by Brian Meehl
By the time the porcupine turned to size up his opponent for another volley of needles, the scorpion was gone. Hovering in its place was a dense patch of fog.
The transformation froze Morning. He never imagined DeThanatos would be so foolish as to CD into the Drifter, much less its most vulnerable form.
The porcupine spun, vanished, and rose up in a dust devil. The whirlwind plowed forward to scatter the fog and spread DeThanatos so thin he could never come together again.
The fog darted away and sped through the trees. The dust devil raced after.
43
Under the Matriarch
Having heard the roars, screeches, and grunts of the combat go silent, Portia stood on her branch and strained to hear or see. She still clutched the crude spear DeThanatos had given her. The ominous quiet was more terrifying than the noise of battle.
Then she saw the swirling column of fog rush into the tree, followed by a roiling ball of dust. The dust devil was still rattling the tree’s needles when something landed on the branch beside her.
She shrieked at the sight of the ape-man next to her. Her spear clattered through the branches below.
DeThanatos had taken the form of one of the first hominids to descend from the trees of Africa and walk erect over the spreading grasslands. Australopithecus.
The initial fright his furry, chimplike face gave her shifted to curiosity. He seemed to possess the same gray eyes as DeThanatos. And he was hardly a threat. His breath came in sharp gasps. He looked weak as he wavered un-steadily on the branch. His eyes slid toward her.
The sound of rustling branches pulled her gaze down. There was no telling what might be coming up to get her. Then she felt a hand on her back. She lost her balance and began to fall. She glimpsed an apelike hand. She grabbed for it, but it jerked away. She screamed as she plunged downward.
Seeing the ground rushing toward her, she flailed her arms, trying to grab anything to break her fall. Then she felt something clutch her middle, squeezing so tight it knocked the wind out of her. She spun and bobbed to a sudden stop. Her face hovered a foot above the ground. Something had caught her. She looked down to see what. The thick body of a python coiled around her ribs. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lungs were squeezed shut. A moment later, air rushed into them as the huge snake loosened its grip and dropped her.
Up in the tree, the python’s neck coiled around a branch, and it stared down at Portia, now safely on the ground.
The branch shook as the ape-man landed on it. Before Morning could react, he felt the rib-breaking blow delivered by the club in DeThanatos’s hand. The python hissed in pain, gave up its grip on the branch, and fell.
Portia rolled out of the way a second before the writhing snake thudded to the ground. She stared in awe and terror as it slithered back into Morning. Sheathed in his Epidex, he clutched his chest and moaned.
DeThanatos dropped from above, landing with his feet straddling Morning. He was back to human form, and naked as night. He dropped to his knees, grabbed Morning’s arms, and slammed them to the ground.
Morning grimaced as his broken ribs knitted together. He tried to gather his strength. He was running out of rocket fuel.
DeThanatos’s eyes searched the ground and spotted the spear Portia had dropped. “Get it!” he shouted at her. “Stake him!”
She crawled to the long stake, gripped it, stood, and hesitated. Why had Morning caught her if he had come to kill her? Why had she lost her balance?
DeThanatos leaned away to give her a clear shot at Morning’s chest. “Do it!”
Morning tapped his marrow for a last burst of strength, and flipped DeThanatos off him. They rolled and wrestled until they slammed into the trunk of the Matriarch. Morning was on top. He pressed DeThanatos’s arms to the ground, pinned them under his knees, and struggled to break a shard of wood off the trunk. DeThanatos’s lack of resistance was strange. Morning figured he was either too weak or knocked out. The shard of wood broke away. He was startled to find DeThanatos smiling up at him. He raised the dagger of wood. A pain shot through his gut, buckling his chest.
DeThanatos let out a weak laugh. “Have you wondered why I didn’t destroy you days ago?”
Morning tried to gather his strength and plunge the dagger, but his intent was met with another bolt of pain.
DeThanatos’s voice mocked him. “Why did I have to hire someone else to slay you?”
The answer froze Morning’s blood. He stared down at DeThanatos. “You—you’re my maker.”
DeThanatos’s maniacal grin widened. “Yes, my boy, we’re blood kin. If I destroy you, I destroy myself. The same for you. Destroy your maker, destroy yourself.” His eyes seemed to charge with new life. “Mortals call it a lose-lose.”
Morning shook his head as he felt the joyous surge of revenge. “No, it’s a win-win. If I destroy you, Portia lives. And I’m free of the vampire curse.”
DeThanatos’s smile vanished.
Morning lifted his dagger of wood as the vampire thrashed under him. Morning held him tight. Pain seared though his gut, trying to prevent the blow that would kill them both. He fought it, determined to drive the stake through his maker’s heart.
His wrist suddenly exploded in pain. The dagger flew from his hand. Turning toward the source of the blow, a gnarled spear of wood plunged past his face and impaled DeThanatos. Portia gripped the other end.
Morning leaped off the twisting, screaming vampire as she drove the stake deeper. DeThanatos began to smolder. Flames ignited and skittered over his body. Then he burst into a fireball.
The two of them jumped back from the intense heat and belching black smoke. They stared as the vampire disintegrated into a layer of ash. They heard the rattle of pine needles in the tree. And they watched a gust of wind scatter his ashes.
After it was done, Portia spoke first. Her voice was shaken and confused. “Birnam told me it took three steps to destroy a vampire. Why did he go all at once?”
Morning looked at her with an exhausted smile. “That’s how it happens when the stake is delivered by the hand of a virgin who’s lost her heart to love.”
She blushed.
He was glad to see her cheeks flush with blood.
As dawn drained the eastern sky of night, they walked out of the Mother Forest.
When they started down the hillside of scattered pines guarding the edge of the forest, the sky darkened again. They turned and watched a wall of dust swallow the rising sun.
“Dust storm,” Morning warned.
They broke into a run, toward the highway at the bottom of the hill.
Back in the grove, under the Matriarch, a lingering bead of ash rose up, swirled into a purple seedpod, and was borne away on the dusty wind.
When the storm overtook them, Morning and Portia took cover behind the last bristlecone pine. They pressed against the tree’s trunk as dust pelted the windward side. But they couldn’t completely escape the swirling dust and stinging sand.
“Ouch!” Portia cried as something pricked her shoulder. In the blinding dust, she couldn’t see what had drawn blood.
It fell to the ground. It was the purple seedpod with its sharp bristle: a tiny dart, now tipped with blood. The blood sucked inside the pod.
44
In the End Is Beginning
In the next few days, a lot of things came out in the wash.
Actually, it took three washings for Penny to get all the dust out of her hair, and three conditionings to restore its luster. It took longer for her to recover from the horrific reality of Morning planting his ivories in her baby girl. The healing process was helped by Portia repeatedly telling her the story of how Morning had redeemed himself by saving her from DeThanatos.
The fact that Birnam never got around to practicing a little old-school memory-deleting on Penny and Portia was part of the deal Morning struck with the president of the IVL. Morning held up his part of the bargain, and vowed to keep his “stumble” with Portia a secret. He pe
rsuaded Penny and Portia to do the same on the condition that, a few years hence, after Leaguers had been fully integrated into Lifer society, Portia would be given the rights to tell the real story of the night the IVL website was launched, including the moment when Morning almost sunk the Leaguer cause by sinking his fangs. Birnam agreed to all of this with one proviso: Morning had to retake the Academy’s bloodlust-management course as a precaution against any future backsliding.
In the meantime, IVLeague.us continued to get millions of hits, and Birnam turned a Leaguer Academy building into headquarters for organizing Worldwide Out Day. He set the date, and posted it on the website for Leaguers and Lifers alike: October 1. He thought it was good date for all Leaguers to step out of the selva obscura of their secrecy for two reasons: (1) It stood apart from other holidays, which would help pave the way to Worldwide Out Day eventually becoming the first vampire holiday, and (2) It gave any kid who was thinking of dressing up as a black-caped, bloodsucking fiend for Halloween time to realize how politically incorrect his costume was and find another.
Back in New York, Morning visited the old fireman, and they both went to the Fire Academy Appeals Board to plead his case for admission to the Academy despite being underage. They argued that technically, yes, Morning would be the youngest fireman in the department. But in a century, when the fire department brass were long gone, he would be the “oldest” firefighter ever. Given their creative math, and the fact that Morning did come with special skills, he was allowed to take the written test for admittance to the Fire Academy, with one stipulation. He had to finish high school first.
Where he would go to high school was briefly an issue when thousands of families across the country offered to become Morning’s new foster parents and adopt him. However, since he wanted to stay in New York, he decided to reside in the only place that had ever been home: St. Giles Group Home for Boys. Sister Flora embraced the idea, as long as Morning understood that being sixteen forever meant she would be his mother protector for just as long. He agreed to her tough bargain with an eye roll and returned to St. Giles.
This meant that he returned to the same high school he had disappeared from the previous fall. The principal welcomed him back but laid down one rule: one shape-shift and he was out.
After resuming school, Morning’s worries about being teased or bullied for being the freaky vampire kid were dispelled by two new friends and bodyguards: the Mallozzi twins. For them, the message tattooed across their biceps, DONT X R PATH, now applied to the most rad kid in the class.
Unfortunately, Morning’s popularity with the twins only lasted a few days. After failing to get Morning to turn them into vampires so they would possess powers that would make them master criminals, they quit being his bodyguards and went back to harassing him. But not as much as before. The Mallozzi twins were malicious, but they weren’t morons.
As for Portia, she plunged into postproduction on her documentary, Morning McCobb: The Jackie Robinson of the Vampire League. But now, because of the deal with Birnam, it was a two-part film. She was already brainstorming titles for part two. None of them were very good, but she wasn’t worried. She had time to come up with something better than Morning McCobb: Fangs for the Memories. As for the first film, she had an open invitation to debut it at Sundance, and her mother had been talking to Christiane Amanpour about narrating it.
But before both Portia and Morning could get back to chasing their dreams at full speed, they had to figure out how they felt about each other.
Their first attempt to sort out their tangled relationship occurred after school one day. They met at the Jackson Hole restaurant on Third Avenue. Portia picked the place because it had the biggest, juiciest cheeseburgers in Manhattan. Fat, juicy cheeseburgers were the best cure for the lingering anemia she still suffered from after Morning’s ass-over-teakettle fall into the forbidden well. Morning brought along his own after-school snack. Since his DNA had completely reasserted itself over Portia’s first transfusion, his drink of choice had returned to his old standby, Blood Lite, which he ordered on a monthly basis from IVLeague.us.
After eating, drinking, and catching up on all that had happened since coming back to New York, they took a cab to Delancey Street and walked out onto the Williamsburg Bridge.
45
Yeah, Right—When the Pigeons…
When they stopped in the middle of the walkway, they looked down the East River toward the expanse of water sparkling in the late-day sun. The lady of the harbor, with her torch, rose up like the figurehead of America’s vast ship.
Morning held up a hand. “You have to wave to her.”
Portia gave him an amused glance. “Is this another one of your rituals?”
“Absolutely. Can’t you see her thought bubble? ‘Welcome home.’”
She waved at Ms. Liberty, then looked down at the river. “While we’re doing rituals, do you see any paper boats coming down from Poughkeepsie?”
He smiled. “Tons of ’em.”
“Me too,” she said, playing along. “But I’m not sure what’s written on ’em.”
“That’s the cool part. They’re blank.”
“How can that be?”
He looked up and watched her hair ruffling in the wind. “Because they’re all the messages we haven’t written yet. You know, a fleet of notes, e-mails, text messages.”
She held back a smile. “You mean to anyone?”
“No.” He eye-rolled. “To each other.”
She let her smile out. “I guess that means you still like me.”
He shrugged. “Hey, how can you not like a girl who revives you with her own blood, then saves you by staking the badass vampire in the end?”
She sagged in mock dejection. “And I thought you liked me for who I am.”
He laughed and found her eyes.
She broke away from his gaze. Ever since they had walked out of the Mother Forest, they’d been ignoring the elephant that had walked out with them. It had loomed over every word and gesture during their burger and Blood Lite at Jackson Hole. It was time to look their pachyderm in the paradox. She took a breath and began. “Okay, I figure we have two choices.”
He feigned ignorance. “About what?”
She whacked him on the arm. “About us, ninny.”
“Oh, right,” he said nonchalantly, trying to belie the twisting sensation in his stomach.
She plunged on. “First of all, we’ve known each other for less than two weeks.”
“Yeah, it’s been kinda fast.”
“And taking it fast ended up with you trying to drink me like a six-ounce Coke.”
He gave her a sheepish look. “Are you gonna hold that against me forever?”
“No, as long as you leave it in your try-everything-once folder. What I’m saying is that maybe we should try taking it slow.”
He nodded happily, seeing the light at the end of this claustrophobic tunnel. “Sounds good to me.” Then he remembered that she had mentioned two choices. His curiosity got the better of his instinct to drop the subject. “What’s our other choice?”
Portia raised an eyebrow. “We decide right here and now that we’re star-crossed lovers, declare this Star-Crossed Lover’s Leap, and jump.”
He chuckled with relief. She was back to her wisecracking self. “I have two problems with that. One, I’d survive, and two”—he looked over the rail—“you keep forgetting it’s a long jump from here.” She glanced at the two lanes of traffic between them and the far edge of the bridge. “We’d be more like tire-crossed lovers.”
She laughed. “Morning made a funny. Maybe you still have a little of my blood hanging out in your funny bone.”
“I hope not. If I still had a pint or two of you in me, I’d probably wanna tap into a burger like the one you just ate and get some real blood.”
She turned to him. “There’s only one way to find out.”
He swallowed. “Find out what?”
“What you really want.”
He took in her inviting eyes. The twister inside him wound tighter. “I thought we were going to go slow.”
“We can’t go too slow.”
He stalled in confusion. “What do you mean?”
She faced the big bad elephant head-on. “In a couple of years, you’re going to look like a kid to me.”
He pulled away and watched the water roll under the bridge.
She turned and did the same.
Rivers could be slowed down, even stopped. Time couldn’t.
He turned back to her. “And a few years after that, you’ll look like somebody’s mother.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said.
Her eyes brightened. “You have?”
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll have a year or two before it falls apart. Until then, I think we should just suck it up and enjoy it. Enjoy us.”
“But how?”
He pushed closer, lowered his eyelids on the world, and pressed into the twin pillows of her lips. She darted her tongue in search of fangs. Nothing. Just the sweet exploration of a first kiss. That is, a first kiss without dentis eruptus, or the envy that provoked it.
They pulled away, still wrapped in the danger and delirium.
“How did it feel?” she asked.
He couldn’t stop grinning. “I feel like I’m the one who’s been bitten. And it’s giving me a fever.”
Her eyes danced. “And the fever’s mutating you into another form.”
“Right. I’m shape-shifting. But what’s the form?”
She didn’t need to dive into his eyes and swim with his thoughts to find the answer. “Superhero.”
Her prescience startled him. “Right. How did you know that?”
She gave a little shrug. “’Cause that’s how I feel too. Maybe that’s what love does. It makes you feel like you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Makes you feel like anything is possible.”