Suck It Up

by Brian Meehl

  He felt a sharp jerk and almost fell backward as a force yanked him to a stop. He spun around. Birnam stood in the middle of the street, twenty yards away, one arm raised. As Birnam lowered his arm, Morning struggled to move but couldn’t budge. He felt like he was wedged in a fissure of invisible stone. His eyes blinked. At least he wasn’t as immobile as Penny. He still had vision and voice. “Let me go!”

  Birnam ambled toward him. “No.”

  “He’s going to kill her!”

  “You should have thought of that before you left her outside for the taking.” Birnam stopped in front of him.

  “Please,” Morning pleaded. “I have to try and save her.”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s a trap to destroy you.”

  “I don’t care about me!”

  “I do.” Birnam’s brows slid upward. “And you’ve already fallen for one trap by coming outside.”

  “You told me to keep an eye on Portia!” he protested. “That’s why I followed her!”

  “Yes.” Birnam’s voice was calm, matter of fact. “You also followed your jealousy. That’s what DeThanatos wanted. Then he stood by and watched you surrender to the trilogy of bloodlust: envy, vengeance, and a long drink from the forbidden well.”

  Morning stared fiercely back. “You sound like you knew this would happen.”

  “I had my worries.”

  “Then why weren’t you watching me? You could have stopped it!”

  Birnam nodded. “Yes, I could have. But I was watching the launch of IVLeague.us.” A smile prowled across his lips. “The commercial was brilliant. Within five minutes the website got millions of hits.”

  “I don’t give a rip about your stupid website!”

  Birnam’s smile vanished. “And I can’t watch every Leaguer all the time. Especially after Worldwide Out Day.”

  Morning stared in stunned disbelief. “You can’t go through with it, not after what happened.”

  “Just because you failed doesn’t mean everyone else will.”

  “But you said I was the guinea pig, I was going into uncharted territory!” His voice cracked with emotion. “I just showed you where the path out of the dark wood leads. Right back into it!”

  Birnam’s eyes were as cold and hard as diamonds. “Nothing will stop our march out of the selva obscura. Not even a little stumble by our first ambassador.”

  “A stumble? I almost killed her!” Morning raged.

  “Okay,” Birnam conceded. “Let’s call it a colossal blunder.”

  Morning tried to thrust an arm toward the saloon, but it remained welded to his side. “You can’t hide it from Penny!”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “How? By having a Leaguer Rescue Squad make her disappear like they did with me at the house where the couple got murdered?”

  “The old powers are more subtle than that.”

  Morning erupted in a scornful laugh. “Oh, so you’ll kiss her like Superman kissed Lois Lane, and she’ll forget she ever had a daughter, or had anything to do with me?”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  Morning seethed with revulsion. He wanted to spit in Birnam’s face. He wasn’t the war hero from the Leaguer history books, or the great reformer he pretended to be. He was a dictator who would squash anyone who got in his way. “And what about me?” he demanded.

  Birnam held him with a sardonic smile. “I don’t plan on kissing you, if that’s what you mean.”

  The crevasse of stone Morning felt trapped in squeezed tighter. “You can’t risk your vampire poster boy turning Worldwide Out Day into Worldwide Truth Day, so you have to destroy me. Isn’t that right?” Birnam’s icy stare was the only answer he needed. Then a crazy thought came to him. His destruction was worth something; he could barter with it. “Fine,” he declared. “After what I’ve done, I deserve whatever end you’re planning. But if you’re so sure DeThanatos will destroy me, then let him do the job. Let me try and save her.”

  Birnam’s head pulled back, like a startled turtle’s. “Intriguing idea. But what if you survive?”

  “Then I won’t blow the whistle. I’ll pretend I’m still the bloodlust virgin everyone wants me to be.” He didn’t blink or break from Birnam’s intense gaze. “For you and your cause it’s a win-win. I die and become the Leaguers’ first martyr, or I live and you get your poster boy back.”

  Birnam stepped back and raised an arm.

  Morning shut his eyes and braced for whatever was coming.

  Flicking his fingers, Birnam released the binding thrall.

  As the invisible shackles fell away, Morning’s lungs filled with air.

  “You’ll find DeThanatos in the Mother Forest,” Birnam said.

  “Why there?”

  “It’s the Loners’ favorite picnic ground. And the best place for a vampire to die.”

  Morning gazed at Birnam for a last second. He wanted to thank him and curse him. But there was no time for either. He turned and raced down the dusty street.

  A moment later, Birnam watched Morning’s tuxedo drop to the ground. A great horned owl rose toward the moon.

  When Birnam stepped back onto the boardwalk, he felt older than his seven hundred and eighty-three years. Emancipating the world from its fear of vampires was a grueling mission. Especially when it required brushing a few things under the rug.

  Inside, he joined Penny, still standing next to a table like a dust-covered statue. He pulled out a handkerchief and cleaned off two chairs. Pushing one behind her, he thralled her into it, then slid her to the table. He sat in the other chair and gently brushed the dust off her face. He answered her blank expression with a bittersweet smile. “When the children spread their wings and leave the nest, all we can do is wait, and hope for their return.”

  He swept a sleeve across the table, pulled out a deck of cards, and began a game of solitaire.

  * * *

  THE LEGEND OF THE MOTHER FOREST

  We share our creation legend as an act of goodwill, and as the wind of tongues have shaped it over the eons.

  Like yours, our earliest ancestors were more ape than human. And like the many early hominids shouldering their way toward modern man, our forebearers lived in trees. Not the trees of Africa, Asia, or Europe. Our Mother Forest was in the western part of North America. The trees provided our forefathers with protection from dangerous creatures, pointed sticks to hunt with, and nuts and bark to eat.

  But then came the Great Dryness. The forests were shriveled by heat, ravaged by fire, and overrun by scrubland and desert. All the clans of tree people fought bloody wars to determine who would live in the dwindling forests, and who would be forced into the open, dangerous scrubland. During the long conflict, our clan became known as the Old Ones because the trees of our Mother Forest grew so withered and gnarled. The Old Ones defended our sacred forest against all enemies, and began a practice that no one had ever seen before. While the other clans and creatures drank the blood and ate the flesh of their conquered enemies, the Old Ones only drank the blood, leaving the drained body on the battlefield to strike fear in their enemies’ hearts.

  In time, the Old Ones grew so powerful they were the only human clan left in the land. But the Great Dryness continued. With fewer creatures to satisfy their bloodthirst, the Old Ones ate more and more of the bark of their ancient trees. The bark began to give them strange powers: the ability to change into creatures of the hunt—the Runner, the Climber, the Flyer, the Swimmer. Stranger still, each generation of Old Ones lived longer and longer. They called the sacred trees that endowed them with their powers, saber-toothed pines. But as the clan grew in number and the Great Dryness worsened, they faced the choice of starvation, or feeding on each other.

  A Grand Council was called. It was decided that the entire clan would leave the Mother Forest to find richer lands. Some went south and became the sorcerers and high priests of human sacrifice in Aztec civilization. Some went west into the sea and became the blood-drinking langsuir of Malaysia. A few w
ent north and became the ekimmu of Inuit legend. Many traveled east into the rising sun, crossed another sea as Flyers and Swimmers, and arrived in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, where the Assyrians called them utukku.

  Even though the Old Ones descended from the trees, abandoned their Mother Forest, and scattered over the globe, in the end, all Old Ones, all vampires, return to their native ground.

  When a vampire is slain, he shape-shifts into the seed of a saber-toothed pine, and the wind bears him back to the Mother Forest. The seed is our spirit: our Eighth and Final Form. And the seed grows into the cradle and gravestone of our race—the saber-toothed pine.

  * * *

  42

  Back into the Selva Obscura

  Flying over the scrub desert, Morning was stunned by the invigorating power surging through his body and wings. Equally astounding was the clarity and scope of his shadow-conscious. He now understood why Loners craved human blood. It exploded through your body like rocket fuel, and turbocharged whatever brain you were packing with enough consciousness to enjoy the ride.

  His sharp eyes spotted the sentries of the Mother Forest: the first bristlecone pines scattered on a rocky hillside. The moonlight striking their twisting limbs of bald wood turned them into pale flames frozen in the cool desert night.

  Soaring over the hilltop, Morning watched the pines grow in number. While the crown of a bristlecone pine often resembled the writhing tentacles of a monster beseeching the heavens, the tree’s midriff was a thicket of bottlebrush branches with dark green needles.

  The great horned owl skimmed up a mountainside over the gathering forest. Shooting over the ridgeline, Morning looked down into a valley dotted with burly pines. With their multiple trunk stems, some of the biggest bristlecones were twenty feet wide at the ground, double that at the waist. Their fiery crowns of bald wood rose as high as fifty feet.

  He had reached the heart of the Mother Forest. He circled and scoured the ground with eyes a hundred times more powerful than human vision at night. He spotted the telltale sign of Portia’s white dress. He thrilled at the sight of her sitting on a bare branch in the middle of a tree. She was alive. But he was surprised by which tree she occupied. It was the largest and most ancient tree in the forest: the Matriarch.

  He dove down silently, his ears tuned to the slightest sound of DeThanatos approaching in whatever form he might have chosen to welcome him to his trap.

  The owl landed silently on a high branch above Portia. Morning closed his large yellow eyes and focused inward. A second later, he CDed back into human form. Under his new weight, the branch creaked.

  Portia turned toward the sound, and gasped at the sight of Morning standing on a branch high above her.

  “Don’t be scared,” he whispered.

  “He told me you’d come.”

  Her voice sounded weak, but he was thankful that her pallid skin had pinked up a bit. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, but he gave me this.” She held up a sturdy spear of bristlecone pine. “I pulled a stake out of you once. I can just as easily stick one in.”

  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He heard the sound of great wings pushing against the air. “I don’t blame you for not believing me. But I’ll prove it.”

  “How?”

  The beating wings grew louder. “Twice you’ve given me blood. This time, I’ll use its power for the right reason.”

  He ducked just as a four-foot beak, armed with jagged teeth, snapped over his head with a resounding crack.

  Portia screamed at the monstrous creature that flew over. She’d never seen anything like it. No human ever had. The Quetzalcoatlus had been extinct for sixty-five million years. That is, until DeThanatos pulled it from oblivion as his first weapon of choice.

  Morning watched the pterosaur, with its forty-foot wingspan, wheel in the sky for another pass at his head. He wasn’t sure how many CDs he or DeThanatos could do before needing to feed again. But he knew he must pick his creatures wisely and swiftly. He also knew the odds were against him. It was his first battle, against a warrior who had killed countless Leaguers in the war.

  In the moonlight, he studied the pterosaur’s flight as it began another dive toward him. He noticed that its wings weren’t feathered. They were made of thick membranes, like a bat’s. He shut his eyes and focused on the first arrow in his quiver.

  As the pterosaur’s decapitating beak scissored open, Morning imploded into a peregrine falcon, dipped under the snapping beak, and shot through the branches.

  Portia twisted back and forth, trying to track both creatures, but the falcon disappeared. She could only watch the Quetzalcoatlus wheel again and look for its prey.

  The falcon was now fifteen hundred feet above the forest. Portia was a speck of white in the Matriarch. The pterosaur looked no bigger than a circling buzzard. Morning began his dive.

  In a few seconds, he was hurtling downward. If his memory of the superhero Falcon was right, he was already diving at one hundred miles per hour and would soon reach one hundred seventy. His wings made tiny adjustments to follow the pterosaur’s flight as it loomed larger and larger.

  The falcon punched through his enemy’s wing like a missile. The creature lurched and rolled in the air. It struggled to compensate for its ripped wing, but it dropped steeply, crashed to the ground, and rolled in a cloud of dust.

  When the dust settled, a four-legged beast stood in its place. The huge saber-toothed cat shook the pain from his foreleg and unhinged his massive jaws in a thunderous roar.

  Morning countered with his next transformation. A giant grizzly bear lumbered out from behind a tree. He reared up to his full ten feet and answered the cat’s roar.

  The saber-tooth spun toward the sound and charged. The bear swatted him away. The cat rolled, jumped to his feet, and fixed his yellow-green eyes on the bear. He emitted a low growl and charged again.

  As the saber-tooth crouched to leap, the bear raised his massive paw to strike again. But DeThanatos faked the leap, shot behind the bear, sprang off the tree trunk, and pounced on the bear’s back. The cat sank his great fangs into one shoulder.

  Morning bellowed in pain, dropped to all fours, and tried to shake the cat off. He only succeeded in shaking the fangs out of his shoulder. As DeThanatos lifted his head to strike again, the bear reared up and staggered backward, crushing the saber-tooth against the trunk of the pine. When the bear leaped forward, the cat fell to the ground, howling in pain.

  Morning turned and raised his paw to rip open the cat’s belly. But when his paw came down, the writhing saber-tooth shriveled into a rattlesnake.

  Morning checked his blow enough to miss the strike, catch the ground, and blind the snake in a cloud of dust. He shuffled backward. A bear was no match for the speed of a snake. He wasn’t sure anything was. Then another memory fired in his shadow-conscious. A film clip the Mallozzi twins had once shown him on the Internet. A clip of an animal doing battle with—and killing—a huge rattlesnake.

  The rattler cleared his eyes and glared through the dissipating dust. Ten feet away was a cougar.

  Morning felt the heat of his shoulder healing. Recovering from wounds sapped energy. They were even on that score: a broken wing, a bloodied shoulder. But he wasn’t sure how many more wounds he could heal or creatures he could CD into. There was no time to think. The rattler was coming at him.

  The cougar waited for the strike. The snake reared its head and shot forward. Morning watched it like it was in slow motion. He leaped clear of the gaping, pearly mouth. The snake recoiled and struck again. The cougar leaped in the air, saw the opening to strike back, and batted the snake’s fat body.

  The snake slithered to the side, out of reach—then shot forward again. Morning pounced and landed another blow. This time his claws were extended.

  The rattler landed in the dust with blood oozing from its diamondback. Trying to seize the advantage, Morning went on the offensiv
e. He feigned another blow to the snake’s right. When it struck, its fangs pierced nothing but air. Morning jabbed with his left paw, hitting the body and drawing blood again. Morning vaulted out of range and felt a renewed surge of power and adrenaline. In his shadow-conscious, it felt like a laugh.

  But as the rattler flickered its tongue, DeThanatos seemed to be enjoying a laugh of his own. The snake rattled its tail and was gone. A smaller, deadlier tail had taken its place. The sickle tail of a yellow scorpion. It packed a venom that could stop a human heart within minutes. It couldn’t kill a vampire, but it would immobilize one long enough to complete step one in vampire slaying: a good staking with bristlecone pine.

  The twelve-eyed scorpion eyed the cougar and waited for the next swat. It would be the cougar’s last.

  Morning paced back and forth, never taking his eyes off the scorpion. He knew he needed another weapon. A weapon of protection. Then he remembered another superhero. He laser-focused on an animal with a very different sting.

  The scorpion saw a flash of movement and cocked his tail for the sting. But nothing struck. His dozen eyes fixed on the dark, bristling body of a porcupine.

  Morning knew this newest CD was risky. After all, the costumed villain Porcupine had died when he fell on his suit of quills and took one through the heart. Falling on his own quills wouldn’t prove fatal to Morning, but it would slow him up enough to give DeThanatos the opening he needed.

  He shook off the defeatist thought and charged before DeThanatos made a countermove. Because he was a porcupine, it was more of a scuttle than a charge. Just before reaching the scorpion, he spun and batted DeThanatos with the pincushion of his tail. But these pins were pointed out, not in.

  When the scorpion righted himself, a half-dozen quills pierced its exoskeleton like spears. One protruded from an eye. His tail was still armed with a deadly stinger, but the searing pain, and the prospect of being run through by a quill, tossed the scorpion on DeThanatos’s pile of discarded weapons.