It took a few years for human governments and the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead to reach a compromise that both sides could live with. Humans couldn’t seem to accept that the monsters they’d always feared didn’t want to gnaw on their necks at the first opportunity. Vampires were just looking for a chance to live out in the open without worrying about being staked by their paranoid neighbors.
As a reward for not overthrowing humanity just by virtue of superior upper-body strength, the Council was allowed to establish smaller regional offices in each state in every country. Local Council members policed newly turned vampires for irresponsible feeding behavior, settled quarrels, and generally kept the vampire circles respectable.
My life after the Coming Out, well, it didn’t change much. My father the professor was too wrapped up in his work to pay much attention to a total alteration of humanity’s view of the world. Other than the possibility of having live (so to speak) subjects to interview about key events in history, he had no interest. My mother thought dealing with the reality of mythical creatures was “too scary” for me, so she kept me from watching the news, reading magazines, or surfing the Internet for vampire news. And when she found out that my school was holding an “Undead American Awareness Week,” she threatened to homeschool me. As with the sex-ed lessons, I had to excuse myself from the classroom and do independent study in the library while my classmates learned about vampire culture. Because Mother didn’t sign the permission slip, and her signature was difficult to forge.
A few vampires taught at the college I attended, but strict fraternizing guidelines kept students from forming personal attachments to them. As an adult, working in the history department of a small private university in rural Virginia, I had even less contact with the undead. I spent my hours locked away in the special archives, studying books so old they could crumble into dust at a touch. Those vampires who chose to specialize in history tended toward the more theoretical angles of the field. Objects from their period of origin seemed to make them sad.
Seeing Finn bare his fangs and go into full-on raging undead mode on the plane had been a shock I hadn’t quite registered yet. When those fangs came out again now, my hands started to shake, and my legs felt like they would liquefy.
I leaned against an oak tree, the rough bark scratching my waterlogged skin as I struggled to get my breath back. The full impact of what I’d just experienced seemed to land directly on my chest. I focused on breathing in and then out, one breath at a time. I pictured my blood flowing back into my fingertips, my toes, keeping my body warm. It was a technique I’d learned in one of my many, many, many therapy sessions, meditating on keeping my body functioning even while my mind spun into chaos.
I burst out laughing, a hysterical half sob that grated on my own nerves. But I couldn’t seem to stop, Finn took a step back, and I laughed even harder. All thoughts of the first few minutes after the crash being vital to our survival disappeared from my head, and all I could do was cackle.
I laughed until tears rolled down my already wet cheeks. I seemed to be feeling all of the emotions at once—fear, confusion, anger, fear, joy, relief, fear. It was all I could do to stay upright under the weight of all those feelings. Finn took hold of my elbows, trying to support my weight while pulling me away from the tree.
My feet got tangled up with each other, and I flopped face-first into his chest. I stopped laughing immediately. Finn’s arms slipped around my waist to hold me up. My nose seemed to be buried directly between his pecs, which were just as firm and well shaped as I’d suspected them to be on the plane. He smelled like expensive cologne and dryer sheets. How did I end up smelling like lake water and panic sweat, while he smelled like he just rolled out of a fashionable magazine? To my surprise, I didn’t fight his hold. I didn’t freak out over the invasion—nay, shattering—of my personal space. I wanted to stay right there, where I felt almost safe, with the comforting weight of his arms resting around me. As long as I could suppress the memory of Finn tossing me out of the plane, I could stay there forever.
And because that was one of the strangest thoughts I could remember having in a long time, I started giggling all over again.
“Uh, I don’t know what to do here,” Finn said, patting my head awkwardly. “We’ve only taken a few steps. I thought we had a couple of miles to go before one of us collapsed into hysterics.”
I snorted into his shirt. I had to pull it together. As much as I deserved to wallow in these crash waves of endorphins, giggling like a loon wasn’t going to get me to a warm, safe, dry place.