You Suck: A Love Story

by Christopher Moore

  It took most of the day for us to move the Countess and the vampyre Flood to Jared’s room. First we had to wrap them up in duct tape and garbage bags to protect them from the sun, then get them down the hill from the Bay Bridge in the garden cart, which was totally physically hard, and not like taking X and dancing or playing DDR all night, more like work. Then, when we were loading them into the minivan, these two cops come by.

  And they’re all, “So, what are you doing with your piercings and your magenta-on-black hair, and what can we do to further repress your creativity? Bluster-blah-blah.”

  And Jared was all, “Nothing.” All wussy and guilty-sounding. He had the front end of the Countess at the time and he totally just dropped her headfirst on the floorboard of the van.

  So I was like, “Fucktard! The Countess is going to rip your nads off when she awakens!” (And she might, too, although when we unwrapped her she seemed unbruised.)

  And the cop was all, “Hold it right there, kid.” With his hand on his gun like I was going to go all Columbine on his ass or something. So I knew it was time for some strategy.

  So I stepped over to the cop, and I started whispering like I didn’t want Jared to hear. And I’m all, “Officer, I’m really embarrassed to even be seen like this. I’m a Kappa Delta pledge and we’re doing this hazing thing. I wouldn’t be caught dead dressed like this, but it’s like the most popular and powerful sorority on campus.”

  And the cop is all, “What about the guy? He’s not in your sorority.”

  And I was all, “Shhhhhhh. God, you want to hurt her feelings? They made her shave her head like that and she’s having a hard enough time with that and being totally flat chested. Frankly, I don’t think she’s going to make it. Everyone knows that KKDs are pretty. Hello.” I batted my eyelashes and sort of pushed my basically invisible boobs together with my arms, as I have often seen done in music videos.

  And the cop was all, “Can I see your student ID?”

  And I was like, FUCK, because I didn’t know which college would be most likely to have a sorority, so I went with my Berkeley student ID, because Berkeley is a well-known bastion of hippie behavior and higher learning in which a sorority girl would probably have to blow like a hundred football players just to keep her GPA up. And cops like football.

  So he was all, “Okay, but make sure there’s plenty of airholes so your friends can breathe.”

  And I was all, “Sure thing. See ya later, cop.”

  So when we got the masters to Jared’s house, his stepmom was all, “So, I see you have your little friend with you.”

  And Jared had to play chilly, so he was like, yeah, we have a school project. And stepmonster was so proto orgasmic that Jared was with a girl that she didn’t even say much when we dragged the bodies through the den. Jared was all, “They’re for social studies. We’re doing replicas of Egyptian mummies.”

  Despite the complete embarrassment for me as a fellow woman, I’m grateful that when fathers pick their trophy wives, they don’t check résumés or SAT scores, because you couldn’t get away with that shit with a woman of normal intelligence. But Jared’s stepmonster was all, “Oh, how nice for you. Would you like some juice?” Fortunately she wasn’t around in sixth grade when Jared and I actually did our mummy project. We got in trouble for charging three hundred dollars’ worth of Ace bandages on my mom’s Visa, and my sister Ronnie has never fully recovered the feeling in her feet (and has an anxiety attack whenever she’s in an enclosed space). But there was no gangrene or amputations like the doctors threatened, and we got a B, so I don’t see what all the noise and counseling was about.

  Anyway, after we unwrapped the Countess, I knew I had to go back and feed Chet, like I promised the disgusting huge cat guy, and since we had now shared a moment of intimacy, I felt obligated. So we shoved the vampyre Flood under Jared’s bed, because Jared wanted to sit on the bed and play Xbox and it’s a single bed. So, anyway, I caught the bus on Twenty-fourth Street, and got back to the SOMA with just enough time to feed Chet before the old naked vampyre awakened from his undead slumber. And I took Jared’s dagger with me in my biohazard messenger bag, because I thought I would dispatch Elijah by decapitation as, like, an extra-credit thing for the Countess.

  Shut up. It wasn’t like I went down in the basement in my nightgown to check on a blown fuse when the radio clearly had stated that there was a psycho killer on the loose and he was probably in the basement. I’m not stupid. I put on Jared’s motocross boots and his leather jacket and spiked dog collar, and tied my hair back, so I was totally Thunderdome-ready. How hard could it be to feed the cat and cut the head off a sleeping old guy, anyway? It’s not like they wake up. I mean, we bonked Flood’s head on the steps going to Jared’s room like eight times and he didn’t even groan.

  So I would have been all good and totally in line to be Princess of Darkness or at least Assistant Manager of Darkness, except when I was going up the steps I heard the dryer open. And I was all, Uh-oh. Since when is sundown like at five-o’clock? What am I, nine years old that I should have sunset at five o’clock? Sunset shouldn’t be until like eight or nine o’clock, right? Right?

  So, I’m like, WHOA. And I froze. And I stood there for like a half an hour, not moving at all, because I didn’t buckle like the top buckles of Jared’s motocross boots, to show my casual badassness, so it was like I was wearing fucking sleigh bells. (I know, I’m a tard.) So I couldn’t move.

  Then, after about a year, I hear this car pull up outside and the doors open, and I’m thinking—Hello, Diversion, my old friend. And I ran out the security door and right into this tall blond ho. And she’s dressed all couture and shit, like it’s fashion week at church or something, except she’s with three of the guys from the Hummer limo, and she’s pale as albino monkey cum. And I don’t mean in a good way either. I mean in a sort of “Hey, Myrtle Joe Cornfed, y’all let go your stepdaddy’s penis and get over here and turn the channel to NASCAR” kind of way. I mean, she had no mascara on at all!

  Then she just picks me up by the arms and it hurt a lot, and I’m like kicking and thrashing and all, and she throws back her head and here come the fangs.

  And I’m all, “No way. They’ll just let any-fucking-body into the coven.”

  And she’s all, “Not you. Unless you know where my money is.”

  And I’m all, “Step off, skank.”

  And she goes to bite me, and something yanks her back off her feet and I go flying.

  Next thing, I’m looking up at the old vampyre in his yellow tracksuit, who is holding the blond ho by the hair, and the pale limo guys are like coming in on him. And Tracksuit is all, “Against the rules, pet. You can’t go willy-nilly turning everyone you meet. It attracts the wrong kind of attention.”

  And wham, he smacks her face on the hood of her Mercedes, leaving a face print on the paint, I swear on the crusty hippie grave of my mother.

  So I’m all, “Owned! Bee-yatch! Dog fucking owned you!” Doing a minor booty dance of ownage, perhaps, in retrospect, a bit prematurely. (I believe hip-hop to be the appropriate language for taunting, at least until I learn French.)

  So they all turn on me. And I’m all, “awkward.” So I started backing across the street. And crusty old vampyre bounces monkey cum’s face off the hood of the Mercedes a couple of more times, then drops her and comes for me. The limo guys are all sort of standing by the car like they are waiting for instructions or something. Then one of them says, “Hey,” and starts coming my way, too.

  So I’m at the wall across the street, and I know I can’t run, so I reach into my bag and pull Jared’s dagger. And Tracksuit starts laughing—like really stoner laughing, pointing at my ensemble.

  And I was all, “Shut up, fuckface, this knife and boots totally go with fishnets.” Except for the Countess, I realize now that vampyres lose all fashion sense at death.

  But then I hear this really loud thumper coming from down the alley, like club music you can feel in your breastbon
e, and this totally race-pimped yellow Honda comes screaming out of the alley. Who knew you could even get a car down that alley.

  So the old vampyre has to jump back to avoid being run over and the limo guys jump back, and I was kind of hiding my head in my arms, but I hear, “Get in,” and it’s the cool Manga-haired Asian guy who I’d seen outside the loft before.

  And I’m all, “What?” Because the music is really loud.

  And he’s all, “Get in.”

  And I’m all, “What?”

  And by this time the old vampyre has jumped over the hood of the Honda and is about to grab me when there’s this flash. Really more than a flash, because it stayed on. But there was this blinding light. And the music goes down and I hear, “Get in.”

  So I look into the light, and I’m like, “Grandma, is that you?”

  Okay, I didn’t say that. I’m totally fucking with you. I looked into the light and saw the Manga-haired guy, wearing sunglasses, and he’s waving for me to get in his car. And then I see that the old vampyre is charred like Wile E. Coyote after a bad rocket shoes test. And so are the limo guys, and they’re smoking and limping away from the Honda, which is shining like a star or something.

  And Manga is all, “Now!”

  And I’m all, “Shut up, you’re not the boss of me.” But I got in the Honda and we totally drifted around the corner, and when we’re a block or two away Steve (that’s his name, Steve) kills the ginormous floodlights in the backseat and I can sort of see again.

  And he’s all, “High-intensity ultraviolet.”

  And I’m, “You, too.”

  And he’s like, “What are you talking about?”

  I’m like, “I thought it was a compliment.”

  Then he smiled, like the cutest smile, although he was still driving muy intense and totally badass, and he goes, “No, that light back there was high-intensity ultraviolet. It burns them.”

  And I was all, “I knew that.”

  And he was like, “You know that those three guys were vampyres, too, right?”

  And I’m all, “Duh.” But I didn’t know. So I’m like, “How did you know?”

  Then he takes off his shades and puts on these binocular robot-glasses things, like they wear in Siphon Assassin Six for Xbox, which I am against because it glorifies violence in the minds of adolescent boys and because it’s totally impossible to get a decent head shot when your squad mates are bumping into you, which needs to be fixed in the next version if I’m going to be able to do the “gray spray” on the sentry tower glass.

  So Steve is all, “Yeah, they’re infrared. You can see heat with them, and there was no heat coming off anyone back there but you.”

  And I’m like, “Who the fuck are you?”

  And he’s like, “My name’s Steve. I’m working on my biochem masters at S.F. State.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Please do not further endorken youself to me. You have great hair and a car that is most fly, and you have just saved me with your mad ninja driving skills, so do not sully your heroic hottie image in my mind by further reciting your nerdy scholastic agenda. Don’t tell me what you’re studying, Steve, tell me what’s in your soul. What haunts you?”

  And he was like, “Dude, you need to cut back on the caffeine.”

  Which was fair, and I know that he was only saying it out of concern for my welfare and whatnot, because I think he knew even then that we were destined to be together, soul mates.

  So while he drives, Steve tells me that he was doing some experiments on some bodies for his master’s thingy, and he found that the cells of the victims were regenerating when you added blood to them, and he thinks he can turn them back to normal human cells by using some gene therapy or something. And he’s been talking to the Countess and Lord Flood about turning them back, but the Countess is all, “No way, hot Manga-haired science guy.”

  So I was all, “Why would she want to give up immortality and superpowers and whatnot?”

  And he was all, “I don’t know.”

  And I was all, “We should discuss it over coffee.”

  And he was like, “I would love to do that, but I’m already late for work.”

  And I was like, “I thought you were a mad scientist.”

  And he was all, “I work at Stereo City.”

  And I was like, “Dude, you should get a job at Metreon selling the big-screens, because they have like the best test couches.”

  And he was like, “Okay.” Just like that, “Okay.”

  So he wanted to give me a ride home, so I would be safe, which is so sweet, but I needed double-soy Mochaccino to calm my nerves, so here I am at Tulley’s, totally brooding.

  But before I got out of the car, I was like, “Steve, do you have a girlfriend?”

  And he was like, “No, I put a lot of time into my studies, and I sort of always have.”

  And I was like, “So would you be in the market for a Gaijin princess?”

  And he was like, “That’s Japanese. I’m Chinese.”

  And I’m like, “Don’t change the subject, Kung Pao, what I want to know is if you’re ready to spend some up-close and personal time with ninety pounds of barbarian woman-flesh! Sorry, I don’t know how much that is in kilos.”

  I don’t know what came over me. I was just fizzing over with adrenaline and passion and whatnot, I guess. I usually don’t throw myself at guys, but he was so mysterious and smart and hot.

  So he got this big grin and he was like, “My parents would freak out if they saw you.”

  And I was like, “You live at home?”

  And he was all, “Well, uh, yeah, uh, kinda, uh—”

  So I grabbed the pen out of his pocket and wrote my cell number on his arm while he stuttered, then when I put the pen back I kissed him sort of hard and totally passionately, which I could tell he liked a lot, so I pushed him away and slapped him so he wouldn’t think I was a slut. But not very hard, so he wouldn’t think I wasn’t interested.

  And I was all, “Call me.”

  And he was all, “I will.”

  So I was like, “Do not fuck with your hair.”

  And he was all, “Okay.”

  And I was all, “Be careful.”

  And he was all, “I will. You, too.”

  And I was all, “Oh, yeah, thanks for the rescue and whatnot.”

  And he was all, “Sure. Thanks for the kiss.”

  And so I am his shameless White Devil Juliet and he is my sweet Ninja Romeo (unless Ninjas are also Japanese, in which case I will have to look some shit up for metaphors because the only thing Chinese I can think of right now is Dim Sum, and I believe it’s disrespectful to refer to your soul mate in terms of finger food).

  Fucksocks! My cell. Jared. L8rz.

  27

  Well, That Was Fucked Up

  Then, Lucifer Two attains the blood sword and takes Jared the White as his consort, and they hold dominion over all of the Kindred for ever and ever,” said Jared White Wolf, concluding the hour-long plot synopsis of his unwritten epic vampire adventure novel. “So what do you think?”

  “I really liked it, but I think you may need to work on the characters more,” Tommy said, flexing his writer muscles a little. It helped him to not think about the thirst that was rising in him.

  Jared looked to Jody, and raised a drawn-on eyebrow.

  “I think we must get out of this basement right now,” Jody said, “and if that means murdering your parents and little sisters, well, you don’t make an omelet—”

  “But what did you think of my novel?” Jared said.

  “I think it’s not a novel, it’s a sexual fantasy about you and your rat.”

  “It is not. That’s just the characters’ names.”

  “Try Abby’s cell again, Jared.” Jody was gritting her teeth.

  “Tell her to get back here,” Tommy said. He was starting to get cramps from the blood thirst.

  “Hold on, I get shit reception down here.” Jared took his cell and his rat a
nd headed out the door and up the steps.

  When he was gone, Tommy turned to Jody. “I’m really feeling the hunger.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Should we maybe just, you know, sample Jared?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Well,” Tommy said. “William is in the hospital, and we don’t know where Abby is, and I don’t see as we have that many options.”

  “Tommy, let’s just walk out of here. What’s the worst that can happen? We shock Jared’s parents? I get the feeling they may be desensitized.”

  “That’s fine, but then where do we go tomorrow? A hotel? I guess, if we get the money, we can have Abby guard the door to keep the maid from coming in and frying us.” Tommy brightened. “Hey, maybe Abby grabbed some money from the loft?”

  “Abby might not even be alive,” Jody said, more than just irritation in her voice now. “You know how Elijah was going to kill you to fuck with me? If he’s been watching us, he has to know about Abby. She’ll be next. We should have left here right away. I feel horrible for leaving her out there alone.”

  “She went right to him.” Tommy cradled his head in hands. “I hate this, Jody. Why did you do this to me? It could have worked. I could have looked out for you and had a real life. Now I just live from feeding to feeding, putting people in danger. Everyone wants to kill us or take something from us. I’m from Indiana, they don’t prepare us for this kind of thing in the Midwest.”

  Jody slid off the bed to the floor and sat next to him, put her arm around his shoulders. “It’s not like that, Tommy. We’re like gods. Sure, we have to hunt, but if you let go to the predator part of you, you’ll lose that anxious feeling. You have to feel the power of it.”