Sayre woke to a laugh. It filled the room, echoing about the walls and high-ceiling—and they were high, he could tell that much—with a haunting, distant tin that made his spine curl with unease. And, it did. Until a grimace squawked out of this twisted and bloodied mouth. Sayre pulled in a deep breath; it was gasping. His eyes eased open. His hands, cold and wet, streaked over this torso to the two massive, gaping holes in his chest. Another breath, another horrible sensation of cold. He didn’t even know he could feel this cold anymore.

With his head against the hard, stone floor of the church, he blinked and stared at the ceiling. To its crooked, branching rafters, like a sulking, pius canopy, and the shattered, spiking light of the moon.

It was still night.

He must not have been unconscious for that long, or else the sun would have had him. Of all the things humans speculated about his kind, that one had always been correct. The sun: glorious, radiant, and furious. Sayre blinked and groaned. He tried to twist from his back, but the ache was too much. When he turned his head, the puddle of blood from the witch’s flask (a thing torn to shreds) remained untouched beside him. A lake of life, waiting for him. Wasting. And beside it, a dead pigeon.

Sayre’s brows twisted. Before he could ask, the laugh returned—and slipping into focus from thin air: a smile, a set of glowing eyes, a body.

“Oh, shit, so you’re not dead!” it said. The body—a young boy with knee-socks, shorts, suspenders, a little jacket, and some side-leading hat—crouched, hands on its knees, head twisted to the side. It laughed again.

Sayre groaned. A ghost. He had a dozen questions, but none of them could come out before the spectral boy motioned for the dead pigeon.

“Don’t worry. It’s freshly dead. I don’t got much, but I do still have me arm,” he said and pretended to throw a ball.

A ghost that could interact with the world, Sayre thought as he inched fingers for the pigeon, great.

Sayre brought the dead bird to his face and gagged on the smell. He would smell the death-touched magic around it. The scent of something, like him, had killed this creature. He could also smell the life within—a lingering, fading, glow of something golden. Like ale. Like honey. Like—

Desperate, Sayre bore his fangs into the bird and drank. The little thing fed him, but it was comparable to a shot when he needed a cauldron. Still, the wheezing in his chest began to subside. The cold shunted away. His body began to stitch itself together, and when he no longer felt outside-air against his lungs, he sat up to an elbow and jerked.

“You’re weird!” The ghostly child poked a finger at his shoulder, but it went through him.

“What are you doing in here?” Sayre grumbled.

“I live here.”

“I live here,” he corrected.

“No,” the ghost giggled and shook his head, “I live here, too!”

“I’ve never seen you.”

“I’m not usually awake when you are, but I heard you stumblin’ in, and all, and I thought to meself, might as well see what all the commotion is about, and uh…well…here you are!”

Sayre lifted the witch’s flask and held it over his tilted back head. Blood dripped from the sharpened edges across his lips, on his tongue, down the side of his neck. He savored every drop, as did his body which shuddered and crackled with a newfound energy. The self-stitching wounds on his chest healed faster.

“So, uh,” the ghost boy started, looking over Sayre, the puddle of blood, and the wounds, “met yourself with pointed-end of someone’s hello, eh?”

He didn’t give the ghost-boy a reply. Instead he lifted a hand to the nearest broken pew and eased himself to his feet. His bloodied hand adjusted the lay of his woolen frock coat, his suit, his tie, his gelled ruddy-brown hair. With a twist (and a groan), Sayre looked for his hat.

“You ain’t real talkative, are you? That’s fine, Ma always said I talked enough to fill a congregation!” Laughter filled the empty, decaying church. The ghost boy’s mother was correct. “What’re ya looking for?” he asked. Well, he appeared before he asked.

“Nothing.”

“So, we’re staring at the floor, for…?” Sayre sent a human sapphire eye to the ghost boy, but the spectral child laughed. “I like you,” he said, “you’re funny.”

Sayre limped to the puddle of blood on the floor. With a wave of his hand over it, it rippled and peaked. A warbling, liquescent mountain range of red reached for his palm. He curled his fingers and guided it into the flask, but whatever couldn’t fit before leaking, he dropped on his tongue and swallowed.

“Gross…that was on the floor.”

Sayre again said nothing. He didn’t even look at the boy. Instead, he marched his way to the belfry, and climbed, and climbed, and slipped into his room—a dark, dark room with mis-matched furniture, a mattress on the floor covered in heavy looking blankets, and piles, and piles, and piles, and piles of books. There was a single window of stained glass, but it was blocked by a heavy curtain. To the armoire in the corner, he pulled out newer clothes. His old he tossed to a corner. The woolen jacket he lifted with more care and hung on a rack with a collection of other hats and coats. A finger poked through the new holes and he let out a sigh.

“You know, I thought you’d be in a coffin, or something. Or the basement.” The ghost-boy peeked around the door to the room, then floated himself in. He pretended to scale the books, hopping from one peak to the next, as if he were jumping across stones that stretched a creek. “Shouldn’t you?”

Sayre hung his coat and switched his clothes. He slipped into his house-wear, then slumped to his bed. The only words in his throat a “Hm,” of a grunt. Once under the covers, he laid his head on the pillow and willed himself to sleep.

“You know, the sun’s not gonna come up for a little bit longer. Couple hours, I think. You were lucky you didn’t sleep all the way through. I dunno what would’a killed you first: the sun, or those two—”

“What do you want?!” snapped Sayre, as he sat up on his elbow.

The ghostly boy was already there, hovering. “Oh!” he said and fixed his spectral hat on his spectral head, “Oh, nothing. I guess…just wanted to say, hi.”

“And now you have.”

“Yeah… So, what’s your name?”

“If I tell you my name, will you leave me alone?”

“Probably not, but you should tell me anyway, or I’ll think of something to call you. I’m really good at it. Ma said—”

“Tell you mine, before I’ve heard yours? Have you no manners?” Sayre said, hoping he could get the boy to leave, and so he could just lie in bed and sleep. Dear Blood! He just wanted to sleep and heal.

“My friends called me: Lark, ya know, on account of how chatty—”

“And your mother called you…”

“Her special angel boy.”

Sayre groaned and rubbed his fingers into his forehead. The headache dug its talons into his brain again, slowly at first, before sinking deeper and deeper. “We are not friends, Lark. I would like to sleep. Leave.”

“What, no please?”

He could feel his eyes turn. A tingling heat that swept across them. “Leave,” Sayre growled with the echoing, booming voice of an Old One.

Lark blinked, and stared, then he laughed. “That’s so cool! Can you do that all the time?!”

Sayre fell back to his pillow, palms digging into his eyes.

“Listen, Mister Fangs, Mister, uh, Night. Yeah, Mr. Night, I’ll keep an eye out. I’m not affected by the sun. I’ll make sure no one bothers you. A’right?”

“…Why? Why would you do that?”

Lark pulled his hat off his translucent head. Fingers wrung it. His little shoulder shrugged. “I don’t know. I like ya. You’re funny, and if I’m being honest, you’re a bit of a mess, and uh…I dunno. Been awhile since I’ve had company…” Sayre’s palms eased off his eyes. He watched Lark shrug again. “No one comes to the creepy old church. No one wants to play. No one…can see me.”

“I see you perfectly fine.”

“Now. You didn’t see me before.” Lark affixed his hat. “Don’t worry about it, Mister Night. You’ll be no fun to me if you’re dead. Rest up, I’ve got the door.” The ghostly boy turned and floated away.

Sayre huffed. “It’s…Sayre.”

Lark turned, a perfect pirouette. “What?”

“My name,” he said, “it’s Sayre.”

“That’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard!” Lark laughed and threw a hand. “G’night, Mr. Night.” Lark turned to leave, but angled back with a poorly-restrained laugh. “Don’t let…the bed bugs bite!” The laugh busted out of him, and echoed through the room, down the stairs and into the rest of the church, before finally, there was silence.

Darkness, and silence.

Sayre eased himself under the covers.

Things had certainly taken a turn for the more…excitable over the last couple weeks. Ever since he first ran into that witch, the one who still didn’t have a name. Even though he passed her shop and saw the sign, her name was nowhere to be found. Even if he eavesdropped on conversations about it, about her, there was still no name. It was as if it was written out of existence. As if she had spelled the world never to speak it aloud.

Sayre closed his eyes to the darkness.

It wasn’t for long. Behind his eyelids, there was him stalking down cobble-stone streets. His hand that flitted a wrist and sent a body tumbling into the alley way, where he would appear suddenly, and he would force the body against the wall, his fangs bare, aching, and his finger would ease back the collar, and he would pierce the sink, and drink, and drink, and feel the life move from their body, and into his, and his soul would feel alive, even though he knew it was dead and gone, and his body would tingle with newness, with a buzz of electric crackling energy, and he left unsatiated, and wanton, and lustful, and aching, and yearning, and bored still. He would drop the body to the ground, uncaring. His thumb would wipe blood from his lips and he would turn—but tonight, he found another person stalking in the shadows. She waltzed over with a sway and bone-saw in her hands. A free hand lifted her hem high, over her laced boots, over her stocking ribbon which held it down just below her knee, and to her thigh (bare skin thigh), and she pressed the heel of her boot into the body. Against the chest. Against the lungs. It pushed out the last of the breath, and from it, something blue and silvery wafted upwards, like smoke, and curled, and danced into her as she inhaled it. She inhaled so deeply, her eyes closed, and when she opened them, they were blaring golden.

Bright.

Bright.

Hot.

Golden, sunshine.

Burning.

…Burning…

Burning!

Sayre woke from his dream to heat. To a broken window, smashed. Glass across the floor in various hues, sparkling and dazzling in the sun. To the giant block of sunshine on the bed, on the covers, on him.

He hissed and bolted for the only corner in the room with shadow. He forced himself small, to even his toes curled inward, away, away from the dancing sun, hot and furious, that bathed his entire room. Sayre stayed in that corner, awake and furious, until at last the sun eased away, and he could slip into a cold, darkened shadow.

He dressed without a word. He slipped on his ruined, bloodied woolen frock coat, and he eased into the night.

His eyes black and red, hungry and vengeful.

Someone tried to kill him twice in one day. Someone knew where he walked. Someone knew where he slept.

There was no doubt in his mind.

If there was one thing that eased the boredom, if there was one thing that made his dead, blackened heart pulse, it was a well-awaited, well-stalked hunt.

Tonight, he would feast.

On blood.

On revenge.

On fun.