DARK RIDES
by Rachel Caine
There’s something deeply creepy about an unlit Ferris wheel in the dark. It looks like the skeletal remains of something large that once rolled across the earth scooping up screaming victims in its buckety jaws. Or at least, it looked like that to me, but I naturally have a pretty macabre imagination. “Wow,” I said, looking up at the outlines of the black girders against the fading dark blue of the sky. “You take me to the nicest places. I am so lucky to have a guy like you.”
“Eve! Shhhh,” whispered Michael, my significant sweetie, as we crouched down between a blown pile of trash and the iron-shuttered side of some kind of cheesy win-a-toxic-stuffed-animal booth. This one specialized in rabbits. They all looked manic and a little diseased. I couldn’t help but fill in the old-time Elmer Fudd voice in my head. We’re hunting wabbits. It made me giggle a little breathlessly, with a nice knife-edge of terror, because we were in a closed amusement park, looking for a vampire, and hey, who doesn’t get the giggles now and then under those circumstances?
Don’t answer that.
Michael was giving me his I’m concerned and a little disturbed look, which was adorable. I’m not a fragile flower. Hell, I was born and raised in Morganville, Texas, which is likely the only place vampires can call home; if you grow up human there, you learn how to deal with life-threatening danger the way other, luckier people learn to deal with those annoying telemarketers. I don’t eat danger for breakfast, because it’s really just a tiny little bite size snack in hometown terms.
Michael, meanwhile, was the same … but different. He’d also grown up human in Morganville, but unlike me, he’d had the seriously bad misfortune to actually be bitten, almost two years ago. It hadn’t gone well for him, and now, my all-time best guy ever was … well, fanged. But fighting to stay the Michael I’d always loved, which was nice, because we were, well, married now. Fangs and all.
He couldn’t have looked less bloodsucker-y, really. Gorgeous blond hair, clear blue eyes, the face that in earlier ages they would have put on a really hot marble angel … not vampire material, generally. He even dressed like he was a regular dude who was looking forward to being of legal drinking age … I wondered if he ever lamented the fact that he was going to be carded for all of his immortal life. Probably.
Me, I looked like I was aspiring to be what he actually was, what with my Goth black hair (temporarily streaked with electric blue, because, why not?), and the baggy black cargo pants and stomp-em boots. My shirt was tight, sheer, black over black, and had a particularly cool dark-blue-on-black embossed skull on it. Fighting clothes, although Michael had just shaken his head when he’d seen what I decided to wear for our middle-of-the-night tour of the scary carnival grounds. He just didn’t know what was stalking-appropriate, obviously. Men. No fashion sense.
“Over there,” Michael whispered, and nodded toward – od course — the haunted ride. It was what the carnies called a dark ride, which I thought was awesomely appropriate, especially tonight, what with all the creepy skulking around. The structure featured an absolutely gigantic Grim Reaper leaning over the top of it, gripping his scythe in one bony hand as the other reached down for the would-be riders. It probably looked super cheesy in the daylight, but tonight, I could practically see those black, flowing robes ripple in the cold wind.
If I believed in omens, that would probably be a really bad one.
“We’re looking for Death? Found him,” I said. I got another look, but also a smile. “Right. Stealth mode, engaged.” I made a zipping motion across my mouth. He did me the favor of not quite rolling his eyes.
We crept from the cover of the toy shed to that of a greasy-looking shack that dispensed hot dogs of doubtful meat content (oooh, but
by Rachel Caine
There’s something deeply creepy about an unlit Ferris wheel in the dark. It looks like the skeletal remains of something large that once rolled across the earth scooping up screaming victims in its buckety jaws. Or at least, it looked like that to me, but I naturally have a pretty macabre imagination. “Wow,” I said, looking up at the outlines of the black girders against the fading dark blue of the sky. “You take me to the nicest places. I am so lucky to have a guy like you.”
“Eve! Shhhh,” whispered Michael, my significant sweetie, as we crouched down between a blown pile of trash and the iron-shuttered side of some kind of cheesy win-a-toxic-stuffed-animal booth. This one specialized in rabbits. They all looked manic and a little diseased. I couldn’t help but fill in the old-time Elmer Fudd voice in my head. We’re hunting wabbits. It made me giggle a little breathlessly, with a nice knife-edge of terror, because we were in a closed amusement park, looking for a vampire, and hey, who doesn’t get the giggles now and then under those circumstances?
Don’t answer that.
Michael was giving me his I’m concerned and a little disturbed look, which was adorable. I’m not a fragile flower. Hell, I was born and raised in Morganville, Texas, which is likely the only place vampires can call home; if you grow up human there, you learn how to deal with life-threatening danger the way other, luckier people learn to deal with those annoying telemarketers. I don’t eat danger for breakfast, because it’s really just a tiny little bite size snack in hometown terms.
Michael, meanwhile, was the same … but different. He’d also grown up human in Morganville, but unlike me, he’d had the seriously bad misfortune to actually be bitten, almost two years ago. It hadn’t gone well for him, and now, my all-time best guy ever was … well, fanged. But fighting to stay the Michael I’d always loved, which was nice, because we were, well, married now. Fangs and all.
He couldn’t have looked less bloodsucker-y, really. Gorgeous blond hair, clear blue eyes, the face that in earlier ages they would have put on a really hot marble angel … not vampire material, generally. He even dressed like he was a regular dude who was looking forward to being of legal drinking age … I wondered if he ever lamented the fact that he was going to be carded for all of his immortal life. Probably.
Me, I looked like I was aspiring to be what he actually was, what with my Goth black hair (temporarily streaked with electric blue, because, why not?), and the baggy black cargo pants and stomp-em boots. My shirt was tight, sheer, black over black, and had a particularly cool dark-blue-on-black embossed skull on it. Fighting clothes, although Michael had just shaken his head when he’d seen what I decided to wear for our middle-of-the-night tour of the scary carnival grounds. He just didn’t know what was stalking-appropriate, obviously. Men. No fashion sense.
“Over there,” Michael whispered, and nodded toward – od course — the haunted ride. It was what the carnies called a dark ride, which I thought was awesomely appropriate, especially tonight, what with all the creepy skulking around. The structure featured an absolutely gigantic Grim Reaper leaning over the top of it, gripping his scythe in one bony hand as the other reached down for the would-be riders. It probably looked super cheesy in the daylight, but tonight, I could practically see those black, flowing robes ripple in the cold wind.
If I believed in omens, that would probably be a really bad one.
“We’re looking for Death? Found him,” I said. I got another look, but also a smile. “Right. Stealth mode, engaged.” I made a zipping motion across my mouth. He did me the favor of not quite rolling his eyes.
We crept from the cover of the toy shed to that of a greasy-looking shack that dispensed hot dogs of doubtful meat content (oooh, but
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