by Brian Meehl
“Why?” Birnam asked.
Morning rattled off the answer he’d memorized during finals week. “Because there is no act more selfish than bloodlust: feeding on and killing a fellow human being.”
Birnam asked his next question with a satisfied smile. “And how has the Loner plan of replenishing their ranks with Aryan vampires been working?”
“Not very well. Their newest crop of vampires usually give the old method of hunting and feeding every night a shot for a few months, or even a few years, then most of them realize hunting is too much work and too much of a hassle. That’s when the Leaguer Rescue Squads get their hooks in ’em, and they come to the Academy, learn the Leaguer Way, and get a steady, hassle-free supply of their minimum daily requirement: three quarts of blood-product.” By the look of Birnam’s pleased expression, Morning knew he was acing the oral exam. To be certain, he went for extra credit. “Bottom line, what the Loners didn’t realize is that vampires are people too. And if you can get your groceries from the local blood co-op, why waste your nights trapping and sapping?”
Birnam nodded. “Very good. You know the basic story of every cadet who’s come here and become a Leaguer.”
Morning shrugged. “Almost every cadet.”
“Ah yes.” Birnam lifted his eyebrows. “Then there’s you.”
“Yeah.” Morning frowned. “The Loner who turned me got the ‘young’ part right, but he had a sketchy definition of ‘beautiful.’”
Birnam chortled. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor about being a SangFU.”
Morning’s jaw tightened.
“They taught you what that means, right?”
“Yes, sir,” he mumbled.
Birnam opened his hands, asking for more.
Morning couldn’t believe the quiz was popping from history to biology. And he was tired of being under Birnam’s microscope. “Sang means blood, and FU means”—as much as he wanted to shout what FU meant, he swallowed the urge. “You know what FU means.”
“Flubup,” Birnam offered.
“Close enough.” The tension in Morning’s jaw spread to his chest. “But yeah, that’s what makes me a ‘rarity.’ I’m a SangFU.” He smothered his growing impatience with sarcasm. “I got bitten by fangs that went to sink ’n’ drink, but somewhere between swilling ’n’ killing, the vampire messed up and turned me into a big fat mistake.”
Birnam’s eyes remained fixed on the young cadet.
Morning shifted uneasily and tried to suck back the heat rising in his face.
Birnam leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “I don’t believe in mistakes. I believe everything happens for a reason. Do you know that you’re also a SangV?”
The term surprised him. He had never heard it in any of his classes. “What’s a SangV?”
“A blood virgin. You’ve never fed on animal or human blood. You’ve never touched anything but Blood Lite.”
He wanted to tell Birnam about the time he snuck a sip of a classmate’s animal-blood drink to see what he was missing. But there was no point in confessing anything until he figured out why he was there. “Okay, I’m a SangV too. Is that a problem?”
Birnam motioned to the chair next to the desk. “Have a seat.”
Morning obeyed.
Birnam tapped his fingers together. “When you were a Lifer, what did you want to be?”
Morning slumped. If this grilling was going back to his pre-vampire years it could take forever. Without the powers of Dr. Chronos to hit fast-forward, he went with the only weapon he had: keeping his answers short. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a grown-up.”
Birnam eyed Morning’s rail-thin frame with a bemused smile. “That may be what you want now, but it’s not what you wanted to be when you were nine.”
Morning glared at the tiny tree on the desk. That was his other weapon: only responding to questions.
Birnam gestured to the computer. “There’s no use hiding anything. It’s all in your file.”
“So why don’t you read it?” Morning demanded as his growing irritation sabotaged his battle plan. “Why do you keep asking me questions you already have the answers to?”
Birnam ignored his petulance. “Because reading a counselor’s version of your life isn’t the same as hearing it from you. Tell me, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Realizing he couldn’t win, Morning went with his only other weapon: indifference. He monotoned the truth. “When I was little I wanted to be a superhero, but when I realized I didn’t have any superpowers, I decided to become the next best thing, a firefighter. I started taking an EMT certification course, but then at sixteen years, four months, and eleven days, I got bitten. The next thing I knew, I was in the Academy.”
“If you ask me,” Birnam offered, “every vampire who learns to rule his appetites and conquers bloodlust is a superhero.”
“No way!” The leash on Morning’s frustration snapped. “Not doing something doesn’t make you a hero.” He jumped out of the chair and paced. “Doing is what makes you a hero. Heroes don’t sit on their butts and play video games, heroes take action. There’s no way Leaguers can be superheroes. We’re just a bunch of vampires who’ve traded bloodsucking for product-sucking! It’s right there in the Motto: Drink Culture, Not Life.”
He caught his breath, but he couldn’t cage the bitterness in his voice. “And that’s fine, that’s what I’ll do. I’ve got my Leaguer Goals.” He thrust a finger at the computer. “You can read all about ’em, but since you wanna hear it from me, here they are. I’m going to read comic books, I’m going to play video games, I’m going to get myself a Star Wars stormtrooper suit, join the 501st Legion, and march in the Rose Bowl Parade every year! I’ll be a good Leaguer like everyone else, and I’ll do it because I don’t have a choice!”
Unfazed by Morning’s outburst, Birnam slowly stood.
Morning didn’t know what to expect. For all he knew, Birnam’s eyes were going to turn into pools of fire and zap him with red-hot lasers, and he’d burst into flames.
Birnam was eerily calm. “What if I gave you a choice?”
Morning didn’t move. “What choice?”
“What if I gave you a second chance to achieve your dream: to be a superhero?”
Morning blinked. “I don’t get it.”
“I want you to be the first vampire to reveal yourself to Lifers.”
A chill shot through him. The same chill he felt when Birnam had stared at him at the end of commencement and talked about Worldwide Out Day. “You mean, come out?”
Birnam nodded.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This had to be a last joke they were playing on him before he left the Academy. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m never been more serious in all seven hundred and eighty-three years of my life.”
Morning stared, dumbfounded. “But why me?”
“I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time: young, innocent, nonthreatening, someone who’s more victim than vampire. You challenge every myth and fear of what Lifers think vampires are. But most important, you’ve never been tainted with bloodlust. You’re a SangV.”
“Not really!” Morning blurted. “I tasted animal blood. I snuck a sip of Bled Bull from someone’s bottle at a party.”
Birnam’s forehead knitted. “Did you like it?”
“It made me hurl.”
Birnam’s expression relaxed into a smile. “Even better. Everyone loves a hero with a weakness. You’ll be a vampire superhero who’s animal-blood-intolerant. No,” he added as his smile widened, “hemo-intolerant.”
Morning squinted in confusion. “I don’t follow. How is coming out going to make me a superhero?”
Birnam’s serious expression returned. “Think about it. As the first, you’ll be a hero to all Leaguers. More important, if Lifers accept you for what you are, and if you blaze the trail to the day we all come out, we’ll no longer have to hide our powers. We’ll be able to use
our powers to help people. You’ll be the first vampire to be a superhero.”
As his words sank in, Morning’s insides spun with wild exhilaration. The boring, obedient future he was dreading had suddenly been swept away. Birnam was offering him more than the chance to revive a buried dream. He was giving him the chance to live again!
* * *
THE LEAGUERS’ NEW COMMANDMENTS
1. You shall not age.
2. You shall not drink anything but properly milked animal blood, or artificial blood substitutes.
3. You shall not frighten Lifers with your powers.
4. You shall not destroy your maker.
5. You shall not destroy, or make, a blood child.
* * *
5
Catching a Ride
Back in his dorm room, Morning tried to shut out the sound of cadets outside the door. They were exchanging raucous goodbyes before boarding buses that would take them on the first leg of their journeys to new hometowns.
He sat on his bed and flipped through his tattered copy of Watchmen. He had read it so many times the graphic novel’s vividly colored pages and blood-soaked panels had faded. But while the colors had lost their punch, the story hit him with a disturbing immediacy. Watchmen was the saga of masked heroes being murdered by a supervillain. Now that Morning had impulsively accepted Birnam’s challenge to be “a hero to all Leaguers,” each gruesome death of a masked hero in Watchmen seemed to foreshadow his own destruction. If he did become the first vampire to come out, there was no shortage of forces that would rather destroy him than see vampires accepted as the newest minority with special needs.
His grinding doubts were interrupted by another boisterous farewell out on the walkway. It reminded him that he could still chicken out. Before leaving the office, Birnam had told him that if he had second thoughts he only had to walk out of Leaguer Mountain with the others, get on the bus headed for San Diego, and begin the quiet, secretive life of a Leaguer. There would be no shame in choosing comic books, video games, and a Star Wars stormtrooper suit over what might be a suicide mission.
Outside his room, the goodbyes grew further apart.
Birnam had also told him that he would instruct the driver of the San Diego bus to wait an extra five minutes in case Morning got cold feet.
The walkway fell silent.
The bell in the clock tower rang twice, echoing off the mountain’s dome. Morning snatched his backpack off the bed and started out. He stopped at the door and looked at the book in his hand. The cover of Watchmen was an extreme close-up of a yellow smile button. It featured one black oval of an eye, crossed by an arrow-shaped splatter of blood. As he gazed down at it, a smile tugged at his mouth. He tossed the book on the bed. It was still his favorite novel of all time. He just didn’t think it was a good idea to begin his journey with a book that ended in a lowering curtain of blood.
Morning stepped onto the walkway and climbed down the three ladders that provided the only access to the Academy’s cliff-dwelling dormitory. Carving the students’ dorm into the inside wall of the mountain served a dual purpose. The long climb up and down was a constant test of a vampire’s urge to CD into a Flyer and skip the ladders. Not yielding to temptation was the keystone of the Leaguer Way.
As he hurried across the empty parade grounds and passed the grandstand, an old man cleaning the stands saw him and called out, “Better step on it, Morning, you’re gonna miss your bus.”
He stopped and recognized Reggie, the school’s janitor. “I already did.”
Reggie looked baffled. “You did?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “A little change in my Leaguer Goals.”
The janitor shot him a disapproving frown. “You’re not even out of the mountain and you’re changing your Goals?”
Morning flashed a smile. “I was gonna be a stormtrooper in the Rose Bowl Parade. Now I’m gonna be Luke Skywalker.”
Morning hurried down a lighted tunnel until it ended at a rough-hewn wall of rock: Leaguer Gate. He stepped under a red light protruding from the wall and pressed a large button. A door in the rock slowly opened.
Walking through it, he stepped onto a dust-covered stage at the rear of a dilapidated western saloon. He looked down and marveled at the lack of footprints in the dusty floor. A half hour earlier, graduates had walked through the saloon on their way out of the mountain. He glanced up at the sprinkler heads in the ceiling. They didn’t spray water, they sprayed dirt to cover all traces of vampires coming in and out of the mountain.
As he pushed through the half of a swinging door still hanging in the saloon entrance, he triggered a motion sensor. The sprinklers released a fresh cloud of track-covering dust.
Morning raised an arm against the harsh desert light. In the last ten months, the only times he’d stepped outside the mountain had been on field trips for Vampire Health, during the section on solar phobia. All vampires were “born” with two things: bloodlust and an irrational fear of sunlight. But their fear was no different than a nonswimmer’s fear of water. The nonswimmer overcame his fear by learning to swim. The vampire overcame his by learning to “sun-bathe.” Conquering solar phobia began with a sunlamp, moved to a tanning bed, escalated to a sunrise, and climaxed with a high-noon walk in the desert sun.
When Morning’s eyes adjusted to the light, he looked down a dusty street choked with tumbleweed. The secret entrance to Leaguer Mountain looked like any other ghost town in the Sierra Nevadas. The silence was broken by the thwop of a helicopter. The chopper kicked up a dust cloud as it landed in the street. Its rotor torqued down, the dust cleared, and Morning recognized the pilot in the glass bubble. Mr. Birnam was right on time.
* * *
SUNSCREEN OR SUN SCREAM?
One of the few things you Lifers got right in your books and movies about vampires is our abject fear of sunlight. Well, half right. Let us shed some light on our solar phobia.
Long ago, we were scared of sunlight for good reason. We were a nocturnal race; we only came out at night. Our dread of daylight was so irrational, so psychosomatic, that if we were exposed to it our skin would burn. And if exposed to it long enough, our apoplectic panic would ignite us in a fireball.
If you find such terror and its fiery result hard to believe, let us remind you of a similar but milder reaction in Lifers. Have you ever seen a student go to the front of the class to make a presentation, and be so terrified that his skin grows red and splotchy? Or worse, breaks out in hives? Multiply that fear a thousandfold, and you might burst into flames too.
Sometimes, people do burst into flames. You call it autoimmolation. But it’s as rare as the few vampires who still suffer from solar phobia. We call these vampires Loners. If you ever suspect someone to be a Loner, hit them with sunlight. And stand back.
Leaguer vampires don’t avoid the sun or seek it out. It’s not like we can get a tan. Our skin replenishes itself too quickly. The only “sunscreen” we Leaguers need (so we don’t sun scream) is SPF: Solar Phobia Fixer.
* * *
6
Second Thoughts
A half hour later, Morning and Birnam boarded a jet on an abandoned runway in Death Valley.
Morning had never flown in a private jet before. It was like being in someone’s plush living room. He sat on a leather banquette across from Birnam. After takeoff, a pretty Leaguer flight attendant appeared and served Morning a can of Blood Lite, room temperature. She gave Birnam an iced drink she called “Antelope O-Negative, on the rocks.”
Birnam raised his glass. “To your mission.”
As Morning clanked Birnam’s glass with his can, it hit him how his number one mission at the Academy was about to be turned on its head: from trying not to be noticed to stepping into the spotlight, from being freak of his class to being freak of the world. Then he remembered the question that, in his nervous excitement, he had totally forgotten to ask. “Where are we going?”
“We’re flying into history.” Birnam took a swig of his drin
k. “Having any second thoughts?”
“Not really.”
Birnam feigned surprise. “Really?”
He exhaled. “Okay, about a million.”
“All right, let’s deal with them.”
Morning started down his list. “When I come out, so will the vampire slayers.”
“It’s been so long since Lifers believed in us, they’ve forgotten how to slay a vampire. They think all it takes is a wooden stake. They’ve been watching too many of their own movies.” Birnam swirled the ice in his glass. “What’s your next worry?”
“To prove I’m a vampire I’ll have to take one of the Six Forms, right?”
“Right.”
“But that violates the Loners’ third commandment: Thou shalt not leave a mortal with memory of thy darkest powers. The punishment for breaking their commandment is destruction, and if anyone knows how to slay a vampire, Loners do.”
Birnam nodded. “Yes, that is a concern. But I know how Loners think, and they’re going to face a very tough choice. If they destroy you for coming out, they’ll break the peace treaty that’s held for so long, and they’ll reignite the war. With their diminished numbers, they wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d face total annihilation. I’m sure they’ll pick the lesser of two evils: letting you go unpunished.”
“You’re sure of that?”
Birnam studied him with a knowing smile. “I can’t tell you everything, but there are a few Leaguers who have Goals that involve passing themselves off as Loners and spying. The intel I’m getting from them says this is going to be a slam dunk.”
Morning wasn’t sure where he’d heard that promise before, but something about it bugged him. “Okay, even if it’s a slam dunk, will I have protection, you know, like bodyguards?”
“No.”
“Why not?”