Vampire High Sophomore Year

22



I came home from the hospital two days later. Mom set me up on the couch in the living room, where she could keep an eye on me and bring me stuff.

I didn’t do much except lie around and wish I were dead. Inside and out, I’d been so thoroughly beaten up that there was no place left that didn’t hurt.

But things can always get worse, and the day after I came home from the hospital, they did.

It was on the front page of the New Sodom Intelligencer, the local paper:



TOWN COUNCIL TAKES NEW SODOM OUT OF 17TH CENTURY

In a place as old as New Sodom, some funny old laws can turn up. One that has recently come to light involves Crossfield.

Crossfield? Yes, that Crossfield.

It seems that, back in the day, some long-gone town council thought it would be a good idea to let anyone who wanted it claim abandoned land there. In the words of the act, “When it shall hap that a farm or steading of any sort shall be left untenanted for the time of three yeares, and no owner be writ down in the towne records, whoso shall tenant it and build thereon a cabin or a wigwam, and plante corne, and dwell for seven yeares upon it, shall have possession of said farm or steading so long as it shall please him. To keep or to sell, to leave unto descendants, and to do all things that may be done with a farm or steading.”

Now, before you rush over to Crossfield and start throwing up your wigwam, there are two things you need to know: (1) some kids actually tried it, staking out the old Simmons Mill just as though it were still 1676; (2) when the town council found out about it, they repealed the act.

“It was just one of those crazy things that happen,” said town council member Watson Waters. “That and some half-bright kids who thought they could get away with something.”

But why would kids want to take over an abandoned mill anyway?

“We heard that they wanted to start some kind of a half-baked arts center over there, even though no arts group in New Sodom wanted anything to do with it,” Waters said. “We’re not sure what they were really up to.”

In any case, with the kids gone, the act repealed, and police tape around the outside of the Simmons Mill, it’s pretty clear that whatever it was won’t be happening anytime soon.

“Can they do that, Dad?” I said. “Can they just take it away from us?”

We were sitting around the living room that morning, me, Mom, Dad, and Turk. I was doing a lot better and was dressed to go out, even though I wasn’t going back to Vlad yet.

“It depends,” Dad said. “Certainly there’s an argument to be made that whatever changes they made to the act don’t apply to the Simmons Mill. But ultimately, the town can claim eminent domain, and probably make it stick. On the other hand, there’s such a thing as just compensation. If they take something away from you, they have to pay you the fair market value. On the other hand, you’ve staked your claim but you haven’t completed the seven-year term that would make it yours. So they could probably claim they didn’t owe you anything. It’s a very interesting question.”

“Interesting enough to take to court?” Turk asked.

“No,” Dad said.

“Ah, yes,” Turk said. “Leach, Swindol and Twist. Complications with the town. Wouldn’t want those.”

“Turk, do you really think it would be a good idea to go ahead with this?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, that’s a point of view,” Dad said. “Personally, I don’t give a damn whether New Sodom has an arts center or not. My only concern is that you two not get hurt in some damn fool jenti war. If those overeducated idiots want to fight about who did what to whom back in the Middle Ages, let ’em. But they’d better leave us alone.”

“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said.

“Neither can I,” Mom said. “Anyway, Jack, what kind of safety can we have if our neighbors are killing each other?”

Turk didn’t say anything.

“In any case, there’s nothing I can do that will make this situation better,” Dad said.

And he got up and went to work.

Turk went to school. I could tell she was furious with Dad.

That was a strange day. The house was absolutely quiet. We were waiting for something, and we didn’t know what.

Turk came home, and brought me some assignments.

“Weird stuff at Vlad,” she said. “I don’t know what. Feels bad.”

“Did you see Gregor or Ileana?” I asked.

“She was around, he wasn’t,” Turk said. “And your buddy Justin was following her around like a lost puppy. You know, jenti are jerks. All of ’em.”

And she went upstairs.

It wasn’t half an hour later that the doorbell rang. Just because I felt like I could do it, I walked all the way from the couch to the door, and opened it.

Gregor nodded to me.

“Have I your permission to enter?” he said in high jenti. “Rest beneath the shadow of my wings,” I said, and let him in.

He gave a half smirk at my words and said, “May I see your cousin?”

Now, here was a challenge. Going upstairs. What an adventure.

I hobbled up the first few steps.

“May I help you?” Gregor said.

“I got it,” I said. “Thanks.”

Turk’s ladder was down.

“Turk, you have company,” I said. “Gregor.”

“What do you want?” came Turk’s voice.

And Gregor went up.

Up went the ladder.

I went back downstairs.

It was strange to think of Gregor in my house. We never saw each other except at Vlad and the mill.

From the living room, Mom and I listened to the sounds of their voices.

“It sounds like they’re fighting,” Mom said.

“That’s what they do,” I said.

After a few minutes, Turk called down, “Cuz, get up here.”

“Excuse me,” I said to Mom, slowly pushing myself onto my feet. “I think I have to go defend Turk’s honor.”

As I went up the stairs again, Gregor whisked past me, bowed to Mom, and opened the door.

“Safety to all here,” he said. “Please to stay inside tonight. There will be fires.”

He slammed out the door.

Turk gave me a look of pure anger as I crept up the ladder.

“He marked me,” she said. “Without my permission. He just came up here and said, ‘I have been meaning to do this,’ reached out his damn claws, and put something on my cheek. Do I have a mark?”

“No,” I said. “It’s invisible to anybody but a jenti. Anyway, so what? Ileana marked me without my permission. It saved me from being beaten to a bloody pulp by Gregor.”

“Yeah, I know all about that,” Turk said. “But here’s the difference, Cuz, nice and simple so you can understand it: That kind of thing might have worked last winter, but now it doesn’t. So why would he do it?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” I said.

“I did. I said, ‘What the hell was that about?’ He said I’d marked him already. Some damn fool thing like that. Then I told him to get out, and he left.”

She started pacing back and forth.

“He was just trying to claim me, that’s all. Claim me like I’m his property. I’m nobody’s thing, damn it.

“He said we’d open the center on Halloween just to show my stuff,” Turk went on. “Said he’d go to jail if he had to. I told him I don’t need anybody to go to jail for me. Especially him. I do not need anybody.”

“Lucky you,” I said. “Listen, next time you have to vent, you come to me. I’m not quite up for all this climbing yet.”

And I got up and went back to my couch.

That was a quiet night. Inside the house, I mean. Turk didn’t come down to dinner, and none of the three of us had much to say.

Outside, though, we heard sirens rushing up and down the streets, and through the windows we saw dull red glares come into the sky, flare up, and die. The smell of smoke came in through the closed doors.

Once, not far off, we heard wolves howling.

“They should impose a curfew,” Dad said once.

“Who’s going to enforce it?” I said.

If the Mercians and Burgundians were going to fight it out for control of New Sodom, it would take more than the gadje of New Sodom PD to stop them.

But they weren’t fighting. Not yet. Not quite. Each side was testing the other, checking out its defenses. Splitting up the town. That’s what the fires were about—ash wood for Burgundian fires, oak for Mercian. Fires set on street corners or in the middle of intersections. Then, in the darkness, someone watched to see who came to put them out, and whether new fires were started on top of the ashes of the old.

I couldn’t see how the Burgundians could lose. There were about ten of them for every Mercian, and the Burgundians were the jenti who could fly, or turn into wolves. Some could do both. The Mercians turned into selkies. In a stand-up fight, things could only go one way. But was that how the jenti fought their wars?

I went to bed and lay there listening to the sounds of New Sodom slipping into the kind of violence it hadn’t seen for centuries.

Over what?

Somebody must know, but there were no answers to be found in that darkness. There was only smoke, and more smoke, making everything darker.