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He watches through the window, enraptured by the rain falling from the dark midday sky upon the metropolis below. He sits at his kitchen table, many storeys up in an apartment poised at the lip, but his mind follows the water flowing down the gently sloping streets to the trough of this crater city many miles across. He imagines the brown brick houses, the schools and universities, the apartment blocks nestled around the great many parks, all leading to the heart at Temperance Square. It’s almost impossible to pick them out against the grey of the streets and the trees that shade them all, but artificial rivers cut through the city, a home to canal boats and refuge for traditions once buried by old, contemporary problems. The rains drown them, and Sheer Vale struggles to drink. For a moment, it is as though nothing has changed in a hundred years.

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Larkin needs to leave this town, this much he knows. Once his degree is done, he’ll apply to every job he can find, even internships if he must. The opportunities are there for anyone willing to find them; the important thing is that they’re anywhere but here.

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He stands up from his chair, feeling a sudden chill at the sight of the cliff of insurmountable height carved out at the opposite end. It stands like a yawning mouth in the distance, about to swallow the city whole. He didn’t used to feel this way, but he cannot get the image out of his head. It’s unnatural. He puts the kettle on to distract himself from it, takes out his smartphone to distract himself from the kettle. It’s warm in his hands; a state-of-the-art machine eighty years ago, it expelled heat the way old tech used to. It cost him more than it was maybe worth to revive it, update it, outfit it for contemporary outlets; as a living link to the past, it’s priceless. It’s a sucker’s phone, but then, he is a sucker for nostalgia.

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He has never known a time when vampires did not live in Sheer Vale. Never before now has it been so unsafe to be a human within its earthen walls. Once upon a time, a human found drained of their blood was a shocking, unusual event; even as vampires held employment in daylight jobs alongside the wider public, it was rare. It was possible to believe that walking down the streets at any time of day or night was safe, even in the Hallam borough where the sun never reaches. Now, the city is seeing an unparalleled spike. When he checked the news this morning, two murders had been reported just overnight – separate incidences.

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He holds a cup of coffee in his hands, letting the heat soak his palms and the steam soak the carmine lenses of his glasses for a long moment before he takes a sip. It’s sweet. When he looks out the window again, glasses wiped, he picks out the Western Bank Library and follows its shape to the heart of the city. He remembers a time when he was oblivious, when he would stand in the central square as his parents watched from a bench. The landscape rose up to embrace him and the cliff was a giant’s towering keep. Now, he looks down and sees only the shadows the cliffs casts. Places the sun never touches. In Temperance Square, where once he would stand, a bronze sculpture of a vampire poses illuminated. He wonders if the families of their victims feel bitter and resentful at the sight of it, at what it represents. He knows that they call the figure Sheer Vale’s founder, but he also wonders if that’s not an excuse to impose the vampires’ presence on the rest of them.

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The truth is as clear to him as it ever was: these vampires that reside among the living are parasites. Perhaps he could once understand their desire to live in the open – he studies vampires for his degree, after all –but after sixty-two years of freedom, it’s no longer about that. They only wish to have the law work their way. They have legislation protecting them from being ‘unjustly fired’. They have extra opportunities and scholarships – some fields even offer an extra leg-up besides. They have a whole area of the city to themselves, a statue, and a month for ‘Vampire History’, but they don’t care about these boons. Whatever gratitude they have, they don’t care to show it; they’re always late for work, when they bother to show. Humans have to live with them, but they don’t care about anyone’s safety. Blood-drinking has been illegal since 2077, but they have only murdered more in the twenty years since. That statue celebrates their role in the city, but no once do they appreciate the figure or the money it brings in tourism.

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Vampires don’t need to be citizens here; to hear their complaints, they got along fine when they were myths. Yet humankind offered them a place. Humankind, from Sheer Vale and to every coast, generously gave them room at great cost to themselves. Never has anyone fought so hard for freedom, seen what freedom costs, and decided it isn’t good enough. It’s sickening. He feels so often infected by their vitriol, by their brattish resentments, he wonders how much longer it will take before he becomes one.

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He knows he has work to do, and he places his cup back on the kitchen table, but thinking about this arrangement saddens him. It’s clear that the city loves these creatures; just as the city walls embrace him, it aims to embrace everyone who walks these streets, even when they are the hardest to love. That philosophy is built into the foundations. Every minute he remains in it, he is only feeding the vampires and the city that calls itself their home when they won’t love it back.

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Humans didn’t not have to embrace them. They did not have to let them in, or give them citizenship, or let them remain in the country. Yet every day, they throw the generosity in Sheer Vale’s face and pay it back with fear and loathing. That old, contemporary problem will never quite go away. In all his years of life, he decides as he looks over the city again, it makes him glad that he’s never known a vampire personally.

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The city comes alive in the rain, Larkin thinks. He is going to miss this view one day.