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It’s not the first time Pearl thinks about Cleo’s mother, and it probably won’t be the last time either.
Cleo had confessed to her one night, the night after she had dropped the bombshell that had changed both of their lives.
My mother was a vampire, she had whispered into the darkness that separated their beds. I was always scared of becoming her. Something wild. Violent, I guess.
Pearl knows it’s not fair, but she still laughs humourlessly at the memory. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Cleo.
She’s angry. Isn’t she allowed to be angry? Sitting atop the roof of the house she had built for them —for her—she was angry.
Hmm, no. Not angry. As much as Pearl wants to ignore it, she knows that isn’t what’s twisting in her stomach tonight.
Pearl is jealous.
Rotten from the inside out with sick, sick jealousy.
She sighs, watching the town beneath her move through the night like usual. She can see Cleo’s white hair among the chickens, the glint of the glass bottles they’re holding shining in the moonlight. They raise their hand, and Pearl looks away sharply. Blood doesn’t bother her, especially not now, but she didn’t want to see the way Cleo’s fingers ran red. Not her Cleo.
She imagines a little Cleo for a moment, watching her mother suck her carefully raised cattle dry. Would she have cried, knowing the life she had sculpted with her own hands was over? Or was she like the woman Cleo was now? Indifferent to the suffering of the creatures beneath her hands?
How long before Cleo looked at her like their livestock?
The way that Cleo had started to treat her new… condition… Pearl knows them better than they think she does. She knows that Cleo doesn’t want to be more powerful, like they’re saying. She knows they don’t want to use their powers to protect Oakhurst.
She thinks Cleo wants it to save her.
She’s been watching her, for as long as she can in between the chaos of what life here has turned out to be. Ever since she faded into something else, something that really was a shadow of her former self, Pearl has been keeping a close eye on her.
She can see it even now, in the way Cleo grins as she drains her chickens dry. She doesn’t even know she’s changing, Pearl thinks. She doesn’t even know.
And Cleo should know all about this. Pearl doesn’t know much about vampires, and she’ll be the first to tell anyone that asks that fact. And maybe she’s wrong, maybe all the blood is making Cleo feel normal again. Less like the desperate animal Pearl had comforted in the woods with Martyn. But something deep in her gut tells her that she’s right.
Cleo isn’t getting better. They aren’t feeling normal. They’re… changing.
Cleo should know all about this. She should know, after growing up with her mother, that this isn’t something she can be saved from like this. Does she know what too much blood does to a vampire?
Cleo had told her something, a few days ago. Vampirism brings out the traits you push down, she had said. It pulls up everything bubbling under the surface.
If that was true, then maybe Cleo had always been like this. Maybe watching their mother drain livestock, or God forbid people, had hardened something in them that was just beginning to spread its cold roots through them.
They might be changing, or they might just be showing their true self, but they’re also leaving. Pearl watches as Cleo leaves the chicken pen, tucking the last of their bottles into a bag. They’re heading towards the gate, and the knot of jealousy begins to squirm.
She’s probably going to see Drift.
Pearl isn’t stupid. She’s seen the way Cleo’s taken Drift under her wing (more literally than she would like, probably) and since Drift had moved into the castle, Cleo was gone more and more frequently. It isn’t hard to put two and two together.
Pearl draws her knees to her chest, pulling a vial of water out of her pocket. She swirls it, letting the sparks of her power ripple through the glass and into the liquid within.
This is the most important substance in the entire town. Pearl studies the holy water under the moonlight. There’s nothing different about it, not visibly, but Pearl knows she holds the most powerful weapon against the vampires in her hands.
Against Cleo.
Pearl looks back up at where Cleo used to be, but she’s gone by now. The town falls into slumber with her absence—Cleo is the only nightwalker within the walls, at least as far as Pearl knows. Already it feels emptier with her gone.
Does Cleo resent her now? There’s a loud, loud part of Pearl that thinks that’s true. The idea had been lingering in the back of her mind ever since Cleo had told her they were a vampire, but it had only grown bigger every day that passed. Especially since Drift got turned. Since Cleo started to leave her behind.
She always left you behind. Idiot.
There is some part of Cleo that hates Pearl. Hates her for getting lost all the time, for running off and getting herself hurt. For not going with them that day, for not saving them in that bloody castle. For surviving every stupid blunder when it only took one mistake to kill them. Pearl knows it’s true. She feels it in her bones.
And even as she thinks on this truth, she still worries that tonight might be the night that Cleo doesn’t come back. She feels sickened by the thought, but she can’t figure out whether the idea of losing Cleo is what turns her stomach, or the very act of missing her itself. She doesn’t want to care for her, but she knows that there is nothing better she can be than a widow, even if her beloved’s corpse is running off with someone else.
Someone here has to care for Cleo. Pearl can’t bear the thought of Cleo deciding to come home and finding the entire town drained of any good will. She would be the vampire’s home, just as much as Oakhurst was.
Oakhurst isn’t her home. She hates it here just as much as she hates you.
Pearl is still clutching the holy water between her fingers. She ought to give it to the doctor, let him take it to his stash and hide it away.
She drinks it all in one go. It burns on the way down, the same way water from deep in the ground sets your mouth on edge with iron-tasting bubbles. She hopes it will trickle all the way down into her stomach and wash away the disgusting creature that has taken root in there.
She should have known better than to love a monster. Cleo was wrong for hiding that from her, even if she was the first person to be told their secret. Although, how much of their new bloodlust was from their affliction, and how much had been bubbling under the surface. Pearl remembers the way Cleo cleared out their house with a sword in hand, waving it at the other townsfolk with a grin on her face. She had felt so safe. So at home.
Cleo was wrong for being a monster, but Pearl was sick for liking it.
She supposes it was always going to end up this way. It had always seemed too good to be true. Everything goes bad eventually. Sometimes you wake up the hunter, sometimes you wake up the rabbit. That’s just the way life is.
Pearl closes her eyes, imagining where Cleo would be right now. She could barely remember what the castle looked like now, her mind piecing together long wood tables and dark stone walls. She imagines Cleo, leaning against a chair and drinking from a goblet like an old painting. Drift, face a blur of half-remembered features, resting her head against Cleo’s shoulder.
Imagining the blood trickling down Cleo’s throat makes Pearl gag, for more reasons than one. She knows the feeling, the taste, the texture. And she knows Cleo does too. Not just the taste of chicken, or cow.
Cleo is too far gone now.
And what does that make me?
Deep down, Pearl hopes Drift is enough to make Cleo happy. That these nights of sneaking up to the castle are worth it. Maybe, that it’s making Cleo smile again. Not the fanged snarl that’s begun to replace every mirth-filled grin on her face, but the real one that had made Pearl fall i- like her in the first place.
If that is true, then she can probably even get past the fact it isn’t her doing those things.
She stretches, stands to her feet on the roof. If she squints, really squints off into the distance, she can see the outline of the castle sitting on top of the hill. The sight makes her stomach turn.
If she squints even harder, she’s certain she can see the outline of two bats, flying off towards the lake.
Let her be happy, Pearl. It’s not her fault you will never be.