-1Chapter one

It was a rare night indeed that the streets of the Cross weren’t crawling with humans eager to spend the night in a drug induced whirl of beats and gutters and the arms of a stranger. Hawkers lined the brightly lit streets as men and women hesitated beneath the neon signs- a most eclectic mix of Sydney’s population rubbed shoulders and sometimes more as young girls with fake lined up behind men who’d been frequenting Porky’s for years and the occasional middle aged couple giggled as they dared to enter a place they’d previously thought belonging to their past.

Tacky, yes- but full of life. Overflowing with a drunken joy of living until you turned a corner and saw the road lined with boarded windows and closed brothels where economics had chased away the life and replaced it with a morbid huddle of blankets and the occasional shopping trolley.

Tonight was hardly a rare night, and Gareth watched the people move from his perch atop an apartment building that straddled the line between the Cross and Potts Point. Green eyes tracked the progress of individuals and groups, and what he saw made him smile. Beneath the clothes they wore, beneath the skin disguised by tans from a bottle, warm blood pulsed through a maze of veins carrying with it traces of alcohol and drugs. He could almost hear the beating of their hearts above the city traffic.

Eventually a woman, high heels clicking in time with her friends, paused beneath his vantage point and waved her friends ahead of her after a brief discussion. Her heel was rubbing, she said. They were new shoes and she’d have to fix the bandage she’d worn just in case. It must have slipped- she’d fix it and meet her friends at a club they’d been walking to. There was nodding and brief ritual of air kissing and cheek rubbing before the now lone woman shuffled around a corner and leant against the brick wall, bending over her raised foot as she adjusted her footwear.

Gareth smiled. He rose and swung himself down from the roof onto the fire escape, scampering down to the street the woman had chosen to use as a dressing room, her head still bent over her foot and too-blonde hair obscuring her vision to either side. Silently and quickly he positioned himself in front of her and waited for the woman to raise her head. When she did, she saw him standing there, so close, and managed to open her mouth to utter-what? He was on her before the breath made it past her lips. He had her pinned against the wall, both her wrists caught in his hand, body pressed flush against the bricks with his thigh between hers. With his free hand he turned her head to left and paused, waiting. There. He opened his mouth and sank his teeth into her neck, feeling the skin break and the vein spill into his mouth.

Blood. Life.

The tang of a little alcohol and a lot of fear was carried from his mouth to every limb in his body as the woman beneath him stopped struggling and stood rigid, and then slumped against the wall as the weakness came. He didn’t want to drain her- didn’t need another corpse to avoid. The wound on her neck was red and swollen when he finished and broke away, pale skin slightly flushed from his recent feed. With a nail he pierced the skin on his finger and passed over the woman’s neck, watching as her wound began to fade. He smiled and bent to lie her on the ground. She’d wake, he guessed, in a few moments with a blurred memory and a headache.

Just as he had her on the ground, light flooded the mouth of the street. He squinted and turned, the light blinding him from making out any details for a moment. It wasn’t the sun, obviously. He had hours before he needed to worry about that. The only sensible solution was the police, and Gareth found himself cursing underneath his breath. Just what he needed, the cops finding him crouching over the unconscious body of a woman in a back street of Kings Cross. As their voices reached him- ordering him to stay still and let go of the girl- he thought briefly of running. They hadn’t a chance of catching him. He’d be on the roofs and gone before they knew what was happening. Likely they wouldn’t even be able to shoot him before he was out of sight and out of range.

Then again, a man moving with supernatural speed in the inner suburbs of Sydney probably wouldn’t be conducive to keeping a low profile. If word got out to other vampires that he was making a spectacle of himself they might get it into their heads that he was compromising their own safety. That, Gareth thought, would be an easy way to see the sun again, and he didn’t particularly want to.

And so, he found himself not long after sitting in a concrete cell with bars on the door and a small window in the corner. It wasn’t exactly the best situation he could have been in. A far cry from it, in fact. The cops in front of him, it seemed, were of the opinion he’d been doing exactly what it had looked like and it didn’t appear to surprise them. They’d have seen worse, he knew. Apparently the latest crusade the blue and white had taken up was one against the ever present drink spiking and consequential date rape. He leant back against the wall and closed his eyes briefly, trying to think of a way to get out before morning without raising too much suspicion. Unfortunately there was a decided lack in ideas, and Gareth remained against the wall in his cell while the station continued to run into the hours of early morning.

Around one, he guessed, they brought in someone else- another man was deposited in his cell as comments were made about the ever increasing amount of criminals on the streets today. Perhaps another station would have to take the excess? Gareth listened as he watched them push the new comer inside and lock the bars into place once more. The man, though he looked about Gareth’s age with his fair skin and longish brown hair, was definitely not human. He was far too old for that, and Gareth could hear his heart beat- faint and torturously slow. The man wasn’t dead, but he certainly had no right to be living. He continued to stare, unsure of what had been put into his cell, until the other man looked up and seemed to notice him for the first time. He narrowed his eyes a little and sighed.

“Oh, Hell. Now we’re all screwed.”

Gareth blinked. Not a reaction he’d been expecting. “Well,” he began. “I don’t think being in gaol is supposed to be anything else, to be honest…”

The man across the cell seemed to be trying to ignore him as he somewhat frantically surveyed the walls, the floor, the roof and the bars. He seemed to reach some kind of disheartening conclusion before returning his gaze to Gareth. “Just make it quick, okay? I haven’t re-charged in days so I’m sure you’ll have no problem, and then you can leave without taking the entire station with you, not that I think you won’t kill everyone just to watch them die.”

Gareth frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?” Slowly it came to him. “Unless… oh. Drugs? Are there drugs that’ll slow your heart that much and still let you live…” he frowned. “Tell me you’re just some weird ass druggo whose mixed one too many pill cocktails and all this re-charging bullshit is a product of one of many hallucinations?”

The man just stared at him for a moment. “You’re playing with me. I know you are. Make me think I can get out of this and then make the draining that much worse…” he sighed. “I should have stayed with them. So stupid!”

Gareth shook his head. Insane, maybe. The cops wouldn’t have left a man so drugged up his heart was that slow in a cell. Something strange was going on. The guy must know what he was, or at least, must have some very strange yet basically accurate ideas. He had more important things to worry about though- like getting out of here before the sun rose without making too much of a scene. “Well. I’m buggered if I know what you’re on about. I’d just really like to know how someone with a heart beat that slow can breathe, let alone get himself arrested.” He shook his head and stood up. “I need to get out of here.”

The man, still sitting on the floor, laughed a little at that. “Afraid of the morning, are you?”

Gareth snarled. “Shut up. Just because I’m not hungry doesn’t mean I won’t rip your throat out, and if you really do know what you’re talking about then you’ll know I’m not making any idle threats right now. Besides, I don’t imagine you want to stay here too long either. Your heartbeats getting even slower.” He frowned. “What the hell are you?”

The man shrugged. “If you don’t know, then I’m hardly going to tell you, vampire.”

Gareth grunted. “I prefer Gareth, if you don’t mind.” He sighed heavily and rubbed his neck. “Fuck! Much longer and I’m going to have to make a scene.”

“A vampire hesitant to murder crowds of people?” A mock surprised voice came from his right. “I don’t believe it. I must be dead already.”

“Not yet you’re not,” Gareth muttered. “I turn into a pile of ash and there’s gonna be problems anyway. Still. I act and it could be worse,” he shuddered and leant against the wall. “Why can’t they all just go to sleep or something!”

The man in the corner stirred. “Promise to take me out of here with you and they just might, vampire.”

Gareth raised an eyebrow. “I told you I preferred Gareth- and it’s a deal. I’m just about ready to try anything here.”

The man shrugged. “I’ll try not to take that as an insult. Firstly, you’re a vampire and if this situation were any different we’d be trying to kill each other, but I think that activity can wait until there’s a better chance of the winner surviving the coming morning. So.” He took a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. “I’m going to need some of your blood. Not,” he continued before Gareth could interrupt, “To consume or anything like that. I don’t usually do blood magics, but, well, it’s hardly like I’ve taken any notice of any of the other rules so far. You just need to bleed, a little, where I can reach you. When the police still, you’ll need to get us both out of here, and don’t even think about leaving me here. You won’t make it out the door.”

Gareth nodded. “You’re insane.” He cut his finger, repeating the action he’d performed earlier in the street and holding his hand out to the figure in front of him. “Go for it.”

“Vampire blood. Hopefully it’ll work anyway.” That said, the mans eyes closed and Gareth felt his hand grow cold as gradually energy was drained through the blood on his finger. It finished soon enough, leaving him standing and only slightly dizzy. The energy he’d lost was not so great that he’d miss it before the next night, but that… whoever he was… had been able to draw from him like that. Well. It was disturbing and Gareth didn’t understand it at all. But as he looked beyond the cell he saw that the police men, previously so busy and active, had indeed stilled. They were hardly what you’d call sleeping, but it appeared as though they’d suddenly… slowed. As though an action that had previously taken them all of two seconds would now last half an hour. Their hearts were steady, they were still alive, but their actions had been slowed. It was eeire, to say the least. Still. Morning was coming and he had an unconscious something or other on his hands. He glanced at the bars and grasped the bar that held their cell closed, brow furrowing as he bent, then snapped it. He bent to pick up his cell mate and shouldered the cell open before walking quickly and softly to the door. With one last glance at the scene within the station, he stepped back out into the Cross and thought about getting home.

Home wasn’t, when all was said and done, too far away, or terribly hard to get to. Gareth flagged down a taxi and managed to push the body of his previous cell mate into the back of the car, slipping inside after it. He looked at the cabbie and smiled a little sheepishly.

“Bit too much to drink. Gotta get him home to Woollahra- South Head rd, just keep following it past the station and I’ll tell you when.”

The cabbie hesitated, eyes still on the unconscious body in his back seat. “He gonna throw up? Cos I ain’t cleaning it up…”

Gareth smiled. “Neither of us will make a mess, I promise. Please, I’m in a hurry here.”

“Yeah, okay.” The meter counter was started and the cabbie pulled out onto the road, heading towards the suburb Gareth called home. It wasn’t far away, and soon Gareth was telling the driver to slow down in from of a small terrace house, one of the ones with steps leading below the pavement to a barred door. He paid the fare and walked around to the other side of the car to pull out the body of his ’inebriated’ companion, supporting the limp body down the stairs, fiddling with a set of keys, opening the door, flicking a light switch and sighing in relief.

He had about an hour for a shower before he needed to sleep the sunlight away.

Depositing his load onto the couch, he took a piece of paper and a pen from next to a telephone and wrote a note-

You’re in my house. Don’t try to kill me while I sleep- it won’t work. If you’re human, I think there’s food in the fridge- biscuits & frozen juice, anyway.

Um.

What the hell are you? Oh, and what’s your name?

Think that’s all.

- Gareth (you know, evil vampire guy…)

He reviewed the note, pen protruding from the side of his mouth. He was never going to win an award for sociability or his conversational skills, but he figured it would do. That settled, he trundled off to the bathroom, hoping to relax for a few minutes before sleeping. As the steam rose around him and the hot water sprayed his back, he found himself thinking of the man he had unconscious on his couch, and his strangeness. His heart beat, for one, was incredibly odd. Added to that was whatever magic he’d worked at the station, and the fact that he obviously knew what a vampire was and how to recognise one, although his opinion on vampiric nature seemed to be somewhat outdated and medieval.

Gareth sighed. Hopefully he’d find out tomorrow, if the guy stayed that long. He was still weak, and Gareth doubted he’d regain enough strength to go too far in the next twelve or so hours. Still, if he did wake, Gareth couldn’t see him wanting to spend too much time in his house. The blood magic, though, intrigued him. As a vampire, he drank blood to survive on the life force of others and it fuelled his immortality as well as his other gifts- the speed, strength and agility he used to avoid detection and feed off humans. But he couldn’t channel that force consciously, and that’s what, he guessed, the other man had done. Though he’d seemed reluctant to use the blood. Gareth turned off the taps and stepped out of the shower.

It was more than likely he’d never know.

He dressed and wandered back out into the lounge room and over to a door near the kitchen. His house was half underground- a set of stairs behind him led to a street level with another bedroom and so on, but his living areas were all semi-buried and the room he was about to enter was simply a similar room to his lounge room, minus the windows and with a very strong door. He doubted a mortal could open it. No- he knew a mortal couldn’t. He slipped into his coffin and smiled, eyes closing already.

It would be nice to sleep for a while, and stop worrying just for a few hours. He would deal with the man in his lounge room in the evening.

AN:

Sooooo. It’s unlikely this’ll go anywhere until I finish Changes, at least, but here’s what I think up in the wee hours of the morning when everything else I’m working on become difficult

Uh, okay- so the vampires you can probably see are pretty similar to your generic vampire. I’m sorry Gareth’s not blood thirsty- He just didn’t work out that way.

Also, the slow beating heart thing will be explained in coming chapters. Uh, yeah.

Have fun, and enjoy