CHAPTER FIVE

“What do you want?” Ruby said, hovering near the display chairs but refusing to sit down with the vampire. She felt like sitting down would be the same as relinquishing her final defense even though she knew the vampire could kill her and vanish before her body hit the ground. 

The vampire held up his hands, showing her his sun-starved palms. “Only to talk to you, miss,” he said quietly. His voice had a subtle Midwestern lilt. Everything about him was more human. Looking at him now he could easily pass for a regular man about the same age as Ruby. That did nothing to make her feel safer in his presence. No matter how he now looked he had still put Ethan in the hospital and may have killed them all last night had Ruby not gotten lucky with the makeshift stake. 

“You’ve been stalking me like a creep because you want to talk to me?” she said, forcing out false bravado. 

“I have kept my distance to give you a sense of safety.” 

At that, Ruby let out a loud snort of laughter that sent a spray of spittle from her mouth. She didn’t even care. “It had the opposite effect,” she told him. 

“I apologize for that. May I please talk to you? It’s very important and I mean you no harm.” He pointed again at the vacant chair as though they were standing in his living room and not a demo lounge in a department store. 

“Will you let me go after?” 

“You can go now if you want. I won’t stop you,” he said simply. 

“But you will follow me?” Ruby said drily. Despite his words, she did not believe for one second that he would let her leave. 

“I just want to talk to you about last night,” he said, his voice taking on an almost pleading tone. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you. Last night I wasn’t myself. I was frenzied and out of control. I’m in control now. You’re safe.” 

A middle-aged woman who was passing looked down at him disparagingly before turning to Ruby. “Are you okay, dear? Shall I get security?” she said. 

Ruby smiled, grateful for the well-wishing stranger. “No, thank you. I’m okay,” she assured the woman. The passer-by glanced once more at the vampire before she continued on her way, giving Ruby a reassuring pat on the shoulder as she went. 

Ruby stepped fully into the demo lounge and after a moment’s hesitation, she sat in the free chair, positioning herself on the very edge of the seat. “Do you have a name?” she asked. She didn’t want to keep thinking of him as “the vampire”. 

“Yes, miss, my name is Scott,” he said simply and Ruby had to stop herself from laughing. It was such an un-vampire name. 

“And you’re a…” Saying the word out loud was more difficult than thinking it. It seemed almost ludicrous to say it out loud. 

“A vampire. Yes,” he confirmed. 

“Scott the vampire,” she said. It sounded even more ridiculous out loud than it had in her head.

“May I ask your name?”

She considered withholding her own name but he’d managed to find her without it so it wasn’t like it would do any good. “I’m Ruby.”

“I’m sorry for attacking you and your friends last night, Miss Ruby.” The way his chin dropped to his chest when he spoke made Ruby believe he was truly sorry. He looked almost ashamed. 

“Why did you attack us then? And how do you look so different now?” 

He hunched over in his chair and buried his face in his hands. His posture lacked the confidence that Ruby would have expected an immortal predator to exude. Scott could kill her in the time it would take her to blink and yet anybody watching them would never have thought so. 

“I was starving and out of control. I hadn’t had blood for…” he looked up at the bright spotlight that shone done on the display units. “Five years there about. We vampires age and dry out when we don’t feed. I was rotting away in that house for so long with nothing but rats to stave off the torpor. By the time you and your friends walked in I was no more than a starved beast. Is your friend okay? I truly didn’t mean to hurt him.” 

A pang of sadness hit Ruby and she nodded. “He’s stable,” she said, wishing she could see Ethan. In some way, she felt partly responsible for his injuries. She had only helped when Scott had attacked Jay, maybe if she’d acted sooner Ethan’s injuries wouldn’t have been so bad. 

“I’m pleased to hear that. This must be quite a shock for you to learn that vampires are real.” 

“It’s easier to accept than you’d think. I suppose when the evidence is right in your face you have no choice but to accept it,” she said. 

Scott offered her a wry smile. “You’d be surprised by what people are willing to refute no matter the evidence presented to them.”

“What do you want from me? Why are you stalking me?” 

He shook his head quickly, denying her accusation. “No, please, you must understand, I was not stalking you. I mean, by the definition of the word I was a little, but… I was downtown already when I happened upon you. I didn’t seek you out but when I recognised you I knew I had to talk to you. I needed to apologize and I need answers. If you have them.” 

Ruby’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Answers from me?” She couldn’t even imagine what answers he thought she had. 

“Yes. You see, I do not know how I came to be in that house.” 

“Neither do I. I didn’t even know vampires existed until last night,” she reminded him. 

“Then may I ask what you were doing in the house last night?” he asked so timidly, so meekly. He must have been a terrible vampire. He seemed like the sort of person who’d ask somebody if he could drink a bit of their blood and when they said no he just accepted it. Maybe that was how he’d ended up starving so badly. 

“We were doing a Halloween livestream for our YouTube channel but we just thought it was an old, abandoned house, we had no idea anybody was in there, especially not a vampire,” she explained. 

He recoiled, eyes bulging like she’d suddenly jumped up and stamped on his foot. “You mean everything that happened…” his voice was barely more than a whisper. Somehow his face had turned even whiter. “You livestreamed the…” 

“The attack? Yes. The whole thing was streamed on YouTube. It’s already gone viral, although most people don’t think you’re real.” 

Scott’s fingers dug into the arms of his chair and Ruby saw the fabric split open under his inhuman pressure. “You have no idea what you’ve done. Ruby, you have to delete the video,” he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth. 

Instinctively, Ruby shifted farther away from Scott so she was pressed up against the arm of the chair. The intensity in his gaze was more than a little unsettling. “I can’t. Jay — my boyfriend — he’ll never take it down. It’s getting too many views.”

“You have to convince him.” 

She almost laughed in Scott’s face. If he knew Jay he’d know how impossible that was. “There’s no way I can. He wouldn’t take it down even if the police told him to.” 

“Then I need to make him take that video down. You have to take me to your boyfriend right now,” Scott insisted. 

“There’s no way that’s going to happen,” she said firmly. She wasn’t going to let Scott anywhere near her boyfriend. Especially not when he’d attacked him once already just last night. It didn’t matter how meek he seemed tonight, last night he’d been a ferocious beast and for all she knew this could just be an act. 

“You don’t understand. I don’t mean to hurt him. I’m trying to save him, you, me — all of us. If the Nytarch sees that video…” Scott shrank into the chair, his eyes staring off into the distance as if he could see some future horror playing out. 

“The what?” 

“The Nytarch,” he said sombrely. “They’re in charge.” 

“Like a government for vampires?” she said, dubiously, aware of how insane the words sounded. It was one thing to learn that vampires existed but learning that they also had a government was taking it too far. 

He let out a small, dry laugh. “Not just vampires. The Nytarch is in charge of everyone. They control everything, the whole damn world.” 

Ruby narrowed her eyes. He was starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, next, he’d be saying the government was comprised of lizard people. “Why have I never heard of them then?” 

Scott stared at her for a moment with a look that was almost condescending, like she’d said something unbelievably stupid. It was a look Jay gave her more times than she could count. She felt her cheeks blush and she glanced down, shuffling her feet. “The Nytarch’s biggest rule is to stay in the shadows and do nothing to expose vampires. You’ve heard of the deep state I take it?”

“People that secretly control the world’s governments?” Ruby had heard the conspiracy theories and dismissed them as nonsense like most of the people she knew did. 

“It’s real and it’s made up of vampires and those that serve them. The Nytarch has servants all over the world. They control everything from Alaska to Aukland. If people knew that a cabal of blood-suckers ran the world… Well, I don’t know exactly what would happen but it wouldn’t be good.”

“So what will happen if this vampire deep state sees the video?” 

Scott ran his forefinger along his lips slowly as he mulled over her question. “They’d get rid of the video and kill everybody involved. You, your friends, and me.” 

Ruby’s skin turned cold as she listened to Scott speak. As farfetched and fantastical as it all sounded, she knew from his tone that he was telling the truth. She had to make Jay delete the video before it gained any more traction. “I’ll get Jay to take the video down,” she said. She didn’t know how she’d achieve it but she knew that she would one way or another. Hell, she’d delete it herself if it came to it. Dealing with Jay’s anger was better than being murdered by vampires. 

“I’ll be more persuasive,” Scott said, standing up ready to go. 

“I already said no,” Ruby said, standing as well. “I’m not taking you anywhere near him.” 

“You don’t really have a choice,” said Scott, and there was no timidness about him now. “I’m not going to hurt him, I promise you that. If I just frighten him a bit he’ll do as I say.”

“Good evening, are you looking to buy a new lounge set?” said a chirpy man who was dressed in a navy suit with a name badge that identified him as David. 

Scott turned to the sales assistant and the subtle hints of red in his eyes grew bolder. “We’re still looking,” he said in a growling tone, his lips peeling back to reveal his fangs. 

David’s face reddened as he backed away, smiling inanely. “If you need any assistance, I’ll be just over there,” he said before hurrying away as quickly as possible. 

“Isn’t that against the rules — exposing yourself to that guy?” 

Scott turned back to Ruby. “Even if he were to tell people what he saw, who would believe him? As I was saying, my life is now on the line so I can’t leave anything to chance. You can’t run away from me because I’ll follow you easily. I mean you no harm, so please, take me to Jay.” 

Ruby stared back at him, trying to come up with some way out of the situation that didn’t involve introducing a vampire to her boyfriend. No matter how many times he said he meant them no harm it was hard to believe when he’d already harmed them. 

“Ruby, if you don’t let me talk with Jay, somebody much more dangerous is going to come and they will not be coming to talk with him,” Scott said. This time the words hit home. Scott was the safer option. 

“I’ll take you to meet him but you have to promise me that you won’t hurt him,” she said. She didn’t know if she could trust his word but it was the best thing she could think of. Like he’d said, she couldn’t get away from him. She’d already tried. 

Scott nodded once. “I promise. Now take me to your boyfriend.” 

Ruby and Scott went to Old Bean to wait for Jay since Ruby had arranged to meet him there after he’d finished with the mayor anyway. She tried calling him but he rejected the call so she assumed he was still talking to Mayor Weller. She tapped a quick text instead; she didn’t want him to turn up to the surprise of a vampire waiting for him. She gave him a brief rundown of who Scott was, assuring him that Scott was perfectly civil and not at all the beast who’d attacked them the night before. 

Ruby’s hands clasped her mug, siphoning the warmth from her mocha and Scott sat across from her staring down into a hot chocolate. The hot chocolate had a generous dollop of whipped cream on it and Ruby wondered if she’d made the wrong beverage selection. In her defense when she’d asked him what he wanted he had said anything. 

“Can you even drink it?” she asked. 

Scott glanced up like she’d ripped him out of his thoughts. “I can. Whether or not I want to is another matter,” he replied. “We vampires can still eat and drink the things humans do, however, they don’t agree with our constitutions. They tend not to stay down.” He smiled sheepishly and for a moment he reminded her of Tyler. 

“Lovely,” she said, trying to push away the image of Scott vomiting up his hot chocolate Exorcist style. “Why ask for anything?” 

“It seemed odd to sit in a coffee shop and not drink anything.” 

“It’s not that unusual.” Ruby’s attention was snatched away when she saw Jay enter the coffee shop, his cheeks flushed pink from the bitter cold outside. She stood up so he’d see her more easily in the packed venue. 

As Jay approached his eyes fell greedily on Scott, he looked at the vampire like he was a product rather than a person. Scott turned and saw Jay coming, and he stood up to greet him. 

“Good evening, you must be Jay,” he said, extending his hand to shake. 

Jay’s eyes widened and he stared down at the pale hand incredulously. “You’re the thing that gave me this?” he touched the white bandage on his neck that was far larger than it needed to be. Jay had swapped the dressing from the hospital for a larger one he’d found at home because he believed it would look good on social media. He’d already posted a picture on Instagram claiming he’d survived a ferocious vampire attack. Technically he wasn’t lying, but Ethan had been the recipient of most of the vampire’s ferocity. 

“I am sorry about that. However, I would prefer not to be called a thing,” Scott said perfectly politely. 

“Tell that to Ethan,” Jay said. Ruby wondered if Jay’s lack of caution was due to her description of Scott in the message she’d sent. Maybe Jay’s confidence was simply because of the packed venue. Safety in numbers. If he’d seen how fast Scott could move he might feel less secure. 

Ruby offered Scott a shrug at Jay’s hostility. As they all sat down around the table, Jay pulled out his phone and began leaning it against the thin vase that held a plastic tulip in the center of the table. 

“What are you doing?” Scott asked. 

“Setting up the camera for our chat. I can’t believe I’m about to talk to an actual vampire. This is giving serious Interview with the Vampire vibes.” Jay hit the red circle and his phone started recording. 

“This is not an interview. Put that away,” Scott said firmly. Ruby noticed that he was far less meek when speaking to Jay, he was commanding. “Or I’ll destroy it,” Scott added when Jay ignored him. 

Jay glanced up and locked eyes with Scott. Once again, the vampire’s eyes turned redder, like his irises were slowly filling with blood. He drew his lips back in a snarl flashing his fangs at Jay. Ruby saw her boyfriend gulp and knew he was envisioning the events of last night. 

“Jay,” she said in a small whisper, imploring him to stop recording. 

“I’m not here to be interviewed, I’m here to warn you that if you don’t delete the video of last night then all of us are going to be killed,” said Scott. “Now. Turn. That. Off.” 

Jay stopped the recording and tucked his phone back into his jacket pocket. “What’s he talking about?” Jay said, turning to Ruby as though he didn’t trust Scott to answer his question. 

It was Scott who answered him. “Vampires have one rule above all others: never expose the vampire race to humans. If that video gets the attention of the Nytarch then they will send somebody to kill everyone involved with its making.” 

“What the fuck’s the Nytarch? Sounds like a shit band,” said Jay, but even through his jokes Ruby could tell he was nervous. 

Scott leaned in closer, worried that he might be overheard. “The Nytarch is a group of vampires who control everything; vampires and humans.” 

Jay leaned back in his chair, a smug grin plastered on his face. Ruby knew that look, it meant Jay thought he had the upper hand. Before he even spoke she knew that he did not. “If the Nytarch — or whatever it’s called — controls the humans then why doesn’t everybody know about vampires?” he said. 

Scott sighed and shook his head, none too pleased that he was going to have to convince a second person in one night. “The control isn’t as simple as a vampire phoning a human and telling him what to do, it’s… Well, I don’t know exactly how it’s done, but it’s done secretly, in the shadows. And a video like this threatens to pull the Nytarch out of the shadows. They will not like that. Take the video down before we all get brutally murdered.” 

Jay’s fingers danced on the table, he always jiggled his fingers when he was trying to think on the spot. “If I take the video down now I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for.” 

Scott stared at Jay with flat eyes, like he was staring at the most stupid person he’d ever met. “I fought in a war for idiots like you. Do you value your life at all?” he said, after a long and uncomfortable silence. 

“Obviously. But if they’re so worried about exposure they can hardly come here and rip us to shreds. Won’t it look a bit suspicious if all the people who made the video suddenly turn up dead?” Jay said. For all the silly ideas he came up with, Jay was not a stupid man. He let his ambition and his eagerness for success cloud his judgment far too often, but he did have a decent brain beneath all the selfishness. His intelligence was one of the things that had drawn Ruby to him. 

Scott turned to Ruby. “Please talk some sense into him,” he implored her. 

Ruby knew there was no chance of talking sense into Jay. Making it big on YouTube was his dream, it had been his driving focus for the last 2 years and now he finally had a chance of achieving it. Scott looked too human and he was acting too human to frighten Jay. Maybe if he’d stalked Jay the way he had Ruby then Jay would have been more receptive to his warnings. 

“Deleting it could benefit us more than keeping it up,” Ruby said to Jay as a new thought occurred to her. “Right now everybody is debating whether or not it’s a hoax. If the video suddenly vanishes with no explanation then people will start wondering why. It will stoke the flames.” 

Jay’s eyes flicked to the side and his brow furrowed deep in thought. Then his lips stretched in a satisfied smile. “I don’t just keep you around for your looks,” he said, and before she could retort to the backhanded compliment he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Her face grew hot with embarrassment but she said nothing; he seemed to be listening to her and she didn’t want to change that.

Jay pulled out his phone and began tapping on the screen. His eyes lit up when he opened the YouTube app. “We’ve got nearly 150,000 followers,” he said excitedly. Last night they’d had 312. Ruby tensed up, knowing that the new followers might make him change his mind. 

“Wait,” he said and his voice turned flat, all of the previous giddiness gone. “What the fuck?” 

“What?” Ruby asked. Scott leaned across the table, trying to get a good look at Jay’s phone. 

“It’s gone. The video’s gone,” Jay said. “Fucking content violation!” 

“What violation?” 

“Hold on,” Jay said. His eyes scanned the text rapidly. “Excessive violence.” Jay dropped his phone on the table with a loud huff and he looked around as if somebody in the coffee shop might be able to offer an explanation. Other patrons hurried to look away before meeting his gaze. 

Scott peered down at the screen and seeing that the video had indeed been removed, he sat back in his chair, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Trust me, this is a good thing. Did you post it anywhere else?” Jay eyed the vampire carefully, clearly considering lying. 

“I was only trapped in that old house for 5 years. I do know how to operate a cell phone,” Scott added. 

“I posted a few clips of it on other platforms,” Jay muttered. He lifted his phone to check them. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted a few moments later. “It’s been taken down everywhere.” 

“Is it normal for videos to be penalized across different platforms?” Scott asked. Ruby, knowing exactly what Scott was thinking, shook her head. 

Scott stood abruptly. “Then it might already be too late. If I were you two, I’d delete everything and run. You won’t see me again,” he said. He gave Ruby a small, hollow smile and then he turned and left. Ruby watched him go. He walked at normal speed, like any of the other humans in the coffee shop. The moment he stepped outside the facade dropped and he vanished in the blink of an eye.