What am I? What a stupid question.

My tongue was too dry to say so. I swallowed. Had my mouth always tasted like sand?

"I'm Kate," I said weakly. Nothing was making sense. Maybe I was losing it. Maybe Dane and I had entered some shared psychosis. Or he was playing some elaborate prank at my expense.

The breath of his dark laughter had no humor. In the muted streetlight that filtered through the windows, his canines seemed particularly sharp. Fang-like. I shook my head. This was impossible.

"I think we've established that," he whispered. There was no room for a joke, for a prank, for anything other than complete and deadly conviction in his voice. I could see my reflection—the confusion, the fear—in his dilated pupils. The black almost erasing the ring of blue. "But what are you, Kate? Hunter? Wicca? Half-breed?"

I coughed. "Doctor?"

The answer gave him pause.

Dane sat back in his seat. Black returned to blue.

"Doctor?" he asked, incredulous. His brow furrowed. The dangerous promise in his voice battled against processing the absolute stupidity of my answer.

"Yeah," I said. In the tautness between us, I couldn't stop talking. "I'm a resident. Or at least I was one. I'm not working right now. I'm on a sort of vacation."

The silence was almost laughably uncomfortable. Truth settled like a stone.

This wasn't a prank. And I wasn't crazy. Somehow, Dane—the catfished man bun who worked in finance—was something that shouldn't exist. Somehow, this was real.

And somehow, strangely, that made it easier to process.

It didn't matter that my memories were splintered or my sympathetic nervous system was constantly short-circuiting, I could deal with a monster sitting across from me. I could deal with something tangible.

"So you're a vampire." The word sounded asinine as it fell out of my mouth, but my voice didn't waver. "What's that like?"

Dane sat back in his seat, shoulders robbed of that coiled tension. The hard angles in his face smoothed in the heavy surprise. I guessed that my questions, as ridiculous as they were, made it difficult to maintain that predatory guardedness.

His voice was soft, disbelieving. "You're human?"

"Pretty sure," I said with a shrug. I couldn't speak for my dad—he hadn't stuck around—but my maternal relatives had never shown any hint of being anything other than normal, functioning humans. A ghost of sage tickled my mind. Maybe not normal in the nuclear-American-family sense, but they were certainly human by all biologic definitions. "My mom is at least."

Dane scoffed in amazed laughter. He covered his mouth with his hand and paused to stare at me. Then laughed again. Shaking his head, he pulled the tie holding his bun in place. His hair fell in golden, shoulder-length waves. I might have expected the look to soften his features, but it sharpened him into something that was both brutal and disturbingly attractive. A spark of wild energy shot through me. Said malfunctioning nervous system liked the way he looked.

"You're taking all of this remarkably well," he said, running a hand through his freed hair. For a moment, too focused on watching his fingers, I forgot how my mouth worked. "For a human."

After processing the comment, I feigned nonchalance. "Working a couple night shifts gives you a different threshold for dealing with things that are batshit crazy."

It wasn't untrue. I'd seen patients with acute psychosis try to escape the hospital through the ceiling and people who swore that they definitely fell onto phallic shaped objects... and patients with unbeating hearts speak and think during active chest compressions, patients walk away from accidents that should have destroyed them, people survive unsurvivable odds... we called them outliers and miracles and lucky. Maybe I was desensitized to things I couldn't always understand, or maybe my brain was just broken.

Regardless, I was curious.

And, as it turned out, Dane was too.

"How did you know I was at the gallery?" he asked.

"I didn't."

He frowned with such disbelief that I couldn't stop a breath of laughter from escaping my chest. I was sitting in the back of a tinted-out car, en route to a second and unknown location, with a vampire who was accusing me of stalking of him. Admittedly, I'd never read a medical textbook that provided the exact technique for handling this sort of situation, but I assumed humor was probably the healthiest coping option.

"I swear!" I said, raising my hands. "How would I have known you where there?"

Dane raised an eyebrow. "I texted you."

I'd assumed the pinging from my phone had been Anna, but as I checked my unread texts, in addition to her replies, a flurry were from an unknown number. They were innocuous enough. A very wordy, 'Hey it's Dane...What are you up to tonight? I'm at an event downtown until 10 if you're free later.'

"You didn't mention the gallery." I frowned. And then realized that Dane was an arrogant bastard. "Did you think I've been crawling through downtown looking for you?"

With a guilty cough, Dane ran his hand through his hair again. And then it made sense. Kind of. This gorgeous vampire-thing had been hoping that I was doing exactly that. I couldn't help it: my lips curved. "Were you booty texting me?"

"I—" He paused. Dane didn't blush—I wondered if that was physically possible—but he looked away with the tiniest flash of embarrassment in his eyes. "Maybe."

"Do you have follow up sex with all your meals?" I asked, wry. And then I blinked. It had happened so slowly, so easily, but I realized that it was the old-Kate speaking through my mouth. Unshakable. Fearless. Funny. The warm rush of confidence made it easy to take pity on the flustered vampire. "I've been helping Anna with her catering company. Beauty and the Beet, remember? She wanted photos of the gallery for a dinner she's doing."

The car made another turn. In the pause, that event, its bizarre menu, became an itch in my mind. Why was Dane at the gallery? Why were the requested foods so rich in iron? I hadn't paid close attention to the crowd beyond its threshold, but they'd been just as glamorous and inhumanly attractive as the blond creature across from me.

"Is that a—" It still felt ridiculous to say out loud. "—vampire gallery?"

Dane shrugged. "It's owned by a vampire," he said, "but it's not a vampire gallery. It features human artists too. And you don't need to say 'vampire' like it's a dirty word."

I bristled a little. "I'm not saying it like it's dirty word."

The slant of his eyebrow mocked me.

"I'm not!" I protested. "If anything, I think you should give me more credit for how well I'm handling this situation. You've barely explained anything."

"I did give you credit."

"Not enough."

At that, Dane smiled. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. The blue of his eyes were a shade darker—not the blacked out bath-salts-going-to-bite-me-in-a-bistro-courtyard darker—but something decidedly intimate. I flushed. "Dr. Bishop," he purred. "You're doing a remarkable job."

"Thank you," I said automatically. "And as for an explanation?"

"What questions can I answer for you?"

My brain blanked. I blurted something out before my thoughts could catch up with my tongue.

"Do you really work in finance?"

Dane laughed. My stomach fluttered in a shower of warm butterflies.

"I have my finger in a lot of pots, but yes, I currently work in finance and industry. Namely investing in bioengineering and renewable energy."

"An environmentalist vampire?" I laughed. It caught me by surprise.

"It's not funny," Dane said with the barest hint of an annoyed growl. The skin puckered between his eyebrows and his tone deepened with steady conviction. "Vampires are the most affected by the irresponsible consumption and casual disregard of the planet. We're the ones who inherit this mess."

"Still, that seems a little tame for a vampire, doesn't it?"

I didn't mention that a blond man bun also countered the stereotype.

"And what do you know about vampires?"

Nothing really. A handful of myths and stories and movies.

"You drink blood," I said.

Dane rolled his eyes. "Yes."

And he'd drank my blood. A flare of anxiety squeezed my heart.

"Am I going to turn into a vampire?"

The immediate, "No," calmed me. I studied him more closely. His hair was perfect and golden, his skin fair. Guessing age was a bit of a challenge in Los Angeles: years of sun tans and plastic surgeries and Botox shifted faces into the same smooth, ageless perfection.

"How old are you?"

He shrugged.

"You just whined about inheriting the planet, Dane. Don't be coy about your age."

Dane watched me for a moment, as if deciding whether or not he would answer truthfully. He sighed. "I was born around the year eight-hundred. In Scandinavia."

The number made me blink. "That means you're—"

"Over twelve hundred years old, yes."

"—old," I finished.

Dane's beard twitched.

"Are you immortal?"

"We can be destroyed, but largely, yes: vampires are immortal." He paused and shifted closer towards me. Our knees were an inch a part. With precise gentleness, Dane placed my hand against his chest. His skin was cool, but beneath it, I could feel the faint flutter of a pulse. I gaped, and moved my hand to his throat, to the pulse that lived there. "But we're not quite the undead."

"You have a heartbeat!"

He nodded as I, rather reluctantly, moved my hand away and he replaced the space between us. "As far as we can tell, we still need to circulate blood. We don't seem to produce any hemoglobin of our own, hence our diet. We have scientists who believe our genetic material is resistant to degradation. Unfortunately, our cells and proteins do not survive long in vitro and it limits—"

My stunned expression stopped him. Admittedly, I'd never been more interested in a lecture on biology, but I couldn't get passed the idea of vampires in lab coats and goggles. My lips curled.

"Vampire scientists?"

Dane shot me a dry look and ignored the humor in my voice. I continued.

"Okay, so sunlight?"

"Ultraviolet light is very harmful to us. Deadly, even."

"Wooden stakes? Holy water? Garlic?"

If Dane was phased by theme of my questions—namely things that, according to myth and legend, destroyed vampires—he didn't show it.

"We're a fair bit hardier and heal much faster than humans, but any well placed strike to the heart or head will destroy us. Holy water is wet and garlic is pungent."

This was ridiculous and amazing and surreal. I slumped back into my seat.

"You could still be lying," I said slowly. "Or this could all be a dream. Or a psychotic break."

He seemed to expect the comment, if I was judging correctly by hint of smug pleasure in his closed-mouth smile. "Ah, Kate, you were doing so well."

It bristled my pride.

"Prove it then." My challenge was meaningless, ultimately. He couldn't prove that I wasn't hallucinating or dreaming anymore that I could prove he'd bitten me, anymore that I could prove I'd gone to that shipyard. Even so, I was curious.

Dane frowned a moment.

"You want me to prove that I'm a vampire?"

I nodded. If this was delusion, I might as well lean into it.

His smile was a touch wicked, a touch disbelieving. "What would convince you?"

"Can you turn into a bat?" I asked, matching his disbelief with sarcasm.

Dane laughed dryly. He stilled a moment, eyes gently closed. Between the thumping of my heart, he was a statue. I wasn't sure he even breathed.

He didn't jump at me or scream 'boo' or 'gotcha' or, sadly, turn into a bat. When he opened his eyes, the blue had returned to the inky black that stretched through his irises, seeped into his sclera. It made his face sharper. Angles and edges focused on a deadly hunt. His teeth flashed: canines pointed and wicked. My pulse quickened. My mouth dried. As by some buried instinct, every inch of my body screamed in adrenaline-laced panic. He was a predator. Dangerous. A monster.

Before I could blink or even look at the door handle or contrive some ill-fated flight, Dane was braced over me, his head dipped to my neck.

I couldn't breathe.

Save for the frantic hammering of my heart, I was frozen.

Dane pressed his lips to the hollow of my neck. His breath left a trail of gooseflesh.

"Any more questions?"

Hundreds. Millions. All with answers too impossible to guess. Why did vampires live in secret? Hunters and wicca and half-breeds...was there an entire hidden world within the mundane routines of housewives and hipsters? I could think of all the historical questions I wanted to ask. What had those great events been like? He'd have lived through the colonization of the world, the industrial revolution, the Renaissance, the Space Race...what might a thousand years of life feel like? How many languages did he speak? Was it lonely? Did he get bored? And nothing at all. With Dane's mouth still close to my skin, my brain felt fuzzy and slow. With each of the featherlight touches of his lips, the adrenaline faded into a different buzz altogether.

I blamed whatever cologne he was wearing. It was like bottled ocean and captured wind. And amber. Did vampires wear cologne? Or was this some deadly pheromone evolved to trap idiotic prey? My idiotic brain blurted out the first words it was able to string together. A dangerous, idiotic question to the predator at my throat.

"What do I taste like?"

Dane paused. His breathed hitched before he returned his lips to my skin for each pause.

"Like starlight, the summer sea, a winter storm...you taste like my memories."

When he pulled away, his eyes were blue. His canines sharp, but not long. There was something still feral in his gaze, but he no longer looked like he might devour me whole. Or at least, not in the literal sense. This balancing act between likely-meal and sexual fantasy was making me dizzy. I took a steadying breath before answering.

"You see how that's weird, don't you?"

His lips curved a fraction as the car rolled to a stop. Then the smile died with a flinty edge in his eyes. That creeping tendril of fear uncoiled in my chest.

"You want to know everything?"

Through the dark windows, I could tell we'd pulled into an underground garage. A rarity in earthquake-prone Southern California. It was empty, save for an elevator to the unknown. I wanted to know if I was dreaming or delusional. I wanted to know what was real.

"Yes."

"Then let's go."

The driver opened the door and offered a hand. His skin was the same cool, unblemished marble as Dane's. His smile had the same sharp canines.

Dane exited, and his arm immediately fell around my waist. He pulled me an inch closer to him. Warning or protection, I couldn't decide. It didn't matter. My determination to pursue this ridiculous true was fading into anxiety. Even in the stale air of the underground garage, my brain had gained enough distance from Dane's intoxicating presence to finally understand the chilly danger of the situation.

If this was real, if I wasn't still intubated in an intensive care unit, if I wasn't hallucinating... if there was a secret world of vampires that lived among humans, then I now knew that secret. I had wasted our trip with a flurry of nonsense queries. Christ, I'd asked if he could turn into a bat. My thoughts hummed with simmering dread.

Namely, the question I should have asked much sooner.

"Where are you taking me?"

And the question I dared not voice.

What's going to happen to me?

Dieselpunk? Airships?? Looking for your next ONC read??? 

Check out Thistle in the Sky by SmokeAndOranges

Farah knows things are amiss when the zeppelin Ariomma finds another airship wrecked and abandoned in the middle of the sky. Towing it to safety promises rewards, but it's not long before the crew's luck takes a turn for the worse. Farah's crewmates start to disappear one by one. With mutiny brewing on all sides, she must distinguish allies from enemies in order to save herself and her brother as whatever emptied the first ship turns its attention on the Ariomma instead.