“Crap. I didn’t bring my charger. I need enough juice to find my way home.”
“Okay. Love you.” He kisses me over the phone.
I return the smooch and hang up.
With my battery on life support, I sit there bored and rambling at the doll for a few hours. A little after six in the afternoon, a door opens and closes upstairs. Someone walks overhead a moment after. The unmistakable beeping of microwave buttons follows, then television. Channels flip until settling on a movie that sounds old. I don’t recognize it, but the background music and the way the actors are speaking makes me think of a film made in the late Forties. A few minutes later, the microwave chimes. Footsteps go back and forth overhead. Bored. Bored. Bored.
I could fire up their Xbox, but I don’t want to take liberties. None of these vampires invited me to use their crap whenever I wanted, so I remain polite. Did I mention bored? It occurs to me that I’m in a basement with its windows thoroughly blocked, enjoying complete separation from the sun. Meaning: my powers are online. I could try peering into the ‘mind’ of the doll.
Yeah. I’m a big fluffy chicken. Nope.
Eventually, the Lost Ones stir.
Andrew, on the couch, sits up, stretches, and yawns. He peers at me over the sofa back. “Whoa. Where’d that creepy ass doll come from?”
“She’s why I’m in Portland. Picking her up for a friend.” I almost called her my patron, but since I’m in the company of Lost Ones, I don’t feel like starting a political debate. Also, I’m not even that into the whole ‘vampire society’ deal. Being an Innocent, I’ll always kinda wind up as ‘the mascot’ anyway. No one will take me seriously. So, I’m happy to have a patron and stand at the edge. Those who care about power can play politics. I’ll show up for the hors d’oeuvres.
“Wow, yeah.” Mick walks over, bent sideways to look under the pool table at me. “That is a creepy little thing.”
Kara appears behind him, spots Rebecca, and makes a soft squee. “Oh, she’s adorable!”
The three guys stare at her with ‘yeah right’ expressions.
I pull the doll into my lap and hug it. “I think she’s adorable too.”
Mick points at me. “You know, kid, if you’re trying to look eighteen instead of, like, twelve, hugging a doll is not the way to go about it.”
“She’s got way too much of a rack to be twelve,” says Kara.
“Them little things?” asks Emilio. “Yours are bigger.”
“Mars has bigger boobs than this kid,” says Andrew.
“Mars?” I ask.
“Bouncer at a club we go to.” Kara rolls her eyes. “Dude’s kinda heavyset.”
I sigh. Except for when they first started appearing, I’ve never been self-conscious about my breasts… until now. I think they’re a fine size, not too big, not too small. Fortunately, I don’t blush because my baggy sweatshirt hides them.
“Just messin’.” Mick chuckles. “You do look so overly wholesome though. If you were gonna stick around, we’d totally have to give you a makeover.”
“I didn’t realize you guys have a uniform code. Leather jacket and jeans?”
The three of them pause, exchanging glances.
“I’m out of uniform!” yells Kara. She darts across the room to her bed and flings her shirt off, naked with her back to the room. Over the next few minutes, she rummages a large trunk until she’s decked out in fishnet stockings, a leather skirt, black tank top, punk boots, and enough plastic bracelets to supply an entire school’s worth of Eighties tweens. She totally looks like an extra from a Pat Benatar video.
And yes, thanks to my father, I know who that is.
I find elsewhere to look at as the guys change. Wow, it’s like being in an Army barracks or something here. They really have no sense of personal space whatsoever. At least they’re not total hedonists, sitting around with nothing on. That would’ve gone far enough past my threshold of awkward that I’d have found somewhere else to crash. I can’t imagine ever being that comfortable with a roommate, much less three of them.
“So, you gotta get going right away or do you wanna hang a bit?” asks Emilio, smiling at me.
I shrug. “Umm. I kinda wanted to get home with this doll. I don’t wanna break it… I mean hurt her.” I whisper, “Sorry” to the doll.
Mick points at the wall. “Seattle’s basically an hour away for us.”
“Come on. Have a little fun.” Andrew squats by the pool table and nudges my shoulder. “You really look like you need to loosen up.”
Kara winks. “You can’t just go to Portland and disappear right away without at least seeing some of it. C’mon. It’ll be fun.”
I peer down at Rebecca. She should be reasonably safe in the basement here for a few hours. No way am I bringing her out for whatever these guys want to do. “Is it okay if I leave her here when we go out? I don’t want anything happening to her.”
“Oh, sure.” Mick nods. “Dingleberry never comes down here unless he needs to fiddle with the hardware.” He points at the closet with the water heater/furnace. “Maybe once or twice a year.”
The others snicker at his use of ‘Dingleberry.’
Against my better judgment, I decide to spend a while hanging out with these guys. Maybe a part of me is curious about what life would be like for me as a vampire if I didn’t have such an awesome family. For instance, if I’d been in some crappy situation like Kara, or someone like this girl Tabitha from my senior study hall. That girl always talked about how much her parents drove her crazy and she wanted to move out. Not that they did anything worse to her than actually enforcing parental rules. You know, how dare they expect her to actually do schoolwork, not stay up until three in the morning, that sort of thing.
Curious to see how ‘real’ vampires live, I crawl out from under the pool table and set Rebecca on the couch, covering her a little with a blanket so she’s comfortable.
“Be back soon,” I whisper.
The others exchange glances at me talking to a doll.
“Don’t look at her like that,” says Kara. “The last thing she needs to do is hurt her feelings or piss that doll off.”
The men stare at her.
“Tell me you don’t feel it too?” she asks, hands on her hips.
“Let’s hit Oaks,” says Mick, heading for the door.
As fast as he’s hoofing it for the exit, I’m pretty sure he does feel something.
“Cool.” Andrew, ignoring Kara entirely, follows him out.
Emilio shrugs at her. “Yeah. Crazy energy.”
Kara beckons me with a wave. “C’mon. You’ll love this.”
‘Oaks’ turns out to be somewhere between an amusement park and a permanently set up street carnival. We swoop down out of the air into a thick cluster of trees at the north end by a roller rink. Holy crap… those still exist? Anyway, walking around this place really makes me feel like we’ve stepped into The Lost Boys. Most of the rides look like they’re for little kids, but there aren’t too many of them running around at this hour.
Kara, Mick, Andrew, and Emilio exploit the hell out of their vampiric reflexes at some chance games, especially this ‘Bonanza’ thing with air rifles. And wow, this place has an arcade. Talk about feeling like I’ve gone back in time.
The boys pickpocket a few random people, taking only cash, and Kara disappears for a little while before I spot her emerging from one of the food vendor stalls with a satisfied grin. As much as it bugs me to do, I try to pretend I didn’t watch them stealing. Kara drapes an arm around my shoulders, laughing at the look that must be on my face.
“Oh, you’re a good girl, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
She laughs. “Not a rule breaker, huh?”
“No, not really.”
“You know mortal rules apply to mortals, right?” She winks.
The guys catch up to us, all grinning at their successful pilfering.
“We got us a good girl,” says Kara before whispering, “She’s all sort
s of traumatized watching us work.”
“Heh.” Mick pats me on the back. “Look at the innocent one.”
“Yeah, something like that.” I hold my hands up. “Hey, it’s cool. You do you. Not gonna make trouble or anything.”
“What time do your parents want you home?” asks Emilio. His expression stays serious for barely ten seconds before he cracks up.
“4:30 a.m.,” I say. “Mom gets mad at me if I cut it too close.”
All four of them laugh, thinking I’m kidding. Kara catches on first, probably because I told her.
“Wait, you’re serious?” She giggles again. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, you still live at home, don’t you?”
I nod.
They tease me a little about that, but it’s not mean-spirited so I roll with it.
“So, umm, what do you guys need money for? Does Dingleberry charge you rent?” I ask.
Mick laughs like an idiot when I use his name for their ‘landlord.’ “Nah. Gotta feed the Xbox. And audio gear ain’t cheap.”
It’s surreal following them around this place. At one point, the four of them hang off the sides of the merry go round and use their powers of flight to push it faster and faster while the operator freaks out. They keep going until the kids riding it start screaming in fear rather than excitement. By the time an older guy with a giant tool belt jogs over to help the poor teen running the ride figure out why it went crazy, everything’s back to normal. From there, my new friends spend a while messing with the vendors running the ‘games of skill’ booths. Emilio wins a stuffed Tasmanian devil for Kara by tossing all five rings over beer bottles without even really looking at them. The old guy hands over the plushie, giving him a suspicious squint. Later, in the video game arcade, Mick and Emilio reminisce about the past, when people had to go to an arcade to play a video game.
The Oaks eventually closes, so we take off (literally). Sudden inspiration pulls Mick off to the right. He cruises over a field with a baseball diamond into a huge area of houses arranged in super-neat rectangular blocks. From the air, it looks like the city planners kept copying and pasting the same set of houses over and over again.
The Lost Ones descend on these houses in an Armageddon of pranks. They swap lawn furniture from house to house, move trampolines around, relocate lawn gnomes, and in one case, they pick up and carry a small car three houses over and leave it in the wrong driveway. The whole time, Kara keeps nudging me to ‘stop being a goody-two-shoes’ and have some fun. I don’t really think sowing chaos in people’s yards is particularly fun, but their clear amusement at it becomes contagious after about the twentieth house.
I wind up moving this like 200-pound statue of a naked dude from a backyard of one house to the front yard of another one across the street. As soon as I put it down and take off into the air again, I feel like I’ve done like the worst thing in the world. Like someone’s whole life is going to be ruined because some useless statue disappeared.
Crap, can the cops get fingerprints off stone? Wait… do I still even leave fingerprints? I’m not producing anywhere near as much skin oil as a living person does. Argh. I’m going to spend the next six months cringing every time a cop comes near me.
Dammit.
Kara, Mick, Andrew, and Emilio die laughing when I zip over to put the statue back where I found it. I mean, I guess I’m already guilty by association for all the mayhem they’re causing, but not personally contributing to it makes me feel a little better.
“Aww.” Kara hugs me when I rejoin the group. “You are too cute.”
Lawn mischief continues for a few more houses, until the sound of a man screaming draws Kara’s attention. She dives out of the air like a plane from a World War II movie.
“Oh, shit,” mutters Mick.
Emilio starts to go after her, but Andrew grabs his arm. “Let her. She’s gotta.”
I raise an eyebrow.
Kara swoops down in front of a house, landing on the front porch. It’s a little difficult to follow along with the screaming match, but ‘stupid bitch’ repeats enough that I can tell more or less what set her off.
“Is she gonna kill him?” I ask.
“Nah.” Mick shakes his head.
That relaxes me somewhat.
A man answers her pounding knock, looks at Kara, and goes to slam the door in her face, but she catches it and forces her way inside. Two minutes later, the guy zombie-walks out, gets in a black Dodge Charger, and drives off.
Another three minutes go by before Kara walks out and launches herself skyward to join us.
Emilio glides over and hugs her without a word. She’s in tears, so no one says anything for a while until she calms down.
“Right on,” mutters Mick.
Andrew pats her on the back.
Kara wipes her eyes. “I’m okay. Come on. We have a guest.”
Done with house mischief, Mick zooms off toward Portland downtown. Again we get into this midair race-slash-chase thing as if the guys are trying to play Mario Kart in real life, only without the random stuff floating by. They keep calling me ‘good girl,’ and daring me to fly in increasingly more dangerous ways—like making low passes across highways or, in one case, playing chicken with a train.
High speed acrobatic flying only entertains them for about a half hour before they get another idea and we wind up descending on a nightclub named ‘Extra.’ It’s an explosion of silver, purple, and black. While not a ‘Goth club,’ there’s enough of them there that I feel conspicuously out of place. However, no one gives me a hard time. The guys mingle in among the crowd, dancing, playing grabass with anyone who seems open to the idea, and in a few cases, sneaking a quick bite here and there.
I so feel like the prude in a go-go bar. This is not my scene, but I smile and deal. Dancing is at least somewhat fun, even if I’m not into this grindy techno-industrial whatever they’re pounding the air with. I’m shocked most by how the grabassery tends to leave me alone, almost as if the crowd can read my disinterest in being pawed (or pawing anyone back). Then again, maybe it’s my outfit. I definitely don’t look like I belong here.
Kara appears out of nowhere and we wind up dancing with each other for a bit until the guys rematerialize. Mick leads the five of us to the other end of the building where we wind up at a table in a giant C-shaped booth seat with puffy cushions.
“Hey, anyone want drinks?” asks Mick.
Andrew raises a thumbs-up. Kara nods. Emilio holds up both arms with ‘metal horns’ and lets out a “woo!”
“Uhh, sure,” I say. Before I feel too much like a social inept, I blurt, “Rum and coke?” as it’s the first ‘drink’ that comes to mind.
The four of them stare at me. After a few seconds, they seem to have taken it as a joke, and laugh it off. I guess they don’t realize I can drink stuff, which makes me wonder what they meant.
Mick answers my question soon after by escorting three twentysomething women and a stumbling man about the same age over to our table. The humans are all blitzed beyond the ability to walk in a straight line.
Oh shit. This is like that whole Abaddon situation. They’re gonna sip blood from drunk people. I politely pass on joining in on that, but I do watch with a degree of curiosity. The four humans sit among the Lost Ones, blabbing at each other as if unaware that the vampires even exist. As far as they seem to act, they’re the only people at the table. About as regularly as a normal person would take a sip of a mixed drink, my hosts nip them on the wrist or neck, drink a mouthful, and seal the bite. Within twenty minutes, the vampires begin to look tipsy.
Evidently, that does work. Note to self: avoid feeding from people who are high on anything stronger than weed. Despite my feeling like a total outsider, hanging with these guys is pretty cool. Out of nowhere, Kara starts blabbing about how much of an asshole that guy was for hitting his wife. She grabs my arm and pulls me close.
“I can’t stand that shit, yanno?”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. My boyfriend
’s dad was like that. I got rid of him.”
Kara leans back, swaying slightly from the alcohol. “Whoa. Good girl killed a dude?”
“Nah. I didn’t kill him. Told him to get lost and made him afraid to be near that house. Same thing you did to that guy earlier.”
She cracks up, covering her mouth to keep from spraying us. “I didn’t tell him to leave. I sent him to find the nearest cop and punch him in the face ten times.”
“You what?” I yell. “Why would you do that?”
“Because.” She grins. “Asshole oughta be in jail for hittin’ on his woman. He’ll get more time for hittin’ on a cop than his wife.”
“But, the cop could get hurt.”
Kara shrugs. “Nah. I made sure he’d find a group of at least three before he punched anyone.”
“She gave him an ass-beating by proxy,” says Andrew. “That’s gonna get messy—for the dude.”
“You bet.” Kara grins.
“Wow, you guys are like really drunk.”
“Woo!” Andrew thrusts his hands up. “We are drunk!”
“Good girl here has never been drunk,” says Emilio. He tries to poke me in the arm, but misses and jabs his finger in my boob.
“Ow.” I grab the spot. “I have been drunk. Twice. Passed out both times.”
They laugh at me.
I roll my eyes and wind up spotting a big digital clock on the wall across the room. It’s 3:54 a.m. “Shit! I gotta go.”
“Gonna turn into a pumpkin?” asks Mick.
“Nah, I need to get the doll back to Seattle.”
“Hey wait a minute.” Andrew points at me. “Did you go outside today? Like before we woke up? When did you get that doll?”
“Yeah. It was really rainy. Almost no sun out.”
Mick snaps his fingers and points at me. “No wonder. Bet you could have that rum and coke. Wouldn’t do a damn thing for you, but you could drink it.”
I flash a cheesy smile.
The other three give him curious looks.
“Good girl here’s all right.” He grasps the back of the woman’s head next to him, holding her up like he’s toasting me with a beer. She looks confused for a second, until he bites her. He takes barely a mouthful before letting go and she deliriously resumes her conversation with the next nearest mortal. “Heard about your type once. Never saw one before.”
The Artist of Ruin Page 17