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It’s Always Sunny in Key West

Laurell K. Hamilton


I stood on Duval Street watching the bachelorette party stumble out of Irish Kevin’s Bar with its green chandelier made of Jameson whiskey bottles. It was their third bar tonight. All four of them were in their early twenties, barely out of college, the same age I’d been when I died. I’d actually managed to graduate before peace, love, drugs, and booze took over my life. Honestly, fear of being drafted had helped me stay just sober enough to get my degree in finance of all things.

I’d always been good at math. It was the only reason I majored in something with numbers so I could do as little real work as possible. My dad had been so proud of my grades, my mom just happy I wasn’t over in Vietnam getting killed or having to do horrible things in the name of my country. She’d been a little worried when I hopped in a van with several of my fellow flower-power-loving graduates for an epic road trip to celebrate our passage from student to adult. We could finally drink and smoke dope and do all the things we’d had to moderate in order to keep our grades up. None of us had really been that serious about college, but none of us wanted to go to war either. Almost none of the six of us had ever gone to an antiwar protest, or done anything real to help peace along, but the clothes, the drugs, the alcohol, the free love . . . we’d all dug that pretty hard. We thought we were such hot shit, sophisticated college grads, frat boys like the thousands I’d seen here on Duval Street over the years. All full of themselves, all thinking they knew where their life was going, or not caring where it was going and just wanting to have fun. That had been me once until I’d been killed by a Spanish conquistador who was trying to set himself up as a master of his own territory with Key West as his homebase.

I still looked like that same college grad, except my tan had paled and my hair was the brightest yellow it had ever been. That’s what happens when blonde hair doesn’t see sunlight for decades. I was wearing an oversized tank top that showed off the upper body that would be in twenty-something shape forever. Loose-fitting shorts and flip-flops completed the look. It was spring break, and the sidewalks were so crowded it looked like there were herds of men just like me. I did make sure my shorts fit close at the waist unlike a lot of the herd. If I flashed my underwear I wanted it to be on purpose, hopefully to one of the bachelorettes I was following.

The tallest girl in the bachelorette party had long brown hair, jean short-shorts cut so they were ragged at the ends, a wide belt, and a tank top tight enough I knew she wasn’t wearing a bra, but it was the wedge sandals that really sold me on her being my blood for the night. The first time I’d had sex was with Jenny O’Brian wearing those high-heeled wedge sandals and a white sundress that she’d just pulled over her head. She’d kept the sandals on, and I’ve dug them ever since. Always nice when ’60s fashion comes back around.

The four girls were trying to walk in a line with their arms interlocked, but sidewalks aren’t made for that many people; they barely fit two in these crowds. Tall Girl stumbled on the curb in the wedge sandals and almost dragged the rest to the ground, but the other three managed to keep themselves standing. Tall Girl ended up on the street in her short-shorts laughing. The rest of them laughed with her as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

I debated on making my move and helping her to her feet, but if I showed up again later at the next bar they could think I was being creepy and I needed her consent for me to take blood. I liked that vampires were legal in America instead of being killed on sight. But legal meant a human being had to give me permission to drink their blood, and if I used mind tricks it was considered the same as using a date rape drug. I’d never thought of it that way until the law changed. I’d never thought of anything I’d ever done voluntarily with a woman as sexual assault, it just hurt less when I bit someone if they were under the influence, so to speak. I saw it as a kindness. But nowadays, I was really careful to get full consent for blood and sex, not just because of the law, but for my sense of who I thought I was. I’d been one of those guys who thought “not all men,” because I didn’t do shit like that, only to have the bar raise so high over the last forty years so that I had memories of some dates and some casual sex in the past that I didn’t feel so good about now. I had promised myself that I would never do anything that left doubt again. Explaining that when I’d been alive in my twenties it hadn’t been considered rape, was just not a sentence I wanted to use to justify myself. That was me as a living human male. I didn’t count the years that I’d been under Don Diego’s control. I was happy that I didn’t remember everything I’d done back then as a new vampire; what I remembered was bad enough.

If you’ve read the history of what the Spanish did to the Aztecs then you’ll know that with Don Diego as master of Key West, he had all his vampires do some really messed up stuff. If you haven’t read the real history of what happened to the Aztecs, then prepare yourself beforehand, because no slasher flick is worse than that particular historical truth. I’ve read up on it since Don Diego died for good, but he liked telling stories about the bad old days and the things he saw, the things he did personally. I listened to him tell real-life horror stories for thirty years before a bigger, badder vampire killed him. That had been another conquistador. The Spanish got to Florida before any of the other Europeans so most of the ancient vampires here are Spanish and most of them are conquistadors. Though there’s one that was a priest in life, and there’s Dona Luisa. She rules most of the coast below St. Augustine, until you get to Miami.

She also runs a chunk of central Florida, minus Disney World. Disney is neutral territory; no vampire owns it and if you are crossing territories to get to Disney it’s like a free pass. It’s pretty much the only thing you can say to save your undead life without fighting a duel to prove your point.

I waited for the three women to help Tall Girl to her feet, while visions of past sins and ancient Spanish vampires danced in my head. The women were all laughing and getting in each other’s way, but finally they swayed their way down Duval toward the next bar or restaurant, though I was betting on bar.

I followed at a distance, debating whether I needed to cross the street so they wouldn’t see me behind them. They were probably too drunk to notice, but again, I wanted to avoid the whole creeper situation. If Tall Girl said no, she said no, but then I’d have to find a new feed for the night, and I really wanted her. I was a predator. I couldn’t deny that, and I needed human blood to survive. One of my friends from college, Caroline, had been a pacifist, the closest to a true believer in the hippy movement that we had in our van that summer. She’d tried taking animal blood from local pets, and the damn chickens that are everywhere. She felt morally superior and encouraged the rest of us to follow her example until she started to rot like some kind of zombie. Caroline went back to sucking human blood the next night. Her one hand never did heal back completely. It was a visual lesson for all of us that it was human blood, or it was nothing.

The bachelorette party had some trouble getting through the door at Fogarty’s, because a group of drunk college guys were trying to come out at the same time. I wasn’t sure why the women had passed up the Flying Monkey, which was the outside bar section, but they had. All four of them were laughing and tangled up in each other’s group. I decided that I needed to close the distance between me and Tall Girl before she got too friendly with the drunk guys. I went up to the door like I just wanted inside Fogarty’s and couldn’t get past the eight of them. I really couldn’t get past them, which helped the lie.

The women looked embarrassed and tried to work their way through the door to get out of my way. The men tried to persuade them to come with them, that the bar was boring, and they could have more fun together. I was debating how to stop that from happening when one of the drunk guys wrapped an arm around Tall Girl’s waist and started kissing her neck. She didn’t protest for a second and I thought I’d missed my chance, but then she started pushing at him and telling him to stop. Her words were slurred, but the “no” was clear.

He drew back, looking blearily into her face from inches below her chin. He tried to kiss her on the mouth, but it was sloppy drunk kissing, so it looked more like he was licking her chin. If he touched her mouth it had to be accidental.

“Get off of her!” The bachelorettes’ shriek sounded serious, not playful. The Bride with her little tiny hat and veil on top of her head started slapping Drunk Guy in the back. He didn’t react, but one of his friends tried to grab another bridesmaid.

The other two drunk guys were apparently not as drunk, because they were saying, “Let her go, man. She said no. Dude, you’re going to get us in trouble.”

Tall Girl pushed at Drunk Guy, but she didn’t know how to fight, or she was too drunk. The cops were going to get called if things didn’t calm down.

I should have walked away; this scene had attracted too much attention. People would remember it. Vampires may be legal now, but I remembered when cops would throw you in a cell with a window and just leave you there for the sun to kill you. It still happened sometimes, though the cops in those cases would lie and say they just hadn’t thought about the window. No police officer has ever been charged for one of those little mistakes.

Then Drunk Guy slid his hand under Tall Girl’s tank top. She screamed, and I was suddenly grabbing the back of his T-shirt. I twisted it tight and pulled at the same time. It choked him so that he stumbled back, gagging.

I used the collar choke to manipulate him to face away from Tall Girl and her friends; that he was facing away from his friends was incidental to me. Drunk Guy gagged harder.

“He can’t breathe,” his friends yelled.

“I hope he chokes!” the Bride spat.

The sound of Drunk Guy’s gagging changed, so I let go of his collar and he fell to his knees, vomiting. I was glad I’d let go, him choking on his own vomit would still count as manslaughter. There wouldn’t be a trial for a vampire that killed a human, they’d just send an executioner and I’d be dead once and for all.

Why had I gotten involved?

Tall Girl was saying, “Thank you, thank you,” and threw her arms around me. Unlike Drunk Guy I was tall enough to look down into her face while she cried.

“May I put my arms around you?” I asked.

She cried harder, then nodded and said, “Yes, please.” Once I wrapped her up in a hug, she buried her face in my neck and started to sob. She held onto me like I was the last solid thing in the world. It was probably the liquor making her cling to me, but it had been a long time since a woman had held me like I was her hero and someone to be trusted. In this moment, I was her hero, and I really had done a good thing. I hadn’t choked Drunk Guy off of her because I wanted to suck her blood, or get inside her shorts, but because she needed help. She needed a hero and for the first time in forever I wanted to be that for someone.

The Bride was saying, “We should call the cops.” Her other bridesmaids agreed.

I was honestly surprised that the cops weren’t here yet, then I realized it was a Saturday during spring break, and the cops were stretched thin. I was hoping to get away before the cops came, because I was the only vampire involved and vamps still got blamed for things we didn’t do.

Drunk Guy was just moaning on all fours, head down and slowly swaying. Two of his friends had grabbed his arms to keep him from falling forward into his own vomit. He probably wouldn’t remember anything tomorrow. If he woke up in jail he’d just be confused. It didn’t excuse what he’d done, but I sympathized from my own days when drinking too much was one of my hobbies. How many times had I woken up from complete blackouts? Had I ever done something as crass as what Drunk Guy just did, or worse? I held Tall Girl while she cried and was so glad I’d been the hero of this story and not the drunk creep.

She was saying something into my neck where she’d wet me down with tears and other things. I finally smoothed her hair back and gently moved her so we could understand her.

“No,” she said. “No cops. I just want to go home.”

The Bride tried to persuade her to put his ass in jail, but Tall Girl was adamant she just wanted to go home, and she meant back home. When her friends finally convinced her the best she could do was their hotel, that’s what they did. The Bride threatened Drunk Guy and friends, telling them they were lucky that none of them wanted to press charges. The most sober of the friends said he knew, and he was sorry, so sorry.

Then Tall Girl’s knees buckled as she passed out. I moved fast, hoping it wasn’t too obviously inhumanly fast, and caught her. Luckily, I was strong enough and tall enough to carry her all the way back to the hotel. It was one of the private houses that had been turned into a bed and breakfast, which meant someone in the group had more money than I’d thought . . . or their parents did.

Tall Girl woke up just as I was carrying her into her room. The Bride had unlocked it and was turning down the bedding for me to put Tall Girl to bed. She blinked big, brown eyes at me as I laid her down.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Sunny.”

“I’m Harmony.” I put her in the bed and let the Bride, whose name was Becca, tuck her in. They gave me an invitation to the bachelorette party weekend with contact info on it. I promised I’d check on them tomorrow after dark, hoped the hangover would be better by then. They laughed, I left.

I found a very willing, beautiful gay man back on Duval Street. He was also psychic enough to know I wasn’t human, but that’s okay. I like witches. They see through the shit to the real stuff. He wanted me to use my gaze on him and make it the most wonderful experience ever. I did what he asked. He tasted sweet from drinking too many sugary rum drinks. We called it the Key West Sweet Blood Cocktail. Vampires from out of state would visit just to see if the hype was real.

It was, it so was.

I tucked my beautiful blood donor into his bed at the Island House. I’d tucked a lot of men into beds since it opened in 1999, but I’d never gotten to stay over, because without blackout curtains and a very trusted human to watch over me during the day I couldn’t risk it. I did have a regular that always let me know when he was in town. I’d been his Key West friend with benefits for nine years. He’d brought his boyfriend last time, wanted to introduce him to the vampire high with someone that he trusted. It had been a good weekend, and I’d had two blood donors so I could trade off nights with them and not have to hunt for strangers.

If we were willing to be as public as some vampires in other cities, we might have had regulars in Key West, but we all stayed with the tourists because they’d take their vampire stories home with them. In some ways it had been easier before the laws made us legal, at least then we could have captured anyone we wanted with our gaze. No need to seduce them, they’d just instantly wanted us, or at least been willing feeds.

I was later getting home to our rented house than I’d planned, but there was still plenty of time before dawn. I was late, not suicidal. Sebastian was already there, dressed for bed in tank top and shorts, his do-rag smooth over his tightly curled hair. We’d been roommates in college back when some of the people in our dorm hadn’t liked the idea of a black student. He had joked that I was the whitest white man he’d ever met. I’d told him he should see my grandfather; he was a redhead with green eyes, and Sebastian had laughed, and we’d been friends. Such good friends that we went on a cross-country trip after college and died together in Key West.

“Did you bag one of those bachelorettes you were trailing?” he asked.

“No.” Then I told him about my night while I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed.

“Sunny, man, you told them your real name.”

“I know I should have used the name on my driver’s license.”

“We paid enough for the IDs, so yeah.”

“If anyone asks, I’ll say it’s a nickname.”

“I guess with all that sunshine-colored hair they’ll believe you. But remember, to everyone else you are Kyle Sullivan.”

“And you’re Samuel Becker.”

I hit the button for the storm shutters on the bedroom window. They blocked sunlight better than any blackout curtains.

“No man, wait. Look out at that moonlight on the water,” Sebastian said. The fact that we had a water view was one reason we were willing to double up in the bedrooms. We could only see it from part of the house, and we had to stand up and gaze at it between other houses that were closer to the actual beach than we were, but he was right, the view was worth it. Though . . . 

“I wish we could see the ocean with all those shades of blue like when we first came.”

“Turquoise,” he said.

“Baby blue,” I said.

A woman’s voice called out, “Navy.” It was Caroline with her long red curls and gray-green eyes. She even had a few golden freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks and the palest skin of any of us. She’d been my girlfriend in college, before we realized we were better friends and she fell for Jonas. He’d gotten his throat ripped out trying to defend Caroline from Don Diego. It had been a clear message that we could still die permanently, and that we all belonged to Don Diego in every sense of the word.

“Sky blue,” Marti, short for Martina, said as she leaned in the doorway. She was almost as dark skinned as Sebastian, but hers was native. She was one of the last of her people that the Spanish—or later the English—hadn’t slaughtered outright. Her latest papers had her listed as Hispanic and she’d been fluent in Spanish for centuries, so it wasn’t a lie. She’d learned Spanish when she was alive; the rest of us had learned after we died, because Don Diego insisted. She’d taught us her native language, too, because there was no one else to share it with, and because it helped her remember her language and keep it alive. Now that vampires were legal she was talking to some professors at Florida colleges about putting together a class or even doing a book so the language would have more people speaking it. If a bomb went off tonight and killed the four of us that would be it her for her people’s language and culture. She called us her tribe, though that was a colonizer term, but once it had been a term of endearment, so we kept it. We were her tribe and together we were each other’s people.

“Emerald green,” Caroline said, her hand curling around the doorjamb. Her fingers looked almost normal now. We’d found a plastic surgeon after Don Diego was dead. He hadn’t let her fix her hand, because he said it would make sure she never forgot what she was again.

“Teal,” I said.

“Cerulean,” Marti said.

“Clear like glass when you dived in it with the sunlight shining down on the coral and fish like we were Dorothy and got dropped into Oz,” Sebastian said.

If we’d had to breathe we would have sighed together, but it was just us, and we didn’t have to pretend anymore. The girls went to get ready for a good day’s rest, and I pressed the electric buttons to close all the storm shutters. It had been expensive to convert from the old-fashioned shutters that you wrestled into place, but totally worth it. The landlord had taken the expense of the shutters off our rent because it would make the house so much easier to rent to the next people. We didn’t make enough from our various jobs to buy a house in Key West, rent was hard enough. We had gold, Don Diego’s gold, but if we suddenly started living like we had money then the more powerful vampires up north could come and take it from us, along with our lives.

However, I had finally found something to do with my finance degree and was slowly setting us up with some offshore accounts as I converted the gold. That much antique gold could not hit the market all at once. It would attract too much human attention, some of it criminal, some of it academic. The scientists wouldn’t kill us, but they researched better than most criminals, so in a way they were more dangerous. We could just kill the criminals and feed their bodies to the crocs and alligators, and other wildlife. We’d lived here a long time; if we wanted to hide a body we could.

We watched the storm shutters slide shut, double-checked them, then listened to Caroline go through and triple-check them. She’d been doing it since we moved into the house out of the windowless warehouse room. If it made her feel safer, who were we to argue? It wasn’t like we had human servants to watch over us while we slept, and we all agreed we didn’t want to bring anyone over as a vampire so we couldn’t even have someone with a few bites on them to run daytime errands. It was just the four of us now and that had to be enough.

The last thing I thought about just before the sun rose was how Harmony had felt in my arms, then the light came, and we all died again.

Then sunset and we woke. It was like a switch inside us: sunrise off, sunset on. There was no moment in between, no soft edge between sleep and waking like there was when we were human, just on and off. I always woke gasping as if I’d been trying to breathe all day and couldn’t. Sebastian woke quiet, just opening his eyes and awake. Though I couldn’t see them in their room I knew that Marti woke calm but angry, like she resented being awake or resented being dead. I asked her once and she said it was both. Caroline woke thrashing and crying out like a nightmare was finally letting her go. She always wakes with her mind as blank as the rest of us, turned off and dark for the day, but she’s the only vampire I’ve met that wakes like a nightmare is chasing her. None of us know why. When we asked Don Diego, he’d beat us for asking foolish questions. Over the years we figured out that meant he didn’t know the answer.

I called the number on the bachelorette invitation first thing. Sebastian gave me shit about it, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see Harmony again. I wasn’t sure why, but she felt like home in a way that no one ever had. Love at first sight is for fools. Lust sure, but not love. That’s what I told myself as I called the number. My stomach twisted in fluttery knots, butterflies like I was the age I looked instead of old enough to know better.

“Who’s this?” The woman’s voice was frantic.

“It’s Sunny from last night; is this Becca?”

“Yes, is Harmony with you?”

“No, this is the only number I have for any of you. What’s wrong?”

“Oh God, I was so hoping she was with you.”

“What is wrong?”

Becca told me that the four of them had gone out to a local outdoor café just an hour before dark, so they’d have something on their stomachs before the new guests arrived for the second night of the bachelorette weekend. “Then we saw those boys again from last night.”

“The ones that got all handsy?” I asked.

“Yeah, Harmony said she didn’t even remember what happened, but when she saw that one guy again she freaked out. She ran to hide in the bathroom. I should have gone with her, but the four of them tried to apologize again. The one that groped her even yelled after her that he didn’t mean it, and he was sorry. Mandy and I blocked him from going after her. Rita threw her drink and mine on them. Told them to cool down and get the hell away from us before we called the cops. They left; the groper had to be dragged off by his friends. He was still screaming that if he could just make her understand . . . ”

“Good for all of you, but what happened to Harmony?”

“We waited until the creepy guys were out of sight, she didn’t need to see them again, but when we checked the bathrooms she wasn’t there. The bathrooms were down this alley, so we checked all the way to the end, but nothing.”

“Did she go back to your rooms?” I asked and knew as soon as I did that it was a stupid question. If Harmony had just gone back to the rooms in the afternoon, Becca wouldn’t still be frantic hours later after dark.

“Of course, Rita and I ran back to them. We even left Mandy at the table in case Harmony came back so she wouldn’t think we ditched her.”

“She wasn’t there,” I said, the butterflies in my stomach starting to die. I had a bad feeling.

Sebastian caught on because he came to stand by me. He didn’t ask what was wrong while I was on the phone. He just waited for me to get off and tell him.

“No, we’ve got a couple of the new friends that flew in tonight waiting at the room just in case, and I know it hasn’t been that long, but I have a really bad feeling that we need to find Harmony now.”

I couldn’t disagree, but out loud I said, “Did you call the police?”

“They told me it’s spring break in Key West and she’ll turn up, that they don’t have the manpower to follow up on our friend who’s all grown up and been gone less than two hours. She doesn’t qualify as a missing person yet, and on spring break people usually show back up on their own.”

The police weren’t wrong. Spring break was a madhouse here. There were a lot of late teens and twenty-somethings making a whole lot of bad decisions, drinking way too much, and sometimes adding drugs to the mix. If you added the spring breakers to our local population, it could almost double on the busiest nights and Duval Street was the busiest part of town once night fell. It was a vampire’s paradise for finding victims, but we weren’t the only predators out there.

“Did you explain to the cops what these guys did? Especially to Harmony?”

“The cop asked why we didn’t report it last night. I think he didn’t believe us. He thought we were making it up, so they’d look for Harmony.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You were there, you know we’re not lying.”

“I do, but if they think I’m just another college kid here for spring break they won’t listen to me either,” I said.

“We have to do something.”

“Yeah, we do,” I said.

“Do you know what to do? Because my plan stopped when the cops wouldn’t help us.”

“I’ll do my best to think of something.”

“If you can’t think of something, just come down to Duval Street and help us look for the bastards that took her.”

“How many other women you have with you now?” I asked.

“Ten and we are all ready to jump their asses and force the police to pay attention. If we make enough of a scene, the cops will take us all in, then they can question them about Harmony.”

I wasn’t sure about her logic, but if she was willing to be arrested then I wasn’t going to argue with her. “Okay, but only do it on Duval in plain sight, no alleys, no dark secondary roads, don’t follow them into the men’s room. Don’t leave the bright lights and crowds on Duval.”

“There are ten of us now, and we’re not drunk tonight.”

“I know, but if they really took Harmony then they’ve proved they’re dangerous, right?”

“We have to get her back.”

“She wouldn’t go with them willingly, would she?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Becca said; she sounded indignant.

“Then that means at least one of them has a weapon, maybe even a gun.”

“Shit, I hadn’t thought about that.”

“That’s what I’m here for, to help you think of things you missed. Now, please promise me that you will all stay on Duval with the crowds.”

She promised, then we hung up.

Sebastian said, “So the girl you met last night is missing?”

“Yeah, and I think the drunk guys who accosted them last night may have taken her.”

“I’ll make fun of you later for saying ‘accosted.’ Say you’re right, let the police find her and them.”

I told him what the cops had said.

“They’re probably right,” Sebastian said.

“I know, but my gut says Harmony is in trouble, serious trouble.”

He paused. Then: “I won’t argue with your gut, you know that.”

“Yeah.” Unspoken between us was that my gut had warned me away from Don Diego’s honey trap. Two pretty coeds that he’d put out on Duval Street for some takeout. Sebastian and I had been the takeout. Once he had us under his spell, he sent us to bring back our four friends and we obeyed him. It would take years before we could even try to fight against his mind control, let alone win against it. So, the rule was, we didn’t argue with my gut feelings ever again.

“So, what does your gut say to do next?” he asked.

“What’s Sunny’s famous gut telling him now?” Caroline asked from the door.

“That a girl I met last night may have been taken by the bastards I pulled off of her last night.”

“Your white knight complex is showing again,” Caroline said. “It always gets you or us in trouble.”

“I wanted her to be my feed last night, but then I rescued her and I . . . ”

“You’d saved her, so you saw taking her blood as victimizing her,” Marti said.

“Yeah,” I said looking down at the varnished pine floor.

“But if you’d rolled her with your gaze and bitten her just once you could call her to you from anywhere in Key West. If she couldn’t come to you because the villains have her then you could track her using the connection you’d created last night,” she said.

I looked up at her. “But because I played the hero and liked her too much to feed on her I can’t track her or call her to me. The irony isn’t lost on me, Marti.”

“Too bad we don’t really have an ancient master vampire using you as a stalking horse. He could totally ride to the rescue right now,” Sebastian said.

“How did we decide that Sunny was our pretend master of the city and not Marti who is centuries older?” Caroline asked.

“I refused to make myself a target for every would-be challenger that came through our city,” Marti said.

“And Sunny is a better actor than I am,” Sebastian said.

“And I’m not good enough at bluffing,” Caroline said.

“But yeah, this is the downside of us not really having a master of the city who is connected to the land here,” I said.

“And an animal to call that could search the island for your girl,” Caroline said.

“Not sure that Don Diego’s sharks would have been that helpful,” Sebastian said.

“If he was still our master he wouldn’t help Sunny find the girl,” Marti said.

“No, Don Diego would think it was hilarious that Sunny cared about her. He’d enjoy knowing he could help and not helping,” Sebastian said.

“Which is why we were glad the other bastard killed him in that duel,” Sebastian said.

“Then the bastard turned around and raped Ingrid right in front of us,” Caroline said, her voice distant like she was reliving the memory. I was really trying hard not to see it again in my head. I’d lived through it once, that was enough. Damn it.

“Sunny’s our pretend stalking horse for a nonexistent master of the city because it was Sunny that grabbed the sword and stabbed the fucking bastard through the back,” Sebastian said.

“Through the heart,” Caroline said.

“And I took the bastard’s sword out of its sheath while he was still squirming on the end of Sunny’s blade and I chopped off his fucking head,” Marti said.

“We killed him, but it didn’t save Ingrid from committing suicide a week later,” I said.

Marti gripped my shoulder. “We save what and who we can. You saved all of us that night.”

“Except Ingrid,” I said.

“If you hadn’t done what you did it would have been Marti and me next.”

“She’s right,” Marti said, hugging me around the shoulders while I sat slumped on the bed.

“But we still have to hide the fact that we don’t have a real master of the city from other vampires,” I said. “If they knew that we killed our last one and didn’t have anyone else strong enough to take his place they’d either take us over or wipe us out for breaking the rules of succession.”

“The humans think Key West doesn’t have a master of the city,” Marti said, “and the vampires think we have one that uses you as his stalking horse so that if anyone wants to challenge the real master they can’t, because all you can do is carry the challenge back to our master.”

“The plan has kept us safe for ten years,” Sebastian said.

“Because we killed him outside of a duel, none of us got the power that went with the kill,” I said.

“None of us wanted it,” Marti said, hugging me again and stepping back.

“I never wanted to be the master of the city before, but I’d really like to have the power that went with the title tonight.”

They all looked at me. It made me look back at them. “What?”

“Didn’t you feel that?” Caroline asked.

“Feel what?” I asked.

“That answers that question,” Sebastian said.

“Step outside, touch the land,” Marti said.

“Why?” I asked, they all had this look on their faces that I didn’t understand.

“Do you trust me, Sunny?” she asked.

“With my life and with my death,” I said. It had been our vow to each other, ever since Don Diego died.

“Then come outside with me.” She walked out of the room, and I followed her. Sebastian and Caroline trailed behind. The front and side yard were one reason we liked this house. There was actually room for a small garden for flowers and vegetables if we were careful. There was a narrow backyard with a sidewalk down the middle leading to a small shed that was actually big enough for storage or a workroom, or studio if any of us could remember that we had hobbies. We’d waited five years after Don Diego’s death before we left his windowless industrial lair. If a new master vampire had come, we wouldn’t have fought them, because we couldn’t have, and they would probably have preferred the more secure location. But even if we couldn’t have sunlight or an ocean of blue, we wanted more air and space. We wanted to decorate and have Dade pine floors and something that didn’t remind us of the trauma we’d survived. We’d done a condo first, but the girls wanted a yard and we all wanted at least a glimpse of the ocean.

“Do you feel it now?” Marti asked.

I blinked and had to think for a second what she meant. I shook my head.

“Touch the ground,” she said.

I bent down to touch the grass, and there was something, a hum, or a beat like distant electronics or maybe music, but the ground didn’t carry sound like that. I knelt down, resting my knees against the grass and the pulse was stronger . . . as if my body was a tuning fork resonating with the power in the ground.

Caroline came to stand next to me barefoot. “It’s like a heartbeat in the ground.”

I nodded, “I want to lay down on the ground as close as I can get to it.”

“Then do it,” Marti said.

Sebastian came to stand beside me. “You need some help, Sunny?” He touched my arm as if to try and help me stand, but he let go of me and stood up moving a little distance away.

“Wow, whatever that is, it’s something,” he said.

“Embrace the call,” Marti said.

“You know what’s happening to Sunny, don’t you?” Sebastian said.

“He said he wanted to find the missing girl; this will help him do that,” Marti said.

That was good enough for me. I wanted to find Harmony, but more than that, I wanted to stop hiding. We all still hunted as if vampires were illegal, not because we were afraid of the human police, but because we didn’t want to attract the attention of other vampires. To the vampire community that contacted us from a distance we said our master was so ancient that they would not meet with anyone unless we were attacked. That I was their stalking horse if either the vampires or the humans reached out to us. We had made no new vampires because our master didn’t want the attention from the humans, but in reality, I didn’t trust us to control a new vampire without a master vampire to help us.

I lay down on the soft, springy grass so different from the kind I grew up with. Where my skin touched, the energy tingled like a low-level electric current and then flowed over the rest of my body until I felt my whole body humming with energy and—I felt the quiet of our street, the sense of home, and maybe that was just us, or maybe it was all the people in the small houses, their first houses; there’s something about that moment that gives you a sense of peace and . . . home. We were home. The big houses, the mansions, the money, but some of them were home, too. Some of them were full of families and joy and dogs and kids, or cats, a parrot. It was like I was a wind sweeping through everyone’s house. The historic homes, quiet at night, no visitors, empty except for the ghosts, but they weren’t ours, and I left them alone or tried to, but they noticed the wind, and some of them noticed me. Away to the stores still open, trying to get those last few customers, anxious about meeting this month’s bills, do we have to close, I hate my job, I love my job, it’s my first job, I’ve been here for twenty years I thought I’d be a musician by now. The shops took me to Duval Street because there are shops there; people just forget that Duval is more than just bars and tourists getting drunk. There was a lot of that, and the drunks felt me sweep past. I felt them shiver, huddling and sad because they were drinking to forget, drinking to fit in, drinking to stand out, drinking so they could tell that girl I like her, or believe my boyfriend loves me, or get up the courage to stay here in Key West and never go home. I thought: A decision you should make sober, and just like that they decided they would wait and decide tomorrow. The bands playing live, their hands caressing and pounding their instruments, the singers making love to the microphone, or choking it as they screamed into it. The crowd alive and clapping, or swaying drunk so that any music was great, and then the few that got it and seemed to connect to the music, the band, the bar, the moment in time. The restaurants where people went to enjoy food and drink second, or not at all. I got a taste of different food from dozens, hundreds of people all over the city. I hadn’t tasted food in so long and I wanted to, God, I’d missed it, to be able to taste something besides the sweet metallic of blood. It made me linger or try to but the power pulled me onward until I was couples looking out at the water and the moonlight. I was boats bobbing and tugging at the ropes keeping them at the dock. Boats want to sail, want to go, want to move, that’s what boats are made for, and I was made for that, too. I was out at sea, dark and beautiful under the moon and stars. Out and out and out until I could draw an invisible line in the water and knew this was mine, this far out was still mine. Key West was mine.

It felt like I fell back into my body, like jerking awake in a dream where you’re falling. Vampires don’t dream, but our bodies remember what it feels like. I lay gasping on the ground, fingers digging into the grass like I was trying to hold on and not fall away and keep drifting out to sea.

I heard voices, “What is the bird doing?”

“Hush, let it happen,” Marti said.

“Let what happen?” Sebastian asked.

There was a seagull looking down at me, way too close like my nose was a french fry. It made me jerk my head up. The gull gave a hop away, flapping its wings for balance. It was a lot bigger with its wings outstretched. I levered myself up with my arms, but froze in mid-motion, staring into the gull’s eye. It could only look at me with one eye at a time. That one yellow eye seemed to grow bigger, wider, like a deep yellow pool with that one black dot in the middle like an island. It was like the seagull held Key West in the center of its eye. Then I was sitting up and the gull just stood there.

“Hi, buddy,” I said.

It just looked at me, then it squawked loud and ringing, and then there were gulls in the air all around me as if they’d been waiting to join us. Their wing tips brushed me, their bodies thudded into me. It didn’t hurt, it was just startling and wonderful like being wrapped in your favorite sweatshirt, safe and warm and one hit me in the head, and they all started cawing at once. The sound was deafening, but it felt like bells ringing, meditation music as if every part of me resonated with it. The last card reader that had grabbed my hand to try and get me in her shop had told me my chakras needed aligning; if they did, they were aligned now. Everything felt perfectly in place; I felt better than I ever remembered feeling. It was invigorating.

I stood up and the gulls parted like a lumpy winged curtain standing on the ground all around me, balancing on the neighbor’s fence. I ran my hand through my hair to get it out of my eyes from all the wind and wings. I was laughing when I saw the looks on my friends’ faces, except for Marti.

“What the hell is happening?” Sebastian asked.

“We have a new master of the city, at long last,” Marti said.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“The seagulls mean something else,” Caroline said.

“They’re my animal to call,” I said, and my voice sounded breathless, as if I’d been running.

“And you’re master of the city?” Sebastian said, face full of suspicion.

“I think I am.” Then I realized that was a lie. “No. I am. I am the Master of Key West.”

“You sound kind of full of yourself,” Sebastian said. He was trying to be tough, but I knew he was nervous, I even knew why.

“Dude, it’s still me. I’m not going to turn into an asshole just because I’m the master of the city now.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You promise?”

I nodded. “I promise.” I looked at the women, and added, “I promise to all of you that I won’t turn into the kind of vampire we killed to be free.”

“If he had simply taken the power of the city from its old master it would not have been so dramatic,” Marti said. “That is what is making Sunny’s energy feel so different, but he is still the person we have lived with for forty years.”

“You saw Don Diego take the city from someone else?” Sebastian asked.

“I did and it was much less energetic than this,” she said.

“The two master vampires we’ve met were horrible,” Caroline said.

“I think maybe they were horrible before they became masters,” Sebastian said.

“I won’t turn into a monster, because I’ll have three of you here to tell me to cut that shit out,” I said.

Marti hugged me first, and the power flared everywhere she touched me. She drew back, rubbing her arms. I made myself let go and not try to see if the power would grow.

“Did it hurt?” I asked, worried.

She gave a little laugh. “No, it felt good; maybe we will all have to watch each other around this new power.”

“You’ve never been attracted to me,” I said, “so I’ll know you just want me for my power.”

She laughed.

Caroline said, “I was attracted to you once, so will it be worse if I touch you?”

“I don’t know. It hurts my heart that you’re afraid to touch me, but let’s give me a couple of nights to get used to this. We were together once, and I don’t know if it will make the attraction harder to resist for both of us.”

“Hey, I’m your roomie, not Caroline,” Sebastian said.

I grinned at him, wide enough I knew I flashed fangs, but he knew I had them, so it didn’t matter. The four of us knew everything about each other: good, bad, and traumatic. “Roomies for life, or unlife,” I said.

“Damn straight.” He held his hand out for a fist bump. We touched hands and a spark jumped between us. He jerked back.

“Did it hurt?” I asked and took a step forward like you would if someone burned themselves.

“No, like Marti said it feels good, just surprised me, that’s all.”

“What will your first act as master of the city be?” Marti asked.

“I wanted this power for two things, to keep us safer, and to find Harmony, but how does being a more powerful vampire help me do that?”

“A vampire with an animal to call,” she said.

I looked at the gulls all around me and realized that maybe this wasn’t something we wanted our neighbors to look and see tonight. I started to send them away, then I realized that seagulls fly night and day around cities. The lights let them see at night and cities are always making fresh garbage for them to eat.

I looked at the big white, black, and gray birds. How did I tell them that I wanted to find Harmony? I tried out loud. “I need you to help me find Harmony?”

They turned their heads this way and that, sort of like that puppy head tilt but more movement because of their eyes on either side of their heads. They settled on one eye apiece so they could study me. Again, I had that feeling of being a french fry they were considering eating, then I found an eye to look into. One yellow eye, and this time instead of the eye getting bigger and showing me the island, it stayed small and yellow with that dark dot of pupil like a black mirror.

I pictured Harmony’s face, her hair, the feel of her in my arms, the smell of her skin. It felt like I was asking Lassie to find Timmy, but I gave what I knew to the gulls, and it was like pieces of a puzzle in my mind. A visual from this bird, that bird, of them seeing her from above struggling with a man in an alley. I needed to know if it was Drunk Guy. The gulls didn’t use words, but they reminded me this wasn’t now. The sun was still out in the visual and it was dark now. I struggled to ask if any of the gulls knew where Harmony and the man were now. I needed to find Harmony.

The birds launched themselves skyward like a cloud made of wings. I could feel the push of their bodies, the strength of them slicing the air to climb skyward. For a second, I wasn’t sure if I was standing on the ground or pushing upward, finding space and wind to lift me higher. I wasn’t just one gull, but all of them; I couldn’t think like a person, because I was too busy being a gull.

Marti’s voice said, “What do you see?”

“What did we see?” I said it out loud, but it helped me to concentrate on what all those eyes were showing me from above. There was so much to see and smell. I had no idea that birds had such sensitive noses; they wanted to follow the scent of food, but I thought about Harmony again and they circled wider and wider. There!

“What are you pointing at, Sunny?” Caroline asked.

I hadn’t realized I’d pointed at all. I fought not to spill out of the gulls’ eyes and still talk in my human body. “A gull landed in the alley where they saw her struggling with a man. Harmony’s jacket and purse is there.”

“How do they know that it’s hers?” Sebastian asked.

“It smells like her.”

I blinked and freed myself enough to look at my friends. “The gulls will make sure he doesn’t come back and take her things, but if they’re there then she has to be close by, right?”

“It’s a place to start looking,” Marti said.

“I’ll call Becca and tell her where they are,” I said.

“And how are you going to explain knowing where her personal items are? You cannot tell them the gulls told you,” Marti said.

“The police will think you did it, Sunny,” Sebastian said.

I wanted to argue. Between the seagulls in my head and the energy of Key West, I felt like I could make anyone believe anything. That made me calm down and think for a second. I pictured Drunk Guy as best I could and told them not to let him remove the items and alert me if anyone picked them up, then I had to draw my mind back to my body. It was almost wrenching, like the gulls were part of me already.

“How do I find the purse and stuff without looking guilty?” I asked.

“You need her friends to find them and tell the police,” Marti said.

“They’ll have to pay attention then,” Caroline said.

“Call her friends back and say you’re coming to join the search,” Marti said.

“We can all go,” Caroline said.

“Do we want that much attention on all of us?” Sebastian asked.

“We have to help,” Caroline said.

I looked at Sebastian and then the others. “No, Sebastian is right. Just because I’m really a master of the city doesn’t mean I know how to fight another master in a duel. We can’t afford for every vampire in Key West to be listed in a police report even as witnesses. We can’t afford our profile to go that public until I figure out how to use all this new power. I want to find Harmony more than anything I’ve wanted in a long time, but I won’t endanger all of you to do it.”

“Don Diego and the other master dueled with swords,” Caroline said.

“Maybe I should start practicing,” I said.

“Traditionally the vampire that’s challenged gets to choose power or a weapon of choice,” Marti said.

“I’ll never challenge anyone to a duel, but I don’t have any weapon of choice, and this power is too new. I have no idea how to fight with it.”

Caroline shivered, though I knew she wasn’t cold in the warm night. “Then we need to stay hidden until you learn how to defend us.”

“We’re hoping to involve the police, so I’ll go; the rest of you stay away,” I said.

“Go, meet up with her friends and join the search for the girl. Lead them to the alley, but don’t be too obvious about it. We don’t want you in jail on suspicion,” Marti said.

Caroline shivered again. “Please be careful, Sunny.”

“You suck at being sneaky, so be really careful,” Sebastian said.

“I’ll be careful.” Then I called Becca to find out where they were, told them I was joining the search. It was close to where Harmony’s purse and jacket were waiting for us to find them. I started running.

I found Becca and two of her bridesmaids pacing up and down the sidewalk outside of Mangoes Restaurant. I’d never been able to eat solid food there, but I’d sat in plentiful outdoor seating under the big tree or the umbrellas on the other, less shady, side. The serving staff always seemed to know the menu and it was one of my favorite places to take my “dates.” All of them had loved the food. The Baja Fish Tacos were a favorite. I hoped that I got a chance to bring Harmony here.

Becca hugged me and I hugged her back because that’s what you do. She drew back, keeping my hand in hers. She held on like I was holding her at the edge of a cliff instead of . . . “This was supposed to be my bridal party dinner.”

“It’s great food, I hope we can bring Harmony back for dinner before you all leave,” I said.

Her bright blue eyes got shiny with unshed tears. “I was praying that Harmony would just walk up and join us. She helped plan all this.”

I squeezed her hand, and said, “Let’s go find Harmony.”

We found her purse and jacket because the seagulls were on top of the buildings keeping watch over it. Becca cried, and when she found Harmony’s phone in the purse she cried harder. The police believed the women now, because no twenty-something American woman would leave her purse and phone behind.

A uniformed officer took my statement down about what I’d seen last night and finding Harmony’s belongings in the alley. I gave my real name, Sunny Winston, because you don’t give fake ones to the cops if you can’t leave the city. Then the seagulls started screaming in my head. I saw her in a boat with Drunk Guy. How did I tell the cops that I knew where she was and who had taken her? How did I know that? Oh, the seagulls told me. Even if I revealed I was a vampire, they’d never believe in time.

I pretended I had a phone call and stepped away from Becca and the police to take it. I thought at the seagulls flying over the boat, wanting them to attack the man driving the boat. Dive-bomb him, they didn’t know what that meant, I had to picture what I wanted them to do or pick words they recognized. I guess if you live near humans for thousands of years you pick up some language skills.

Seagulls are big birds, or these gulls were. I should have known what kind of gull it was, but the gulls didn’t think of themselves that way. They dived toward him like yellow-beaked missiles. The first strike drew blood on the side of his face. I felt the beak strike flesh and smelled the blood. My stomach cramped, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten yet tonight. I pushed the hunger away. I’d gone longer without eating than this. The man swung at the next gull; it backpedaled with strokes of its wings and while all his attention was on that gull two more hit him in the head and back. He took his hands off the wheel to wave at the birds.

The waters around Key West are unforgiving, shallow and deep over and over so that unless you stay in the marked lanes you run the risk of hitting sea grass, sand bars, coral. The environmental damage is bad, but the first bad happens when your boat hits the shallows, hits the obstacle, and if you’re going too fast, it hits it hard.

The front of the boat went up as the bottom slid onto the sand bar and kept going, driven by momentum until it ground to a halt. Harmony fell to the floor, but Drunk Guy went flying over the front of the boat. I thought she’d been hurt at first, then she pushed herself to her knees. Relief washed through me until I felt my knees tremble. The gulls had found Drunk Guy in the water. I’d told them to mob him, strike him and they were still doing it. I asked some of the gulls to stay over the boat to watch Harmony. She crawled toward the front of the boat. There was a red emergency button on the radio that would put her straight through to the coast guard, but could she see it in the dim light?

It was like watching two different movies through a dozen sets of eyes. One was the end of a thriller where the victim is close to being saved. The second was a horror movie.

The gulls smacked into the top of Drunk Guy’s head. He was already struggling to swim; maybe he was hurt. Good. He raised his face up trying to breathe, and another gull pecked him in the face with its knife of a bill. Blood poured and he went under the water.

Harmony had found the radio and hit the red emergency button. A gull had landed on the boat to listen to the radio cackle to life and the coast guard started talking to her.

Drunk Guy came back up splashing at the surface of the water. The gulls were waiting and mobbed his head and face over and over. He screamed for help.

Harmony told the coast guard that her attacker was in the water and seemed to be drowning. I gave her points for telling them. I wouldn’t have. The coast guard asked if there was a life preserver to throw him. She looked around but couldn’t find it in the half-wrecked boat.

Drunk Guy went under again, his hands grabbing for the air like he was hoping for someone to throw him a rope. The gulls bit his hands, some of them landing near him floating like ducks waiting to peck him when he came up for air. Suddenly the gulls scattered upward flapping frantically. A triangular fin cut the water. The sharks had come, attracted by the blood that the gulls had drawn.

Drunk Guy screamed, but not for long.

The coast guard rescued Harmony. She asked them to call Becca, so the bridal party and I met her as they brought her safely to shore. I hadn’t heard that many high-pitched happy squeals since—ever. Becca held her and cried, the other girls joined in, and the only thing that kept me from joining them was that my tears would be stained pink with blood and I didn’t want that to be how they learned I was a vampire. I held it together until Harmony saw me, and Becca told her that I helped search for her. Harmony threw her arms around me and said the thing that finally made me cry.

“I knew you were my white knight.”

It turns out she didn’t mind me being a vampire. The next night Mangoes redid the bridesmaid dinner since Becca had told them what was wrong the night before. I sat beside Harmony while she ate the great food and had just two drinks, because she wanted to end the night by feeding me, and maybe a little bit more. It was a lot more, and she tasted even better than she smelled. She makes me think of old dreams that I gave up when I became a vampire.

Marti says that if Harmony was important enough for me to finally embrace being a master vampire, a master of the city, and find my animal to call all in one night just to save her, then I should maybe look at those old dreams again.

Harmony is planning to come visit next month. If that visit goes well, then next time I’ll introduce her to the rest of us. But we’re still keeping a low profile for now—I’m master of the city of Key West, but I’m a baby master. I have no idea how all the power works, until I do know and can use it to protect all of us, we’ll keep pretending that there’s a bigger, badder vampire master hiding somewhere here. Someone we’re terrified of—and please don’t make us take you to him for all our sakes. The lie had worked for ten years, except now we really did have a master of the city; it was just me for real, no stalking horse, just me.

I’m Sunny Winston, Master of the City of Key West. If you visit, you’ll never know I’m here, until I want you to. Maybe I’ll take you to one of my favorite restaurants for a bite to eat, and then if you say yes, I’ll put the bite on you.

But only if you say yes.


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Framed