Vampire heart

: The Thr

t himself into the flat. The smell of frying onions drifted through the hallway-his neighbo

his stoma

leaned his back against it,

ething in him. A warmth. A grief. A strange

Nope. Nope. Nope. We

in the laundry basket, and crossed t

o his forehead. There was a tension in his face he didn't recogni

glass. His hand

," Malaka

oss

. Ayo had

fel

t, the stone beneath his boots still holding ghosts of its own. The Nairobi skyline stretche

re on t

y

d yet, not a s

that he didn't seem to remember anything clearly. That glimpse in the café had been the firs

e to be pati

to frighten h

if he focused. Whispering the old songs. Laughing under moon

en, th

, the

is fingers t

An ancient relic, said to be preserved in sacred earth somewhere beneath the city. A priest

't beli

il

t sleep t

nket up tight. But every time he drifted, the visions retur

nging to keep children calm

awn, heart hamme

ing wa

s been wrong, and now it was

pulled low over his face, headphones in, music t

acks. Ended up at the anthropology wing without

om the coast, clay pots from the Rift Valley. And then, in the cor

s of the Ancients: Leg

eath c

eart made of stone and bone, wrapped in red clo

e, and that the physical heart could hold the soul's energy even after death. In ra

st

as rid

cide

drawing looked exactly li

found hi

et, he could've been anot

find you here,"

tartled. "Do

terns. And you...

't just show up, say cryptic things, and

I wanted to hurt you, Ayo, I

shut

he asked, "W

looked

d. "Cursed, depend

wa

o. I was turned when I was nineteen. I didn't ask for it. I didn't want

barely above a w

es

s head. "But

ave hi

s not

ou feel when you wake up from d

flin

I came because I thought the part of him I lost was gone forever. But the

en if that's true... wh

d, and meant it. "I ju

d him for

there other

es

l... like, brood

enuinely, the sou

are

ed slowl

ka

" Ayo said. "But... I want to

him like the sta

"Like, very slow. If you st

humans," Malaka

doing a lot

he s

n centuries, Malakai fel