Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            “I liked this job,” I tell Vania, grabbing the framed Polaroid of me and Serena and resignedly stuffing it into my bag. “It was easy. They bought my circadian rhythm disorder excuse and let me come in at night.”

            “My apologies,” she says. Unapologetic. “Come with me.”

            I should tell her to fuck off, and I will. In the meantime, I give in to my curiosity and follow her, straightening the poor benjamin fig on my way out.



* * *





            The Nest is still the tallest building in the north of The City, and perhaps the most distinctive: a bloodred podium that stretches underground for hundreds of feet, topped by a mirror skyscraper that comes alive around sunset and slides back to sleep in the early hours of the morning.

            I brought Serena here once, when she asked to see what the heart of the Vampyre territory was like, and she stared open-mouthed, jarred by the sleek lines and ultramodern design. She’d been expecting candelabras, and heavy velvet drapes to block the murderous sun, and the corpses of our enemies hanging from the ceiling, blood milked from their veins to the very last drop. Bat artwork, in honor of our winged, chiropterous forefathers. Coffins, just because.

            “It’s nice. I just thought it’d be more . . . metal?” she mused, not at all intimidated at the idea of being the only Human in an elevator full of Vampyres. The memory still makes me smile years later.

            Flexible spaces, automated systems, integrated tools—that’s what the Nest is. Not just the crown jewel of our territory, but also the center of our community. A place for shops and offices and errands, where anything one of us could need, from nonurgent healthcare to a zoning permit to five liters of AB positive, can be easily obtained. And then, in the uppermost floors, the builders made room for some private quarters, some of which have been purchased by the most influential families in our society.

            Mostly my family.

            “Follow me,” Vania says when the doors swish open, and I do, flanked by two uniformed council guards who are most definitely not here to protect me. A bit offensive, that I’m being treated like an intruder in the place where I was born, especially as we walk parallel to a wall that’s plastered with portraits of my ancestors. They morph over the centuries, from oils to acrylics to photographs, gray to Kodachrome to digital. What stays the same are the expressions: distant, arrogant, and frankly, unhappy. Not a healthy thing, power.

            The only Lark I recognize from personal experience is the one closest to Father’s office. My grandfather was already old and a little demented by the time Owen and I were born, and my most vivid memory of him is from that one time I woke up in the middle of the night to find him in my bedroom, pointing at me with trembling hands and yelling in the Tongue, something about me being destined for a grisly death.

            In fairness, he wasn’t wrong.

            “In here,” Vania says with a soft knock to the door. “The councilman is waiting for you.”

            I scan her face. Vampyres are not immortal; we grow old the same as every other species, but . . . damn. She looks like she hasn’t aged a day since she escorted me to the Collateral exchange ceremony. Seventeen years ago.

            “Is there something you need?”

            “No.” I turn and reach for the doorknob. Hesitate. “Is he sick?”

            Vania seems amused. “You think he’d call you here for that?”

            I shrug. I can’t think of a single other reason he’d want to see me.

            “For what? To commiserate? Or find solace in your filial affection? You have been among the Humans far too long.”

            “I was thinking more along the lines of him needing a kidney.”

            “We are Vampyres, Misery. We act for the good of the most, or not at all.”

            She’s gone before I can roll my eyes, or serve her that “fuck off” I’ve been meaning to. I sigh, glance at the stone-faced guards she left behind, and then walk into my father’s office.

            The first things I notice are the two walls of windows, which is exactly what Father wants. Every Human I’ve talked with assumes that Vampyres hate light and relish darkness, but they couldn’t be more wrong. The sun may be forbidden to us, toxic always and deathly in large quantities, but that’s precisely why we covet it with such intensity. Windows are a luxury, because they need to be treated with absurdly expensive materials that filter everything that might harm us. And windows this large are the most bombastic of status symbols, in a full display of dynastic power and obscene wealth. And beyond them . . .