Harry and Fred both got tardy slips because it took awhile to get Harry out of the locker. He was a lot bigger than Binky, and nobody would have believed you could get him into a locker if Fred hadn’t seen it himself and described it.
I told Binky about it at lunch, but he didn’t seem to think it was funny. All he said was, “Sometimes things come back on you.”
I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the cafeteria food. We had fish that day because it was Friday, but Binky wouldn’t eat any. He looked interested when I poured ketchup all over mine, and I thought for a minute he’d give it a try, but he said he just wasn’t hungry.
My sister surprised me when I told her that Binky had demanded an invitation to the party. She didn’t even argue. She pushed her hair back and said, “All right, Binky can come, as long as he stays out of the way.”
She meant, “as long as he stays out of sight of my phony friends,” which also meant that he’d be hanging out in my room, since that’s where I’d be staying. I didn’t like Binky any better than she did. I just put up with him because I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t want him in my room during the party. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, though.
“Did you see the vampire?” Kate said. “Is he the real thing?”
Like I would know a vampire if I saw one, and I hadn’t really seen this one, mostly just his hand, which I have to admit looked real enough to satisfy me, so I said, “He’s the real thing, all right, and if I were you, I wouldn’t want him coming to the party.”
She just laughed. “You don’t have to worry about a thing. We’ll take plenty of precautions, and there aren’t any real vampires, anyway, no matter what you think.”
“If you say so.”
She could believe it was all a big joke if she wanted to, but it so happened that I didn’t agree with her, not that it made any difference.
“I do say so, and I want you and your pal Binky to stay out of the way.”
I didn’t bother to remind her that Binky wasn’t my pal. I asked if she’d told our parents about the vampire, and she gave me this condescending look.
“I don’t tell them a lot of things,” she said, as if she had these big secrets to keep, but I knew she didn’t because I’d sneaked into her room and read her diary one day. “And you’d better not tell them, either, if you know what’s good for you, buster.”
I told her I wouldn’t cause any trouble and handed her my geometry book.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “I’m not doing any problems until after the party and after the vampire shows up.”
I wished I’d never said anything to her about the vampire. Binky had warned me not to, but I had. There was nothing I could do about it. I took my geometry book upstairs and got to work.
Halloween was pretty dreary. It rained most of the day, and the thick clouds stayed dark and low all afternoon. By the time of the party, it was inky black outside, with no sign of the moon or stars.
Kate’s friends started to arrive, and our parents went next door to play canasta with our neighbors. Our parents were very liberal that way, not pushing in where they weren’t wanted. My mother said to be sure to call if there were any problems, and Kate told her not to worry about a thing. I wasn’t so sure, myself, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew what was good for me, buster.
When Binky got there, Kate invited him in. He had on a black plastic rain jacket with the hood pulled over his head, like it might’ve still been raining, and he didn’t seem to like the wreath of garlic hanging around Kate’s neck. I couldn’t blame him. It smelled pretty bad, but Kate thought it was just the right touch. She had a crucifix, too, not just a cross but the real thing with an image of Jesus on it, which was pretty funny considering nobody in our family had been to church in the last ten or fifteen years as far as I knew.
After Binky got inside, he wanted to hang around the way he always does, but I told him we had to go up to my room.
“I want to be here when he comes,” Binky said, and I didn’t have to ask who he meant. I told him we could slip back down later, and he said he guessed that would have to do.
“That crucifix won’t do any good,” Binky said when we got to the top of the stairs. “You have to believe in it.”
“I don’t guess it matters,” I said. “There’s all that garlic.”
“Yeah. That might help.”
I didn’t like it that he said might, but I didn’t believe in the vampire anyway, or that’s what I kept telling myself.
The doorbell rang exactly at eight-thirty, which is when the invitation I gave the vampire had said for him to come. Kate wanted all her friends to be there first.
Binky and I slipped to the head of the stairs and looked down. Binky still had that dumb hood over his head, but I guess he could see all right. Kate went to the front door and opened it. She said something, and then the vampire stepped inside.
He was tall and pale, and his hair was slicked back. From where I was standing, it looked as if he had pointed ears and red eyes. A bunch of Kate’s friends came into the room and stared.
The vampire looked them over like they were buffet items at the smorgasbord restaurant downtown. They all took a step back, even Kate, who usually didn’t back away from anything.
I looked at Binky. He pushed the hood of the rain jacket off his head, and I saw the tips of his ears.
“Binky,” I said.
He smiled. I wished he hadn’t. His teeth weren’t bad anymore. They were white and shiny, and his incisors were pointed and sharp.
“Binky,” I said.
His eyes looked as if they were lit from the inside with red lanterns.
“Binky,” I said.
I thought of a lot of things all at once: Binky studying in the dark locker, wearing long sleeves when it was so warm, Harry Larrimore. I remembered a lot of other things, too, things that I should have thought about before.
“Binky,” I said.
There was some screaming from downstairs now, but I didn’t look to see what was happening. I couldn’t take my eyes off those red eyes, Binky’s eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
“Binky,” I said.
The screaming was louder, and I wondered if anybody had called next door, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t been able to get to a phone.
“Binky,” I said. “For Crissakes, Binky.”
And then he was on me.
I never went back to school after that. Somehow I couldn’t see trying to fit in with a bunch of people whose blood I wanted to suck. After what must have happened downstairs at my house, they probably wouldn’t have been real glad to see me, anyway.
Binky didn’t go back, either, now that he had a “friend” to keep him company. That just goes to show what can happen if you let somebody sit with you at lunch. They start thinking you like them, and then they turn you into a vampire.
Binky says he and the other vampire never did get friendly. Binky had found him out at the old house, where he’d moved after having a close call with some Van Helsing type in the Boston area. He’d told Binky that he was trying to kick the bloodsucking habit, but Binky had pleaded to be turned into a vampire. I blame all those nutty magazines that Binky read. Anyway the guy finally gave in.
“Nobody liked me anyway,” Binky said. “I’m still not with the in-crowd, but at least this way I get to live forever, or at least until somebody stakes me. So do you.”
If you could call it living. It wasn’t anything I wanted to thank him for.
“Too bad the Master had to leave town,” Binky said. “You would have liked him.”
As if I could ever like anybody called “the Master.” If there was ever a phony name, that was it. I’d rather be called Carleton than “the Master.” I’d have liked him about as much as I liked living in that broken-down old house, which is where Binky and I had gone after we left the party by the back door. I never knew much about what happened in my own house that night, and never tried to find out. I g
uess I didn’t want to know. You probably think that’s hard-hearted of me, since my sister was there and all, but she wasn’t my sister anymore, not now that I’d been changed.
“I don’t think he made any of them into vampires,” Binky said. “He thinks it would be a bad idea to have too many of us around, and he prefers just to drink the blood.”
I said I thought he was trying to break the goddam habit.
“He was,” Binky said. “But living on mice and rabbits and stuff like that got pretty boring after a while, I guess.”
Come to think of it, it was getting pretty boring to me, too. I mean, they were all right if you couldn’t get anything else, but before long I was going to have to go for something bigger and more substantial. More nourishing.
“Even blood from a mouse beats that cafeteria chili, though, right?” Binky said.
“Yeah,” I said, “I guess it does, at that.”
All that was a long time ago. For the last few years Binky and I have been hanging out (a little more vampire humor there) under a bridge in Austin, Texas. When you’re surrounded by thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats, nobody’s going to notice you, not if you’re a bat, too, even if you’re a lot bigger than they are. Being bigger works out fine, since they don’t try to push us around.
It’s a pretty boring way to have to spend your time, though, to tell you the truth. Like I said at the beginning, being a vampire’s not all capes and fangs and ripping times. When the highlight of your day is flying out from under a bridge and seeing how many tourists’ mouths you can crap into before they get wise and shut their mouths, you can be pretty sure you’re not living the high life.
It’s actually even worse than that. Bats have parasites. Maybe you didn’t know that. Fleas, mites, ticks. They can be pretty irritating sometimes. I don’t know how living on me affects them. I don’t even care. All I know is that they make me itch.
I think about the old days now and then, and sometimes around her birthday I wonder if Kate survived her party, and if she did, whether she got married to one of her phony friends and had a bunch of kids who were just as phony as their parents. And I wonder if she ever thought about any of those crummy movies she used to like so much. They were pretty much to blame for the whole thing, after all.
“It’s nearly sundown,” Binky squeaked.
The children of the night, such music they make. You probably couldn’t understand Binky even if you heard him, but I could.
“Time to give the tourists a thrill,” he said. “I’ll bet I can hit more open mouths this evening than you can!”
“Sure, Binky,” I said.
“Some fun!” he said.
“Sure, Binky,” I said. “Some fun.”
There’s nothing like being a teenage vampire. I should know. I’ve been one for forty-five years now, so I figured it was time to let the world know.
Maybe somebody will make a movie.
Twilight
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Women of the Otherworld paranormal suspense series. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle, but she puts her old skills to work on her website at www.KelleyArmstrong.com.
Another life taken. Another year to live.
That is the bargain that rules our existence. We feed off blood, but for three hundred and sixty-four days a year, it is merely that: feeding. Yet on that last day—or sometime before the anniversary of our rebirth as vampires—we must drain the lifeblood of one person. Fail and we begin the rapid descent into death.
As I sipped white wine on the outdoor patio, I watched the steady stream of passersby. Although there was a chill in the air—late autumn coming fast and sharp—the patio was crowded, no one willing to surrender the dream of summer quite yet. Leaves fluttering onto the tables were lauded as decorations. The scent of a distant wood fire was willfully mistaken for candles. The sun, almost gone despite the still early hour, only added romance to the meal. All embellishments to the night, not signs of impending winter.
I sipped my wine and watched night fall. At the next table, a lone businessman eyed me. He was the sort of man I often had the misfortune to attract: middle-aged and prosperous, laboring under the delusion that success and wealth were such irresistible lures that he could allow his waistband and jowls to thicken unchecked.
Under other circumstances, I might have returned the attention, let him lead me to some tawdry motel, then taken my dinner. He would survive, of course, waking weakened, blaming it on too much wine. A meal without guilt. Any man who took such a chance with a stranger—particularly when he bore a wedding band—deserved an occasional bout of morning-after discomfort.
He did not, however, deserve to serve as my annual kill. I can justify many things, but not that. Yet I found myself toying with the idea more than I should have, prodded by a niggling voice that told me I was already late.
I stared at the glow over the horizon. The sun had set on the anniversary of my rebirth, and I hadn’t taken a life. Yet there was no need for panic. I would hardly explode into dust at midnight. I would weaken as I began the descent into death, but I could avoid that simply by fulfilling my bargain tonight.
I measured the darkness, deemed it enough for hunting, then laid a twenty on the table and left.
A bell tolled ten. Two hours left. I chastised myself for being so dramatic. I loathe vampires given to theatrics—those who have read too many horror novels and labor under the delusion that that’s how they’re supposed to behave. I despise any sign of it in myself and yet, under the circumstances, perhaps it could be forgiven.
In all the years that came before this, I had never reached this date without fulfilling my obligation. I had chosen this vampiric life and would not risk losing it through carelessness.
Only once had I ever neared my rebirth day, and then only due to circumstances beyond my control. It had been 1867…or perhaps 1869. I’d been hunting for my annual victim when I’d found myself tossed into a Hungarian prison. I hadn’t been caught at my kill—I’d never made so amateurish a mistake even when I’d been an amateur.
The prison sojourn had been Aaron’s fault, as such things usually were. We’d been hunting my victim when he’d come across a nobleman whipping a servant in the street. Naturally, Aaron couldn’t leave well enough alone. In the ensuing confusion of the brawl, I’d been rousted with him and thrown into a pest-infested cell that wouldn’t pass any modern health code.
Aaron had worked himself into a full-frothing frenzy, seeing my rebirth anniversary only days away while I languished in prison, waiting for justice that seemed unlikely to come swiftly. I hadn’t been concerned. When one partakes of Aaron’s company, one learns to expect such inconveniences. While he plotted, schemed, and swore he’d get us out on time, I simply waited. There was time yet and no need to panic until panic was warranted.
The day before my rebirth anniversary, as I’d begun to suspect that a more strenuous course of action might be required, we’d been released. I’d compensated for the trouble and delay by taking the life of a prison guard who’d enjoyed his work far more than was necessary.
This year, my only excuse for not taking a victim yet was that I hadn’t gotten around to it. As for why, I was somewhat…baffled. I am nothing if not conscientious about my obligations. Yet, this year, delays had arisen, and somehow I’d been content to watch the days slip past and tell myself I would get around to it, as if it was no more momentous than a missed salon appointment.
The week had passed and I’d been unable to work up any sense of urgency until today, and even now, it was only an oddly cerebral concern. No matter. I would take care of it tonight.
As I walked, an old drunkard drew my gaze. I watched him totter into the shadows of an alley and thought: “There’s a possibility….” Perhaps I could get this chore over with sooner than expected. I could be quite finicky—refusing to feed off sleeping vagrants—yet as my annual kill, this one was a choice I co
uld make.
Every vampire deals with our “bargain” in the way that best suits his temperament and capacity for guilt and remorse. I cull from the edges—the sick, the elderly, those already nearing their end. I do not fool myself into thinking this is a just choice. There’s no way to know whether that cancer-wracked woman might have been on the brink of remission or if that elderly man had been enjoying his last days to the fullest. I make the choice because it is one I can live with.
This old drunkard would do. As I watched him, I felt the gnawing in the pit of my stomach, telling me I’d already waited too long. I should follow him into that alley, and get this over with. I wanted to get it over with—there was no question of that, no possibility I was conflicted on this point. Other vampires may struggle with our bargain. I do not.
Yet even as I visualized myself following the drunk into the alley, my legs didn’t follow through. I stood there, watching him disappear into the darkness. Then I moved on.
A block farther, a crowd poured from a movie theater. As it passed, its life force enveloped me. I wasn’t hungry, yet I could still feel that tingle of anticipation, of hunger. I could smell their blood, hear the rush of it through their veins. The scent and sound of life.
Twenty steps later, and they were still passing, an endless stream of humanity disgorged by a packed theater. How many seats were inside? Three hundred, three fifty? As many years as had passed since my rebirth?
One life per year. It seems so moderate a price…until you looked back and realized you could fill a movie theater with your victims. A sobering thought, even for one not inclined to dwell on such things. No matter. There wouldn’t be hundreds more. Not from this vampire.
Contrary to legend, our gift of longevity comes with an expiry date. Mine was drawing near. I’d felt the signs, the disconnect from the world, a growing disinterest in all around me. For me, that was nothing new. I’d long since learned to keep my distance from a world that changed while I didn’t.
Many Bloody Returns Page 8