Page 8 of Grave Throbbing
"I was the one who ran. I did it for you."
Key and Greed had grown up hard and fast on the streets of New York, and then they'd jumped on the Jersey City ferry the night after he'd escaped Harley and Queen Marcella and never looked back. While he'd been elated to be welcomed into the vampire community, he couldn't risk anyone knowing his little sister's location. They'd moved around the tri-state area, and Key worked odd jobs and took night shifts until Greed came of age.
"There," Greed said. "You look like a dragon-rider."
"Should I have gone for pirate?" he asked, giving himself a once-over in the mirror. The combination of the wig's long, straight hair and the black eyepatch made him look rakish. Not that his brown curls made him more reputable. Harley had declared his curls "doll-like," an ill-timed reminder of Key's sister at home waiting for him to return.
She was no longer his hero-worshiping little sister. She was his conscience more often than not. Since he'd told her about Harley and the potential relationship he'd sacrificed for her, she'd berated him daily for not trying harder to find him.
Only after she turned eighteen did he seek out the midwestern vampire council for permission to turn her, since they'd traveled Minnesota for Greed's teenage years. Key knew better than to take matters into his own hands, thanks to his sire. After two years, the Midwest council consented to accept Greed as a vampire with Key as her sire.
Key had been naïve about the sire bond and the wrench it would throw into his plans. He'd hoped he wouldn't have a bond with Greed, since she was his sister and his sire had rarely been able to control him. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
Greed studied his Halloween outfit, shaking her head. Thanks to the empress's help, Greed's will was once more her own. With their sire bond broken, she could make decisions without his influence.
"I think you should go as yourself, but that's me."
"You know I can't."
She nodded and braced her hands on his shoulders. "You're sure you don't want me to come with you?"
They usually did everything together. They even went on double dates when Key convinced himself to date.
"I'm sure." He'd met Harley before he'd turned Greed. It didn't seem fair to drop the entire story on him while the reason for his rude behavior sat on the opposite side of the table sucking down a cup of blood. "I'll be home before dawn."
"I hope you're not." She tapped her index finger on the end of his nose. "I won't wait up."
"Be careful."
She knew as well as he did, he would be home before dawn. They had a contingency plan with the humans in their building if either of their coffins were empty past sunrise, after the last time Greed hadn't come home.
"I always am." She winked as she pulled a yellow HAZMAT suit on over her hot teacher Halloween costume.
The costumes had become a necessity of late. They always left the bar in different getups than the ones in which they'd arrived. They needed to lie low until Empress Marcella arrived. At least Key had finally gotten a response. The empress would arrive in three days to cleanse the eastern seaboard of the vampire filth that had tried to hurt Greed a month ago. The council's response had been less than nothing, so Key had called on the only other resource he had: the empress herself.
Granted, anyone close and familiar enough would recognize their scents, but so far, they'd kept to random entrances, exits, and routes home. The costumes had been enough for the moment. Still, Key worried as he exited the building alone. As her big brother, he would always worry.
Blood Drive wasn't a diner. It was an all-hours coffee shop for vampires, except instead of coffee, they served fresh warmed blood drawn during the day while the vampires slept. They had all kinds of willing donors and animals kept as pampered pets, from werewolf to otter. They also infused the blood with all manners of seasonings listed on the wall-to-wall dry-erase board behind the cashier. It was Key's greatest guilty pleasure, and within walking distance of Fanglory and their apartment. He'd even applied for a job there before Greed had given him a positive reference at the club.
While he walked, he tried to come up with a way to explain to Harley why he'd waited so long to make contact again. It had taken over a century, but Key's life finally had some semblance of normalcy. He knew what it meant to be a vampire now. He'd had some excellent teachers, like Harley, and some hard knocks, like the sire bond with his sister.
Breaking that bond had been essential. If he was still tied to Greed that way, he would never be able to pursue a relationship, with Harley or anyone else.
Was that his goal, a relationship? After over a century, he was lucky he'd run into Harley again at all.
Well. Key had been thinking about Harley when the council broke his sire bond.
Empress Marcella had made contact in the spring of 1970, asking them to fly from New York to Wisconsin. They'd killed some of the empress's enemies during the Earth Day Massacre. In return, a Lakota two-spirit elder prepared a poultice and performed a ritual to remove the bond.
For the ritual, they'd said some words, covered Key and Greed in ambergris and frankincense, and doused them with myrrh while they embraced. Ancient ingredients powered the ancient spell. It was almost dawn, so they sent Key and Greed to their separate coffins for the day. When they woke, the sire bond was broken, and Greed was once again the strong-willed and passionate little sister he remembered from their youth.
He'd asked about Harley then, but Empress Marcella denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. It took almost fifty years for the empress to reward him with answers. He'd helped her council find a vampire missing in downtown Manhattan in 2019. His bonus had been a thumb drive with Harley's information, antiquated even then, but he still had a USB converter for his laptop and plugged it into his computer as soon as he returned home.
The information on the thumb drive led him from the streets of New York to Boston's North End, of all places. Key never thought he'd like it there with all the crusts, but he and Greed lived rent-free in a three-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a building owned by vampires and monitored by sympathetic humans. Their only monthly bills were utilities and their shared phone plan.
Key had spent the last few years job hopping whenever he got bored. Greed had been at Fanglory for most of that time, starting as a bartender before working their seasonal tourist traps like the glory hole. After Halloween, she would probably return to the bar until the next gimmick they devised to get people in the door.
Key had a hard time keeping a job. He had good intentions, but then he wandered off each time he thought he saw Harley. Tonight, he'd caught a whiff of him. The tang of synthetic blood was new, but beneath it, the old scent of ambergris pomade identified him as unique among the body-spray crowd. Key hadn't been so faithful to his hair products. Today's gels and oils worked much better to hold his unruly curls in place.
