Author's Note: I've been working on this project for several months now; it began as an idea for a Christmas gift, and most of it is written specifically with my friend in mind, which was a lot of fun as her tastes range from Bram Stoker to Bridget Jones. The basic premise is as follows: in the town of Bellevue, the creatures of the night are as vulnerable to heartbreak as humans, and a few of them each face an individual dilemma regarding their respective human lovers. Hopefully it's as enjoyable to read as it was to write.

“Sex and the Cemetery”

Welcome to Bellevue. You may have arrived here by accident, because you've lost your way, or maybe you're just passing through. But while you're here, perhaps you'd like to hear a story or two? I have a million tawdry tales to share, if you're in the mood. Tear-stained diary pages, pornographic black magic, stories about pleasure and pain, murder and redemption. Or maybe just a simple love story... then again, real love stories are rarely simple.

My name is Sabine. I am a vampire, and have been one for the last four hundred years or so. I settled in Bellevue a long time ago, but I was born in Hungary. I died a virgin, at the hands of Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous bloody duchess. I came back to life shortly afterwards, but my creation, and my unholy maker, are other stories entirely. There'll be no mention of that particular monster here, if you really want to know about Die Blutgrafin then you can Google her.

No, the tales on offer right now concern something slightly more complicated than bloodshed or immortality. I want to talk to you about relationships. Friendships, love affairs, marriages – why are people, humans and creatures of the night alike, drawn towards them even though they are fully aware of the pain they can cause? And is it ever possible for one of the undead to take a mortal lover? I've heard countless firsthand accounts of demons who took human companions, and I struggle to name one case that ends in a manner you could satisfyingly call happy.

Not many vampires I know have a “day” job, or any job at all come to think of it. I've had a fair few over the years: I played the piano in a Memphis bar for a while; I worked in a tattoo parlour for all of three nights before the heat and the smell of blood drove me to the limits of my self-restraint.

These days I advertise myself as a “listener”. People come to me at all hours, day and night (indoors, away from the sun, of course), to tell me about their lives. Their problems, their secrets, every tiny kink and fear. I'm cheaper than a therapist and I don't even pretend that I'm going to help fix them. I just listen, because I want to hear what they have to say.

I suppose you could say that I'm a vampire in more ways than one. When people tell me their stories, I feel like they have given me a piece of their soul to keep. Having lost my own soul years ago, I treasure these small keepsakes. I like to think that in the future, I will have collected enough soul fragments to make up a whole new animus for myself.

So here they are. The tales, the nightmares and fantasies that have been given to me over the years. You'll encounter all sorts of folks in Bellevue; vampires, werewolves, incubi, succubae, and perhaps even the odd human or two. And when I say odd, I mean very odd...

S.

1.

The Dead Quarter

Bellevue has a lot of graveyards. There are twelve within the city limits – although the use of the term “city” is loose, Bellevue being a sizeable town at most. A sizeable town, with a lot of dead. And not that all of them are below ground; some are still walking.

One such being is Sabine. She walks the earth, alone for the most part, although the pattern that her life has followed for the last couple of centuries is about to change drastically. The reason for this is Nathaniel, but we've not met him quite yet. Keep your eyes peeled, though – he'll be making an appearance any moment now.

Tonight, Sabine is walking through Cypress Cemetery. It seems a suitably Gothic pastime for a vampire, and she finds comfort in reading the names of people long gone, in tracing her fingers over the two most important dates of their lives. Somebody cared enough to make sure they were remembered. Sabine's own family never got to bury their daughter; they never had the luxury of a corpse to whom they could say goodbye. She simply vanished one night, the night that she became a vampire.

Nobody but Sabine is ever in the graveyard this late at night, but her preternatural senses detect two heartbeats close by. She leans against a tombstone and closes her eyes, letting her ears and nose tell her everything she needs to know. They are a young man and woman, both young. The blood is rushing through their veins at an incredible speed, and pheromones saturate the night air. A low groan reaches Sabine on the breeze, and she almost smiles as she realises why they are so hot and out of breath.

It's been a long time since Sabine was physically intimate with anybody in that way, and so a kind of morbid curiosity brings her closer to the young couple. She treads so quietly on the grass it is as if her feet make no contact with the earth at all. When she turns the corner of a mausoleum and sees the pair, she imagines her heart might stop beating in her chest, were it not already still. The two humans lay on the ground, man on top of woman, as history dictates. Sabine moves closer for a better look, for a better reminder of what it feels like to have hot blood in ones veins.

The girl is pretty, but the boy is breathtaking. Again, Sabine amuses herself with the thought of oxygen catching in her throat. His breathing is heavy, loud and incredibly masculine. Steam pours from his mouth into the night air with each groan, with each thrust into his companion. The girl writhes underneath him, gasping, uttering small encouragements and exclamations. She would be better suited to treading the boards than making love, Sabine thinks, she makes that good an actress. The boy seems to know this, and then Sabine notices that his eyes aren't on his lover, but on his surroundings. The soil, the stones, the trees. He is making love to the cemetery, Sabine knows it, and with this knowledge a perverse smile plays on her lips.

As if sensing her amusement, the boy turns his head and their eyes meet. The girl is oblivious, seemingly lost in her throes, but the boy sees Sabine. He looks right at her, sees her smile falter. He smiles right back at her, and continues to fuck the girl. Sabine doesn't move, doesn't even know if she can, all she can do is keep watching. The boy doesn't take his eyes off her the whole time, until the girl comes loudly and the spell is broken. He looks back down at her, then shudders and groans a moment later. He collapses onto her, breathless, and when he looks back up, Sabine has vanished into the night.

***

Not everybody in Bellevue is aware of the otherworldly population that lurks beneath the surface of everyday life. In fact most people are either entirely oblivious, or they have some idea but simply refuse to acknowledge it. And who can blame them? If confronted one night by something that is not supposed to exist outside of legend, the logical human response is to deny, deny, deny.

There is, however, a part of town that turns a blind eye to certain unorthodox goings-on. A part of town where it's not out of the ordinary to see people who only ever seem to come out at night, a district where you can find bars that offer plasma in a martini glass. Cocktails poached from the blood bank and exotic dancers who can literally bewitch you. This part of town is known by locals and patrons as the Dead Quarter.

It is into one of these establishments in the Quarter, a night café named Armand's, that Sabine walks after she witnesses the two mortals fucking in the graveyard. She hasn't seen anything on the way here other than the boy's eyes, green flecked with gold, boring into hers. No human has ever been able to look right at her for more than a moment or two at a time. It's a natural mortal response, to look away from black eyes that have seen several lifetimes and will, doubtless, see many more. But this human wasn't afraid of her, not in the slightest.

Sabine finally notices Sunday, sitting with Quinn at a table in the corner of the room. She makes her way over and joins them.

“Sab,” Quinn greets her through a cloud of Sunday's cigarillo smoke, “what're you drinking? And please don't say the obvious.”

“I'll have a vodka,” she replies. Her thirst for blood only arises intermittently, once or twice a month. When this happens, she sneaks into the blood bank or visits the willing vamp groupies in one of the seedier Quarter bars. She never kills.

Sabine's the only vampire at this table. Quinn is human for the most part, with a few peculiarities in his lineage, more of which will be revealed later on. Sunday (or Papa Sunday Rimbaud to give him his full name) is, by appearance at least, a man, but he is also a shaman, a long-time practitioner of voodoo, which means that at least some of him belongs to outside bidders. He is younger than Sabine, but only by about a century. He looks no older than fifty, but they do say that black skin ages well.

Sabine has known Sunday ever since she arrived in Bellevue. Quinn is a newer addition to the group, having only rolled into town four years ago, but his impish leanings rank, in their own way, right up among theirs.

They meet like this, at night, to talk about things that ordinary people couldn't understand. Quinn lives with a Yale graduate who wouldn't even begin to get his head around what really happens in Bellevue, and Sunday says that regular humans bore him anyway. And as for Sabine, she hasn't had anything resembling a partner in over two hundred years.

'Family' might be slightly too strong a word for what these three share, but it's something worth preserving all the same. Along with the stories that she collects, Sunday and Quinn are all Sabine has. She knows that without them she may have already taken a fatal walk in the sunlight, something that lonely vampires are prone to doing.

***

Quinn is in the middle of telling a spectacularly explicit story when he catches sight of something over Sabine's shoulder. He looks away casually and continues talking, but both the vampire and the shaman know that he has something else to tell them. He continues to look nonchalant, presumably until he is sure he can speak freely without being observed, then leans forward and whispers;

“There's somebody just come in, who is looking right at you, Sab.”

“He's right, girl,” Sunday puffs this out along with his usual tobacco-scented fog. “That one's definitely here for you.”

Sabine begins to wish there were mirrors on the walls of Armand's. She wouldn't be able to appreciate her own reflection, having none, but she would at least be able to locate whoever was supposedly watching her.

“I think,” she says slowly, deliberately, “I think that I would like a drink.” She rises from the table and walks over to the bar, keeping her gaze directly ahead. By the time she has ordered another vodka, she already recognises the heartbeat that she can hear throbbing next to her. She turns to her left and finds herself looking into green eyes, flecked with gold.

“Hello again,” he says, bold as brass. Sabine does not respond immediately, instead savouring the surprise of a young man acting so unflappably after what happened in the cemetery.

“I see you got your strength back,” she says after a moment, “and your clothes as well.” He smiles at her, not the knowing leer he had given her in the churchyard but a simpler, more boyish grin.

“I'm Nathaniel.”

“It's nice to meet you, Nathaniel.”

A pause.

“Can I not hear your name?”

“That depends. Am I going to find out why you followed me here? Or how, even?”

“Who's to say I followed you?”

“I can smell lies, just so that you know.”

“Well alright, I followed you.”

“And why was that, exactly?”

For the first time, Nathaniel looks the tiniest bit uneasy.

“Could we go somewhere to talk? Maybe somewhere more private?”

You don't know what you're saying, boy, asking to be alone with me. There was a time when I'd lure you away and sink my teeth into your warm neck.

“That's a dangerous thing to be requesting, in a place like this.”

“I know,” Nathaniel says. “But I'm asking anyway.”

Sabine feels Quinn and Sunday watching from across the room, and decides that this conversation is over.

“No.” She takes her drink and walks back to the table, imagining his eyes on her the whole time. But when she sits down and looks over her shoulder, Nathaniel is already gone.

***

Two nights later, she sees him again.

“I asked about you in a few places,” he says when he shows up at her door, “and somebody told me that you're the woman who listens.” He holds up one of the cards that she uses to advertise; it has her name and address printed on it, no more.

“Sabine's a lovely name,” he goes on, and she almost shuts the door in his face. But he nimbly steps around her and just like that, he is in her apartment.

“So the rules don't work this way around,” he smiles. “I don't have to be invited into your home.”

“What are you talking about?” But she already knows exactly what he means.

“I'm talking about you, Sabine. I'm talking about what you are.” He comes closer, and leans forward to whisper in her ear the one word: “Vampire.”

Sabine almost recoils when she feels his warm breath on her cold skin, when she hears the name of what she is on his lips. Why does this bother her so, that he should know her true nature?

“And what of it,” she says, calmly, “that's hardly unusual in a place like this.”

“Maybe not,” he tries to come closer, and she puts her hand up between them, blocking him. “But it's fascinating to me. You fascinate me.”

Sabine wants to roll her eyes. Does he think she's never come across his sort before? Mortals who find themselves drawn towards the dark, the fallen, the lost... In the Dead Quarter they're known as groupies, and they'll let vampires feed on them for cash and for the sheer rush. It's all about pleasure and pain, Sabine thinks. Humans never change.

But then she forces herself to look at Nathaniel again. At his jeans, his gray shirt, the wholesome chestnut colour of his hair. Something doesn't feel right. And then it hits her. Why he's here, what he wants. It's not unheard of, almost popular in certain places, but Sabine has never encountered it firsthand.

“Oh, God,” she whispers, and Nathaniel is visibly surprised that she can utter the name without bursting into flames. She regains her composure, and says as icily as she can; “I know why you're here. I know what you want, and I am not going to help you.”

“How can you know,” Nathaniel says, “you don't read minds... do you?”

“Shut up,” Sabine grabs his arm, “and get out.” She leads him towards the door and pushes him out. “If you have any sense, any intelligence at all, then you won't come back here, and you will never think about this again.”

She slams the door in his face and stands, rooted to the spot, until she hears him walk away. It's madness, she thinks, for him to be even considering what he's considering. Unless maybe he's ill... an inoperable brain tumour or a disease that she couldn't detect with her heightened senses. Why else would he want to forfeit everything? Why else would Nathaniel want to become a vampire?

***

The next time they see each other, it is she who seeks him out. She finds him in the Quarter, in a bar named after Caligula. He is talking to a pretty young Goth, but not the same one he was with in the cemetery. This one has obviously committed herself to the role; jet-black hair, deathly pale makeup, a painful looking glossy bodice. As soon as he sees Sabine enter, he leaves the girl and walks over.

“That's a little bit rude, don't you think?” Sabine says.

“What are you talking about?” He looks behind him. “Raven doesn't seem too bothered.” And true enough, the girl who calls herself Raven is already leaning against another, taller Goth.

“You really don't fit in around here,” Sabine tells Nathaniel. “That's how I was able to find you so easily, people remember you from the sea of pure white faces.”

“And why were you looking for me exactly? I thought you never wanted to see me again.” Nathaniel tries to sound hurt, but the muscles around his mouth twitch and Sabine knows, is even relieved, that he's glad to see her.

“I wanted to tell you again,” she says, “you're making a huge mistake. Trust me.” Nathaniel begins to look less amused.

“I don't trust anyone,” Nathaniel tells her. “Not even vampires, surprisingly.”

“Then why do you want to become one so badly?” If she had still been human, anger would have warmed Sabine's blood and flushed her cheeks. “Do you think it's cool? Fun and glamorous? It's an abomination, Nathaniel.”

“I have no illusions, Sabine. Thanks for your concern, but you have already said that you're not going to help me. So if you don't mind...”

Nathaniel begins to walk away. Before she even knows what she is doing, Sabine grabs his arm and pulls him out of the bar into the street. He barely has time to protest, and his considerable muscles are no match for her preternatural strength.

“Please,” Sabine says, trying to keep her voice calm, “just explain. Just tell me why you want this so much.”

“It has absolutely nothing to do with you,” he says, all smugness and charm gone. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“You made it my business when you came to my house with the intention of asking me to kill you. And I care because I would give anything to become like you. To breathe. I just don't understand. Surely there are people who'll miss you, people who will want to see you in the daylight.”

Nathaniel tries not to flinch when she says this, but she knows she has hit a nerve. “Don't you have a family?”

“Sort of.”

“That's more than I have,” Sabine says. “Tell me about them.”

“There isn't much at all to tell,” Nathaniel says. “We were a family, but now we're not.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn't matter.” Nathaniel shrugs, and pulls away from Sabine's grasp. She lets him leave, watches him walk away until he disappears around a street corner, knowing that she will see him again soon. Either he will come to her, or she will find him – there is something between them now, something she doesn't entirely understand.

She has never connected with a human, not since she was one herself. But now, she realises that she cares for Nathaniel. She doesn't want him to become like her. Which begs the question: how can Sabine, a dead girl, prove to Nathaniel that life is worth living?