“I think I’m a little past drugs, aren’t I?”
We stop at another corner, waiting for a lone Toyota to glide by.
“Ahh, sod it. You’re right. That happened before my Transference. So… anyway. If you’re feeding from a person directly, you’ll get a warning sense when you’re about to drink too much.”
“A sense? Like what?” I toss my head back and let my hair fly in the wind, savoring the feeling of being alive. Or, well, almost. Other than night vision, I don’t feel much different than I used to. If Dalton hadn’t told me I was a vampire (and I hadn’t stumbled across flying) I wouldn’t know anything had changed―at least until I picked up Dad’s ping pong table myself.
“Well…” Dalton holds his hands out as if framing a distant landscape scene. “It’s like when you’re living at home and havin’ a good wank, and you hear your mum walkin’ down the hallway toward your room. Know what I mean?”
“No. Not at all. Wank? Is that like some British food?”
He cackles. “Guess it’s a bit different for the girls. Wank is… umm…” He makes a jerking-off gesture.
“Oh.” I blush. “No, it’s not that different for the girls. So you’re saying it’s like being three fingers in going for broke when the ’rents knock on your door and it feels like you’re seconds away from your entire life being ruined?”
Dalton grins. “Perhaps life ruination is overstating it. You’ll get a sense of imminent worry. It’s difficult to explain. But if it ever happens, you’ll know.”
“Okay. So… how much do I need to drink? And what? I just like bite people on the neck?”
“Unless you’ve been ripped up, you’ll get full on about a pint. If you want to avoid leaving evidence, be careful not to feed from the same person more often than once every couple of months. Think of it like donating blood.”
“Can we drink donated blood?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Aye… if you don’t mind the taste of preservatives.” He cringes. “I don’t recommend it. ’Ere, let’s ’ave your arm a tick.”
I hold out my left arm.
“Bear in mind we are mystical beings. Our fangs have some unique properties. If you bite intending to feed rather than fight…” He extends his fangs and bites me on the wrist.
I gasp, but mostly from the sight of it. It doesn’t hurt at all, no worse than a light pressure from a finger checking my pulse.
He withdraws his fangs, and blood wells up out of two puncture wounds, but nowhere near the sort of gushing spurt I’d expect from holes that deep. “Now, once you’re done, you merely need to make a symbolic gesture of closure over the wound and desire it to seal.” Dalton traces his fingers across my arm, and the bite marks disappear. “Some of our kind lick the wound if they’re feeling kinky. Any touch will do, along with the intent.”
“Got it.”
“Now, you may be wondering why those little holes remained in your arm and didn’t close right up like other times you’ve suffered injuries.”
I shrug. “I hadn’t thought of it, but I guess that’s a good question. Is it because of the fangs and you wanting to feed?”
“Partially. Our fangs and claws are full of the same sort of magic that makes us exist as vampires. A bite or scratch is pretty much like a normal injury to a normal person. It’ll heal much slower than other wounds. The fangs are painless for feeding; in fact, you can even feed off a sleeping person without waking them. But if you’re angry, they hurt quite a bit.”
“Sounds easy enough. Is it weird to drink blood from another vampire?”
“It’s basically junk food. No nutritional value but it tastes awesome. And some of the old bastards can do strange things with it. Generally, try to avoid drinking another vamp’s blood. And since you joked about it earlier, if you feed a few drops of your blood to a human, it will empower them somewhat for a short time.”
“Like how long?” I hesitate at the next corner, not sure which way he’s going to go.
Dalton steps out onto the road, going straight. “Depends on how long a vampire’s been around. For you right now, perhaps one year. It suspends aging, gives a little boost to the body as well as the mind, and can clear up sickness.”
“Wow. That sounds awesome.” Obviously, I can’t do that to my siblings since it would be crappy to trap them as little kids forever.
“Before you go ‘empowering’ your whole family, you should know that there is a downside.”
I sigh. “Of course.”
“Giving your blood to a human too often will eventually turn them into a brainless servitor. Plus, for every person you’ve fed, you will get proportionally weaker until the effect wears off them and the power returns to you.”
“Oh.” I frown at the street. “So I can’t keep my parents around forever.”
“Not by that method. They’d eventually become little more than creepy two-legged dogs.”
I so did not need a mental image of my parents scampering over to lick my face after I got home in the morning. Thanks, bud.
“Ahh, here we are…” whispers Dalton as he comes to a halt. “Now. There’s a few things you want to consider when feeding. One: find a target you haven’t fed from within the past, oh, three months. Two: look for someone in a secluded location or in somewhere so bloody chaotic no one will notice what you’re doing. Three: make eye contact with them first and command them to be quiet and docile… unless you find one of the freaky ones who likes it.”
“That exists?” I blink at him. “Seriously? Wouldn’t those people know that vampires are real?”
“Yeah, but it’s not too common here in the states. Amsterdam, Berlin, Sweden… there’s some ruddy wild night life over there.”
I shudder at the thought. “So, how does the command thing work?”
“Well, you’re a vampire and they’re not, so if you stare into someone’s eyes and tell them to do something, they’re probably going to do it.”
“Hah!” I crack up. “I think I commanded Mom to go to bed.”
He snickers. “You did. Almost made me laugh out loud.”
“Hey, Dad. Can I have a pony for my birthday?”
Dalton pokes me in the stomach. “Do not abuse your powers of cuteness. It is a great gift, and with great power comes―”
“Great responsibility,” I drone.
“No. I was going to say a stonkin’ good time.” He winks. “Though I think your neighbors might complain about horse manure all over their lawn. Right, so last step. Once you stop feeding, stare into their eyes again and command them to forget.”
“Just ‘forget’?” I ask.
“If you’re not specific about the forgetting, it’ll make their brain flush the last ten minutes or so. Right, so, two houses up there on the left, there’s a bloke trying ta break in. Perfect candidate for a snack, and you look famished.”
“So, just walk up and nom?” I stand up on tiptoe for a better vantage point but can’t see much over the hedges.
“More or less. Remember what I told you.” Dalton points at a red wooden fence. “Other side of that. Go on.”
Sounds easy enough. And also weird. And creepy. And eww. But… I’m not going to let myself waste away. Dalton gave me a second chance at life and I can’t blow it on being queasy. I’ve been the good girl for eighteen years, and fate decided to kill me anyway. I suppose I can rebel a little.
The biggest problem with having night vision is that it feels like I’m right out in the open where everyone can see me. I dart across the street in a stupid half-crouching run, which gets Dalton stifling laughter. It’s probably pretty dark in the trees beside this house, and normal people wouldn’t have an easy time spotting me.
“Dammit,” whispers a man, followed by a scrape of metal. “Come on.”
I creep up behind the fence and float off my feet, inching higher until I can see over it.
A thirty-something guy in a green sweatshirt and grey sweatpants is jamming a metal strip at a window. I don’t have t
he first clue if what he’s doing is the wrong way to go about breaking into a house. Whatever it is, he’s not having any luck. He hesitates, peering to his right at the street when a car approaches. Dude seriously needs a shave, and I can smell beer on him from where I’m floating. At least he’s not acting drunk. Maybe it’s soaked into his clothes.
Well, if I’m going to do this, I should get it over with. First time’s always the hardest. Of course, the words ‘first time’ make me think of Scott. Last Thursday wasn’t the only time he stuck something in me that drew blood. Well, he did that when he killed me, too, but I mean the first time I had sex. It hurt a lot more than I expected, and I bled a lot, which freaked me out big time. We didn’t finish. He said some bullshit like ‘I guess you’re not really in the mood,’ and just left me there curled up, crying and bleeding all over myself.
Why I didn’t dump him after that, I have no idea. Ooh! I get fuming mad at myself just thinking about it. He acted like I’d messed up and ruined the night for him… and for a while I kinda believed I did.
Grr.
The burglar turns at my sudden snarl, which probably sounded more like a bear than a girl my size. He looks right in my direction but doesn’t notice me. Wow. Okay. It’s much darker than I thought. I grab the top of the fence and vault it, gliding to a soft landing right behind him.
“Hey,” I whisper, tapping him on the shoulder.
He turns and starts to scream, but only a half second of noise comes out before I’ve made eye contact. The man goes derpy, and stares at me, dumbfounded.
“Relax,” I say, trying to push the idea of calm into his head.
Right. So… how do I do this? I step up to him like we’re going to slow dance, try to get my mouth to his neck. It doesn’t feel right, so I back off and look at him. Leaning in again doesn’t work either, so I take two steps back and stare. Maybe I should try the left side. Again, I tuck in, but the dude’s a week overdue for a shower, and I retreat, almost ready to hurl. Wow, you’d almost think biting someone on the neck is like unnatural or something. Gah. Awkward.
“Feckin’ do it already. Bite him,” rasps Dalton, from the other side of the fence.
I sigh at the stars. “He stinks! And he’s drunk.”
“He’s not drunk. And it wouldn’t matter if he was. You could drink a mouthful of AIDS and it wouldn’t bother you.”
“Ugh. Seriously?” I glare at the fence. “That is like totally not cool.”
Okay. I can do this. Concentrate, Sarah. It’s only a little blood, and the guy won’t even remember.
I open my mouth and extend my fangs. “Wait. If I drank that, would I become contagious?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Viruses can’t survive inside us… and―it’s magic!” He thrusts his arms up wide.
Whatever.
I lean in before I can think too much about it, concentrate on my desire to feed, and sink my fangs into the neck of the world’s worst burglar. An explosion of pizza sauce fills my mouth. The unexpected flavor makes me gag and choke, but the instinct-driven vampire part of me takes over and prevents me from wasting blood.
Clamped onto him like a koala, I suckle at his neck for a few minutes, gulping down the bizarrely tasty blood. Eventually, I’m as stuffed as if I’d eaten a full meal (with appetizer salad) and totter back a step, holding my stomach.
“Oof. I think I took too much.”
Blood spurts out of his neck.
Oops.
I pounce on him and wipe my hand over the bite, wanting it closed. He stops bleeding. The bite mark’s gone, but he’s got blood on his neck and soaked into his shirt.
“Step four,” whispers Dalton from behind the fence.
Staring into the man’s eyes again, I say, “Forget me… and go get a real job.”
The guy blinks, disoriented.
Before his confusion evaporates, I fly-leap over the fence and land next to Dalton, who’s got a hand clamped over his mouth. Tears glisten at the corners of his eyes and his shoulders shake.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter. “If vampires had YouTube, I’d be on Fails of the Week.”
He pats me on the back, then grips my shoulder for a moment until he can speak without laughing. “Nah. That’s not actually that bad for a first time. I’s laughin’ about the ‘get a real job’ bit at the end. Classic.”
A clatter of thin metal striking the ground precedes the burglar walking off.
Dalton tugs me along back to the sidewalk, and we lurk in the shadows watching the would-be robber hop into a beat up Honda Civic and drive away.
“I think I drank too much. I feel like I ate a whole Thanksgiving turkey… plus a slice of pie. And why did it taste like pizza?”
“Blood’s pretty disgusting,” says Dalton.
“Huh?” I peer up at him. “Aren’t we supposed to drink it?”
“Aye. But our brains are still mostly human. Now, ya might one day meet some real old-school types who think they’re superior to humans… like they’d never once been a mortal. Maybe they taste blood for what it is, but unless ya get ta that point, yer brain will fill in a flavor ta make it moreish.” He nods for me to follow, and sets off down the road again.
“Moreish?” I trot up beside him and fall in step. “Why’d that guy taste like pizza? Did he eat pizza right before?”
“Means tasty… and maybe. Possible you smelled it on him and your head filled it in, or maybe it’s what your brain figured a man who looks like that would taste like. It’s completely arbitrary based on what you think of the person. Nothing spiritual or deep about them. All in your head.”
“Oh… so that explains…”
“Hmm?”
“My little sister smelled like strawberries when she got angry. Like her heart rate got up and I could smell her blood through her skin.”
“Ach.” He cringes. “Not a good sign. You were overdue for a feed.”
“Umm.” I stop walking. “Is it possible for me to like snap and hurt my family?”
Dalton rubs his chin, giving me the wild eyebrow. “Some vampires, yes. You? I doubt it.”
“Are you sure?”
He puts a finger beneath my chin, lifts my head a tick, and looks me over. “Yep.”
The confidence with which he says that makes me feel better. “Cool. Wow. I’m really going to miss ice cream.”
He chuckles. “Well, you could force yourself to eat normal food if you wanted to. One of the perks of your particular nature. However, it uses up some energy, and what eventually comes out the other end is the same as what you ate. Your body no longer processes it. You can’t get fat or survive on it, but you can enjoy the flavor or blend in among humans. If you do eat or drink not-blood, you’ll eventually need the services of a bog.”
“There’s no swamps around here.”
“A bog’s a toilet,” mutters Dalton.
“Never heard that before.” I shrug.
“Ever been to the UK?” He winks and resumes walking.
“Nope. Never been out of the country. Dad usually drags us on a road trip every summer, but… yeah. I think my road tripping days are over.”
“Well, if he gets a van and a light-proof box for you to sleep in…” Dalton chuckles. “But, you might attract some undue attention that way.”
“How often should I feed?” I ask.
“That depends on how much energy you use. See, everything we do that’s not normal burns energy. Think of blood like calories. It takes a little bit to keep everything working, so if you lay around at home and do nothing supernatural, you’ll need to feed maybe once a month. But everything you do like flying, growing claws, using mental influence on people, beyond-human strength or speed―all the fun stuff―that’ll make you hungry faster. Oh, and regenerating damage is a big one.”
I nod. “That sounds pretty self-explanatory. Heh. I’m like a character in a game with mana points or something.”
Dalton scratches his he
ad. “I’ve not the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”
“So, what else do I need to learn?” I absentmindedly reach for my iPhone and grab my hip. Damn. “Is there like a book or something I can download if I forget something?”
He laughs. “No, but… maybe I should write one.”
We walk along, headed generally back toward home. Guess the lesson’s over for now. I glance down at my hand, specifically my fingernails. “How sharp are these claws?”
“Magically sharp.” Dalton takes my wrist and lifts my hand into the moonlight, so it gleams off my polished nails. “You scratched the walls in the morgue. They’ll go through thin steel, but if you run into someone with a bulletproof vest, stab instead of slicing.”
“Yeah, sure… Like I’m going to attack a cop.”
“Oh, not cops.” Dalton lets my arm drop. “Hunters. Some of them have Kevlar.”
I stop walking, staring at him. “Hunters? Really? That’s a thing?”
“Of course. For every group that’s different from the majority, there’s a subset of people who decide to hate it for no good reason.”
“Dalton… we’re not like a minority. We’re vampires. We drink blood. That would kinda freak me out if I wasn’t one.”
He shrugs. “Most of us don’t harm people. But you get one lunatic and well, suddenly, all vampires are bloodthirsty fiends. Humanity’s got thousands of years of genetic programming training it to isolate itself from ‘the other.’ It’s why people with deformities have been shunned for millennia. A deep-seated genetic encoding on a primordial level sets off a warning bell in the subconscious like ‘that person’s unsuitable for a mate, so avoid them.’ It’s species maintenance on a macro level.”
“I’m not sure I agree, but…” I hook my thumbs in my pockets, staring down at the sidewalk as we meander along. It’s so somber and quiet. What’s happened to me? Walking around here at night with no one else in sight is a visual reminder of how separated from the world I’ve become. My old ecosphere of high school, classes, and friends is a closed door behind me. Almost everyone I know is going away to college, a future I had been looking forward to as well, but that door slammed in my face. Maybe it’s better if I keep a safe distance between myself and society.
A Nighttime of Forever Page 8