there was no one and nothing—just a concrete lot and woods, lit by the flood lamps over the gas pumps. The night was sticky warm, and in the distance she could hear the singing of cicadas. Not caring if it made her a wimp to hate the dark, she ran back toward the brightly lit mart, only slowing when she was at the door. She jerked it open, wishing she hadn’t left her tire iron in the car, even though she was sure they didn’t let people bring stuff like that into regular businesses.
From behind the bulletproof glass, a clerk grinned at her like aman who wasn’t too worried about his security. He had a mass of red hair sticking up from his head in gelled spikes.
There was a small television, mounted high up one wall, showing a feed from inside the Springfield Coldtown, where Demonia was introducing viewers to the newest guests at the Eternal Ball, a party that had started in 2004 and raged ceaselessly ever since.
In the background, girls and boys in rubber harnesses swung through the air. The camera swept over the dance floor, showing the crowd, a few of which had looping hospital tubes stuck to the insides of their arms. The lens lingered over a boy no older than nine holding out a paper cup to a thin blond girl. She paused and then, leaning down, twisted a knob on her tubing, causing a thin stream of blood to splash into the cup, red as the boy’s eyes and the tongue that darted out to lick the rim. Then the camera angle changed again, veering up to show the viewer the full height and majesty of the building. At the very highest point, several windowpanes had been replaced with black glass, glowing, but designed to keep out the kind of light that could scald certain partygoers.
Tana’s scar throbbed and she rubbed it without thinking.
“Hey,” Aidan said, touching her shoulder and making her jump. He was carrying a bottle of water, but he stared at the screen as if he’d forgotten about everything else. “Look at that.”
“It’s like the Hotel California,” Tana said. “Or a roach motel. Roaches check in but they don’t check out.”
All infected people and captured vampires were sent to Coldtowns, along with the sick, sad, or deluded humans who went there voluntarily. It was supposed to be a constant party, free for the priceof blood. But once people were inside, humans—even human children, even babies born in Coldtown—weren’t allowed to leave. The National Guard patrolled the barbed-wire-wrapped and holy-symbol-studded walls to make sure that Coldtowns stayed contained.
Springfield was the best known and the biggest Coldtown, with more live feeds, videos, and blogs coming out of there than from Coldtowns in much larger cities. That was partially because it was the first and partially because the Massachusetts government made sure that people trapped inside had power and communications sooner than the others The outbreak in Chicago was contained so fast that the quarantined area never had a chance to evolve into a walled city-within-a-city. Las Vegas was Springfield’s rival in live-streaming vampire entertainment, but blackouts were common, disrupting feeds and making regular viewing unreliable. New Orleans and Las Cruces were small, and the Coldtown in San Francisco had gone dark a year after its founding, with no one broadcasting anything out. There were people in there; satellites could track their heat signatures at night. That’s all anyone knew. But Springfield wasn’t just the best known and the biggest, Tana thought, looking at the screen, it was also the closest.
“It’d be a good place to hide out,” Aidan said, with a sly look at the car and the trunk with the vampire inside.
“You want to turn Gavriel in for a marker ?” Tana asked him. There was one exception to the whole not-being-allowed-to-leave thing, one way out of Coldtown if you were still human—your family had to be rich enough to hire a vampire hunter, who would turn in a vampire in exchange for you. Vampire
From behind the bulletproof glass, a clerk grinned at her like aman who wasn’t too worried about his security. He had a mass of red hair sticking up from his head in gelled spikes.
There was a small television, mounted high up one wall, showing a feed from inside the Springfield Coldtown, where Demonia was introducing viewers to the newest guests at the Eternal Ball, a party that had started in 2004 and raged ceaselessly ever since.
In the background, girls and boys in rubber harnesses swung through the air. The camera swept over the dance floor, showing the crowd, a few of which had looping hospital tubes stuck to the insides of their arms. The lens lingered over a boy no older than nine holding out a paper cup to a thin blond girl. She paused and then, leaning down, twisted a knob on her tubing, causing a thin stream of blood to splash into the cup, red as the boy’s eyes and the tongue that darted out to lick the rim. Then the camera angle changed again, veering up to show the viewer the full height and majesty of the building. At the very highest point, several windowpanes had been replaced with black glass, glowing, but designed to keep out the kind of light that could scald certain partygoers.
Tana’s scar throbbed and she rubbed it without thinking.
“Hey,” Aidan said, touching her shoulder and making her jump. He was carrying a bottle of water, but he stared at the screen as if he’d forgotten about everything else. “Look at that.”
“It’s like the Hotel California,” Tana said. “Or a roach motel. Roaches check in but they don’t check out.”
All infected people and captured vampires were sent to Coldtowns, along with the sick, sad, or deluded humans who went there voluntarily. It was supposed to be a constant party, free for the priceof blood. But once people were inside, humans—even human children, even babies born in Coldtown—weren’t allowed to leave. The National Guard patrolled the barbed-wire-wrapped and holy-symbol-studded walls to make sure that Coldtowns stayed contained.
Springfield was the best known and the biggest Coldtown, with more live feeds, videos, and blogs coming out of there than from Coldtowns in much larger cities. That was partially because it was the first and partially because the Massachusetts government made sure that people trapped inside had power and communications sooner than the others The outbreak in Chicago was contained so fast that the quarantined area never had a chance to evolve into a walled city-within-a-city. Las Vegas was Springfield’s rival in live-streaming vampire entertainment, but blackouts were common, disrupting feeds and making regular viewing unreliable. New Orleans and Las Cruces were small, and the Coldtown in San Francisco had gone dark a year after its founding, with no one broadcasting anything out. There were people in there; satellites could track their heat signatures at night. That’s all anyone knew. But Springfield wasn’t just the best known and the biggest, Tana thought, looking at the screen, it was also the closest.
“It’d be a good place to hide out,” Aidan said, with a sly look at the car and the trunk with the vampire inside.
“You want to turn Gavriel in for a marker ?” Tana asked him. There was one exception to the whole not-being-allowed-to-leave thing, one way out of Coldtown if you were still human—your family had to be rich enough to hire a vampire hunter, who would turn in a vampire in exchange for you. Vampire
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