Nightfallen

Dark Alley

Echo Valley was a small town of non-chain restaurants, hipster secondhand clothing stores, and Victorian mansions converted to apartments. The town surrounded Ramsgate College, and ringing it all like ramparts were squat Pennsylvanian mountains. Covered in snow, they stood out like God's smudged fingerprints against the moonless night.

We exited the Grogg onto Dominion Street. There were girls and guys walking fast from one bar to the next, dressed for where they were going rather than for the dead calm January cold.

Dave was dressed that way too, just jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Hands in pockets, he shivered as we walked. "Your place far?" His words came out in plumes of white frost.

"We'll take a shortcut."

We cut down an alley, dark except for the occasional dim side-door light. He was hiding it well, but I could hear his teeth chattering.

"You never said what year you were," he said.

"I'm not actually enrolled. I just kind of audit classes. A bandit education," I said.

"That's one way to avoid student loans. I guess no one would notice in the big, general courses."

"They wouldn't, but they mostly offer those auditorium courses during the day. I can only sit in at night. Makes it a little more difficult."

"Work during the day?"

"Mostly sleep in," I said.

"Must be nice living on your parents' dime."

"Actually, most of what I have I just take from others."

He stopped as we approached a door light. I'd overplayed it, but I couldn't help myself. I liked having fun with them. The little hints I left, and seeing how long it'd take them to piece it together. I sometimes marvel at how stupid people can be. It's like they're all secondary characters in a teen horror movie.

But it hadn't been anything I'd said that made him pause. "There's no frost when you talk," he said, as his own breath fogged in the frigid air. His eyes were squinting, as if bringing the world into tighter focus would wring unpleasant truths from it. "You're not breathing."

Not how I'd expected the Big Reveal to go. It chipped my mystique. When that veneer of Southern perfection got scuffed, I tended to ramble, to revert to the science nerd I'd been before becoming Nightfallen.

"No, I'm breathing, if you mean drawing air into my lungs. It's an involuntary reflex from our former lives, but it's certainly adaptive, because it means we can exhale air over our vocal cords and, therefore, you know, speak. There's no frost when I'm talking because the air I exhale is as cold as when I take it in. Side effect of being room temperature all the time. It might be more accurate to say I'm not respiring, since I don't need oxygen extracted from air to live. Or rather, exist."

Wow, that was terrible. All those years of Advanced Placement Biology making an unexpected appearance. He looked at me like I was crazy, and I couldn't blame him. I would definitely skip this part when I got back and told Nathan and my sisters.

He backed away from me.

"Too scientific for you?" I asked, trying to regain my creature-of-the-night cool. "Well, there's no scientific explanation for this."

I grinned and, no longer willing them to remain retracted, extended my canine teeth to fangs.

I turned on my headlights—that's what we call our eyes when they go all Salem's Lot mesmerizing—but he'd already started running.