dan began, “is a really long story, and you ask a lot of questions.”

“Questions are good.”

“Yeah, but sometimes they’re annoying.”

“Now you know how it feels,” Laurie remarked coming down the stairs.

“You’re a funny man, Big Brother.”

“I hate when you call me that.”

“He loves it when you call him that,” Anne said, smiling and turning away from where she was stirring sauce and smoking a cigarette.

“Can’t you see how much I love it by the look on my face,” Laurie said, sitting down in one of the ladderback chairs and stretching his long legs.

“Oh,” Dan said, “and like I said, Sunny made Anne. And it really was to save her life.”

“Is it hard?” Levy said, “to make a vampire.”

Dan blinked at him.

“What?

“I have never done it,” Dan said. “Most of us haven’t.”

“Sunny, is it hard?”

Sunny had been on the other side of the kitchen with his headphones on and now looked up, raising an eyebrow. He looked suddenly very serious, very, Levy thought, despite his curly hair and surfer looks, like a vampire.

Sunny pulled out an earbud.

“Nevermind,” Levy said, because the question now seemed crass.

“Here’s the thing,” Laurie said, “if you don’t tell him everything, he’s never going to stop asking questions. So you should tell him everything.”

“Me?” Dan said.

“He likes you,” Laurie said, as if Levy wasn’t there.

“You’re weird,” Levy said suddenly.

“Excuse me?” Laurie looked at him. “Do you know what I am?”

“I know exactly what you are,” Levy said. “And aside from being a vampire you’re also kind of a grouch. But I don’t think you kill kids.”

Laurie just stared at Levy because, in fact, he did not kill kids, and he knew that he was being a grouch.

“Laurie’s thinking about where he should really be,” Tanitha said, touching him on the back of the neck.

“With Chris and Lewis?” Levy guessed.

“And some others.”

“Oh,” Levy snapped his fingers. “You mean Loreal. I forgot you like her.”

Laurie frowned and looked more embarrassed than dangerous and Dan said, “Oh, great taste. She’s hot. She’s amazing. She’s like a hundred fifty years younger than you, but you should totally go for that. If she’s into it.”

“She’s into it,” Levy said. “I could tell. You guys got a bond. I can feel it. You should definitely, definitely go to her.”

Anne bursts out laughing as Sunny, earbuds still in, went to open the stove and made an approving noise before pulling out his loaf of bread.

“I can’t tell which one of you I want to kill more,” Laurie said, looking from Levy to Dan.

“Did I tell you about the time he pushed me off a building?” Dan asked Levy.

“You’re vampire, get over it.”

“He felt really bad about it after he did it. I could almost see a tear in his eye.”

“Dan, I hate you so much.”

“You don’t hate us,” Dan said. “You love us. Me the most cause you’ve known me the most and to know me is to love me.”

“Something’s not right,”Sunny said.

“See,” Kruinh said, “I never like it when you say that.”

“I can’t put my finger on it,” Sunny said, “but something’s not right.”

The young man walking around Kruinh’s study said, “I just can’t put my finger on it.”

“In a world where there is always something not right,” Kruinh said, “you are telling me you sense that something isn’t right, which means—”

“That there is something especially not right. Uncommonly not right.”

Sunny sat down across from Kruinh, knees wide apart and hung his head. He was only a little taller than Kruinh, and when Levy had first seen him he’d assumed that he and Dan were the youngest. But young meant something entirely different to the vampires, and Levy was coming to understand this, and he had noticed that, even though Sunny appeared to be as bright as his name, he, like Anne, stayed out of the squabbles and pretty much kept silence. If Dan was Kruinh’s lieutenant, then Sunny was something else.

“How long have you noticed this… whatever it was?”

“Actually while Dan and Laurie were going back and forth I started to feel it.”

“I’ve told you everything about Laurie.”

“The girl,” Sunny said. “pregnant with Laurie’s baby.”

“Yes, but not only that.”

“The Evangeline business. And Eve’s. That Augustus’s granddaughter.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s about that?”

Kruinh had always respected Sunny’s senses. What’s more, he respected his intelligence, and now—

“That’s the thing,” he snapped his fingers, and dug his hands into his pockets.

“Kruinh, we don’t really know what that was about, do we? They were trying to make a dark witch? That’s so… That’s like the plot to a stupid TV show. You can’t make something evil. It has to be more.”

“Does it?” Kruinh asked.

“Or has to be less. Has to be Evangeline come to fuck with Laurie.”

“Or with all of us.”

Sunny turned to him.

“We need to place the boy somewhere else.”

“The safest place for him is here,” Kruinh said.

“I feel like things aren’t safe right now,” Sunny said, “and one thing you have to ask is, Evangeline was never head of her clan, so was what she did just her, or was she joyfully following someone else’s directions?”

“Someone like Rosamunde.”

“Yes, Rosamunde,” Sunny waved that off. “But anyone, really. There have always been rival clans, and if they are coming for us, well then, isn’t this the least safe place for a mortal?”

Kruinh nodded.

“I am not completely convinced you are right, but—”

“You’re not completely convinced I’m wrong either.”

Kruinh nodded.

“He likes Dan. Maybe… send him with Dan for the night.”

Sunny nodded.

“I think that would be a wise idea.”

“Sunny,” Kruinh’s voice changed.

The older vampire’s eyes turned to the door, and Sunny closed it.

“Something has happened that Evangeline doesn’t know about, that no one knows about.”

“Alright?”

“This baby?”

“Laurie’s? Yes.”

Kruinh told Sunny and Sunny’s eyes narrowed. They talked mind to mind for several minutes, their bodies perfectly still, their eyes on the floor.

At last, Sunny said, “I can do it.”

“No,” Kruinh said gently. “Some things only I can do.”

Levy was a boy who had a senseof what to say and what not to say, and he had been about to say that being on Bancroft Street was almost like being in a real city, but caught himself, merely looking around at the bright lights of the bars and restaurants as he headed into the club between Sunny and Dan.

“Are you sure they’re gonna let me in?”

“It’s just a pub,” Sunny said, “and a pub is like a restaurant. It is a restaurant, where they serve alcohol. It’s a restaurant with a bar and a band.”

“I feel like you said restaurant three times,” Levy said.

“What he means,” Dan said, “is he’s pretty sure you can get in, but we’re going through the back anyway, and you’re going to be backstage.”

“Where no one can see me.”

“I was going to say where you get an up close look at the band, but it’s about the same thing.”

“We can bring you a burger and fries,” Sunny said.

“We just ate,” Levy said. “I mean, we just ate,” and then he realized that, being people who didn’t need food, they also might be people who had no concept of not needing it, of what was enough.

“That is very true,” Sunny said as they stepped away from the noise of the street and into the alley.

“What instrument do you play?”

“Guitar,” Dan said.

Levy looked to Sunny.

“What?” Sunny said. Then, “Ohh! No, I don’t play an instrument. I’m just like… I’m keeping you company.”

Levy did not say, because he knew he was getting too old for it to sound cute when he saw through things, Dan is the official baby sitter, but you’re sort of Dan’s babysitter.

When they were in the back of the pub, coming through the kitchen and into what must have been as close to the dressing room as they had, Dan introduced Levy to Myron Keller.

“Good to meet you, Levy.”

Levy nodded, and as if a child was not in the room, he said, “Did you hear about those three college kids who were killed over on Decker?”

“No,” Dan said, wide eyed, nodding his head to Levy, “and maybe we can talk about that… later.”

“Aw yeah,” Myron seemed to remember himself and nodded. “Yes.”

Myron Keller had a wide red face, big teeth, longish nose, and pale brown hair that looked like it might thin soon.

“All of Dan and Sunny’s friends get younger and younger,” he said, joking with Levy.

“I think you’ve got my friends confused with your girlfriends,” Dan countered.

“Ouch, speaking of, you have to see the redhead in the front row.”

Sunny cleared his throat and Dan said, “Hum?”

Sunny cleared his throat again and Dan said, “That’s right.

“You’re invited to… um, requested at our friend’s house, at Kruinh’s house. He’s heard so much about you.”

“He’d love to meet you,” Sunny said. “The whole family’s making dinner and everything.”

“He still got that hot daughter with the crazy blue eyes?”

“Yeah,” Sunny said, smiling stiffly. “Yeah, Tanitha’s still an actual thing.”

“Sign me on,” Myron said, “but are we gonna practice or what?”