It’s been months.
Shit . . .
Months.
I don’t want to go into everything that’s happened. There’s no point. There were some bad decisions on my part. Some drinking. Some other stuff. None of us are as strong as we think we are.
I took Alexa to Craig’s house. I had to tell her that her brother was dead. That was fun. And that her sister-in-law was missing, probably dead as well. I didn’t tell her what year it was. I figured that was a shock that could be saved for later. And I didn’t tell her what her body had been doing without her. That’s not anything she needed to know. I didn’t tell Hammond either. I didn’t tell him where I’d found her and he didn’t ask. He was finally starting to understand. Part of me wished it had happened sooner. I would’ve loved to have a partner.
Turns out part of the reason he’d been arguing with his wife, part of the reason they started counseling, was that their girls were older and didn’t need their mother so much anymore. She was struggling with what to do with herself. She could handle the hours her husband spent on the job when she’d had the kids to look after. As they grew up, she realized she didn’t so much have a husband as a roommate. It didn’t take much to convince her to let Alexa into their home. I’m not sure if the authorities will let her stay. That kind of thing always generates lots of paperwork. I expect her case will become a bureaucrat’s wet dream before it’s all resolved. But until then, at least she’s in a good place—as good a place as there is in this world. In a home, with a family.
Craig and I shook hands for the last time on his driveway. I went to leave and he held on a moment. Practically tugged me back. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have to.
I’ll miss him.
I disappeared after that—to protect my family. And his. I was homeless for a while. Out West. That was an adventure. Everyone thinks the street people are crazy. And we are. But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong. There’s plenty in the big city that feeds off the homeless, lemme tell you. And I don’t mean preys on them. I don’t mean gobbles them up. I mean feeds. Like a parasite. And I got to see it.
Vampires aren’t like in the movies. They don’t give soliloquies in dark dungeons. They don’t sulk like teenagers. They don’t reduce a body to its corpse. Usually. That only raises questions.
They’re psychopaths. Sophisticated. Charming. Manipulative. They don’t want to kill you. They want to feed on you, week after week, for as long as they can. It’s so scary to see up close. And I don’t mean the groping and fevered slurping. I don’t mean when two or three are feeding on the same person at one time.
Fucking leeches.
No. It’s how they prey. The easy lies. The feigned innocence. Like a pedophile. They feed on hopes and dreams as much as blood. They love their victims. Even as they’re killing them, they adore them for what they give and promise them everything. They stroke them and kiss them and look longingly into their eyes. And some poor soul feels needed, maybe for the first time ever. And their life just fades away. And the cause of death is “renal failure” or “drug overdose” or “unspecified anemia associated with malnutrition.”
Never vampirism.
You know someone who was a victim. I guarantee it. Your teenager who cuts herself, maybe. Maybe she cuts herself because the secret boyfriend she met on the internet asks her to. So he can kiss the wounds.
I made sure they’d remember I wasn’t ever on the fucking menu.
Ever.
I even helped some folks get free.
Turns out, the chef was right. I’m good at that. But Bea was right, too. It’s a lonely world to live in. More even than before. I mean, you can’t exactly chat about this stuff at a dinner party. Not seriously. Not without seeming completely insane.
“Sorry to hear about your intestinal ailments, Joe. Did you know that some kinds of lesser devils can possess specific organs in your body? That might not be Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Just sayin’. Try drinking a tincture of red wine and deadly nightshade, to get it drunk—they love that shit—then spin a silver dollar on a string in front of your eyes, back and forth, to disorient it and it’ll probably stumble away on its own.”
Ha.
I kept my head shaved. And I got a tattoo. High up, on the crown of my forehead. A vertical lens with an empty circle in the center—a sideways eye. Because now mine are open. All three of them. I finally learned what the chef was trying to tell me that day, the day I broke the seal on the sanctum. Probably the most valuable lesson of my life. Courage alone isn’t enough. It has to be tempered by the other attributes of the saint: wisdom and compassion and the rest.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no saint. I never will be. Odds are, neither will you. But I don’t think the divine expect that—or whoever it is that’s fighting with us on the other side. The patient ones. The wise. The bearers of light. I don’t think they expect perfection. They don’t expect any of us to save the world. But they expect each of us to do our own little part. It’s not always clear what that is, but I guarantee you it’s something more nothing. It’s something more than good intentions. You can’t just be against things all the time, even evil things. You have to nurture the good. And that’s work.
But we can do it, every day, in ways big and small. We don’t need spells or magic weapons. We don’t have to be saints. We just have to start.
We have to. Because now it really is up to us. All of us. To be better. We can’t look to someone else to save us. Because there isn’t anyone. All the saints are dead.
And the darkness is rising.
FEAST OF SHADOWS is interactive
To see galleries of various occult and fantastic art that inspired the story, as well as a number of unused illustrations