“Brennan, this stuff you’re stressing about? That’s what we’re here for! We’re your clan. We’ve got your back.”
Nellie weaved confidently through the streets of Boston, turning down increasingly narrow side streets until she approached a quiet corner occupied only by a bodega with the windows boarded up, a man rolling a joint a few yards away, and a drink vending machine nestled into a narrow alley.
“There are hiding spots in discreet areas of each of our main hub cities,” Nellie explained, leading him toward the vending machine.
“So stock up for a month or so when you’re here. We usually recommend about three pints a week at first”—she scanned him appraisingly,then knelt next to the vending machine, feeling around underneath for something—“but you’re tall, so, maybe more. Anyway, that’s eight ounces a day, or a pack every two days.”
Brennan nodded along with a dazed confusion, like he was getting released from the hospital or getting directions in an unknown city.
“Where do you…?” Brennan started, afraid of the answer.
“Back in the day we paid off some Red Cross lab guys to mark some tests as not-fit-for-donation and pass them off to us. Nowadays, Quinn runs a blood-drive operation out in Connecticut.”
She must have found what she was looking for underneath the vending machine, because a panel along the side popped open to reveal a sizable pull-out compartment. She tugged it open with practiced ease, and Brennan followed the movement to see a freezer loaded with hospital-grade packs of human blood, dusted with frost.
Brennan paced a short length, trying to process what exactly a “blood-drive operation” entailed. But one thing was clear, and the pit of anxiety in his stomach from the café rose back up in protest.
“Oh, great, we steal from the Red Cross. That’s at least a step up from the murder.”
“It’s not murder, it’ssurvival,” Nellie said.
She stepped away from the freezer and gave a jerky nod toward it, gesturing for him to load up. Brennan looked over his shoulder, but the alley was quiet and hidden, devoid of prying eyes. He took fifteen to last him a month, and layered them carefully in his backpack while Nellie watched.
“What you said back there,” Nellie said, jutting her chin in the general direction of the way they’d come. “I get it. Some people have different views on vampirism, and it can seem scary.”
“Differing views is an interesting angle,” Brennan said, zipping his backpack shut, “considering that murder is pretty objectively bad and not, like, aviewpoint—”
“I’m trying to say,” Nellie cut in, “with what we are, we can still begood.We can choose that.”
Brennan scoffed. “While covering up that Dom, like, flipped and killed someone? And standing by while people are”—with a shiver, he remembered,human farms—“like, wandering around killing people?”
“Not everyone sees things the same. I don’t like it, either, but we’ve got millennia of politics at play here. I’ve been a vampire for over ninety years and I’ve never killed a human. Sunny’s been a vampire for three centuries and she definitelyhas,but it’s far in the past so it doesn’t matter.”
There it was again. The horrid question he’d been trying quite hard not to overthink. But now, it wasn’t library research, folklore, or fiction. This was a real vampire, telling him this. He couldn’t ignore it this time.
With a forced casual tone that Nellie probably saw straight through, he asked, “We’re immortal?”
Nellie nodded.
His stomach dropped out from under him. He knew, in his heart, but it was one thing to assume and another to hear it confirmed by someone who ostensibly knew what she was talking about.
Brennan could feel himself about to spiral and jotted that down as something to panic about later. He hadn’t thought he’d live to be nineteen, and now he would be nineteen for-fucking-ever. It was the kind of thing he would want to talk to a therapist about, but he couldn’t exactly call up Dr. Morris and cry about the woes of being newly immortal without her giving him some new, colorful diagnoses.
Nellie smiled sympathetically, like she could smell his panic with some sixth sense. God, maybe shecould.She closed the freezer door, replaced the panel carefully, and pushed it into place with a sharp click. Just like that, it was a vending machine again.
Now, her full attention on Brennan, she continued, “The point of an urban clan is that our past mistakes don’t matter, as long as we move on from them. We get to live out the lives we should have lived as humans. We get to exist in the world, as people. We get to feel normal. That’s what we’re offering. If you want it.”
Brennan’s heart felt like it was in his throat, because thatwaswhat he wanted. But he couldn’t really trust them, could he?
“It’s just a lot,” he said. “Obviously.”
Nellie nodded. “It’s a hard transition. You’re through the worst of it, physically, but mentally—yeesh.”
“Well, don’t sugarcoat it.”
“I know you don’t have much reason to trust me, but, hey, we have nothing but time! I can earn it. And, if you need to talk, I’ll be here. Asa friend, a mentor, or”—she gave a little shrug—“as a licensed mental health professional.”
Brennan blinked. “Isn’t it weird to be friends with your therapist?”
