Guldendal awoke from vampiric dormancy with a start, panic pulsing to the beat of his heart. Bewildered and disoriented, he lurched up and threw his long legs over the side of the bed while he waited for his head to stop spinning. A strange, bedraggled room drowsing in twilight met his eyes. From an open window nearby rumbled the sounds of a city–carts rolling, horses neighing, klaxons clanging, and the distant toll of a church bell. He groaned. Chicago.
What am I doing here?
His stomach clenched in a spasm of pain which caught his breath while he willed it to relent. He desperately needed food, having gone without for the three-day train ride from Boston. With a moan, he staggered to his feet, weakness threatening to drop him to the tattered carpet covering the pine board floor. His nose rebelled at the smell that dominated the room, acidic and yet rotten at the same time. Guldendal might be a vampire, but he was a fastidious vampire, who only accepted fresh kill and if possible, warm blood. The stench was enough to put even him off his feed.
Gotta escape.
Willing his legs to obey him, Guldendal pocketed the room key and headed out. He’d memorized the route through the hotel. Good thing because the building had been built almost deliberately like a maze. As he traversed its second floor, turning right, then left, then right again, he wondered what its architect had been thinking. No one could escape it quickly in the event of a fire.
As he trod down the stairs carpeted in threadbare burgundy, Guldendal pondered possible reasons for that. Trying to prove that Chicago would never again burn to the ground as it had in the Great Fire of 1871? When Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was said to have kicked a bucket and destroyed a city? He didn’t know and he didn’t care.
He passed two young maids, Irish girls, in black dresses, mobcaps, and pinafores, their heads close together as they whispered. Being a vampire, Guldendal could hear what most humans couldn’t, including their hushed comments. Bridgett had gone missing. Disappeared. Run off with a man, probably. No, she wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. I’m worried.
Guldendal cared nothing for errant maids. He continued to the first floor and onto the street.
Chicago glowed with the last rays of the summer sun, which set late at the height of summer. Gaslights flickered on one by one as boys with lighting poles worked both sides of the street. Guldendal studied the avenue, calculating where he might find a convenient human to kill. Of if not that, an unattended animal. To kill a horse would be a waste and a tragedy. Guldendal couldn’t consume that much blood. Same with a cow. Meanwhile, a dog or cat was too small. Humans, as always, were just right.
The city, however, was determined to withhold such a prize. Even as night drew its darkling veil, people filled the streets and alleys. Having been raised in conservative Boston, where decent folk retired indoors at nightfall, Guldendal found the amount of activity odd. Everything about Chicago confused him, especially the odd vibrancy that quivered through its every bone. Weak with hunger, he wandered around Englewood but never found a homeless drunk or a willing prostitute. He decided he was hunting too uptown an area to find such folks.
Finally, in desperation, he stumbled across the back door of a butcher shop. There he found a huge box in which the butcher tossed his leavings–bones, gristle, and bits of meat he couldn’t sell. Guldendal despised that he’d been driven so low, and yet beggars couldn’t be choosers. He scrounged through the box to locate the freshest bones with the most meat, found himself a dark corner in which to eat, and with his fangs rent his meal to pieces. While it was not enough to satisfy him, at least it took the edge off his hunger.
“Now ain’t that a sorry sight,” came a voice from the darkness.
Guldendal stiffened. His hand sought a weapon but all he possessed was the thigh bone of a cow. He grasped it like a bat.
A tall, elegantly dressed man in clothing a century out of date drifted into view. His walking cane tapped superciliously on the hard packed mud of the alley. His silk lined cloak swished with each step. Beneath a black, beaver top hat, gaunt, pale features glowered, looking more skeletal than alive.
Guldendal stiffened. Even had he not scented the musty aroma emanating from the individual, he would have recognized a fellow vampire. The unfashionable clothes, the ashen face, and the cold, inscrutable black eyes gave it away.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said, brandishing his bone like a baseball bat.
A vague smile twitched up the corners of the vampire’s mouth. “You aren’t old enough to cause me any trouble. How old are you, youngster?”
With a swallow, Guldendal answered. “Sixty-four.”
The older vampire laughed. “Damn! You’re just a baby!” He tilted his head. “You don’t look familiar. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Boston,” Guldendal admitted.
“Got run out of town by the alphas, did you, little one?”
The ever-territorial vampire in Guldendal caused him to growl and brandish a fang. “Something like that.”
Ignoring the pathetic challenge inherent in a brandished fang, his companion doffed his hat. “Hilzentallen, at your service. Vampire extraordinaire. Able to steal a corpse out from under even the inimitable Fespalian.” Hilzentallen waved a finger. “He’s the reigning lord of these parts.”
Guldendal’s tension eased. He sensed no malice from Hilzentallen, only gentle humor. He lowered his cow bone. “Guldendal.”
To his surprise, Hilzentallen proffered a silver flask.
“It’s fresh. Bought it this morning,” Hilzentallen said.
Warily, Guldendal accepted the flask. Uncorking it, he found the luscious metallic smell of blood waft from its depths. Without thought, he pressed the opening to his mouth and downed its entire contents in a handful of swallows. When he was finished, he hesitated, wondering what Hilzentallen would do or say.
The grandee regained his flask and hid it away. “You are a growing boy!” he laughed. “No worries, my friend. I have a source. Plenty more where that came from.”
Guldendal started. A non-alpha with steady access to human blood?
Hilzentallen’s humorous expression never faltered. “You look like a vampire terribly down on his luck, young Guldendal. Now that you’ve filled the worst of your emptiness, come with me. Allow me to show you the wonders of my city. I presume you’re newly arrived?”
“Just off the train today,” Guldendal replied. He fell into step beside Hilzentallen. “Why so congenial?” he asked.
Hilzentallen spread his arms to encompass Chicago. “Because I’m as free as a vampire can be! I am not alpha material, good friend. Don’t have the steel in me. And I possess no desire to become one. Nor can I abide living in their shadow. Obeying their every whim.” He pretended to shudder. “A fate worse than being staked out in sunlight, if you ask me. So I live a solitary life and spend my nights tormenting my betters. If Fespalian ever found me, he’d hang me from the Monadnock Building, toes up.” He chuckled.
Not knowing what else to do, Guldendal sauntered alongside this strangely easy-going, somewhat off-putting vampire.
Hilzentallen poked him with a finger. “Not that I need to warn a sharp young buck like you but avoid ole Fess. He’s got a temper on him. He’d make quick work of you. Stick with me and you’ll never go wrong.”
Such camaraderie was rare in vampires. Guldendal wasn’t sure he liked the feel of it. But for the moment, fate gave him few choices and Hilzentallen offered protection and perhaps more food. Guldendal chose to grasp the opportunity he offered.
His gaze swept over the street they strolled where people, mostly human but probably also some vampire, continued to move about like an eddying stream.
“What’s with all the evening activity?” he asked. “People in Boston duck indoors come nightfall.”
“Well, Boston has a wee thicker population of night folk,” Hilzentallen replied, referring to vampires by their colloquial name. “I imagine humans in that old city have figured out wandering around in the dark is asking to be murdered. Chicago has its own night folk to be sure, but the city sprawls for endless miles and we of the moon times are lesser in number, so our predations tend to go unnoticed. The city folk here dare the darkness.”
“But this seems excessive,” Guldendal complained. He gestured to a group of four young women who would never be allowed out so late in the evening back east.
“It’s the Exposition, laddie!” Hilzentallen chuckled.
“What exposition?”
Hilzentallen stopped in his tracks. “You mean to tell me you came all the way to Chicago without knowing this is the year of the great World’s Fair Columbian Exposition?”
Guldendal swallowed, unwilling to admit a weakness to fellow vampire.
But Hilzentallen wasn’t the sort to bash him with his foibles. He was too thrilled to have a companion on his walk. He laid an arm across Guldendal’s shoulders. “This, young man, is something you really must see! The wonders of humankind spread out for all the world to marvel at. And humankind does come up with some wonders.”
Not know what else to do, Guldendal nodded.
Hilzentallen gave him a squeeze and led him east towards the lake. “Come, my friend. Let me show you the world.”
© 2021 Newmin