Lipstick Marks

 Grit crunched under her feet. She hated that sound, just like she hated the whole city. Fiona Wolff pulled her coat tighter around her and kept walking, keeping her eyes on the pavement. The air stank of petrol fumes, rising from the cars sat nose to tail along the narrow roads, taillights cherry-red in the gloom, engines snarling in impatience and boredom.

 Go to England, her mother had urged. It'll be a great experience - best time I ever had, before I met your father, of course. You'll love it.

 Wrong, and wrong again, Fiona thought, weaving around the clumps of people dotting the pavements. This is a vile city. It's cold and the buildings are all blackened brick and seemed to have been designed with prisons in mind. If you're not walking up a hill, you're walking down one, and those million poxy back streets are a maze.

 All in all, it was a small and grimy piece of hell. Signing up for the exchange program was the worst idea she had ever had. England never looked like this in the movies - some green and pleasant land this was!

 Orange streetlamps lit her way home, tiny beacons against the dark night. Her last lecture was done, and now she only had half an hour of staggering up hills before she could look forward to a hot meal and a quiet evening.

 A litany of complaints ran through her head as she walked back: she fell into a rhythm, her boots clicking on the ground, arms swinging at her sides. Her route ran through the labyrinth of suburbia, down thin snaking streets lined with terraced houses.

 But in spite of all the things that were wrong with this godforsaken Northern city, there were some things she liked: like the golden lights of the pubs she passed, and the fat black cat that she always saw sitting on the wall.

 "Hey, you," she murmured, bending down to stroke it.

 "Hey yourself."

 She half-turned at the voice; Australian, her mind muttered, registering the laidback lilt. There was a boy there, his face hard to make out in the shadows.

 "I was talking to the cat," she explained, trying to ignore just how dumb that sounded.

 "Does he talk back?" A little bite to those words. She tried to look around without being obvious: no one was in sight.

 "Not yet," she said. "But maybe one day. If you'll excuse me, I'm late for dinner."

 "Funny, I was about to say the same." His voice dropped to a soft purr, low and slow and with enough of a suggestion to it to make unease swell in her stomach. "I'd like you to join me."

 "My mother told me not to talk to strangers," she said, making her voice breezy and cool. "I'll see you around."

 She turned-

 His hand clamped around her arm, his fingers four tight points of pressure. Even through the thick coat, his grip was bruising.

 "Let go!" She hated how shrill her voice was but couldn't do anything to quell the fear that shot through her. Oh my god, her mind chattered. He's a mugger or a rapist or a murderer and oh my god, what did they teach me in self-defence, why can't I remember?

 "I think it's obvious I'm not going to do that." Despite his amused tone, she felt the menace in those words like the shape of steel under satin. "Now come on, surely you know not to walk through dark streets alone? You never know who'll be lurking round the next corner."

 Panic had seized her, flooding her insides like cold milk. This couldn't be happening, this didn't happen to people like her: this was the fate of nameless girls and pensioners, not her, not Fiona Wolff, American sorority girl.

 What do I do? she screamed in the cavern of her mind and it seemed the question only echoed all around her.

 "If you come quietly, it'll all be quite painless," he continued, and she realised he was staring at her with wide, dark eyes as if by saying it, he could impress it onto her, etch obedience into her heart. "In fact, you're feeling a little light-headed, you'd probably like someone to lean on for a moment-"

 Her head felt thick and fuzzy, but that didn't stop her from understanding that what he said was nonsense. Despite the mesmerising quality of his voice, she would not be lulled, she would not surrender.

 No, some part of her whispered. Louder: no, not me. Not this. Fight, scream, do anything, but don't be passive-

 And suddenly she wrenched her body sideways, and high, breathless shrieks spilled out her mouth - she was slapping at his face with her free hand, she was-

 Something slammed into her chest like a football, and she hit the ground hard, one arm twisting under her. She was dragged to her feet just as quickly, his face thrust so close to hers that she could smell the cigarettes on his breath.

 "No more of that," he said, so quietly that she had to strain to hear him.

 Women, she knew, were supposed to be strong in the face of adversity. They were supposed to hold themselves with dignity, to present a calm face even when they were stooped and broken under the weight of their fear. Her back throbbed, and her shoulder felt strained, numb with the promise of pain to come, and his eyes were shiny and hard in the dark.

 That was the moment when she began to cry, small weak noises that shook her. She felt herself crumbling inside, she felt the panic swept away by a despair so powerful that she just didn't know what to do except let him manhandle her into a small alleyway, feeling sicker with each moment, dizzier with each moment.

 "God, if I'd known you were going to be so much hassle, I wouldn't have bothered," he muttered. "Trust me to get one with resistance to the old snake-charming. And I can't have you running off to cry to the cops - been there, done that, they know my name too well round here. Really, I don't have any choice."

 Choice about what? came the thought, but slowly, winding through the fog of fear and misery.

A shove: her back thudded against the wall, and she cowered against it as if she would sink into the brick, become one with it, immobile, unknowing.

 He was a solid silhouette in front of her, a smear of pale skin in the dark, intangible but for the hands that pressed flat and hard on her shoulders. Tears, boiling under her eyelids, hot as the shame she felt. Someone better, braver, would have fought, they would have kept kicking and screaming, they would be running down the road: it was all her fault.

 His head tilting, the same slow bend of a lover, and the grotesqueness of it all made her want to cackle like a madwoman, to scream, to do anything, but all she did was shut her eyes over the tears because nothing in the darkness could be any worse than this.

 She turned her head away, one last scrap of pride. This kiss will not be taken willingly, if this is the only battle I fight, at least I have fought one.

 But it was her neck he kissed; she felt his lips settle onto her skin and move smoothly, firmly - and then she felt his teeth and she froze-

 There was a neat, sharp pain, like the jab of a needle.

 And she burned.

Golden light shot up behind her eyes like a holy conflagration and heat rushed through her like a stormy sea, drawing a gasp from her. What was he doing to her, had he injected her with something?

 Shocked, she opened her eyes, and gasped.

 The alleyway was gone. She was in a squalid flat: grey and grim, clothes strewn across the ratty furniture, the only sound the static from the broken TV and the steady drip of a tap. This was crazy. She was hallucinating: he had drugged her, that was the only-

 "What are you doing here?" His voice, angry and snarling. He was huddled in the middle of the room, and in the pallid light, she could make out his face. "Get out of my head!"

 "I'm not in your head!" she said, backing away from him.

 He didn't look so big in this light: his face was all hollows and shadows, his hair nothing more than a thin layer of fuzz that did nothing to hide the outline of his skull. His teeth were bared and-

 He had fangs.

 She looked again, and new fear spiked through her chest. Two long, curving fangs that jutted over his bottom lip. And there was something feline about the vast black of his eyes, about the way he crouched as if poised to strike.

 "Yeah? What do you think this is?" he spat, gesturing to the room. "Ain't fucking paradise, let me tell you!"

 "Funny, I figured that out for myself when you dragged me off into that alley!" she shrieked back, panic overriding any shred of commonsense she had left.

 This was some sort of mutual hallucination. Or she was imagining him - that had to be it, it just had to be!

 "Leave me alone." The words were hissed out, and he stood with the last one, tension quivering along his body.

 She had backed up to a wall, and the sick feeling whirred in her stomach. Maybe this is some crazy nightmare - a wall at my back and this vile thing in front of me, playing out again and again.

 He came forward, step after step, anger twisting his lips.

 "I said, leave me alone." One hand grabbed her chin-

 And she was deluged with information: flash of him and a group of other thin-faced, posturing boys, kicking a curled body on the ground. He was Emerald Tamarind, and he didn't need no one, he didn't want no one, he didn't, didn't, didn't-

 -and god how good it felt, how sweet it was when his fangs popped through skin, and the blood flowed thick and warm into his mouth, better than booze, better than sex, better than that shit that Gavin wouldn't stop smoking-

 -how he despised Stacey, her blond hair lank about her face, stroking his arm and cooing at him, how he wished he'd never gotten drunk and screwed her - couldn't even remember doing it, couldn't remember much except waking up in a cold bed with her crowding him, her hands tugging at him, stupid bitch-

 -his head snapping back, good old Dad, consistent in his drunkenness and consistent in his punches. One to the head, on to the gut - then when he was doubled over, that snort of disgust-

 -Gavin high, as per usual, lolling on the floor and saying that soulmates did exist, course they did - it's all about love, man, it makes the world go round and all that crap.

That's gravity, Em had replied. Why the hell would I want a soulmate?

 For the sex, yeah, Gavin had drawled and blown a stream of smoke into the air. They reckon your soulmate gets right inside your head, man, knows everything you want.

 Mike had looked up from the TV, which wasn't showing static for once. Yeah, he'd said, but who wants to be inside some chick's head when you're inside her, huh?

 It's all about love, insisted Gavin through a cannabis-laced cloud, you love someone, maybe you wanna be inside their head.

 You've got too much of that hemp in your head, Mike had answered. You're going to wind up with mush for a brain.

 Gavin shrugged. It's not like I'm researching a-

 And just like that, she was hurled from that stream of recollections - he'd recoiled from her, snatching his hand away like she had burnt him.

 "Oh my god," she whispered, her hands trembling at her sides. "You really are a vampire."

 He was chalky under his olive complexion, breathing hard. "You're not my soulmate," he said, retreating across the room. "You can't be my soulmate, I don't believe in soulmates, and anyway, you're human - you're vermin, I don't want you, I don't need you, leave me alone!"

~*~

 The cold air hit her like a slap. She was in the alleyway, plunged into the grey gloom, brick at her back and clear air in front of her. Just as he had in that other place, he was recoiling from her - she heard the rasp of his breath, saw it fog on the air.

 Her neck stung, and she saw his eyes were gleaming silver as melted nickel, throwing fey light across his hollowed face. Those really were fangs - those things had been in her neck, he had bitten her, he was a monster-

 "Oh Christ." His voice no longer sounded so hard - lost, she would have said, only monsters couldn't be lost. He fumbled at his coat pocket...

 What if he has a knife - what do I do?

 ...and wiped at his mouth, threw a bit of ragged paper on the ground. He spat, as if trying to rid himself of the taste of her blood.

 "You keep away from me, you hear?" He pointed at her, and his hand shook. "I won't come near you, you don't come near me, okay?"

 With pleasure, she thought, glad she could let the wall support her. She swallowed down nausea, but that only made her head spin even more. She shut her eyes as the world lurched alarmingly, and only the sound of running feet told her he had left.

 When she opened her eyes, there was no indication he had ever been there: only the pain that wracked her back and shoulder, and that warm throb at her neck.

~*~

 Somehow she crawled home. The door creaking open under her shaking ands was the most welcome sound she had ever heard, and as she stumbled in, whatever strength had supported her on the endless walk back seeped away, leaving her kneeling on the floor.

 It was all she could do to explain what had happened to her friends: then there were only tears and the meaningless solace they tried to give her.

 A couple of weeks later, when she could put on a pretence of coping, Missy Rasmussen took her aside, and spoke strange, hushed words about a place called the Night World, of vampires and soulmates and blood-covered kisses.

 A few days after that, she went back to the alleyway in daylight. The whole city seemed different to her now: she searched every face for otherworldly oddness, and found herself unwilling to go out once the shadows began to stretch too far across the pavement.

 But the alleyway looked just the same. She couldn't pick out the piece of the wall that had trapped her and borne her weight.

 There was almost no sign that anything had ever happened, except...there, blown into one corner of the alley: a scrap of paper with her blood imprinted on it in the smeared shape of his mouth.

 Emerald Tamarind, she thought and the words had the same intensity as a curse. How can you be my destiny?

 In those flat dark eyes she had seen nothing of love, nothing she could recognise or respond to. If that was her destiny...

 She shivered, and wrapped her arms around herself. She meant to leave then, but instead, on a whim, she stopped to snatch up the tattered bit of paper, reclaiming her blood, returned to her in a despairing kiss.

 When she glanced back, there was nothing to show that her life had changed.