Chapter 5: The Enforcer
Tuesday, 10 Oct 2034
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Announcement: I’m not going to be uploading weekly readings anymore, because it takes 7+ hours to make just one! I’d rather spend that time doing marketing that has more reach. But I will be recording as I do the final edit. After publishing all the chapters, I will likely make ~1hr videos similar to this reading of the first five chapters.
Tuesday, 10 Oct 2034
Skye skipped her Sociology and Politics classes to try to catch up on sleep, but her mind and body refused to rest. It was like they were still in Benny’s house. By the time she had to leave for her compulsory economics lecture, she was fighting a throbbing headache.
Shortly after sitting down in the lecture hall, she began to drift off. She sat slumped in her seat with her arms draped in a loose hug over her body. Her eyelids were leaden, her mind murky.
“Skye?” Her classmate, Kei, nudged her awake. He was nice, though he tended to fawn over her despite knowing very little about her.
She forced her eyes open. Her study pad lay with a blank digital page open, stylus still slotted into its holder.
“Are you OK?” Kei muttered.
She didn’t answer.
Kei pressed on. “You seem–”
The professor cut in. “Excuse me. Do you have something to share with the class?”
Kei shrunk into his chair and shook his head.
“Then don’t speak over me.”
Kei pouted but stayed quiet.
The lecture was about… something. The paragraphs of words on each slide melted into a grey, indecipherable blur.
I’ll catch up on this later, Skye told herself with every passing slide.
She didn’t even react when she hallucinated the back of a classmate’s head vibrating.
On the last slide, labelled ‘Takeaways’, students started to pack up.
“These slides will not be uploaded,” the professor said with a bite to his voice.
Skye would’ve broken into tears of indignation if she had the energy for it. So much for catching up. I need a fucking break.
When class ended, she ambled to the exit, Kei trailing after her. “Do you need help? You don’t have any classes next, right?”
Skye halted outside the building and flumped onto a bench. “Kei, I just need sleep. I’m going home.”
Kei stood scuffing his feet and fiddling with his backpack. “Did something happen?”
Skye was too tired to lie. “A guy dragged me into his home and tried to bite me.”
“What? Why would anyone do that?”
“Guess he was hungry.”
“You should report–”
“Authorities are on it.” Vampire authorities, but whatever.
“Did you get hurt?”
Skye pulled on her sleeve, making sure her bruised wrist was hidden. “Kei, just go. I’m sorry. I’m too tired right now.”
“Sorry,” Kei muttered. His fingers pushed back his short black hair. “I’ll send you the notes I took.”
Skye felt some relief, enough to muster up a weak smile. “Thanks. That’ll help lots.”
“No problem. Just let me know if you need anything.”
They parted ways. Skye nearly threw up on the bus ride home, swaying with every corner rounded until her stop came. She stumbled out of the vehicle. Then, up the stairs to her flat, inching closer to a breakdown at each step.
Finally, inside.
To her bedroom.
She collapsed onto her bed.
“Skye?”
Are you fucking kidding me?
“Aimee, I need sleep,” Skye grumbled.
Aimee lingered by Skye’s doorway. She had been ghost since her bender last week, but she had finally chosen to show herself to the living once again. “I just want to say sorry for what I was like last Wednesday.” And on she rambled about fighting with her boyfriend, fear of failing her classes again, going somewhere tonight, something-something-something.
“Not now,” Skye growled into her pillow.
Aimee heeded the warning.
But now the battle really began.
Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.
She couldn’t find the switch that shut her brain and body down into slumber. The more she willed herself, the more insurmountable falling asleep felt.
So, she imagined a world; one she had never been in. It had a meadow beneath bright skies dabbled with white clouds; a breeze gently whispered against blooming trees and caressed her skin; blades of grass were flattened underneath her bare feet, and blue, pink and white flowers were scattered across the hill.
“You look beautiful, Skye.”
Skye turned to see her Auntie Marina. For once, her Auntie had freed her hair from that rigid bun she usually had. Her grey afro looked like a halo against the glow of the sun. Auntie Marina stepped over to hug Skye. She smelt of roses and powder.
꩜
Skye was back in Benny’s cabin, standing in the single-roomed structure. Instead of cold, she felt feverish. Her stomach churned with unease.
The fridge’s door was ajar, displaying enough blood bags to blot out much of its light. Wait – now they looked like hearts. A waterfall of blood poured from them and meandered to Skye’s boots.
Where’s Benny?
Skye moved out of the puddle, though the blood followed behind her, creating a red rivulet. She stepped through to the dark woods outside. No Benny in sight, and somehow the trees felt… closer, as if they were leaning in, leering down at her.
A flame of red hair burned at the fence.
The Red Bloodsucker.
Nausea submerged Skye. She collapsed like a puppet as her mind writhed. The Red Bloodsucker approached leisurely. Skye wanted to scream and run, yet she could do nothing.
She woke up with a gasp.
Her duvet was damp with sweat. She pushed herself up to sit, breathing steadily to ease the tension in her body. After a few moments, she reached to turn on the bedside lamp. A glass of water, wet with condensation, sat on her table next to a note and her phone. The note read, ‘Hi Skye. Sorry about Wednesday. Thanks for being a good friend, I owe you! Here’s some water. I saw your phone on the floor, so I put it on charge. - Aims’
Skye found herself smiling, though some guilt hung over her. Aimee’s eagerness to claim Skye as a friend was usually irksome, but this was a sweet gesture. Maybe I should put in more of an effort to support her. She’s just nineteen.
Skye reached to take the water, but she knocked it to the ground. The glass shattered against the tiles. Skye stared at the puddle and flecks of glass, but there was no irritation within her. Only disquiet.
The threshold between stages zero and one for Huntington’s is unclear, but increasing clumsiness is one of the early signs of its onset. Whenever She dropped a pen, forgot her keys, or fumbled over her words, a whisper itched the back of her ear: Have we left stage zero?
Shaking off that thought, she got up to clean up the water and glass. Once she’d poured herself a new one, she checked her phone. Skye had slept into the next day – it was 7 in the morning. There were also messages from Kei with what appeared to be his notes from their shared class.
But it was the top message that caught Skye’s attention. ‘Hi, it’s Inge. I’m at Blush if you’re free today. We should talk about Benny.’
As the Enforcer for Scotland (though she came from Norway) Inge applied the vampiric laws developed by the Command. Though she overtly ignored the laws pertaining to keeping adynamos numbers down and stopping the trade of blood, she did want to deal with Benny.
After pulling on some fresh clothes and tidying herself up, Skye hurried out of the apartment, breath pluming from her lips. The streets were lifeless during the morning, especially with the perpetual drizzle and darkening clouds on the horizon. It was downright depressing to hurry past the closed pubs, a bundle of sleeping homeless people, and shattered fragments of bottles.
At Blush, Skye peered through the front door’s window. She knocked. After a few moments, Armory came to let Skye in.
“Hey, you.” Armory gestured for Skye to enter. “How have you been?”
Skye stepped through. “Do you know…?”
“About Benny? Yeah. But just ‘cause I’ll be covering for you.”
“What?” Skye frowned. “No, I can do the deliveries. And what about the rule of no vampires delivering the blood?”
Armory raised a hand to abate Skye’s growing agitation. “No, you’re not getting what I mean. Just talk to Inge. She’s up on the top floor, in her office.”
Skye tempered her budding frustration. She went to climb the stairs. Well, at least now she would finally see the VIP section. It had black walls and floors, with red pops in the lounge furniture and tables. Some private booths lined the walls. It didn’t look particularly special.
Up the next flight of stairs, there was a narrow corridor with a plain door at the end. Skye knocked. “Inge?”
A shuffle of items was followed by the door opening. Inge gave Skye a buck-toothed smile. Her freckled cheeks were plumper than last Friday, and she wore balloon pants with faded yellow and purple swirls, as well as a white shirt with hacked-off sleeves.
“Come on in,” she said.
The room looked more like a lounge with a kitchenette than an office. A lilac table flanked a saffron couch, which faced two ornately patterned teal armchairs. Between the seating was a wooden coffee table, painted white with amateurish skill. The pearly walls were adorned with countless trinkets, which lacked any thematic consistency or decipherable organisation. A sink, counter, and bar fridge were on the other corner. Vibrant mugs hung above a boiling kettle on large nails that stuck out of the wall.
“Do you want tea?” Inge asked.
Skye took a seat on one of the armchairs. “No, thanks.”
Inge started to concoct her own blend using loose leaf teas. She placed the leaves in an infuser, hooked it in a mug, and then filled it with boiling water. She went to sit on the couch, her legs folded underneath herself as she held the mug close.
“You seem tense,” Inge said. “It must have been terrifying, what happened to you.”
“Armory said she’ll take over for me for Monday’s delivery?”
Inge shook her head. “No, what she means is that she’ll take over for Benny’s blood delivery. You, or some other human, will drop off Benny’s when you drop off hers, so she’ll get two boxes.”
“‘Or some other human?’” Skye repeated with narrowed eyes. ‘Some other human’ who could take her spot.
“If you want to skip the next delivery, that’s OK. We’ll make arrangements. But that’s up to you.”
“I’m not scared, if that’s what you think. I can do the job, no problem.”
Inge exhaled. “That’s not it. We are assuming that you will be delivering on Monday night. But if you were to say that you need a break, we are willing to accommodate that. Oh, same goes for your booked performance. You can let me know sometime this week if you’re still up for your Friday slot. Do you get what I’m saying?”
Skye sunk into the armchair, pursing her lips. Inge seemed sincere. Regardless of if she was, Skye didn’t want Benny to rattle her out of this job. “… OK. I still want to do the deliveries. But, yeah, I’d rather not drop off Benny’s again. Ever.”
The vampire bowed her head in agreement. “I’d like you to tell me what happened.”
Skye’s eyes lifted to the ceiling. She trained her face and voice to be as composed as possible as she recounted the events of the night. The dead battery, Benny offering to turn her, Ceana showing up. It required no more than three breaths.
Inge spoke, voice low and sombre. “Did you get the impression that he would have turned you even if you did not agree to it?”
Skye’s eyes returned to meet Inge’s. “He didn’t seem to care about what I wanted. I think, from his perspective, he was getting my consent.”
“So, he was being coercive?”
“Yes, to put it lightly.”
“Did he hurt you?”
Skye raised her wrist. “Just this.”
“OK.” Inge took a sip of the tea. Skye could smell the sweet chamomile and sharp ginger notes wafting from the mug. The vampire set the mug on the coffee table and scooted to the edge of the armchair, placing her shoeless feet on the ground. “What would you like to have happen to Benny?”
“Me?” Skye paused. “I don’t know. Just don’t have people get near him. What does vampiric law say?”
“Well, the Command’s laws are as archaic as the people sitting on its Council.” Inge puffed. “If he had actually turned you against your will, especially given that you are the familiar of another vampire… deprivation for at least five months. Attempted turning, well that’s all up to the Enforcer’s discretion. I think most would do two weeks of deprivation.”
“What’s ‘deprivation?’”
“When a vampire isn’t allowed to have any blood.” Inge gestured vaguely to her face. “Awful experience. Hard to contain them, too. And speeds up the Decay, of course. We can go a year of no blood before we die. I try to be a bit more ‘modern’ with punishments.”
“What, you have a twelve-step programme for it?” Skye asked sarcastically.
Inge’s lips temporarily quirked into a small, amused grin. “I’ll up his levies for five months. And he can no longer enter the city, and he won’t be getting any deliveries done by humans anymore.”
“Vampires pay levies?”
“In Glamis, yeah. We’ve got services, like the blood rationing system – how do you think Cathy pays you?”
Fair enough. “Does Benny even have any money?”
“Last I heard, he sells ‘shrooms or something. He forages the stuff.”
“So, you’re telling me that being a vampire means you’ll basically have to pay vampire taxes?” As much as that made practical sense, it felt ridiculously banal.
“‘Only two things are certain in life: death and taxes.’” Inge took her mug of tea. “The unlife only removes the certainty of one of those.”
Skye pulled a rueful smile. She deliberated quietly for some time. “Can I ask you about some things that Benny said?”
Inge’s thin brows creased into a faint frown. “Go ahead.”
“Benny said that he wanted to turn me, because he didn’t think I should be an adynamos.” Skye’s posture straightened. “I want to know what kind of deal I’m taking if Cathy ends up turning me. I know that she is the only person in Glamis who is allowed to turn people, but I still want an idea of what it’s like to be… well, one of the weaker vampires.”
“Ah… well, I implemented that rule just to keep the population growth in check. It’s more tied to the role of delivery person, though, as a thank you and incentive to keep quiet about it all. But it doesn’t need to by her, technically.” The blonde pushed some of her hair behind her ear, revealing a pointed tip, meaning her Façade was a little lowered. “I feel a bit icky talking about this behind Cathy’s back, though.”
“I know she’ll be biased. I want your opinion as Scotland’s Enforcer.”
Inge sighed. She set the mug back down on the coffee table. “Well, did you want to get turned by Benny?”
Skye grimaced. “No. He’s foul. But I saw how Ceana just… levelled him. I don’t want someone to be able to do that to me.”
“Do you know what Ceana did?”
Skye shook her head.
“I suspect she gave him hallucinations of extreme pain. She likes those tactile ones, especially fire.” Inge squinted. “Kind of naïve that he didn’t realise what she was doing… or maybe he did, but the panic overwhelmed him.”
“How much more powerful is Ceana than Benny? And Benny to Cathy?”
“So, the generations work a bit weirdly.” Inge hopped up to grab a notebook and pen from a shelf. She plopped back down on the armchair, opened it up, and drew a graph. A line curved downwards towards the x-axis, starting off steep and easing into a trough. She held up the image and pointed at it with the pen, the tip travelling along the line. “The blood of the First dilutes each time, right? It’s not a linear relationship, though. Initially, each generation has a big drop in power. When you get to the tenth onward, the drop is very minimal. So, like, Armory is in the twelfth generation. But she isn’t much more powerful than those who are twentieth. Meanwhile, Ceana is second, and Benny is seventh, but the difference in power is a lot starker.”
Skye followed along, leaning forward. She considered her options in Glamis. Inge would be her first choice, and not just for her early generation. Being a Sunborn wouldn’t relegate Skye to the shadows. Plus, she’d always dreamt of visiting Jamaica, and potentially even Angola, where her mother was born. She wanted to experience the sun on her skin in both countries. “And you’re fourth?”
Inge shut the notebook and set it on her lap. Her fingers fiddled with the pen. “Yes. But, in case you were wondering, I don’t turn people.”
Skye straightened up. “Why?”
“Never have and never will,” was all Inge said.
Skye eyed Inge. The Sunborn always struck Skye as forthcoming, perhaps too much so. Yet she was being evasive, now.
Inge continued, “You should know that a lot of early generation vampires usually don’t turn their familiars, by the way.”
“What? Why?”
“They tend to be older, so usually they’re a bit more feudal about social mobility.” Inge tilted her head in thought. “The Command has a law that you got to tell a familiar after five years if they won’t be turned. Most just end the agreement when that time comes, no matter how the familiar performed. Cathy doesn’t ever do that, though.”
Skye’s lips curled back. “That’s horrid of them.”
“It is.”
“Does Ceana treat her familiars that way?”
Inge blinked thrice. “Wait, you’d consider Ceana?”
Skye shrugged. If she’d consider me. “I’m just curious.”
“Well, she doesn’t have familiars. She isn’t as elitist about turning as most, but she is also selective in her own way.” Inge tapped the pen on her kneecap. “I travelled with her for a few years, but never quite understood her philosophy. Something about vampirism being a weapon for justice. I do know that nearly everyone she turned couldn’t handle the power. Enchanters with no self-control are particularly scary, so they became too dangerous. The Command deals with cases like that. As I understand it, Ceana had to help the Command execute them.”
Skye’s eyes widened with horror. “That’s… a lot.”
“Mhm.” Inge leaned back into the couch. “Hey, you don’t want someone to be able to do to you what Ceana did to Benny, right? That’s your concern?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, think on this: do you want to be able to do what Ceana did?” Skye’s expression must have shown her confusion because Inge quickly added, “Think of it like this: do you want to have a machine gun in your home? Even if you never use it, it can mess up a person to have that power within their reach. Most second generation vampires are dead precisely because they couldn’t manage their power. You can get reckless, dumb, megalomaniacal… and then the Command comes in to kill you, because you’re causing trouble for everyone else.”
Skye exhaled in defeat, sinking into her seat. She stared ahead at the coffee table.
Inge took her tea again. “This is just stuff to think about. You got time.”
Skye looked down to her hands, rubbing her fingers together. Cathy would only turn her after at least five years. She hoped that her body would stay healthy until then, that the coin toss would land in her favour.
Maybe I should tell Cathy about why I’m doing this, so she can turn me sooner. I first need to decide if I want to be turned by her, though.
But Inge didn’t need to know all this.
Skye met the vampire’s gaze. “You won’t tell Cathy about this talk?”
“No. That’s on you to bring up with her.” Inge pointed the pen at Skye. “When you’re ready, you should discuss it with her.”
Skye dipped her head. “Alright. That’s fair.” She stood. “Thanks, Inge. For the information, and for dealing with Benny.”
Inge’s expression lightened. “I’m just glad you’re OK. You take care.”