Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

It’s only a few blocks back to her dorm, but Alice struggles, feeling dazed and faint. She realizes she’s on the wrong side of the entrance to the dorm and tells Colin that she needs to go lie down, but he pins her against a tree and starts to kiss her against her will. Alice bites his lip until she draws blood then blacks out, coming back to consciousness in the dorm shower, fully dressed and covered in blood that she knows isn’t hers. She can’t remember how she got there.

She strips her clothes off and leaves them in a wet pile on the floor, then she scrubs herself. She has to steal a towel left hanging in the bathroom. She looks in the mirror and sees herself crying blood. She realizes that she’s not breathing, and her heart isn’t beating. She’s dead, but she’s conscious. She has flashes of memories of biting Colin’s neck and drinking his blood. She sneaks back to her room and goes through the last 24 hours in her mind. She checks her body for any scars or wounds, but she can’t find any. She cuts herself and she bleeds, but the blood is too dark, and her wound immediately closes. She knows logically that vampires aren’t real, but she’s exhibiting all the signs of being a vampire. She looks at Lottie’s note and begins to search the student directory.

It’s not yet dawn, but Sabine can see everything. When the sun rises, she feels ill and hungry. She tries to eat some fruit, but her body rejects it. Sabine finds a barn and hides from the sun beneath an old blanket. She sleeps until she’s woken by a man, who asks her if she’s hurt. She asks him where his wife is, if he’s a good husband, if his wife loves him. He says that his wife does what she’s told. Sabine bites his neck and drinks his blood; the man struggles, even piercing Sabine’s side with a pitchfork, but he dies anyway. Sabine’s side heals, and she sits beside the dead man to wait for sundown, understanding that the sun is what makes her sick. Sabine approaches the man’s house to look for his wife, but she cannot cross the threshold. She hears the wife calling for her husband, and the woman asks where Sabine came from. She claims she was robbed, and she offers the woman her ruby necklace in exchange for her help.

Sabine ambles down Sailors’ Row toward a set of stairs where sex workers gather to wait for potential clients. It’s been 10 years since she stopped being María and became Sabine and 10 years since she ate or drank anything but blood. She doesn’t miss her old life, but she occasionally yearns for the taste of fruit. She finds two sex workers sitting on the stairs. The older woman tells Sabine that this is their area, and she must leave, but Sabine says she seeks to engage their services. The older woman responds with disgust, but the younger woman agrees. Sabine leads the younger woman down a dark alley, backs her against a wall, tells her not to be afraid, and bites her neck. As the woman struggles, Sabine drinks until the woman dies, and Sabine feels her own heartbeat, albeit briefly. Sabine lets the woman’s body drop before stealing her pendant. Because Sabine can only steal the heartbeats of her victims temporarily, she also steals trophies from them.

Sabine returns to the stairs, but the older woman is gone. She decides to walk back to the house she’s currently staying in, but she notices three men walking in the street, seemingly intoxicated. She follows them down an alley, and when one man stops to urinate, one of the other men, suddenly completely sober, attacks the third man, biting his neck and drinking his blood. The urinating man realizes the danger and tries to leave, but a doll-like woman appears from the shadows and drinks his blood. Sabine watches with fascination, as she’s never seen another vampire. When the couple, Hector and Renata, finish with the men, Renata approaches Sabine and asks Hector if they can keep her, as Renata can feel Sabine’s longing. Sabine often wonders if she shouldn’t have killed the widow, if she left something behind in the apothecary. Hector says no, but Renata kisses Sabine before they leave, and she crooks her finger at Sabine to follow them.

Sabine follows Hector and Renata onto a boat in Seville’s harbor. Hector and Renata killed all the sailors, so they don’t need to be invited in. In the ship’s cabin, Hector and Renata can hear Sabine’s thoughts. She’s shocked because she didn’t know that was possible. Hector asks why her maker didn’t teach her how to read thoughts; Sabine feels shame, as she knows killing the widow was wrong. She says she has always been alone, and Hector replies, “Those grown in the midnight soil are never alone” (149). When Sabine asks about the midnight soil, Hector recites an old poem: “Bury my bones in the midnight soil…Plant them shallow and water them deep. And in my place will grow a feral rose” (149). Though there are other names for them (vampire, night walker, blood drinker, etc.), Hector explains that they are roses. Since Sabine has no maker, Hector and Renata offer for Sabine to stay with them and learn from them, and Sabine happily agrees, They prepare to sail away from Seville, as Hector explains it’s crucial to “be found ahead of [their] corpses, and never in their wake” (151).

They sail around for a month, going ashore to feed or waving a white flag to lure ships over to them to glut themselves on the crews. When they grow tired of the water, they move to land and hunt. Sabine collects more tokens from her victims, and she feels herself grow looser and more relaxed in Hector and Renata’s company. They show Sabine affection, and she relishes it, even when Hector calls Renata his petal and Sabine his thorn. Sabine views it as a compliment.

Hector rifles through the shelves of the large house in search of a book he hasn’t read. Sabine can now read, but she doesn’t get the appeal. She, Hector, and Renata killed the entire family in the house, leaving one man alive who now slowly bleeds out onto the floor. Hector begins to play the fiddle while Sabine dances, feeling drunk. Renata explains that the man’s blood has alcohol in it, so Sabine can get drunk through him. Renata forces the man to drink more, then tells Sabine to drink from him again. Sabine tastes the liquor in his blood. She dances to the music again before tripping and falling on a small wooden stool. She feels pain and realizes the wood of the stool pierced her. She pulls the wood piece out of herself, but Renata and Hector are stricken with fear. They explain that they are invincible, except for their hearts, with Hector ripping out the dying mortal man’s heart to prove the point. If their hearts are pierced, or they are beheaded and drained of blood, or they are burned alive, they will die. Burning is the worst, Renata explains, because the heart burns last. Sabine views this moment as the turning of a tide, and she throws the mortal man’s heart into the hearth to burn.

Tensions rise between Sabine and Hector, with Renata caught between them. One night, Renata comes to Sabine’s bed, and they are intimate. Sabine worries Hector will be upset, but he tells Sabine that he doesn’t restrict who Renata is intimate with, as he is her maker and he will always be most important to her. He says Sabine cannot possibly understand what their bond feels like. Sabine is hurt, but Renata makes her promise to stay with them, so she stays.

The next year, Sabine, Hector, and Renata pass through Spain like a plague, slaughtering entire villages and leaving carnage in their wake. Hector decides he’s only willing to feed on members of the clergy in churches. Sabine thinks it’s foolish, but she learns from Renata that they can enter churches, but they must avoid the burial plots in the churchyard soil, as “death calls to death” (166). The trio enters a church, and Hector poses as a man seeking confession. Instead, he kills the priest, drinks his blood, and steals his regalia. They wait, and the next night, when the parishioners come for Mass, they lock the doors and slaughter the churchgoers. Sabine drinks and drinks, but she still doesn’t feel full. The trio supposedly traps and kills 24 people, but if Sabine had counted the bodies, she would have only found 23.

It is snowy when Hector and Renata die. The trio approaches a waiting church, but Sabine falls back, feeling someone’s eyes on her. She sees a child through the window of a house, and the child places a finger over their lips and looks toward the church in warning. Sabine watches in horror as Hector and Renata enter the church and are attacked by a group of waiting men. She cannot save them, so she flees through a graveyard. She feels immediately ill as soon as her feet touch the graveyard soil. She stumbles through the graveyard until she manages to crawl into a crypt. She can hear the group forcing Hector and Renata into coffins, nailing them shut, and then burning them. She falls unconscious.

Sabine wakes in the crypt, tired and unwilling to go on. She hears the heartbeat of a person, a young man who asks her who she’s grieving and offers her help. She takes his hand and bites his neck, drinking his blood until her body recovers. She disappears into the night.

Alice dreams that she’s back behind her grandfather’s pub in Hoxburn, breaking bottles with Catty, who was angry that Eloise had moved in. Alice cut herself on a broken bottle, and Catty licked her bloody wound. In the dream, Alice feels the urge to do the same. She wakes up. She tests herself against common vampire tropes; she can go in the sun (though it makes her sick), see her own reflection, and touch Lizbeth’s silver jewelry. She cannot, however, consume anything other than blood. She looks online for Lottie, but she finds nothing but a blurry candid photo of Lottie. Determined to find her, Alice decides to go to her economics class where Sam, one of the co-op’s residents, will be. She struggles through the sun and makes it to class, but Sam doesn’t recognize Lottie. Alice tries to sit through class, but the smell of people’s blood and the overstimulation of her heightened senses force her to flee the room.

In the bathroom, Hannah interrupts Alice, who claims to have period cramps. Hannah offers Alice some ibuprofen, and Alice wraps her fingers around both the bottle and Hannah’s hand. She tries to compel Hannah to stay still, leaning in toward her neck, and she nearly succeeds until her focus slips. Hannah backs away and calls her an anti-gay slur. Alice feels rage rise within her, the urge to hurt Hannah, but instead she asks with a sharp tone what Hannah called her. Hannah looks afraid, and Alice pushes past her and leaves.

Alice is hungry, so she goes for a walk. She recalls a show about a serial killer who only killed bad people, which inspires her to eat someone whom she deems bad or dangerous so that she can feel the kill is justified. She walks along and waits for the undue attention of men, willing the men who would prey on women to try to prey on her. She sees a man in a suit and a sedan leering at her, so she asks him for a ride. When she gets in the car, he puts a hand on her thigh. She wills herself into her memories and imagines she’s on her bike again, chasing Catty, who was running away because Eloise was pregnant and because Alice hugged her and called her “mum.” Catty had reminded Alice that they have a mother, but Alice couldn’t bring herself to confess that she didn’t remember their mother. Catty told Alice stories of their mother’s trips around the world.

The man parks his car in a parking garage and guides Alice’s hand to his crotch. Disgusted, she crawls across the console and sits in his lap. As he unzips his pants, Alice forces his seat back and bites his neck, drinking his blood until he dies. She takes money from his wallet and leaves him there, feeling truly like a new version of herself.