Seven Days to Midnight

October 31 — New York City

“Make me fall in love with you. Succeed, and I’ll give you eternity. Fail, and I’ll eat you.”

Two hours earlier…

Neon bled across the rain slicked street the way blood mixed with water as it circled the bathtub drain. Lilith smiled to herself at the thought. Halloween was less of a holiday for the city and more of a mirror—masks on with cheap fabric cut and stitched to resemble something far more regal than it actually was. But under it all was the same reflection, the same pulse. Lilith drifted with the crowd, her deep red dress clinging to her body, the silk hem whispering at her knees. Breathless mortals brushed past her in their white face paint and plastic fangs, laughing at themselves and their clever subversion of horror.

It was easy to laugh when you’d turned the monster into something so harmless it was no longer scary at all.

Her heels clicked as she walked, and despite the sound being so familiar after so many decades of hearing it, she still reveled in the feminine power of it. For how could man not fear something so much as her gender that it needed to hobble it. She wasn’t yet sure of her destination. Like most nights, she was adrift, a creature of the night following instinct rather than desire.

It was passion she lacked. Passion and excitement. She was bored, the kind of boredom there wasn’t a cure for. The novelty of life had deserted her, leaving behind a hole so vast and dark it threatened to swallow her. No matter. She would continue to exist as she always had. Trudging through the decades in search of something, anything, new.

She didn’t have another choice.

As she rounded a street corner, an oncoming breeze washed over her face, running its fingers through her hair and sliding down her throat. It carried with it a sweet, woody perfume with a metallic undertone. Blood—old. Not human.

She paused, closing her eyes and taking in the scent, tasting it on the air. She lifted her gaze and followed it to the opposite side of the street. There was nothing but a smear of reflections and umbrellas and a dark emptiness in the alley behind. The scent faded into barely a whisper, undetectable to most, and her shoulders loosened by degrees. She didn’t want to meet her own kind tonight.

Or ever.

Farther down, a cocktail lounge she often found herself in on nights like these glowed warm as a lantern, beckoning her into its arms. Perfect, she thought. She slipped inside and took a stool at the bar. Jazz murmured from speakers hidden away in dark corners, a welcome respite from the thumping music and high energy of the world outside. The wood of the bar and the walls that surrounded it held the faint ghost of smoke from years when the room wore it like fog. If she closed her eyes, she could still taste it—the cigar smoke, matches just lit, nicotine and burning paper.

The bartender nodded when Lilith met his gaze. He knew to pour her a glass of red wine and never ask why she never drank it. She was an attractive decoration at the bar, she never made trouble, and she tipped well. She swirled the liquid in the glass, enjoying the way the warm light danced across its surface, and watched as the humans around her performed their courtship rituals.

Tonight they wore various disguises—some clever, some sexy, some cringe worthy—and their laughter was soaked in alcohol, their words tripping over themselves, but no one cared. Glitter from costumes and bodies alike littered the floor like snowflakes on the ground at the beginning of a snowstorm.

A woman at a high-top table near the far end of the bar lifted a martini glass and slurred, “It’s better to have lived and loved than never to have lived at all. Shakespeare.”

She looked pleased with herself. The table cheered.

Lilith’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.  'Tis better to have loved and lost… Tennyson, not Shakespeare. And wrong besides. Love didn’t last. It curdled. It broke you, put you in pain and in pieces, then it left.

“Hey, gorgeous.” A pirate hat dipped into her periphery, the man beneath it already too close for her comfort. There was rum on his breath and in his swagger was a confidence propped up by cheap plastic. “What’re you supposed to be?”

She turned her head slowly, letting him see the cool stillness in her eyes. “Hungry,” she said.

“So am I.”

“Are you now?” she asked, propping an elbow on the bar and letting her chin rest in her palm. “Too bad I bite.”

“So do I,” he laughed, relieved to be invited into the joke.

“How fortunate.” She let a fang catch the light when she smiled. His laugh died by inches, but hers was full and real. “Run along.”

He didn’t hesitate, looking over his shoulder every few steps as he retreated back into the noise. Lilith shifted in her her seat, an odd feeling pulling her gaze to the window. Somewhere was there beyond the glass, something that watched back. She lifted her wine to her lips without drinking and waited for the night to show its teeth.

***

Julian had learned that an apartment couch could teach you three things: how to start over, how to leave your pride at the door, and just how big of a stick in the mud his cousin was.

To be fair, he had every right to be. Eric had followed the written and unwritten rules of life and was doing alright for himself. Julian, on the other hand, had a couch for a bed, and the entirety of his worldly possessions amounted to a worn leather jacket slung over his shoulder with pockets full of lint, a few crumpled five dollar bills, and the key to his cousin’s apartment.

He tugged it on out of habit and stepped into the hallway. It smelled like stale bodies, reheated food from the microwave, and dusty carpet. Delighted, if not slightly horrified squeals echoed from one of the units down the hall. Teenagers, Julian guessed. He smiled to himself as he remembered his own Halloween night exploits. They were good memories made better because not all of his were.

Behind him, his cousin called from the doorway. Eric, always an inch from worry and three steps from lecture, stuck his head out. His eyes held a look of concern that felt more like a leash than an anchor tonight. “You sure you don’t want to stay in tonight, Jules?”

Julian shrugged and let his grin do what it did best—take up for him. “I’ll be boring, I swear. Soda. People watching. You can lecture me all about it tomorrow.”

Eric pressed his mouth into a thin line, the expression of a man who cared too much, though he couldn’t help the amusement that tugged at his lips. “Call if you need anything. And call your sponsor!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Julian said with a mock salute and kept walking. Eric shook his head and watched him for one more beat before he closed the door, but Julian was sure he saw a small smile break across his face first.

On the street the city was a river of masks and cheap face paint. Halloween turned parts of New York City into a place where everyone agreed to be someone else for the night and consequence was easier than ever to ignore. Julian slipped through it, letting the noise dull his mind so he wouldn’t notice how hollow his life felt. He could have taken the train, but walking was a better distraction from the thoughts he didn’t want to hear. Plus, he liked the anonymity of wandering through a city that kept secrets so well.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. His sponsor. He stared at the screen and felt the small cold slide of disappointment, maybe even denial, down his spine. He thumbed a reply and then shoved the phone back where its buzzing couldn’t bother him. He didn’t need a meeting, not tonight at least. What he needed was some sense of normalcy, to blend into the background where his failures weren’t laid bare for all to see.

He rounded a corner and looked up to see a man standing in the shadows of an alley, bathed in enough light to be visible to those he wanted to be visible to but close enough to the shadows to disappear in a wink. Julian felt that familiar itch, the desire to escape into euphoric bliss if only for a little while, but he shook the feeling away. He was determined to stay on the straight and narrow. He was in a program now. He went to meetings. He had a damn sponsor for Christ’s sake. He’d put in too much effort to fix what he’d fucked up to throw it all away now.

Behind the dealer, a face, obscured by the night, peered out of the shadows. Julian squinted, and he could’ve sworn the face smiled at him. Then he blinked and it and the man at the corner were gone, leaving Julian confused and his steps stuttering on the sidewalk. He rubbed at the goosebumps on his arms and increased his pace, wanting to put as much distance between the dark alley and himself as possible. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he was smart enough to know he wanted nothing to do with it.

The bar he ducked into hummed with a simmering sort of energy, like that of an old Hollywood movie where the characters were bathed in black and white and wrapped in sex and cigar smoke. The scent of wood and spice blended with the low percussion of easy laughter. Costumes pressed together in swathes of color and fabric and shine.

He moved to the long bar as if it were a harbor just coming into sight after months at sea. He ordered a soda and was grateful no one made a fuss about it. Honestly, people rarely did. One thing he’d found most refreshing about getting sober was how big of a deal it wasn’t. No one really seemed to care. Some people even decided to be sober for no other reason than they preferred it, a concept he didn’t think he’d ever really be able to wrap his head around.

He noticed the woman before he meant to. He was struck by the way the light washed over her cheek, how her body seemed to be draped in sex and silk. She sat alone, impossibly still for the room, a dark island in a sea of noise and motion. Her hair was a waterfall of red, her posture the kind that spoke of romantic paintings, of soft light and infinite lengths of fabric. She held herself somehow away from everything, and everyone, else. Proud and aloof, with a wrongness about her that pulled at something under his ribs. She looked perfectly at home and yet out of place at the same time.

He wiped his palms on his jeans and took the stool beside her, setting his drink down and propping his elbow on the bar beside it. His heart skipped a beat, and he recognized the sensation. Anticipation. Excitement.

When she turned to him her eyes were still, as if she were assessing him and found him somewhat amusing. For a second he thought she would laugh at him for being ordinary and still so bold. Instead she considered him, like she was weighing a trinket she’d found in a drawer and didn’t even remember she owned, something small but perhaps useful.

For a moment the bar noise fell away, and all he heard was the small, precise sound of her breathing. It was everything he could do not to stare at the pulse throbbing at her neck, that delicious neck, or let his eyes fall further down to watch as her breasts pushed against her dress with every breath. He told himself he was being dramatic, that she was just a woman in a bar and not some siren with hypnotic powers of desire. He told himself he was in control, but the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

“In some cultures it’s considered rude to stare, including this one,” she said, gesturing to the room around her with a lifted hand, and the voice fit the face—soft, exact, with an edge that suggested everything was always deliberate.

Damn, he thought, tearing his eyes away from her. He could try and go for the suave, mysterious guy at the bar persona, but he wasn’t really the stoic type and doubted he could pull it off. So, he tried for a joke recovery. “My mother was never very good at teaching me manners. Or maybe I wasn’t very good at listening.” He grinned.

She returned his smile with a small one of her, and he found he liked the tilt of her mouth. “Cute,” she said almost dismissively, but there was a flicker of interest in her eyes.

“So,” he said, aiming for casual. “You here alone?”

She raised a brow at him. “I prefer my own company most nights.”

“That a fact?”

"Mmmm,” she said in a way that was more a sound in the back of her throat than a word of acknowledgment.

He took a breath and wondered if he should just go for it. A quick covert look up and down her told him she way out of his league. But you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, he told himself. Or something like that. Whatever the bros were telling themselves these days. It couldn’t really hurt to try. He was already at rock bottom. How much further down could she knock him?

“How can I convince you to enjoy my company tonight?”

A look of amusement crossed her face, and she appeared surprised by it. She picked up her glass of wine, but before she sipped she said, “You’re a bold one.”

He inclined his head. “I have my moments.”

She set down the glass, the wine still untouched, and tapped a finger on her chin. She looked at him as if she was as interested in studying him as sleeping with him. At least that’s what he hoped the look in her eye meant. A guy could dream.

“I have a better idea,” she said, and her eyes took on a predatory gleam. “Let’s play a game.”

He gulped and said with false bravado, “What do you have in mind?”

She leaned forward with a smile, her tongue held between teeth that looked too perfect, too sharp. “Make me fall in love with you. Succeed, and I’ll give you eternity. Fail, and I’ll eat you.”