Drain You

by Beth Bloom

Then Stiles relaxed. His eyes sparkled like he’d thought of something. He said to James, “Why are you even here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In this part of the city. Do you know someone here?” Stiles paused, thinking. “Do you live here?”

  James didn’t flinch. “No.”

  “He’s lying,” Sanders said.

  Stiles held up a hand to silence his brother. “Obviously he’s lying.”

  Then he turned to Libby, who was still huddled in the corner of the room, her eyes riveted by something invisible in the air.

  “Libby, pay attention. I need to ask you something.” Stiles knelt down in front of her. “How does your friend know this guy?” He pointed at James.

  Libby didn’t even look where Stiles was pointing, just sang, “I don’t know….”

  Sanders huffed, said, “Useless,” and rolled his eyes.

  Stiles stood up and walked over to James. “We’re going to make you wish you’d never come—” He hesitated, searched James’s face, and somehow found the answer. Then he finished, “To see your family.”

  The Sheets family. Naomi. Daniel and Charlotte. The stranger named Whit.

  “No,” I said to myself, my hot cheek still against the cool linoleum kitchen floor.

  “Or”—Stiles held up a single finger in front of him—“you could leave now and never come back.”

  No one moved. No one said anything. I kept breathing; I was the only one.

  “Those are your two options.”

  Both choices sucked impossibly. Either throw Libby into the fiery pit of this guesthouse hell and let her die a little every day over and over until her last breath, or else…

  I wanted to throw up. I already knew James’s decision.

  James stepped back, lowered his eyes. Like he was defeated.

  “Well?” Sanders yelled, impatient.

  “We’re going,” James said. “We’re going now.” He looked over at me for the first time since the fight and held out a hand, gesturing for me to join him. I got up and ran to him. I wrapped my arms around his arm.

  “Wise,” Stiles said. “I can’t have you and your screeching little girlfriend staging rescue missions every night.”

  “You won’t see us again,” James said, too sincere.

  “I’ll keep Libby, you can keep…her.” Stiles nodded in my direction.

  James shrugged when he looked at me. His face said, This is it, then he pressed the top of his forehead to mine. He was finished, I could tell.

  But even now, with the battle lost and my friend halfway to a padded cell, I prayed. I prayed the roof would crumble and night would be day and the sunlight would roast these goth creeps to cigarette ash. I prayed I’d join the SWAT team and come back and blow them to bits. I prayed to make things any way but how they were.

  “When this ends,” Sanders said to me, “you and I could always double-date. I’m sure Libby would like that. Look at her, she’s in heaven.”

  Libby was splayed out on the ground on her back like a cat, her bare feet up against one wall. Her hands played lightly with the air.

  “She’s in a K-hole, you maniac.”

  Stiles pretended to yawn.

  “Quinn.” James started pulling my body toward the door.

  I had to accept it: I wasn’t Libby’s savior. I had to accept that I had to leave Libby here, in this nightmare, for Stiles to do as he pleased, for however long it pleased him.

  “Libby, I love you!” I yelled out to her from the doorway. “And Stella says to call her!” James was pulling me outside, but I kept my eyes on Libby, hoping for a glimmer of recognition at the sound of her own mother’s name. But her eyes were static; gray, unfocused, snow.

  “That’s not Libby,” James whispered.

  It wasn’t. She was a goner.

  James pressed my body against him and led me down the driveway.

  “Ta-ta,” Stiles called out behind us.

  Then he closed the door and we were alone in the night. It was quiet out. Warmish.

  When we were at my car, I turned to James. “We can’t give up.”

  “These aren’t games. This isn’t fiction.” He looked seriously broken. “This isn’t some Anne Rice joke.”

  “Yeah, you’re more Stephen King, I get it.”

  He didn’t argue with me, just put a hand over his face and shook his head. He leaned back against the Lexus.

  I stood in front of him and grabbed his shoulders. “James, I know they’re dangerous, I know they’re not playing around, I do get it.” I reached for his waist, but he stopped me.

  “Quinn, please. If I try to fight them, I might not die but Libby will.” He said it like a fact.

  I stared at the ground.

  “Not gonna happen,” he said.

  “Fine.”

  “It’s too complicated.”

  “Whatever,” I said. Saving Libby simply was not up for debate.

  James was petting my hair and saying comforting things, but my brain was elsewhere. I started hatching a new plan, one in which I stole Libby back in the daylight, at the brightest hour, their weakest moment. I’d kidnap her and hide her where no one in this zip code—dead or alive—would know to go. I’d nurse Libby back to health, deprogram her, give her all my extra blood, and remind her of all our favorite things, our favorite hunks, our favorite bands—all our times together.

  I tried again. “I’ll get her during the day.”

  James stared at me, waited.

  “They’ll be asleep, hibernating, whatever. This way you can totally stay out of it.”

  He shook his head. “When Libby’s gone, they’ll know what happened.”

  “What if we stock up, like in the movies? Wooden stakes. Holy water.”

  He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot. Like he was sad for me.

  “Crucifixes?”

  He turned away, annoyed. “Only sunlight and fire work.”

  I was unfazed. I didn’t have superpowers, but I had tricks. My witchy will. I could do this. I ran a hand along his chest, then slipped it underneath his T-shirt’s fabric and felt his flesh. I wanted him on my side again.

  James held me away. “How are you not scared of me? After last night.”

  A flashback of him writhing on the kitchen floor, puking the drugged-up blood of a girl he’d just killed.

  “Definitely wasn’t one of your top ten sexiest moments.”

  “Definitely not.” He smiled, then caught himself smiling and stopped. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. But you need to be. At least a little bit.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded. What James lived on, what he needed, was an evil thing. But he didn’t choose to be at the top of this bizarro dark fantasy food chain, so I couldn’t condemn him for it. I had a choice, though. And I chose to forgive him, to side against every human I knew and didn’t know. A B-minus in tenth-grade ethics class becomes an F in real life too easily. Accepting all the blood spilled would torment me for as long as I chose to love James. But afraid of him? I just didn’t feel that way inside.

  “I’ll live with it.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You’ve been briefed.”

  Our eyes locked.

  Then our lips locked, and we were making out. Majorly. He licked my teeth, my tongue, the shape of my mouth. I ran my hands through his messy hair. I threw the last bit of strength I had into it. I crushed his body against the Lexus, only slightly worried that it might leave a dent.

  Could it get better than this?

  “Come home with me, will you?” James asked between kisses.

  It could get better for sure.

  “Hell yes,” I said, one hand already on the keys, and those keys flying to the ignition.

  10.

  HISTORY

  I followed James’s car through the winding canyons. I wasn’t tired or hungry or bored or weird. I was wholly focused on this night. I was here, now. I tucked Libby away. I gave Morgan a rest. I let Naomi go.


  We parked, and James led me up the stairs to his room. Inside we weren’t kissing, but I was waiting for us to. When I went in for his lips, he gently restrained me. James wanted to talk. For the first time ever.

  “Ask me anything,” he said, sitting down on the big faded rug.

  “Are we boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “That’s your question?”

  “That’s my first question.”

  “I’m going to grant you one do-over.”

  “How’s this: Are we going to talk all night?”

  He squinted at me. “You love to talk.”

  “I know. But you don’t.”

  “Well that’s the give-and-take of dating.”

  “Wait, so we are dating?”

  “Settle down.”

  I could tell he really wanted this to happen, so I stopped teasing. I sat Indian-style with my elbows on my knees and rested my head in my upturned palms.

  He gave me a Serious James face before beginning. “I have a universe of weirdness on my chest, and I need to get some of it off. Starting with that night after the party, when you showed up here with blood on your shirt—”

  I could’ve gagged. Of course it wasn’t a wine stain.

  “I flipped out,” he said. “I don’t always flip out around blood, but you caught me off guard.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  “But the blood was from a bottle. How’d they get it in there?”

  “A few plastic tubes and a bicycle pump. Home Depot on Sunset. Pretty basic.”

  I tried to picture it. The twins and Dewey and Cooper: Spader surgeons in linen and khaki scrubs. Budget horror hospital. Too gruesome.

  I asked, “Do you do that?” even though I didn’t want to know.

  “Well, it’s like…flat Diet Coke.”

  I raised a hand to stop him. “Say no more.”

  “I know how it sounds, but we do it to stay low-profile. It’s not cool to cause a scene. We have to try to fit in. Trust me, you’d rather see that than…” His voice trailed off.

  “Maybe.” I thought about it and said, “But none of you fit in. You’re all obviously scene-stealers.”

  “Really? Seemed like breaking news to you.”

  “Huh.”

  “Look. You wake up late, skip dinner, act aloof, people think you’re a jerk, not a monster.”

  I did all those things. Was I a jerk? A little monster?

  James scooted closer. “Quinn. I don’t want you in a room like that, like tonight. You shouldn’t be in that world.”

  “But I’m in your world. I mean, we’re all in the same world, right?”

  “To know one is enough.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “To know one is, like, too much.”

  “You can’t drag me into all this and then tell me to forget it.”

  “I know. That’s my fault. I got you involved despite strong advice not to.”

  I thought of Naomi. I turned away. If there’d been a window, I would’ve looked out of it. “It’s just like in those bogus movies. The vampire never falls for another vampire. Why do they always go for regular people and then feel tortured by it? That’s so lame.”

  “Don’t get all your insights from Hollywood.”

  “And don’t talk to me like I’m seven. I’m seventeen. And you’re only twenty.”

  “Twenty-two, technically.”

  “Fine. You win,” I said.

  “No, it’s just that you have to believe me when I say…this is the least awesome, last thing anyone should have to be dealing with.” He paused, putting a hand under my chin and turning my face back to look at him. “I don’t want to be dealing with it. I’m glad I don’t even know how it happened. I don’t want that memory.”

  He tugged on the stud in his earlobe. “Ryan Hunter pierced this in the seventh grade with a safety pin off his Misfits hoodie. I prefer remembering that as the most physical pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life.”

  “So you didn’t feel any of it?”

  “I mean I was trashed, like blackout trashed. That might’ve numbed some of the pain.”

  “Ya think?” I rolled my eyes.

  “But it was just some bar. Somewhere my band had played a dozen times.”

  “That’s it? What about ‘it was a dark and stormy night’?”

  “It was a dark and…smoggy night.”

  “That’s the vaguest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s just text for your next D.A.R.E. newsletter.”

  “Like a regular bar, like some Eastside bar? Like I could go there?”

  “You’re underage.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, you could go there. But don’t.”

  “Just a regular cool-kid bar.”

  “Quinn, there aren’t underground bat caves.”

  “So why you?”

  “No reason.”

  “Then why aren’t you dead?”

  “I am dead.”

  “Get real, James.”

  “I don’t know. Some of us want to convert, not kill.”

  “Which are you more into?”

  “Well, I’m definitely not into killing, but you can’t drink just a little…you have to go all the way or they become one too. That’s so much worse.”

  “Is it?” I pictured Libby.

  He didn’t hesitate: “It is.”

  “The twins seem to be having an awesome time.”

  He shrugged and said in a quieter voice, “Not me.”

  There was nothing to say to that, so I asked, “How many are there?”

  “It’s a big city.”

  “It’s not a big high school.” I thought of Stiles and Sanders and Dewey and Cooper. “So you got drunk and that’s it?”

  “Kind of. It was a normal night otherwise.” He paused, then shrugged, then said, “Well it felt like one at the time.”

  “How could you not feel the bite?”

  “The thing is, even if I felt it, even if it hurt, you wake up and all you can think about…is blood.”

  I could only say, “Oh.”

  “The other memories, of before, when I was living at home and taking lame community college classes, and playing music, hanging out, whatever, are so foggy it’s like they didn’t even happen. This part is so vivid it’s like the real stuff was never real.”

  “Well, what was the real James like?”

  “Like this. Only…you know.”

  “So then what?”

  “I woke up on the floor of our bassist’s place. Hungover. Hungry. The band went out for breakfast, but I couldn’t get up. Later I tried to drink everything in the fridge, but it all tasted rotten, like, wrong. Even the tap water made me nauseous.” He almost smiled. “And not just ’cause it’s L.A.”

  “Weird.”

  “First you think you’ll sleep it off. Then all you do is sleep. Parts of my body would go numb, or get supersensitive. I thought for sure I’d been drugged, but ten days in a mini coma? That’s no drug I’ve heard of.”

  “You didn’t go to the doctor?”

  “I tried to. Got dropped off by my drummer at the ER one night, when I was still out of it. Before I even got inside, though, this EMT stopped me, said he’d give me something right out of the ambulance, that I didn’t have to wait. And he already knew what was wrong with me, symptom for symptom, like he was reading it off a list. Then he diagnosed me: dead. He said I’d died. And now I was becoming something else.”

  “Heavy.”

  “Beyond heavy. But he was already handing me an IV bag of blood from his coat pocket—he knew I wanted it before even I did. No time for denial.”

  “So this guy…helps vampires?”

  “You’re not understanding. I’m telling you, we’re everywhere.”

  Goose bumps.

  “I’m just one of the ones who’s not very good at hiding it.”

  I gave him an “Oh, please” look. “You do fine.”

&n
bsp; “Couldn’t hide it from Naomi for long.” Then he said out loud, but more to himself, “Sucked.”

  “Were your parents pissed?” Mine would lose it.

  “They don’t know.”

  “I can’t believe your sister accepted it. Doesn’t seem like her style.”

  “Well, obviously she doesn’t really want me around.”

  I always wanted James around.

  “And these days I’m barely that hungry anymore. And it’s not like I’d go after my family.” He shook his head, then nodded his head. “Also, I don’t live here.”

  I said, “Oh yeah,” and looked around the empty room. “So what’s the deal in Cambridge?”

  “I’d heard a rumor around L.A. of this fake college on the East Coast. I took a red-eye out. Total long shot; they never admit anyone new. And they didn’t want me either, until they found out who my parents were. The guy who runs it, Luke, is really into anthropology. Worships my mom and dad. It’s the only reason I got in. They probably think I’m secretly brilliant or something. Luke’s cool, though. Rides a Vespa.”

  “Like a scooter?” I made a face.

  “I mean, people think we’re trust-fund kids, but no one bothers us. We’re stuck in a stuck-up college town, but whatever. And it keeps up the illusion for my parents that I’m there working, saving up money to study music at Berklee.”

  I tried to imagine it: a bunch of equally hot versions of James living together, sleeping all day, hunting for coeds and postgrads at night. Whoa.

  “Are there schools like that here?” I crossed my fingers tightly in my lap.

  “Not any that I’ve heard of.”

  “You could start one in L.A.”

  “No. It’s different on the West Coast. Everyone’s roaming. Sometimes I can go days, weeks, without seeing one, and when I do, they’re usually alone.”

  “But sometimes you bump into one around the city, just doing their thing?”

  “Ever seen a good-looking dude wearing a leather jacket and dark sunglasses on an August night?”

  “Hello, Sunset Strip.”

  “Well.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  Leave it to L.A. vampires to be the most badass of them all.