One Must Hide

Leap of faith

Robin froze.

“Oh, come on,” said David, with just a touch of mocking scorn. “You figured this out a long time ago. You've known who we are since the moment you saw me.”

“Really?” Robin managed. “What makes you say that?”

David smiled broadly. “You knew my name.”

Suddenly feeling herself sweating in her heavy leather jacket, Robin moved away from the sweltering heat of the open fire. Dwayne let her pass and, behind him, two others whose names she didn't know moved aside. She could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on her back as she took off her coat and draped it over the back of an armchair. She tried and failed to deny to herself the truth of David's words. Instinct and intuition had put it all together long ago. Her conscious mind just hadn't caught up.

She turned back to face them all, though she spoke to David. “Then you're….” She stopped. The word was still beyond her. To say it was to give it credence and power.

“You can say it, Robin,” said David, as though her hesitation reflected a different kind of discomfort: the awkwardness of saying cancer to a terminally-ill patient.

“Vampires,” she said.

Their silence answered for them; that they didn't look askance at her definition, or laugh at the far-fetched notion, or do anything at all to refute the claim. Robin looked at David, and then heard herself speak, more calmly than she felt. “How?” Then she added, intolerantly, “And don't say ‘how what', David. You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Then he paused for such a long moment that Robin thought he wouldn't answer at all, before adding, “Long story.”

Robin folded her arms. “I'm not in a hurry.”

David abruptly flashed her one of his broadest grins, showing all his teeth. “Robin. You're too good at this.”

“If you don't stop playing these games with me, I'm leaving now,” she said flatly. “I've had enough of your bullshit.”

She didn't really expect the threat to work, but David's expression stilled to gravity. “All right,” he said soothingly. “No more games.” He paused. “Why don't you sit down?”

As if that were a signal, all the others moved to resume their places around the room, returning to their abandoned drinks. David settled into one of the leather armchairs before the hearth. Paul and Marko dragged a second around to face it. Robin looked from one to the other, but their faces had gone as unreadable as David's. She sat down cautiously, expecting another stunt. None came. Dwayne brought her a beer. Robin almost refused it, then changed her mind. She took a long gulp, suddenly feeling in need of the fortification. The Boys sprawled unselfconsciously on the floor, but their easy manner was gone. They watched her now with steadily perceptive eyes; watched and waited.

“What do you know about vampires, Robin?” David asked without preamble.

She shifted uneasily in her seat, as discomfited by his sudden candour as she had been by his evasions. “Dracula is on my reading list for next term,” she said at last.

“Stoker,” said David. “Not bad. Not too bad. Still not right, but not as deluded as some.”

From the hearth rug, Marko muttered, “Rice,” and Paul snorted.

“I haven't actually got round to reading it yet,” Robin admitted.

“So what do you think you know about vampires?” David asked.

“You drink blood,” she said slowly. “You can't go out in the sunlight.”

“True and true,” said David.

Robin felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

David leaned forwards. “Sunlight and silver, Robin.”

“What?”

“Sunlight and silver. If you want to hurt us, they're your best bets.”

“Why did you tell me that?” she asked.

David shrugged expressively. “It only seems fair.”

“I don't have any silver,” Robin pointed out, “and it's night-time.”

“Then you're out of luck,” he said.

Robin recognised the little quirk in his voice. “I was more scared before you said that.”

“You're not scared,” he said, with something very like satisfaction. “You wouldn't be here if you were.”

“I'm here because I want some straight answers,” she retorted, “and I'm still not getting any.”

“What do you want to know?”

Robin took a breath. “Who are you?”

“The Lost Boys,” he said.

“From the film.”

“No,” he corrected. “The film is fiction.”

Robin looked at the three Boys lounging on the floor, then at David, and then at the printout she still clutched in one hand. “You've lost me.”

“We didn't come from the film,” said David. “The film came from us.”

“I don't understand.”

“You will.”

“David,” said Dwayne.

David looked down. Green eyes met black for the briefest of instants before both glanced away. David was smiling again, but Robin wondered at the reproof in Dwayne's voice. She looked sideways at him, but he was already staring into the fire.

“Dwayne thinks I'm doing you a disservice,” David said. He leaned forwards conspiratorially. “You should feel honoured. He doesn't usually deign to enlighten us with his remarks.”

“Some of us could learn from that,” said Robin.

Marko spat out his beer. Paul laughed openly. Dwayne looked up from his contemplation of the flames. And as David turned an indulgent smile back on her, Robin realised that their approval increased in direct proportion to her audacity. David threatened her with who he was, and dared her to provoke him anyway. Robin wondered what she would have to do to make him stop testing her.

“We don't faze you at all, do we?” David asked.

Robin made herself unfold her arms. “Why would you?” she asked, only half in jest. “You're not going to hurt me.”

“You think we're harmless, then?”

Robin nearly agreed with the statement, to see if it would needle him into revealing something more, but the thought of how casually Paul had thrashed a much bigger and heavier man last night stopped her. It would have caught her in a transparent lie. Perhaps David had hoped to lead her into that trap. “I didn't say that,” she said instead. “I said you're not going to hurt me.”

David fixed her with a penetrating stare, though he didn't directly contradict her. “You seem very sure of yourself.”

Robin gauged him carefully, and decided to take a risk. “You seemed very sure of yourself when you kissed me last night.”

She didn't look away from him, but from the corner of her eye she saw the other three react, turning their heads sharply. So they didn't know about that. Part of her wished she could observe them directly, to see if they were actually surprised by the revelation or just curious. But David leaned even closer, and spoke in little more than a whisper. “The difference being that you don't know what you're dealing with.”

“Then show me,” she said.

David smiled. Looking thoroughly satisfied, he sat back.”That can be arranged.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “If you think you're ready to trust us.”

Robin realised she'd been holding her breath. She let it out, feeling off-balance. “This again.”

His smile didn't falter. “Well?”

“I don't see what reason you've given me to trust you,” Robin pointed out defiantly.

“Then it'll be a true leap of faith.” David rose to his feet in one easy motion. The flames painted him half in light, half in shadow as he extended a hand to her. “Coming?”

And despite everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Robin still found herself unable to resist his invitation. Helpless, she put her hand in his.

David motioned to the others with his head without taking his eyes off her. They were up and past her in moments, heading for the double doors to the hall. “You'd better put your jacket back on.”

Robin warily let him help her into it. As she shrugged her shoulders to settle the battered leather, Dwayne appeared at the doorway to toss David's coat to him. “Where are we going?”

“Enough questions, Robin,” he told her as he put on his coat. “Just come.”

She felt torn between resentment of his high-handedness and admiration for his resilience. He was the most astute opponent she had ever had the pleasure to spar with, and she felt sharpened by their exchange. She might still be playing David's game, but she thought she was at least holding her corner under difficult circumstances.

But when David commanded she obeyed, however grudgingly. She followed him outside. Dwayne and Marko and Paul brought up the rear, but the others stayed where they were. Robin wondered briefly about the almost-familiar faces, then put them out of her mind. As like as not they were red herrings, there purely to deflect attention from whatever secrets David wanted to keep from her tonight.

The evening had grown colder and misty with freezing fog that made the drive home an unappealing prospect. David's footfalls on the gravel path sounded shockingly loud. He crossed the yard to the dilapidated outbuilding, but it was Marko who dragged open the weathered doors. Inside the four motorcycles gleamed dimly, and despite herself, Robin felt her spirits lift. This she understood.

The Boys started up their bikes with roars that must have carried for miles in the foggy, frosty night. Robin climbed on behind David, and then groped around for a handhold that didn't involved putting her arms around him. David threw a look back over his shoulder, then ignored her. He flipped back the kickstand and throttled away.

It almost sent Robin flying off the back of the bike. Panicking, she threw out one arm, flailing wildly for grip, and got a handful of David's coat. She abandoned all notions of pride, hooking an arm around his neck, and felt rather than heard him laugh.

David accelerated down the lane with no mind for the potholes that had forced Robin to drive so carefully. On the bike the dips and rises of the uneven surface seemed twice as extreme. The tyres scrambled for grip on the frozen ruts of mud but David didn't seem to care, and behind them, the other Boys yelled and shouted, jumping their bikes from one crater to the next, gunning their engines until they screamed, and laughing all the louder when Paul slid his bike sideways almost into the wall. He corrected the skid with a whoop and accelerated up beside David's bike, then ahead, hair and coat flowing out behind him. Robin felt David duck lower over his handlebars and went with him, holding tight with the exhilaration of the mad ride as much as to try to survive it.

The end of the unmade road could not have come too soon. David jinked his bike sideways onto the tarmac and then braked to a jolting stop. Paul had beaten him to it, and waited ten feet up the road, looking back, his face animated with excitement. Dwayne and then Marko turned out of the lane, laughing, and stopped.

“Come on,” David said.

This time, as the bike leapt forwards, Robin found herself baring her teeth in a grin at the power. On the metalled surface for which it was designed, the BMW handled beautifully. Dwayne and Paul pulled up on either side, with Marko just behind, and their headlamps slashed bright through the gloom. David let them ride in formation for a few moments, and then he turned his head from one side to the other. “Keep up, boys!” he challenged, and revved his engine so his motorcycle jumped ahead.

The race was not for Robin's benefit. She only registered much later that this was just how the Boys were, reckless and fearless and competitive, savagely exultant in their own superiority. They took corners much too tight, straights much too fast, cut each other up, reached out with hands and elbows whenever possible to shove and jostle. Paul and Marko teamed up to run Dwayne off the road, then swerved out ahead, trying to push each other off their bikes. David picked his way through the imminent risk of carnage with reflexes quicker than they had a right to be, and never looked in danger of losing control. And Robin forgot about everything else, urging David on and deriding the others by turns, though the cold air burned in her lungs and stung tears from her eyes.

She didn't know how long that ride lasted, or how much ground they covered, but she felt a sharp pang of regret when David finally eased back, slowing his bike to a gradual stop. He lowered the kickstand: Robin's cue to dismount. All warmth had fled the skin of her face and hands in the chill winter night, but she could feel the beating of her heart, right down to her fingertips. She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders as David and the Boys got off their motorcycles, and wondered what they had in store for her.

“Do you know where we are, Robin?” David asked in a conversational tone.

Robin spared one glance around. The sky still refused to show its face behind graphite cloud cover, but they had climbed above the fog. The light from the bike headlamps traced the skeletal outline of an eight foot chain-link fence in incandescent white and illuminated a faded sign whose legend was still mostly visible. DANGER. KEEP OUT. Naturally. “No idea.”

David grasped the fence with one hand. Then he found a toehold with one booted foot and pulled himself easily up and over, dropping soft as a cat to the other side. He grinned at Robin from behind the wire mesh, almost glowing in the headlights. “Come and see.”

Paul swarmed up the fence, barely seeming to touch the wire before clearing the top and landing the other side. Marko and Dwayne followed with the same disconcerting agility, and Robin had to turn her head as a sudden billow of wind blew full into her face. The Lost Boys lined up along the barrier, watching expectantly.

Robin looked up at the fence. She might not be able to clear it with their grace, but a bit of wire netting wasn't going to stop her from joining them. She shoved her toe into one of the links and boosted herself up from the ground.

The wire was old and brittle and uncomfortably fine under her fingers. Robin fumbled to find a secure hold for her other foot, but the mesh was too small. She had to force her foot through one of the holes, and then when she came to move it again the wire caught around her toes. Jerking it free almost ripped her loose of the fence entirely. She clung with her fingertips, scrabbling for a hold with her feet. The entire fence panel shook and swayed with her exertions. She stretched up blindly for the top of the barrier and then snatched her hand away, biting off an exclamation, as the points of the strand of rusty barbed wire across the top spiked into her fingers.

She didn't know how she clung on after that, but she did, too stubborn to let go and certainly too proud to ask for help. Robin clawed her way up the fence and gingerly climbed over the barbed wire. She felt it snag in the overlarge sleeve of her coat as she let herself slide down the other side, and heard the leather tear. This time she did swear, just once, under her breath, as her feet touched the ground.

“Thanks for that,” she said, with asperity. “If I'd known we were doing The Krypton Factor tonight I wouldn't have come.”

“Yes you would,” said David.

Robin poked a finger into the six-inch rip in her sleeve, dismayed. Then she glared up at him. “Not one of your more inspired dares, David. You must be losing your touch.”

“That wasn't the dare,” he said. He nodded over her shoulder. “That is.”

Robin turned.

Two strides from the fence, the ground dropped away: not a hill or a slope or an incline, but a sheer cliff. Only the fog swirled below, and the lip of the escarpment ran as far as Robin could see in both directions. She backed up into Dwayne before she realised what she was doing.

“That's a cliff,” she said blankly.

David clasped his hands behind his back and stepped up towards the abyss.”Actually it's a quarry,” he replied. “Or was. Now it's more like a lake.”

To Robin's fascinated horror, Paul began to march carelessly along the very edge. She had to consciously stop herself from reaching out and pulling him back. She swallowed hard and, trying to sound unconcerned, asked, “There's water down there?”

“Two, three hundred feet down,” he agreed.

The figure was horrible for its very conceivability. Robin stayed where she was, her eyes fixed on the eddying mist.

Then Paul lost his footing.

“Whoa!” Eyes wide, he flung out his arms for balance, hovering on the brink like a graceless eagle.

As clearly as though it were actually happening, Robin suddenly visualised his fall: the nausea in his stomach as precarious balance succumbed to gravity; the engulfing fog billowing aside with the downdraft of his falling form; the terrifyingly brief glimpse of light on the dark water that would break his bones and his body as surely as if he had fallen on rocks.

She moved faster than she had ever imagined she could, seizing the front of his coat and yanking him back to safety. He seemed far lighter than he should for a tall man, almost insubstantial in weight, and the force with which Robin was able to slam him into the chain-link fence would have shocked her if she'd had the capacity to feel it.

“Don't ever do that again!” she shouted up at him, clenching her hands fiercely against his chest. “Hear me? Don't ever scare me like that again!”

Paul looked down at her, clearly startled, his mouth open as if to reply, but no words came. His eyes were innocent of all guile, wide and blue and suddenly contrite.

Then Marko sniggered. Robin slowly relaxed her hands. Dwayne stared off into the distance, looking faintly bored. Marko put a hand over his mouth to conceal his mirth. Only David looked grave, and thoughtfully so, his head cocked to one side, eyes calculating.

Robin let go of Paul's shirt. “Stop showing off to me,” she told him, low and angry.”You don't have anything to prove.”

He raised a hand vaguely, all his usual bravado and hostility gone. Robin turned her back on him and tried to do the same to the fright he'd given her.

“I suppose you thought that was funny,” she accused David.

“Not funny,” he said. “But your concern is a little misplaced.”

“You weren't concerned about him at all!”

“He was in no danger,” he replied. “And neither will you be. If you trust us, that is.”

It took Robin a moment to divine his meaning. “You're out of your mind.”

He smiled benignly. “You wanted to see.”

“What part of that involves stepping off a cliff and hoping you're not delusional?”

“The most important part,” he said.

Robin stared down at the shifting vapours that filled the old quarry. Thinking about the water at the bottom made her stomach heave.

“The question you should be asking yourself isn't ‘do I trust you',” David went on, crossing behind her. “It's ‘can you trust me'. Can we be sure of you? Can we count on you to accept what we are?”

“I don't know what you are,” she insisted.

“We've been betrayed before, Robin,” he said softly.

The way that his tone darkened as he spoke sent a finger of ice down Robin's spine. “And what if I can't be trusted?”

David didn't speak for a long moment. “Then you won't see us again,” he said at last. “So. You decide. Believe in us and we'll believe in you, or else this ends. Now.”

Robin didn't like threats, and David had scarcely bothered to veil that one. It awoke the same dread of being deprived of them that had compelled her to seek them out tonight. She studied each of them, one after the other, and then she asked David, “What am I to you, anyway?”

David turned his head towards her. The breeze blowing the fog into sluggish eddies ruffled the longest strands of the hair at the nape of his neck, but his stillness seemed absolute. “Our future.”

No mockery, no amusement, no half truth or double meaning. Robin looked down. The precipice lured and repelled her with almost equal strength.

A thought intruded on her contemplation of the long drop. You'd be crazy to do this.

No . She consciously denied the cowardly reaction. I'd be crazy not to.

And it was that simple. She walked forwards, and she fell.

Her brain knew what she was doing, but her body didn't understand. The sensation of nothing underfoot gave her the momentary reflexive shock of missing a stair in the darkness. Her stomach lurched, and she instinctively threw out her arms to break her fall. But the fog gave her no purchase for all its thickness: she flailed around for something, anything, and the panic filled her chest in a flood, forcing out the air from her lungs.

Then two things happened, so close together that at the time she couldn't separate one from the other.

At the edge of her peripheral vision she caught sight of something streak past at a rate at least twice as fast as her own downward velocity. At the same moment, she felt a hand close gently but very firmly on her collar. She didn't stop falling, but the speed of her descent slowed gradually, as if to spare her the shock of a sudden halt. And as her stomach struggled to settle, and her brain to work out what could possibly have happened, she felt the wind roar behind her, and against all rational sense the electric jolt of vindication made her laugh out loud as she shouted his name. “David!”

His laugh, genuine with delight, came from behind her, and then incredibly, impossibly, he flipped himself up and over and then down in front of her, still grasping her by the collar of her coat. The wind Robin now understood as unearthly whipped furiously at them both, but his grip stayed firm and his arm steady.

“Thrill-seeker,” he accused.

His eyes challenged and compelled her. Robin reached out to him, but she didn't know what she was doing until her hand touched his face. She traced the winter-chilled line of his cheek and jaw, her fingertips alive to the rough-soft rake of his stubble. David lifted his head reflexively, and Robin felt him go tense.

“Hold on,” he said.

Robin wrapped her arm around his neck. David released her collar as she did, and she knew a moment of consternation before his arm went around her waist.”Better?”

“Better,” she admitted, and then added, “Less like a puppy being carried by the scruff.”

David threw his head back, laughing to the night. “Robin, you're like a force of nature. Nothing stops you in your tracks.”

She looked back over her shoulder, towards the ground. “How high are we?”

“As high as you want,” he replied.

And with a barely perceptible shift of his muscles they were climbing again, straight up, gradually at first and then faster. In moments they were above the fog, above the edge of the quarry: they were looking down on where the Boys' bikes still blazed out four bright beams of light. Something at the back of Robin's mind greeted the sight with calm acceptance, but she paid no attention, too elated by the wind in her face, too exhilarated by the knowledge that there was nothing stopping her from falling to her death but David's inhuman strength.

“How can you stand it?” she asked breathlessly.

She felt him crane his neck to look down at her. “What?”

“Walking on the ground when you can do this.”

“Riding is faster,” he said.

Robin dragged her eyes away from the sky. “And this costs you,” she guessed.

His chuckle was so soft she only knew about it from the movement of his chest. “You understand so instinctively.” Then, before she could question the cryptic remark, he said, “And that's what it means to be a vampire.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, without inflection: as unambiguous as Robin had ever heard him. She looked up at him, trying to divine his intention.

He met her gaze. “Everything comes at a price, Robin. Our strength makes us vulnerable. We're unchanging, and so we don't adapt well. And sometimes, sometimes….”

“One must hide?” Robin asked.

David's eyes flickered. He raised a hand to her face, tenderly stroking back the long strands of hair that flowed in the wind, and despite all her resolve Robin felt her defences crumbling. “Sometimes you have to fall to fly.”

He let her go.

Too late, Robin tried to hold on. Her grip around his neck had been too loose, her reliance on him too great. She fell.

And Paul appeared from the fog below to catch her, as neatly and as easily as though he had been waiting there all along. Robin had grabbed him around the neck before she quite realised who it was. She swallowed hard and tried to relax her grip. “Thanks.”

“We're not going to let you fall,” he said, with either scorn or affront.

“I know,” Robin said, and realised she did. “But thank you anyway.”

He looked at her sharply, as if to see if she were mocking him. “Do you know what he's getting you into?”

The bullish reply Robin intended to give turned to ashes in her mouth under the troubled intensity of Paul's blue, blue eyes. “No,” she admitted at last.”Not entirely.”

“Yeah, well you'd better find out,” he said brusquely. “Or we'll all be sorry.”

He didn't drop her, but heaved her upwards, and Dwayne swooped down to take over. Robin grabbed his shoulder for balance, but the fist of trepidation in her stomach was gradually unclenching. “Don't suppose I can expect to get much out of you.”

“Try me,” he suggested, without changing expression.

“Do you know what David wants me for?”

“Partly,” he admitted. Then he looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “But there's more to life than what he wants.”

Robin anticipated the drop, even as she anticipated Marko's timely catch. “What's this all about, Marko?”

“We're just playing,” he replied. “Aren't you having fun?”

Robin thought hard for a moment, and then spoke with what she thought was creditable composure. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Nah,” he said easily. “You're too good for that.” And he threw her away.

David snatched her out of the air. “Do you understand now?”

“Oh yeah, crystal clear,” she said dryly. Then she framed her thoughts carefully, and asked, “What do you want, David?”

“Isn't it obvious?” He smiled. “That won't do, will it? Dwayne will disapprove of me again.” But he still didn't elaborate.

“I can't decide if you're actually hiding something or if you're winding me up for fun,” Robin said.

“A little of both,” he conceded good-naturedly.

“More like a lot.” Robin looked down to see if the others were visible, and felt vaguely shocked by her own calm acceptance of the situation. “I've dreamed this,” she said, half to herself.

“Of course,” said David. “You've been waiting for it all your life.”

She pulled her gaze away from the vista below. “What do you mean?”

“You were always meant to be with vampires, Robin,” he said softly. “It's in your blood.”

The word, spoken so deliberately, sharpened Robin's awareness of the wider implications of tonight's revelations, but she refused to feel cowed. “That would be your speciality.”

“Very good.” He grinned, but his teeth didn't seem any sharper or more pointed than normal.

“So why haven't you killed me?”

His eyes narrowed, just fractionally, and just for a moment. “Why would we?”

Robin wondered what the little slip meant. “Isn't that what you do?”

“You eat meat, don't you?” When she nodded, he continued, “Tell me, Robin, would you eat your dog?”

“I don't have one,” she said. “I don't like dogs. They don't seem to like me.”

“Say you had a dog,” he clarified tolerantly. “One you did like. Would you eat it?”

“Of course I wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I've heard dog meat is pretty tough.”

“Robin,” David rebuked her in something between a laugh and a growl.

“People don't generally keep dogs to eat them,” she said, at length.

“There's your answer.”

“So you want me to be your dog, now?”

“No,” he laughed. “I don't think you'd like being on a lead.” Then his face went serious. “Our companion.”

“'Our',” she repeated pointedly. “You always talk as if you're running a commune.”

“We're a democracy, not a dictatorship.”

“Really?” asked Robin, heavy on the sarcasm. “Do the others know that?”

“Yes,” he said evenly. “They're not shy about disagreeing with me.” Then he showed all his teeth. “But they always come round in the end.”

“Paul doesn't like me,” she said, and then wondered at the injury in her own voice.

David raised an eyebrow and asked, blandly, “Do you think?”

There was no answer to a question that non-committal. “I passed your tests, David. I trust you not to hurt me, and you can trust me not to betray you.” She paused, and then drew on what Paul had said. “I need to know what I'm getting into.”

He appeared to consider that for a moment. At last, and to Robin's surprise, he nodded. Then he raised his voice. “Boys!”

One by one, Dwayne and Marko and Paul burst from the fog and dived towards the edge of the quarry. They hit the ground like sky-divers, running off their momentum. David followed them down so rapidly that Robin had to lift her feet to miss the chain-link fence, but set her down without so much as a jolt.

Logically, Robin supposed she should have been relieved to have solid ground underfoot again, but logic wasn't scoring very highly in the face of all the impossible things she had already accepted that night. She felt at once very sharp and very abstracted, as when walking home on a crisply cold night after one drink shy of too many. She slowly removed her arm from around David's neck and then noticed the soreness in her shoulder. She reached up with her other hand to massage the ache, but David was faster. His fingers dug uncomfortably hard between shoulder and neck. Robin stiffened with the sudden pain, starting to protest, and then it and the ache were gone. David's hand remained, resting lightly on her shoulder. She looked at him.

He answered the question she didn't ask. “There's more to being a vampire than you think.”

Robin flexed her arm gingerly. “So I see.”

“Come on,” he said. “We'll tell you everything.”

“And if you believe that, you'll believe anything,” she said softly, as she followed him back to his bike.

She didn't hear his reply; only his laughter, drifting back to her on the night air.