Blood Born

by Matthew Warner

  Blood Born

  Matthew Warner

  Blood Born, this edition Copyright © 2019 by Matthew Warner. All Rights Reserved.

  HW Press published the first edition in April 2011 as a trade paperback and eBook. The author is reissuing the book herein under his own imprint.

  “Where Ideas are Born” © 2011, 2019 by Matthew Warner, first published at Somebody Dies, May 2011

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover and Interior Illustrations Copyright © 2011 by Deena Warner

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  MW Publications

  Staunton, Virginia / United States

  Visit us at MWPub.info

  mail@mwpub.info

  Matthew Warner

  Visit the author at MatthewWarner.com

  Also by Matthew Warner

  NOVELS

  Empire of the Goddess

  Cursed by Christ

  Plan 9: Official Movie Novelization

  The Seventh Equinox

  Blood Born

  Eyes Everywhere

  The Organ Donor

  NOVELLAS

  No Outlet

  Die Not In Vain

  COLLECTIONS

  Dominoes in Time

  Horror Isn’t a 4-Letter Word: Essays on Writing & Appreciating the Genre

  Death Sentences: Tales of Punishment & Revenge

  PLAYS

  Chess is Blind

  Pirate Appreciation Day

  How the Martians Stole Christmas

  FILMS

  Dr. Ella Mental’s Mad Lab Picture Show (with John Johnson)

  The Lovecraft Chronicles (with John Johnson)

  The Good Parts

  Criswell Predicts! (with Mr. Lobo)

  More information: MatthewWarner.com

  This book is dedicated with respect to mothers everywhere.

  The author gratefully acknowledges the following: F. Paul Wilson for his early coaching; my first readers Deena Warner, Ricky Lineberger, and everyone at the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers; Ben Warner for his medical advice; and Officer Eric Ivancic for his pointers about police procedure.

  Part I: Conception

  As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.

  —Genesis 9:7

  Chapter 1

  When Eric groped under her tanktop and started kissing her neck, Daniella realized she’d missed the end of the movie.

  The theater lights came on. Eric appeared not to notice this as he nuzzled deeper into her blonde hair, the spray of acne on his jaw like red mountains up close. He sneaked two fingers inside her bra and moaned.

  “Shh—stop it!” Daniella giggled and pushed his hands away. When she grinned, she kept her mouth closed to hide her braces before remembering Mom took her to have them removed a week ago. Eric claimed before the movie that that’s what was making him horny—but then again, a bowl of fruit could make him horny.

  “Stop it, Eric. No PDA.”

  “Man, you’re so uptight.” He removed his hand from under her shirt but reached the other one to the crack of her ass.

  An older couple frowned as they left the row in front of them, shoes squelching in the Coke that Eric had spilled during the previews when he tried to unsnap Daniella’s jeans. The Public Displays of Affection became so bad at one point that she tossed Eric’s brand-new driver’s license into the aisle just to get a break from him.

  Daniella stood up and grabbed her purse before Eric could snag it and hold it hostage for another kiss. He frowned but followed her out of the theater without protest—and why would he argue since they were headed back to his car, where he’d have even more freedom to grope her?

  Eric hoisted his baggy jeans before they could fall the rest of the way off. As they passed the ticket stand, he came up behind her, seized her hips, and ground his crotch against her butt.

  Daniella pushed him away, laughing. “Jerk.”

  “Yep, sure do like those pearly white teeth of yours,” he said, and showed his own.

  “They’re not new teeth, Mr. Teeth-Man—or should I say, Dork-Man.” As if offended, she dramatically swung her purse over her shoulder and giggled when it collided with Eric’s head because he was following too close.

  “Why don’t you file one into a point?” he said as they neared the exit door. “That’d look cool.”

  Daniella exited into the humid night, where a dozen other high school couples on their way home played out similar scenes. She frowned back at him. Mr. Teeth-Man flashed his own orthodontic wonders, smacking his tongue against the canine he’d shaped into a point. He’d told her that his parents had been so pissed about it that they made him get a job at the car wash just so he could save up for a crown. Of course, he blew all his money on her and OutKast CDs.

  “I have a better idea,” she answered. “Why don’t we see that movie again, and this time you keep your fangs—or fang—off me so I can see the ending?”

  “All right.” He caught up and tickled her ribs, making her shriek with laughter. “I’ll keep my fangs off, but can I use my lips?” He pulled her close and kissed her cheek. “How ’bout my tongue?” He licked her ear.

  Daniella hit his chest and danced out of reach. “You’re gross.” She ran ahead into the parking deck. Eric chased her, chattering his teeth like a toy.

  They emerged on the top level a minute later, out of breath from running up the stairs. Eric’s car, a used Honda Accord station wagon, was the only vehicle this far up. It waited under an orange lamp haloed with summer bugs. Since its rear bumper was missing, he’d plastered his Digger and Sex Pistols bumper stickers directly onto the trunk. Daniella had wondered why he parked so far up when there were spaces on the first level. But now, as they got in and Eric drilled his tongue down to her tonsils, she realized he wanted privacy.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The InstaJava coffee maker in the employee pantry shuddered like a car engine trying to run without oil. Sighing in disgust, Dr. Margaret Connolly crossed her arms and leaned back against the refrigerator as the machine’s “in progress” light blinked from green to red.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  The contraption, which looked like a souped-up espresso maker, gagged on the foil package of coffee grounds she’d inserted. It gave a final shudder before spitting a pint of bile-colored water into her waiting mug.

  “Insta Puke-a,” she muttered, then dumped the liquid into the sink.

  She mopped a hand across her tired face and headed for her office. Along the way, she put her glasses back on and re-buttoned her lab coat across her growing middle-aged paunch. She hated wearing white coats because some patients had been clinically shown to suffer hypertensive reactions at the sight of them. But it was nearly midnight and nobody was here now, and the coat kept her warm.

  Somewhere in the course of not being able to afford a working coffee maker, the chief financial officer of the CalPark Fertility Clinic had outsourced the facilities management. The ensuing accumulation of mechanical disrepair had resulted in an HVAC system inclined toward cryostasis. The next time Margaret collected a sperm sample for freezing, she might just bypass the liquid nitrogen in favor of the arctic air vents in the ladies’ restroom.

  She shuffled into her office and plopped down behind a desk mounded with paperwork and lit by harsh fluorescent c
eiling lights. She rummaged through the mess in search of the other half of the candy bar she’d eaten for dinner. Instead, she came across a framed yearbook photo of a grinning, blonde teenaged girl. Margaret sighed and wiped a smudge away from her daughter’s picture. Daniella had gone out on a date with that nice boy from last weekend. At least somebody was having a good time tonight.

  As for her . . . well, she hated Friday nights. They were like Valentine’s Day: calendared reminders of one’s lack of a social or romantic life. These were distinct from anniversaries—say, the anniversary of a husband’s untimely death from prostate cancer, of which Margaret had endured six so far. No, Friday nights were twilight periods between work and leisure, neither weekday nor weekend, meant to be spent in the presence of someone who could reassure you during the transition. And since Margaret didn’t have that someone, she stayed here at the clinic, forcing herself to write some goddamned, stupid article for—

  “Stop it,” she said, and thumped her desk. “You’re getting yourself worked up for no reason.”

  She pushed her glasses up her nose and focused on the computer screen. So far, she had a title (“Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis is Not Eugenics”) and reams of technical and therefore unreadable notes about designer babies and genetic engineering, but little else. She just wasn’t the right person for this. The assignment was to compose a rebuttal to the sensationalistic but number-one New York Times bestselling screed of a televangelist who’d somehow managed to get knighted by Oprah’s Book Club. She wasn’t a writer; she was just Margaret Connolly, a depressed and slightly dumpy mother on the downhill side of fifty who was trained to treat couples suffering from infertility. She had no idea how she’d gotten saddled with such an inappropriate assignment.

  She coughed, laughing at herself. Well, that wasn’t exactly true.

  She picked up her phone and pressed the speed-dial button for home. She frowned when her daughter didn’t answer.

  “Daniella?” she spoke into the answering machine. “You better start thinking now of a good excuse for why you didn’t get this call. You might want to claim you were taking a shower and didn’t hear the phone ring, so be sure to dampen your hair so I’ll believe you. Whatever the case, I’m sure you didn’t ignore your curfew, because then you’d be in big trouble.” She paused, waiting for Daniella to hear her voice and snatch up the receiver. When that didn’t happen, Margaret frowned and said, “Well anyway, kiddo, I hope you’re having a good time. Listen, I should be here another couple hours. Do me a favor: add ‘coffee’ to the shopping list. And clear your schedule for tomorrow. Your ass is mine all day for chores since you chose to stay out late. Nighty night.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Stop it,” Daniella said and pushed Eric away. She knew he wanted sex—he’d been hinting at it all week—but she’d never even touched a boy’s thing before. It all gave her a bad case of the squicks.

  “Come on, Daniella—”

  “Just slow down, okay?”

  “But you got a curfew, and it’s already . . .” He paused to turn on the car battery so he could read the digital clock.

  “Mom’s working late at the clinic, writing some paper or something. There’s no rush.”

  Eric glanced at her as he pushed an OutKast CD into the stereo. “What about your dad?”

  Daniella gaped at him. She’d told him her dad died years ago. How could they have been dating for two whole weeks, and he couldn’t even remember something as basic as—

  “Oh, oh—that’s right, I remember.” He beamed his idiotic pointy-toothed grin as if that would make everything okay. The CD picked up with “Bust,” and Eric sang along about ghosts and goblins running amok and the seventh sign.

  The music was loud enough to drown out further discussion, and Eric took the opportunity to seal his mouth over hers. Daniella tasted the chocolate Goobers he’d eaten in the theater.

  “Eric, I—”

  Another kiss cut her off.

  She tried to get into it, tried to control the sudden suffocating feeling that was gathering although the windows were down, but Eric was moving too fast. His hands were everywhere like that Hindu god Shiva they’d read about in fourth-period social studies. She’d met Eric in that class, teasing him by tugging on the chain that tied his wallet to his belt loop. She still had her braces and hadn’t been listening to rap or punk in order to impress him. Things were simpler then.

  “Eric, please stop. . . .”

  He didn’t hear her over the music, or he was ignoring her. His sharpened canine reflected the parking lot’s lights for a moment before he used it to nip her neck.

  “Ow, stop it!”

  Daniella pushed him away. She glanced at the Count Chocula action figure that hung from the rearview mirror by a rubber band.

  Eric laughed and tried to do it again. This time, she punched him in the chest.

  “Ow.”

  “And turn that crap off,” she said, then did it herself. OutKast was silenced in the middle of explaining that its hunger couldn’t be smothered.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Eric said. His jeans looked like he’d stuffed them with half a box of tissues. A wet spot spread from the top of the bulge.

  Eric’s leer reappeared a moment later, but when he leaned in again, he moved slower. This time when he kissed her, his tongue only ventured as far as her lips—not drilling for oil this time—so Daniella relaxed. She allowed him to lick the smooth surface of her teeth.

  I can do this, she told herself. Fake it till you make it.

  She slipped her fingers through his dark bristly hair, stopping at the stud in his right ear that always intrigued her, more so than the filed-down tooth. There were other parts of him that she couldn’t caress, like his sense of humor and the way he made her feel when he paid attention to her as if she were the only person in the world. She wished she could spend an evening with just those parts of him—because a small voice inside her protested that this was wrong, that she should remain a virgin until marriage. She pushed his hand away when he cupped her breast again.

  The hand returned, as it always did, this time to the clasp of her jeans—and this time she decided not to fight. Eric flicked open the button with a kind of ease that seemed practiced.

  “Eric, I don’t know,” she said but knew she was nearing the point of no return.

  “Shhh.”

  Everything gradually intensified, like on their first date when they’d smoked the joint Eric retrieved from beneath his car seat. Her skin had tingled like she’d bathed in the muscle-relaxant cream Mom used to cure neck and shoulder cramps after long days at the clinic. She felt that way now, a wave of warmth rising from her crotch and up her ribs, tightening her nipples and electrifying her neck and face. She worried she was breaking out in hives and that Eric would notice. The parking lot lights seemed to deepen to the rich hue of a sunset. The hum of cars departing the lower decks were now the murmur of waves upon a beach.

  Eric’s hand searched lower, and Daniella tensed as he inserted the tip of a finger inside her. His touch fired twin lightning bolts of heat and cold through her body. Omigod, I can’t believe he’s doing it, omigod . . .

  “Your pussy’s so hot,” he whispered. “It means you’re ovulating.”

  Daniella clasped his wrist and pulled him out. Too much—my god he needs to go slower! She wanted to tell him this was the first time she’d ever been touched down there, but it was easier to fall back on sarcasm: “Where’d you hear that, biology class?”

  “My brother. He’s had lots of women. Taught me everything I know.”

  Daniella didn’t like the sound of that. It was too much like saying she was just another conquest, and she still didn’t like how easily he’d unbuttoned her jeans (one-handed, even). But his tongue silenced further words. His fingers stole back into her clothes and detoured north to her breasts.

  She pushed his hand away. The giddy feeling was now gone. Maybe she’d made a mistake by telling him that Mom was
n’t home and she could stay out late. She envisioned him asking to come inside when he finally dropped her off. The thought of letting him into her house—where he’d see her pink bedspread, stuffed animals, and other childhood holdovers she’d not had the heart to part with—the prospect of his teasing her about them, laced with more of his scarily advanced knowledge of women, made her want to get out and walk the four miles home.

  Eric left her mouth to suck on her neck, his hands ever pawing, ever searching.

  Maybe I should just go now. It’s not far, and it’s nice out—although Mom will kill me for walking so far alone at night.

  Eric paused on her neck but didn’t remove his mouth. His hands stopped moving under her shirt. Daniella frowned and started to ask what was wrong when—

  “Ow! Damn!”

  She shoved him away. Her hand flew to her neck. Eric, that pervert, he—

  “Bit me! You bit me with that fang of yours!”

  “C’mon, no, I didn’t—”

  “You jerk.” Daniella wrenched the rearview mirror around to inspect her neck. She found a red mark.

  “It’s just a hickey, Daniella.”

  “It is not a hickey.” She yanked Count Chocula off the rearview mirror, snapping the rubber band, and threw it at him. Tears sprang into her eyes. “You and your stupid vampire fetish.”

  “It is not a fetish.” His mouth closed tight over his sharpened tooth, his features hardening.

  Daniella’s heart jumped as she realized she’d crossed the line. She remembered the other vampire crap she saw in his room the five minutes they were there during last weekend’s date: the Underworld: Evolutions and True Blood posters on his door and the vial of red liquid Eric claimed was blood. (And get real: the Goth thing was, like, so over.)

  He squeezed her hand, which was still clenched into a fist. “I don’t get you. You know you want me, but you give me all this mixed-signal shit. What do you need, a beer? I got some beer in the trunk.”