“So,” said Blue. “You were saying?”
“Well, Clint says Tommy is a vampire now, and we should go stake him out or something, but he’s one of us, so we’ve decided to pursue a policy of Buddhist tolerance.”
Just then Troy Lee dragged Clint back around the corner in a headlock. Despite being six inches shorter and forty pounds lighter than Clint, he’d studied martial arts since he was six and that took size out of the equation.
“Should I hypnotize the chicken?” Troy asked.
“Make it so,” said Lash.
Troy Lee adjusted his chokehold on Clint. The larger man’s eyes bugged out, his mouth moved like a gasping fish out of water, and he went limp in Troy’s arms, who then dropped him in the puddle of diet soda on the floor.
“He’ll come around in a second or two.” Lash leaned into Blue to explain. “We used to call it choke the chicken, but that sounded kind of gayish.”
“Of course,” said Blue. That trick would come in handy in her work. She’d have to ask Troy Lee to teach it to her.
“And you think that your friend and this girl are really vampires.”
“I suppose. Clint said he heard it from the Emperor, and he was the one that turned us on to the old vampire guy in the first place. Either way, they’re not our problem.”
“What if I said they were?” Blue said. Her mind was putting it together like a sewing machine on crack. It was insane, but for once she could see a future stretching out before her, welcoming her. “What if I said I wanted you to go after them?”
Lash blinked at her like she was speaking Klingon. “Huh?” He looked at the other Animals, who had stopped bowling and moved into range of the conversation. They stood there with frosty gobblers steaming in their hands like they were on wet-nurse duty for a group of headless infant snowmen.
“Flood is our friend,” Lash said.
“I don’t want you to kill him,” Blue said. “Just catch him.”
Lash looked to the others, who looked away—at the floor, at the cabbage and lettuce counter, at the turnips, at their frozen charges.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” Blue said.
Jody lay on the bed watching Tommy turn slowly, back and forth in the air like a pale white-boy mobile. The loft had twenty-foot ceilings with open, industrial-style beams, and sometime during their lovemaking, they had both ended up hanging from them. Jody dropped to the bed after she came, but Tommy still hung by one hand. The bright side was that with the exception of the set of shredded sheets upon which she lay, they had kept the destruction to a minimum. The downside—well, she really could have gone a couple of lifetimes without seeing him from this angle.
“We did good,” Jody said. “Hardly anything broken.”
“You think that monkeys really do it that way?” Tommy replied.
“I always thought you were just using that as an expression.” She’d thought she could remain detached enough about their lovemaking to stay in control—to enjoy it, but to use it, as it were—but since Tommy had changed, it wasn’t like that anymore. She lost herself in it, she didn’t just make love with him, she fucked him like a crazed monkey girl. It was good, but disconcerting. She had liked being in control.
“You look amazing from this angle,” Tommy said.
“You look like a man-shaped fluorescent lightbulb,” Jody said, grinning at him, then noticing a change. “Do not get wood, Thomas Flood. You will not get wood, do you hear me?”
“You sound like my mom,” Tommy said.
“Ewwwww,” Jody said, shuddering and covering her eyes.
“Ewwwww,” Tommy said, realizing what he had just said and about what and whom.
He dropped to the bed and bounced. “Sorry. Quick, put the self-tanning lotion on me, we only have a few minutes before sunup.”
“Okay, but just the lotion.”
“Right, go.”
Jody took the lotion and squirted some on her hands. “Turn around, I’ll get your back.”
“But—”
“Just point that thing the other way, writer boy, you have had all the monkey love you’re going to get to night.” She said it, but she didn’t mean it—she’d go another round if he wanted, if they had time before sunrise. Then she remembered.
“Did you say you found us a minion?”
“Yeah, I did. She’s going to start tomorrow—er, today. I gave her money to get us an apartment. Told her what we needed.”
“Her?”
“Yeah, you remember that girl we saw in the drugstore?”
Jody stopped rubbing, grabbed his shoulders, and spun him around. “You gave our deposit money to a nine-year-old?”
“She’s not nine. She’s sixteen.”
“Still, Tommy. You trusted our secret to a sixteen-year-old girl?”
“She already knew.”
“Yes, because you let your fangs show like some doofus of the night. You could have explained that somehow, or better yet, never seen her again.”
“Look, she’s smart, and she’ll be loyal. I promise.”
“You could have just gotten us killed.”
“What would you have done? Huh? You have to trust someone.”
“But a sixteen-year-old kid?”
“I’m only nineteen, and I was a great minion. Besides, she thinks I’m her dark lord.”
“Did you even tell her about me?”
“Of course, she knows all about you. Knows that you’re my sire—that’s what they call the vampire who made you. I even told her that you were older, that you had vast experience.”
“Vast? Vast experience sounds like I’m a slutty old divorcée. How old does she think I am?”
“Five hundred.”
“What?”
“But you look great for five hundred. I mean, look, you got my attention. Do my front.”
“Do your own front.” She threw the lotion bottle at him and he snatched it out of the air.
“Love you,” Tommy said, slathering self-tanning goo all over his face and chest.
“I’m going to lock the bedroom door,” Jody said as the alarm on their watches started beeping, signaling ten minutes before sunrise. She’d gotten the alarm watches for both of them, just in case. “You didn’t give her keys, did you?”
“Not to the bedroom.”
“Great. What if she finds William in the stairwell and stakes him out? You could have given our key to a Buffy wannabe—”
“This stuff is supposed to take like eight hours to work, so by sundown I’ll be sexy bronze.”
“There’s a bronze vampire in the living room. Why don’t you go ask him how that’s working out for him?”
“He’s impersonal bronze, not sexy bronze like I’ll be.”
“Come to bed. And put on a T-shirt. I don’t want a sexy bronze stain on the sheets, even if they are torn up.”
Tommy sniff-tested a half-dozen shirts, finally decided on one, climbed into bed, and was kissing Jody good morning when the sunrise put them out.
11
Then, When They Woke Up
Oh my God, that stuff turned me completely orange.”
“Not completely.”
“I look like the Great Pumpkin.”
“Good grief, Tommy, you do not.”
12
Blood, Coffee, Sex, Magic—Not Necessarily in That Order
Just after sundown.
They watched the coffee dripping out of the filter like they were distilling nitroglycerine and the slightest bit of inattention might cause an explosion. “It smells really good,” Jody said.
“It’s like I never noticed it before,” Tommy said.
“You’d think it would smell sickening, since it’s indigestible,” Jody said. The last time she’d taken a sip of coffee, her vampire system had rejected it so violently that she ended up convulsively dry-heaving on the floor, feeling like forks were twisting inside of her.
“This might work,” Tommy said. “You ready?”
“Ready.
”
He poured a tablespoonful or so of coffee into a glass cup. Then he uncapped one of the syringes that held William’s blood and squirted a few drops into the coffee.
“You first,” he said, swishing the cup around in front of her.
“No, you,” Jody said. As good as the coffee smelled, the memory of her nausea held her back.
Tommy shrugged and threw the coffee back like a tequila shooter, then set the cup down on the counter.
Jody stepped back and snatched a tea towel off the fridge handle in preparation for the coffee’s return trip. Tommy rolled his eyes, shuddered, then grabbed his throat and fell to the floor, twitching and choking. “Dying,” he croaked. “Suffering and dying.”
Jody was barefoot and didn’t want to stub her toe, so she pulled the kick to his ribs. “You suck, you know that.”
Tommy rolled on the floor giggling, curling himself around her foot. “It works! It works! It works!” He sort of dog-humped her leg in rhythm and tugged at the hem of her robe. “You never have to be grumpy again!”
Jody grinned. “Pour cups, grommet! Full cups.”
Tommy climbed to his feet. “We don’t even know the blood-to-coffee ratio yet.”
“Pour!” Jody was in the fridge in an instant, grabbing another syringe. “We’ll wing it.”
The she heard the downstairs door open and spun on her heel. “William?”
Tommy listened to the footfalls coming up the steps and shook his head. “Nope, too light.”
They could hear the key fitting into the lock. “You said you didn’t give her a key,” Jody said.
“I said I didn’t give her a key to the bedroom,” Tommy said.
“Lord Flood, there’s a stinky dead guy with a huge cat on your landing,” said Abby Normal as she came through the door.
THE CHRONICLES OF ABBY NORMAL:
Dedicated Servant of the Vampyre Flood
I have been to the lair of the vampyre Flood. I am part of the coven! Kinda. Okay, back up. So I like slept till eleven, because we’re on Christmas break, only it’s called winter break now because Jesus is AN OPPRESSIVE ZOMBIE BASTARD AND WE DO NOT BOW DOWN TO HIS BIRTHDAY! At least not at Allen Ginsberg High School, we don’t. (Go, Fighting Beatniks!) But it’s all good, ’cause I’m going to have to get used to getting up later if I’m going to be a creature of the night.
So, like first thing, I made some toast, and it burned, as black as my soul, and I was so bummed that my tears of despair fell like cold bits of crystal, to be destroyed on the unforgiving rocks of this miserable life. But then I saw that Mom had left a twenty out on the counter with a note:
Allison (Allison is my day-slave name—my mom named me after some song by some Elvis guy, so I totally refuse to accept it), here’s your lunch money, and please stop at Walgreens and pick up some RID shampoo for Ronnie’s head lice. (Veronica is my sister, who is twelve and a total tumor on the ass of my existence.)
So, I was like, Sweet! Starbucks!
It took forever to pick what I was going to wear, and not just because I’d never rented an apartment before. The lightbulb burned out in my closet and we didn’t have any extras, so I had to take everything out in the living room to look at it in the light. Like the song says, I wear black on the outside to reflect the black I feel on the inside, but OMG, it’s impossible to tell one thing from another in a dark closet. Since it was going to be a business thing, I decided on my striped tights with my red PVC mini, my skull-and-crossbones hoodie, and my lime Converse All Stars. I went with just a plain stud in my nose, a barbell in my eyebrow, and a simple silver ring in my lip—understated and elegant. I carried my hot-pink biohazard messenger bag.
Ronnie was all, “I wanna come with you, I wanna come with you,” but I pointed out that she was a scourge on humanity and that if she came along I would tell everyone on the bus she had lice, so she elected to stay home and watch toons. It was then that I ventured into the undiscovered country, and called the number that the vampyre Flood had given me.
And the woman was totally a bitch.
She was like, “Hello. Blah Blah Property Management.”
And I was like, “I need to rent an apartment.”
And she was all, “How many bedrooms and did you have an area in mind?”
And I was all, “What’s with all the questions, bitch? Are you some kind of thought police or something?”
And she was like, “I’m just trying to help.”
“Right, help. Like tuberculosis.”
So she’s all, “I beg your pardon,” like the queen of freakin’ France or something.
And then I remembered that I was supposed to ask for a specific person, so I was like, “Oh, I need to speak to Alicia DeVries, Is she there?”
And the bitch connected me.
So it turns out that Alicia DeVries is this crusty hippie who is like as old as my grandma, but wants to be all Earth Mother and everything, which I’m not against, because old hippies have the best pot and they’ll just give it to you if you pretend not to notice that they’re crusty and old. So Alicia picks me up in her crust-mobile rainbow peace-and-love Jeep CJ and I give her the requirements of the vampyre Flood, which were bedroom with no windows, a washer and dryer, private entrance with lockout, and, at least above the ground floor, windows looking down on the street.
And she’s all, “We have to have a Social Security number and driver’s license number for the paperwork—you have to be eighteen.”
So I’m, “My client will provide all the information you need, it’s just that he’s very busy and can’t deal with pissant details during the day.” Then I waved the cash that Flood gave me and she went all spacey, overmeditated, “namaste” on me, like it’s not about the money when it’s really about the money. Then she takes me to this loft, which it turns out is only like a half a block from the address where Flood said to meet him at sundown. Sweet!
So I’m all, “Excellent, the master will be pleased.”
And she’s like, “I’ll make you out a receipt.”
Then she starts to lecture me about respecting myself as a woman, and not allowing myself to be subjugated to the desires of an older man and shit—like I’m this corporate fuck-puppet for some creepy businessman or something. I didn’t want her to get suspicious and try to rescue me, so I’m like, “No, you misunderstand, I call him the master because he’s the sensei of my jujitsu dojo—he’s not boning me or anything.”
Luckily I have an extensive martial-arts background from watching anime with Jared and I knew that one must never bone the sensei.
So she like reaches over and pats my knee. All, “That’s okay, sweetheart.”
And I’m like, “Step off, rug-muncher!” I mean, I’m as bi as the next person, but not with some crusty old hippie—I need music and some X, and then only if some guy has rejected me and thrown my heart into the gutter like an abandoned vegetarian burrito—and even then I draw the line at making out.
So she gave me the keys and took my money and just, like, left me there. So I called Lily, who came over with a two-liter of Diet Green Tea, a bag of Cheese Newts (I still hadn’t had breakfast), and some book she found called The Big Book of Death. So we looked at the book, which is this how-to thing with great art, and drank tea and ate Cheese Newts until she had to go to work. I wanted to tell her about the vampyre Flood, but I promised that I would keep his secret, so all I told her was that I had discovered my Dark Lord, and he would soon satisfy my every desire and I couldn’t tell her anything else. So she was all, “what ever, ho,” which is what I like about her—Lily is très noir.
So I walked over to the Sony Metreon and watched the flat-screens until it started to get dark. I was already about ready to pee with nervous ness when I got to Flood’s door, but then, just as I get my key in the door, this big Hummer limo pulls up, and these three college-age guys climb out followed by this blue woman in a silver dress with ginormous fake boobs. And they’re all, “Where is Flood? We need to find Flood?�
�� And she’s all, “Where did you get the key? You need to let us in before it gets dark.”
I’m not intimidated—because I know that her boobs are fake. And it’s so obvious that they hunt the nosferatu that it’s not even funny. Inside, I was like: “Ha, suck my spiky rubber strap-on, vampyre hunter!”
But on the outside I was totally chill. And I’m like, “I don’t know who you’re talking about. This is my apartment.” Then I opened the door and inside, lying on the landing, there’s this dead guy with a huge bald cat in a red sweater on his chest. And the cat hissed at me and I screamed just a little bit and slammed the door. “You have to go,” I said. “My boyfriend is naked and he gets mad if strangers see his enormous unit.” I looked right at the blue bitch when I said that, like: Oh yeah, some of us are confident enough in our own femininity that we don’t need fake tits to get a guy with a huge unit.
And the black guy is like, “I just talked to Flood here last night.”
And I was like, “Yeah, he moved.”
Then the Asian guy checked his watch and was like, “Dude, too late, it’s officially sunset.”
And it was like it was on cue or something, the cat on the dead guy let out a long scary yowl, and even the blue skank backed away toward the limo.
“You’d better go now,” I said, all ominous and full of foreboding and dread.
And she was all, “We’ll be back.”
And I was like, “So?”
So they went. But then I had to get past the cat and the dead guy and go up the steps. I have to say, that as much as I’m all about the peace of the grave and the glorious gloomth of the nonliving and all, it’s different when there’s a real dead guy you have to walk over, not to mention a really big, angry cat in a sweater.
NOTE OF SELF: Always carry Kitty Treats for Self-Defense (because evidently they don’t like Skittles, which I tried).
Since I didn’t have any kitty treats, I got by the preternaturally big-ass cat by opening the door wide and yelling, “Hey, kitty, go away!” Much to my amazement, the cat ran out of the doorway and hid under a parked car. It was like I already had vampyre powers to command the Children of the Night. Then I had to get past the dead guy on the landing, which was sort of like dead-guy hopscotch, but I got up the stairs and managed only to step on one of his arms. I was hoping he really was dead, and not one of the nosferatu, because then he might be pissed off when he rose. He certainly smelled dead, the fetid stench of the charnel house emanated from him like a foul miasma of evil, as they say in the books.
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