1.
Madison was always making mistakes. Alerting his victim. Sniffing out the wrong blood type. Tonight, it was the getaway. He should have left right away, but he was distracted by the things in Evan’s room. A beginner’s guide to classical guitar. And the guitar itself, propped in the corner. The callouses on Evan’s fingertips suggested he played every day. You never really know someone, thought Madison. Evan had never mentioned a new hobby. And they had been best friends for months.

He was thinking about this when he heard the key in the door - Evan still lived with his mother. The window was across the room, so Madison dove into the closet instead. He wished he hadn’t. Here were clothes Evan would never wear. Then, through the slats in the bi-fold door, he had to watch Evan’s mother discover the body. She’d been seventeen when Evan was born and still had her youthful looks despite the many adventures that had brought her to Montreal. The sight of her son did not push her over the edge. With a stoic’s composure, she knelt by her son and brushed the hair from his face. There was blood on the hardwood floor. That was another of Madison’s faults: he was a sloppy drinker. He shouldn’t have lost control. It hadn’t even been worth it - Evan was drunk and his blood had tasted like piss.

At last, Evan’s mother called the police and spoke in a soft, wet drawl. “Ah’ll be downstairs,” she said. “Ah can’t stay in here.” Once she had scurried away, Madison fled down the fire escape; he didn’t let himself look at Evan again.

It took Madison a while to slink home. At least he hadn’t struck in his own neighborhood - that was one of Sachi’s rules. Too many deaths in the neighborhood and people began to talk. Sachi hated the idea of the walls closing in on them. She liked their house and didn’t want to move. Sachi was Japanese and had worked hard to fill their lives with ornate prints and white screens. Usually, he found it comforting. Tonight, after letting himself inside, the faces of geishas mocked him. As if he was in the wrong place. Better he still lived in one of his old bachelor flats, the ones full of grime and darkness. He didn’t deserve track lighting and a big screen T.V. Maybe Sachi would be asleep. He wanted a glass of port and the latest episode of The Great British Bake Off. People fighting over cake and no blood in sight.

But Sachi was reading with the television on, an unfathomable ability he had never understood. What was it tonight? Ah. Dracula. That Sachi. Always with the sense of humor.

“How’s Mother?”

“Ready to ground him the moment he’s born.” Sachi patted her stomach; she was eight months along.

At the sideboard, Madison guzzled the port. It wouldn’t get him drunk, but it gave him a warm spurt.

“Doc came while you were out,” said Sachi. “Said the baby is fine.”

“Of course it’s fine. Why shouldn’t it be fine?”

“Doc said you never know.”

“Doc is putting fear in your head. He’s just after our money.” At once, he regretted the remark. It wasn’t like him to worry about money and Sachi knew it. Poverty was behind them. They could work online. They both had home offices and steady jobs.

Sachi put down her book. “You’ve been feeding.”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Madison. I can always tell. What’s the matter with you? We can’t take risks right now. And it’s not like we don’t have plenty in the fridge.”

Madison sighed. “I got into a fight with Evan. I lost control.”

“It’s a hell of a way to win a fight. What was it about?”

“He said we shouldn’t have the baby.” Evan didn’t know Madison and Sachi were vamps, of course. He just didn’t like Sachi. He’d been drinking and said she’d make a bad mother. The fight had escalated from there. “His mother came back early. I had to hide.”

“Did she see you?”

“No.”

“If you exposed us ....”

“I didn’t. You know, I just killed my best friend, you could show some sympathy.”

“I told you not to make friends with the norms. I suppose now you’re wracked with guilt.”

“He was learning guitar.”

Sachi rolled her eyes and turned away. She had no patience for him when he got like this. When she ate, she swallowed her remorse along with everything else. “The sun’s almost up.”

“Sachi - “

“We need to go to bed.”

She was right. Already he could feel the coming dawn. Drugged by the coming daylight, Madison followed her downstairs. Every window was covered up, but they could always feel the rising sun. The closer they got to dawn, the harder it was to stay awake. A handy survival mechanism - sunlight burned them to the bone.

He fell into a dreamless state and woke an hour after sunset. Sachi was folding laundry. She let him stroke her belly. There was no proof the baby would be born a vamp, but that was the whole problem. Nobody had babies like they did anymore. It was shrouded in so much superstition that it was hard to know what to believe. But the baby never kicked for him and Madison thought this said it all. The kid already resented him; his child knew what it was. Pale, cold-blooded, forever thirsty. Prone to kill your friend just because he’d said the wrong thing.

Madison crawled out of bed and got dressed.

“Where are you going?”

“Thought I’d see Gerald.”

“Try not to eat him.”

“Go to the devil.” But he didn’t look for Gerald; he went to see the witch instead.



Madison had only seen Elise once before. Vamps are solitary and he had never heard of a pair who had married. But he loved Sachi and had hoped for a witch’s blessing. Elise had given it after studying the signs; he’d proposed to Sachi that very night, right after slurping back the blood of a constable. There had been no doubts back then. He hadn’t given the constable a second thought.

All that had been more than sixty years ago, but Elise remembered him. The witch wasn’t a vamp, but she had enough strange power to keep from dying. She led him into her salon, waddling as she moved. She looked to be made of dough. Her pupils had long ago vanished, and she was missing most of her teeth. Elise lived in a grand house in Mile End, and her salon was a nineteenth-century throwback. She ordered everything online and stayed safely tucked away; she hadn’t been outside in years.

Madison sat on a Louis XIV couch as Elise poured wine that was a century old.

“And your wife? Almost due, I think.”

Her knowledge of things didn’t surprise him. “She’s doing well.”

“Glorious. Was it very difficult? The process, I mean.”

“We struggled a bit. Most couples do.”

“Most norm couples.” She came from England and still had her posh accent; she had been a society girl in her youth and still sat like she was being judged on her poise. “It never ceases to amaze what you do to keep some sense of your old lives. Last night, this young vamp comes to me. New teeth. And what does he want to know? If he will be a virgin forever. Here he is, as bloodlusty as anyone, yet his only concern is getting his wick lit. And look at you and Sachi. A million vamps in this city. They want a baby, they go to the maternity wards and bite the first darling that catches their eye. Or they just find someone older. Isn’t that what happened to you?”

“I was dying from polio. The doctor offered to save me.”

She peered into him with those dark eyes. “You’re here because you’re worried about your son.”

“My son?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. I saw it in the signs back when you came for my blessing.”

“Then you know what will happen to him?”

“That I can’t say.”

He sighed as she topped off her glass. “You hear all sorts of myths about what happens when two vamps have a kid. They say the demon in us is always kept in check by our past life. But since the kid has no past, all bets are off.”

“You’re worried he’s going to be a monster.” Elise studied her wine as if the answer was in the merlot. “You’re right to be afraid. It’s possible that, no matter how you raise him, he’ll be so full of terrible desires that he’ll lose control.”

Madison slurped his drink as he thought of Evan’s red face. The laugh as he mocked Sachi. It was the racist slur that had sent Madison over the edge. Made him lose control. “Is there a way we can know? Something that could put me at ease?”

“I’ll have to check my books.”

For an hour, Madison paced the salon and checked his phone. Messages from Sachi. Where u at? No response was the best response. Sachi thought the witches were charlatans and didn’t know Madison had sought Elise’s blessing before proposing. She would hate him for coming and hate him more for lying about it. Twice, Madison thought about leaving; the third time he almost did, and it was then that Elise returned. She had an old tome with a title scrawled in Danish. For some reason, the Scandinavian chroniclers had been the experts on vamp lore.

Since vamps rarely gave birth, the sources were scarce. But she had found one legend from the village of Endegaard on Denmark’s northern coast. A pair of vamps, desperate for offspring, had produced a child. Ten years later, the village vanished from the world. “The chroniclers had only the testimony of the sole survivor,” said Elise. “He spoke of terrible destruction. For centuries, it was said the offspring haunted the area.”

“A shadow tale to scare the young?”

“And the old.” Elise turned a few pages. “One story might be of interest. In the 19th century, there was a vamp commune near Königsberg. A vamp was pregnant and the elders, fearing a repeat of Endegaard, performed a ritual.”

“Sachi will never agree to destruction. Neither will I.”

Elise waved her hand. “They didn’t destroy the child. They changed it. Turned it fully norm. There’s no indication of whether it worked. But we might assume that someone would not have recorded the incident if the magic had failed.”

“Fully norm.” Madison mused over the possibility. “That would make raising him a challenge.”

“You misunderstand. The child was sent away for its own protection. A norm living among vamps? The temptation to give it teeth would be overwhelming. Even the parents might lose control.”

There was that word again. Control. Madison understood the danger. You didn’t send a former smoker into a tobacco factory and you didn’t ask a bloodsucker to live every day with some warm-blooded scamp. “What does this ritual involve?”

“The baby must be born into light. The mother must survive the process and recite an incantation, freeing the child from her grasp. Permitting it to join the norm world.”

Madison was astonished. Sunlight made them comatose. They couldn’t stay awake if they tried. It had to be another shadow tale. But something in her toothless face suggested the witch thought something else. Elise stretched out in her chair and those empty eyes bore into him.

“I believe it could be done,” she said. “But it would depend on the two of you. To give up your own child? For all my power, even I might not have the strength.”

Madison trailed the witch back to her front door. The journey to their baby had taken many months. The deciding. The effort. Fertility drugs. Finding tiger blood because of its potency. And now, at last, they were here. It was madness to consider giving it all up. Sachi would hate him if he even asked.

“You’ll need to decide by next week,” said Elise. “Come back on Wednesday or don’t come at all.”

Madison paused, trench coat in hand. “You really believe it can be done?”

“Why else would I have told you?”

Madison transferred her some money and slid into the night.

At home, Sachi was already in bed, pretending to be engrossed in Dracula; she was also pretending she wasn’t pissed at him for ignoring her texts. Madison lay parallel to her stomach and stroked her bulge. His son. Whatever choice was made, they would be imposing their own will. But wasn’t that what all parents did? Babies didn’t ask to be born. Even forcing one into the world could be considered a selfish act. That had been his mother’s way. She had chosen Madison’s father with care: it was World War II and she voted him most-likely-to-be-shot. She had wanted a child, not a spouse. After that vamp doctor had saved him, she had asked for the same medicine. Another selfish act; she never wanted them to be apart.

Sachi peered at him over the book. Waiting.

Screwing his courage, he told everything to the belly, afraid to look up. When he reached the story of the village that had disappeared, Sachi’s sigh filled the room.

“This is so typical of you, Madison. Going to that witch before you come to me.”

“I’m worried about our baby.”

“Is that it? Or are you just a self-hating vamp? You didn’t know Evan that long. Stop beating yourself up.”

“This isn’t about Evan or about me getting too bloodlusty one night. Elise said we’re having a son. And we don’t know what he’s going to be. Endegaard was wiped from the map. Do you want that to happen here?”

“It’s a shadow tale.”

“Elise says it isn’t.”

“Elise is a lunatic.” She had wrapped her hands around her belly. A barrier. Protection from him. Now she was scared of him. He had made a mess of everything.

“I’m going out,” he said.

“It’s almost dawn.”

“I’ll find a safehouse.”

“Madison, stop. You can’t just spring this on me. We went through so much for this. I want to be a mother.”

“I wanted things too. But maybe there’s a price to being what we are.”

The fresh air did nothing to calm him down. He checked his phone. A little more than an hour until sunrise. Angry, he turned down the street. He’d be seeing Gerald after all.


2.
Sachi considered calling Madison back but changed her mind. Why have a child? she thought. I already have one. She didn’t have the patience for his self-hating vamp routine. Sachi had come to terms with how they lived. How they had to live. Because that’s what it was about. Survival. Everyone dealt with it in their own way. Animal blood. Picking only the old or dying. A ruthless way to live after being handed a ruthless fate.

The baby squirmed inside her. Her throat was dry. She took a packet of blood from the freezer and put it in the microwave. “You can’t have normal cravings?” she asked her stomach. No. Of course he couldn’t. Her baby wasn’t normal. It had been a happy pregnancy and she’d been told that, when the birthday came, there wouldn’t be any pain. Her vamp constitution. Because she wasn’t normal either.

Sachi had been born in Japan in a village on Kyushu. One evening - her last or her first, depending on your viewpoint - she had been sent by her father to collect a debt. The man had paid her in teeth and, when she woke, she’d been seized by a ravenous thirst. Concerned, she woke the village doctor. As he examined her, his bare neck came into view and her new instinct kicked in - she drained him dry. The next afternoon, a child was attacked by an animal and there had been no one to tend to his wounds. Sachi had fled the village. She never saw her father again. Had he mourned her? What of the dead child’s family? And all the people who had suffered until a new doctor could be found?

She had never thought these things before. Damn you, Madison. These were his ideas. Guilt is part of their existence, the last glint of humanity. Look at Madison’s mother. She had hated being a vamp. While feeding one night, a victim got the upper hand; to this day, she knew Madison thought his mother had let it happen. Parents want their child’s life to be better. By the end, his mother was convinced she had made it worse.

I won’t feel that way, thought Sachi. Our son won’t have regrets. He won’t be plagued by distant memories of fathers or villages or the sun in his face. The thought lifted her spirits. Your fate was determined by the events of your life. Their son wouldn’t be able to go to school, of course, so it would be up to them. They would teach him to read and to think. They would give him the missing pieces of his human heritage.

But what of killing? Would they teach him that too? Feeding was pure instinct, but you couldn’t just spring on everyone you saw. You couldn’t leave a village without their doctor. You had to plan. Learn to maneuver through the shadows of the world. All part of getting bloodlusty once or twice a week. They’d have to take him, once he was old enough. This is the carotid artery. This is the subclavian. But the jugular is what you really want, son. That’s the thing you want to tear apart.

The microwave sang its high blip. The craving was as intense as it had been that first day in her village. Intolerable. Like she could rip out all the hearts in the world just to make it stop. The microwave beeped again. Sachi didn’t move.



On Wednesday, they went as early as the sunset would allow. Elise wasn’t surprised to see them. She probably knew that Sachi didn’t trust her, but she greeted them with warmth and even kissed as if they were old friends. Sachi admired the old house as they were led inside. An inheritance, she thought. Witches had families that went back through the years.

In the parlor, Sachi fidgeted and Madison put his hand in hers. That cold, familiar touch. All week they had been locked in heated debate and, filled with pique, she had often turned away. This touch felt like the first in many days.

Once getting permission, Elise put her ear to Sachi’s belly. Sachi caught the woman’s smell. Perfume. The witch had vanity; she had some humanity, after all.

“Healthy! You’ve been taking care of him.”

“I was excited.”

“You’re not anymore?”

Sachi sat up straighter. “I need more information. Madison said there was some ritual, but I don’t see how we’d survive it.”

“There are ways. The fates conspired to bring you to this moment.”

“Why would fate give me a baby only to make me give it away?”

“That’s just it, Sachi. Fate brought you here but it can’t make you do anything. You have to choose. Do you think you can do that? When you see your baby, will you be able to release it or will you kick like a mule?”

Sachi hadn’t considered this part of it. “Tell me the shadow stories are true. Tell me that, if I don’t do this, he will grow into another monster of Endegaard.”

“I can’t ever tell anyone anything,” sighed Elise.

So it was a gamble. Sachi preferred certainty. She looked down at her hand. She liked that Madison was still holding it. She still felt they were making the choice together. If she wanted to walk away, he’d agree.

“I’ll do what needs to be done.

Elise nodded in satisfaction. “Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow day.”

“So soon?”

“There’s a reason I gave Madison a deadline. The time is tomorrow or not at all. You will stay here until the sun rises. I’ll give you something that will keep you awake and bring you outside when it’s time.”

“I still don’t see how you expect us to survive this,” said Sachi.

“I told you: fate conspired to bring you here.”

She called up a webpage on her cellphone. As soon as Sachi saw the headline, she understood. She wasn’t sure she believed in fate. But there was something preordained about them making this choice right before the day of a solar eclipse.



Elise gave them a luxurious room whose window had blackout shutters. The decor was Victorian, reminding her of the flat in London where she’d stayed for years before Madison. You didn’t move much when you were a vamp. All you needed was a landlord who didn’t ask questions and four walls that kept out the sun. You had that, you had everything. Or so she’d thought.

Sachi tried to make herself comfortable while Madison studied the books. There was a small collection filled with the castaways of the years. Dickens and Grisham and bodice. Madison plucked a volume and brought it to her. Dracula.

“Here. You can finish it.”

She had to smile. She had to love him. The book’s cover boasted a black and white still from Nosferatu. Max Schreck with his bald head and pointed ears. “They’re so vicious in this,” she said.

“We’re vicious in everything,” Madison sighed. “Someone probably ate Bram Stoker’s family. One kill and he spoils our reputation forever.”

Sachi ran a hand over the cover. “I saw Nosferatu when it first came out. I laughed the whole time. These writers, I thought. What will they think of next?”

“You should write a book. Try to get it right.”

“No one would believe it. Or they won’t want to. We all need our devils. The norms have us. We have the monster of Endegaard.”

There was a knock and Elise arrived with two goblets. They were told to drink every drop. Lick the cup clean. After she left, Sachi gave a goblet to Madison and smelled the other one. Chocolatey. Nutmeg too. Probably a waking potion. She was about to drink when Madison stayed her hand.

“This is my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have lost control with Evan. At the very least, I could have given him teeth.”

“Then he’d be around all the time. Probably try to be the kid’s godfather.” Madison didn’t laugh and Sachi’s smile dropped away. “Don’t kick yourself too hard. Losing control is what we do.”

“So we’re doing the right thing?”

“See? We’re not monsters at all.” She toasted him and emptied the cup. Madison followed suit; they ran their fingers along the inside and sucked up the dregs.

They crawled into bed and she read to him. Find this great Un-Dead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him ... The hours slipped by and they felt the sunrise in their bones. The blackout shutters weren’t absolute, and Sachi saw the first signs of dawn. Real light. She had seen the world go from candles to gas lamps to electric lights. Yet here was the true miracle. The sun. And if all this worked, her son would see it every day.

Elise returned, this time with only a single cup: a potion to induce labor. The eclipse was set to occur shortly after eleven; there were only fifteen minutes left. As Sachi prepared to drink, she caught sight of Nosferatu. Find this great Un-Dead ... She drank the potion and nearly gagged. It was rancid, like spoiled blood. When she put the cup down, she saw Madison watching her. He seemed both unhappy and resolute.

Out they went, down the hall and towards a narrow staircase. Elise explained the roof had an enclosed courtyard that could not be seen by others. It would give them all the privacy they needed. At the top of the stairs, they came to a small landing. A ladder led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The last barrier.

“Take off your skirt,” said Elise. “It will start soon.”

The witch scurried up the ladder as Sachi removed her skirt and underclothes. Like clockwork, the first tremors began. Not quite pain but a discomfort great enough to make everything tilt. She clung to Madison, and he muttered words of comfort. The moment passed, and he helped her climb the ladder and then Elise was dragging her through the trapdoor. A grey blanket had been thrown over the sky. Sachi realized she was squinting. The light was dull and yet it was still too bright. She felt the burn in her eyes and on her skin. The sun was huge and black, a sinister orb hanging in the sky.

Elise smacked her arm. “Concentrate. You need to bear down.”

She remained standing, grabbing Madison for support. Elise crouched behind her and bellowed instructions. A spasm went through her and it was the singular moment of pain, terrible pain, something that approached what she could only imagine she would feel if she were human. If she were normal. It brought out her teeth and she sank them into Madison’s skin. He didn’t seem to notice. His face was slick with sweat. His body radiated an oven’s heat. The moon continued its orbit. They weren’t going to make it. Any moment, the sun would assert itself and they would be charred. Elise yelled her name and some instinct took over and Sachi imagined pushing everything away, the baby and her heart and the demon inside her and then the torment passed and it was done and she heard it, that miraculous sound, her son, her little boy, was alive and screaming with a noise that filled the world.

Madison continued to hold her aloft. Elise must have cut the umbilical cord, because suddenly the baby was thrust into her arms. Sachi stared down at their mewling thing with wonder. He was small and round and his eyes were wide like blood drops. But their color was a healthy blue. He may have been wet with viscera, but nothing about him was a terror. This was no monster. How could she give him up?

“Read this!” Elise shoved a paper in her face.

Sachi tried to focus, but her eyes were clouded with tears.

“Quickly!” said the witch.

“Don’t,” said Madison. “Don’t do it.”

Sachi looked at the child as he opened his mouth for another wail. Then she saw it: her son’s mouth was jagged and sharp. This was not the scream of a newborn plucked into the world. It was the roar of hunger. He had been born with teeth and was already desperate to feed. No. She would not allow it. A mother should always do what’s best for her child. Even if that means giving him away. She stole one final moment to look on the baby as a mother and then read the incantation. Elise took the baby and told Madison to get her inside.

“Wait!” said Madison. “My son!”

“He’s not your son anymore!” Above them, the sky was brightening. “Inside now or you’ll never do anything again.”

Sachi had started to smoke, like something turning on a spit. The couple had to carry each other - neither seemed to have the strength to move on their own - and it was only by working together that they were able to slip through the trapdoor and drop down the ladder. Sachi kept her eyes on the baby until Madison slammed the door shut. The darkness was like stepping into winter, and they collapsed into each other, their skin marked with blisters and burns. War wounds - they would scar but never heal. She was drowsy now. The waking potion was wearing off. Sachi grabbed Madison and saw he was already nodding off. She sank down, fighting to stay awake. At last, she heard what she had wanted to hear. With a mother’s instinct, she knew it wasn’t that hungry roar. It was a cry. A baby’s cry.

*     *     *
When Madison woke, Sachi was standing by the window, staring into the night. Elise had somehow taken them back to their room. Sachi had woken right at sunset full of tears. Her body ached, and Elise had given her a salve for the burns. Now she rubbed it on Madison. The sun had scorched parts of his neck.

“You look old,” she said. “Your hair is grey.”

“Yours too.” He looked miserable. “In the end, I didn’t want you to do it.”

Sachi thought of the baby’s sharpened teeth. The hungry scream for blood. “We would have tried to be good parents. But it wouldn’t have mattered.”

A while later, Elise came to tell them they had done well. The ritual had worked; their son would live as a norm.

“Where is he now?” asked Madison.

Elise looked surprised - no easy feat with a witch - and turned to Sachi. “He doesn’t know?”

“I didn’t want to tell him, just in case,” Sachi admitted. “Did it work?”

“I’ve never seen someone so happy,” said the witch. “She wept when she found him on her doorstep. Said she was going to call him Evan. After her son.”

Madison looked at his wife in wonder and then pulled her close. Sachi took in his smell, this scent that had been hers for so many years. And there was still an eternity to go. Will we make it? Will we last until the ends of the earth? She wanted to ask Elise, who knew so much through signs and wonders. But they were alone; the witch had already slipped away.