Page 37 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

Travis dug through the pockets of his coat, his overalls, and patted down his chest, before finally finding a joint tucked behind his ear.

“Aha!”

“Nice,” said Cole.

Travis lit the joint with a flick of his fingers and Cole gasped as Travis inhaled deeply, the bitter smell slowly permeating the air.

Brennan tried to stay on track. “You weren’t surprised? I know you were kinda friends.”

“Oh, sure, we were friends for a little while. A fleeting moment, in the grand scheme of things, maybe, but a few months. Or, weeks? Or years—what day is it today?”

“December third,” Cole said, but Brennan knew asking Travis about timelines was a lost cause.

“Did she tell you anything?” Brennan pushed.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “I saw her the night before she skipped town.”

“The day of the murders?”

“Which murders?”

Brennan bit down a growl of frustration. “The murders. Here. At Pike’s Point.”

“Right! Not that day, the night before. She seems lost, really, it’s sad.” He extended the joint to Brennan. “You want some?”

“Uh, no,” Brennan said, “but did—”

“Oh, I will if you don’t mind!” Cole reached across Brennan to pluck it from Travis.

“Did Dom say where she was going? What she wanted? Did she mention the vampire ball, or what she had planned?”

Travis perked up. “The vampire ball?”

Did he not know?

“There was a flyer at Dom’s place with a note to me. I’m not sure what she might be planning, but that many humans and vampires together seems like a bad mix. She didn’t say where she was.”

“Man, I haven’t been to the annual ball in decades! That brings back memories. I used to dress to the nines with Shea, up until the vampire ball of 1928, when—”

“She didn’t mention it?” Brennan asked.

“No, she didn’t,” Travis said. “Though, in hindsight, I suppose I mentioned it. I was telling her about Shea, actually. The vampire ball of 1928 happens to be where she died.”

“What happened?”

“Well, you see, I can’t just tell the story of the vampire ball of 1928, not without telling you about Shea herself, so that you can understand.”

“Okay, fine,” Brennan said through gritted teeth. “Just tell us what you told Dom.”

“Okay,” Travis said. “Shea was wild and free. Like a wild horse. Untamable. From another time, ethereal.”

Is this really relevant? Brennan wanted to ask, but Cole leaned forward in his seat with interest, and one hand absently reached for Brennan’s shoulder, soothing without even realizing it.

So he bit his tongue. The glow of the campfire flickered, casting shadows across Travis’s face.

That’s when Brennan realized that, as Travis spoke, the golden glow of the campfire danced and flickered, and slowly curled into the undeniable shape of a woman’s silhouette with wild hair.

“She was almost a thousand when I first met her as a little baby human,” Travis said.

“I must have been your age, even.” The fire shifted, and the delicate tendrils of orange formed mirror silhouettes of a man and woman.

“She was fearless and spontaneous and laughed freely, didn’t take anything too seriously.

I was pretty serious back then, so naturally we fell in love. ”

The figures leaned together until the flames overlapped, and for a moment the flames were just flames until Travis started speaking again.

“She turned me and we ran away together. We decided we wouldn’t play by anyone’s rules but our own. We would be free and in love and well-fed forever as long as we were together.”

In the fire, the flames of Travis and Shea circled a screaming man. They drew closer, and then they bit him, one on each side.

“And for centuries, we were.” The image fizzled out.

“I think of those as our golden years. We were legends, myths, gods. Passing through towns, taking sacrifices. Killing who we wanted to kill. Drinking what we wanted to drink.” Travis caught Brennan’s growing horrified expression and shrugged. “It was a different time.”

Travis kicked his legs out and reclined, leaning back on his hands.

“I say all this to emphasize that this is how she lived her life for thousands of years. Before me, and with me. It was her normal.” In the flames, a tree sheds its leaves and blossoms and sheds them again, time passing in an endless cycle.

“Why would she change what worked for her? But, after a while, I started getting interested in society again. Some cool new artists were doing some great work in Italy, and it excited me.”

A silhouette that looked suspiciously like Michelangelo’s David appeared in the campfire, and Brennan’s head spun trying to make sense of that information. The Renaissance was the fifteenth century or so, and if Shea was thousands of years old before then, she could be literally prehistoric.…

The fire shifted again and Brennan tabled that existential crisis (and history-nerd fangirling) for later. The flame lovers stood at odds, shouting and waving their hands.

“I tried out the whole undercover vampire gig, the urban thing. Shea couldn’t take it.

We were pretty on-and-off for a while because of our, ah, conflicting lifestyles.

So on and so forth, blah blah blah, eventually, I ran away to America.

” The figures dissolved into a ship cutting through waves on a rough sea.

“It was all very dramatic. Sometime after the Civil War, if you’re familiar with it? ”

“Um, yeah,” Brennan said. “I’m familiar with the American Civil War.”

“Oh, good. Who’s to say, you guys get so much right and so much horrendously wrong. Anyway. Shea followed me out and said she’d make the sacrifices ’cause she missed me. Most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me. We fucked for six days straight after that.”

The figures in the fire illustrated this with more detail than he’d thought fire capable. Ew.

“So for, I wanna say a good fifty years? I don’t know, a while, she did the whole housewife thing. But some creatures aren’t meant to be domesticated.”

A house with a picket fence fluttering in flames.

“Which led to the vampire ball of 1928. This was after Sunny and Nellie had teamed up and started campaigning for all sorts of urban clan regulations, and it was the final straw for Shea. She told me one day she couldn’t take it, she couldn’t keep hiding.

I asked if she was going to leave, and she said she’d do one better. ”

The house and picket fence rotted and crumbled.

“She had a plan. She wanted to out vampires to the world. She wanted to be feared again, like we were in the glory days. She wanted to be known. You have to understand—that’s only human.”

Even Brennan leaned forward in anticipation.

“What was the plan?” he prodded.

“She wanted to spark frenzy in the vampires, getting them to attack the humans publicly and, theoretically, start some sort of vampire uprising. The plan was hazy, admittedly, but she was gung ho about it. And I was in love.”

The fire dimmed to a soft glow, as if that was the end of the story. But Brennan needed all of it.

“You helped her,” Brennan pushed.

“I tried to.” Travis shrugged. “Needless to say, didn’t go as planned.

Sunny and Nellie stopped us before the ball even started.

Shea put up a fight. They killed her. They didn’t have a choice, really.

I don’t even blame them. They bound me to these woods as punishment for helping her and, well, I’ve been here ever since. ”

Travis waved a hand over the waning fire and in an instant, it flickered out. Storytime’s over, kids.

“Wow,” said Cole.

“Hold on,” Brennan said. “Why did Dom want to know about Shea? How did this come up?”

“Oh,” Travis said, suddenly bashful, examining his fingernails. “She asked me what my greatest regret was.”

“And? What is it?”

“That I didn’t die with Shea that day.”

Travis looked off into some middle distance for a moment before blinking away the memories and coming back to himself, easy smile returning slightly forced. Brennan couldn’t imagine living for thousands of years, let alone losing someone you’ve loved for that long.

“But man, what a downer that is, am I right?” Travis said. “I must sound like an old man, rambling on about the good old days and lost love.”

“No, not at all,” Cole said. He was adopting his Library Blanket Guy voice, all open and supportive, extra Southern twang amping up the charm. “Thank you for sharing.”

“Did Dom say anything else?” Brennan tried again. “About the ball, or about where she was going?”

“Nah. She kinda snapped at me and told me she was skipping town, and that’s the last I saw her. I hope she’s doing okay, murder or not.”

“Skipping town is… good,” Brennan said. “That means not bothering us, at least, but Sunny and Nellie won’t be able to contain the murders if she’s running.”

“She’ll be in someone else’s jurisdiction.” Travis shrugged. “Someone else’s problem.”

“Until she comes back,” Brennan said. “There’s still the ball. She ran away after she heard that story. What if she wants to finish what Shea started?”

“If that was the plan,” Cole said slowly, “why wouldn’t she wait till then? Why kill people and run off now?”

“She needs power,” Brennan and Travis said at the same time.

“Hah, jinx!” Travis said, laughing, but Brennan went cold under Travis’s confirmation.

“So she’s going on a murder road trip to power up before the ball?” Brennan asked.

“That’d be my guess,” Travis said, “but who’s to say, really?”

“Great,” said Brennan. “Awesome.”

“Damn,” said Cole. “What are we gonna do about it?”

That was the question.

“Sunny’s tracking Dom,” Brennan said. “Nellie’s covering the blood bank. I want to hit the library and keep researching, maybe try to find a relevant pamphlet.”

“Good fucking luck with that,” said Travis.

“But other than that…” Brennan caught Cole’s eye. Cole took his hand. “I think we wait.”