Sweetblood (9781439108741)

by Hautman, Pete

  The second I say that, a creature in black glides into the room and all conversation comes to a halt.

  At first I think, This guy didn’t get the message about the costume party. He is wearing a flowing black cape over a black leather corset and black leggings. His lips are painted red, his hair is black and oily and combed straight back, his face and hands are pale with foundation: a caricature of a Hollywood vampire.

  “Good evening, my children,” he says. The voice is familiar… then I see who it is under all that makeup and everything makes perfect sense.

  After all, this is Bizarro Halloween.

  All of us black-clad freaks are dressed as mundanes, why shouldn’t Denim Jacket/Nike T-shirt Wayne Smith dress up all vampy? Actually, he doesn’t look half bad. The leather corset is a little silly, but I suppose he needs it to hold his belly in. Maybe I should get one for my dad.

  “You are a spooky-looking bunch,” Wayne says, putting his hands on his hips. I look down and notice his high-heeled boots. No wonder he looks taller.

  “Hey, Wayne,” I say.

  He snaps his head around and fixes his eyes upon me. “Did I hear a peep?”

  I give him a little finger wave.

  “Ah,” he says. “The raven-haired mundane speaks a strange name. Who is this ‘Wayne’ you speak of?”

  Now I’m confused. Maybe this isn’t Wayne. I don’t know what to say, so I shrug.

  He walks over to me and looks into my eyes. “Allow me to introduce myself, child.” He holds out a red-nailed hand. “Draconius Mundo.” He bows and plants a kiss on the back of my hand, then looks up at me. Lips curl back from stumpy little teeth, and he winks. Definitely Wayne.

  He releases my hand and spins, his cape billowing. “Cider in the kitchen, children. Wine in the study.”

  Wayne, aka Draconius, does another cape-swirl and stalks off.

  Fiona says, “Was that him? I thought you said he was normal.”

  “This is Bizarro Halloween. Everything is backwards.”

  “Well I think he’s creepy.” She follows Marquissa out of the room.

  I search for Dylan and find him sitting on a sofa eating potato chips and slurping hot cider and listening to a girl dressed in a ruffled powder-blue blouse and a matching pleated skirt. Last time I saw her she was in fishnet and vinyl.

  “What did you mean before, about Wayne giving me the chrysalis?” I say, interrupting her.

  Dylan looks up with a mouthful of chips. “Huh?”

  The girl has a nasty little smirk. I’d give her a black eye like I gave Gruber, only I’m afraid it would look good on her.

  I say, “You told me in the car that this”—I’m still holding the shoebox with the butterfly—“was from Wayne.”

  Dylan gulps his cider. “Oh. He told me to give it to you.”

  “But he didn’t even know me then.”

  “He knew who you were.”

  This sends a shiver up my spine. “How did he know that?”

  “How should I know? Why don’t you ask him?”

  I stare at Dylan with new eyes. He looks small and young and weak. Mark’s Seward Stingers letter jacket is huge on him. I can see why they call him Dilly.

  “What are you, his message boy? That’s really pathetic.”

  “What-ever.” He shrugs and drinks more cider and the jacket sleeve slides back to reveal his wrist. The hilt of his tattooed sword is missing.

  “What happened to your tattoo?” I ask.

  “Umm, I guess it’s coming off.”

  “It’s fake?” I feel betrayed, as if he has lied to me. “That’s so… high school.”

  “I’m thinking about getting a real one.”

  I turn away and head for another room, any room. I am half furious and 100 percent paranoid. Are Butterfly Rancher Wayne and Chat Room Draco the same person? Coincidences happen, and the whole goth/cybervamp community just isn’t that big… but somehow he found out that Sweetblood was Lucy Szabo. The chat room was supposed to be anonymous. It was supposed to be safe. How had he found me? And why?

  25

  Wine and Chocolate

  I don’t like it when people play games with me. I don’t put up with it from parents, or teachers, or anybody else. The more I think about the game this Wayne/Draconius/Draco is playing, the madder I get. Is he trying to frighten me? I’m not a scared little girl. I can take care of myself.

  Part of me wants to confront him, but I know that’s not a good idea. I should leave. I don’t feel so good. Maybe I have the flu. My head hurts and my throat is tight and my stomach feels like it’s full of lead. I should make Dylan drive me home. Now, before he gets drunk.

  But I still have the butterfly box in my hands. I still have to let the poor thing go. I lift the lid and peek inside; the monarch is sitting quietly on its bed of crumpled tissue. I find the short hallway that leads to the greenhouse. Pushing through the plastic curtain, I am once again surrounded by the smell of moist earth and rotting vegetation, and the flickering of fluorescent tubes. This is where my butterfly needs to be, among the milkweed and flowers and warmth. I set the box on a long table crowded with orchids and remove the lid. The butterfly does not move. Is it okay? Should I lift it out of the box? I reach for it, and suddenly it is airborne, flitting toward the glass ceiling.

  “You are returning my gift?”

  I jump and let out a yelp.

  He is standing a few feet away, partially hidden behind the milkweed plants.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  Draconius/Wayne moves into the light. “Sneak up on you? I was standing here when you walked in.”

  “You scared me.”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “To scare me?”

  “Hardly. I wish to apologize.”

  “Oh.” That was about the last thing I expected. “For what?”

  “For deceiving you. Come, join me.” He heads back toward the sitting area where, just a few days ago, he read my tarot cards. It seems like months. I follow him. “I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest with you, Lucy. You deserve better.”

  A bottle of wine and two glasses are sitting on the glass table.

  “Would you care for a glass of port?” he asks. The fluorescents give his makeup a greenish tinge.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You’ve come all this way, and you won’t let me share a drink with you?”

  “I have to go home.”

  “Do you want to go home?”

  Do I? Home to my empty desk and shred of chrysalis? I open my mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.

  Draconius/Wayne smiles and pours two glasses half full of deep red wine and hands one to me. He sits down on the leather sofa and pats the cushion beside him. “Have a seat.”

  I would rather sit in the opposite chair with the table between us, but he is looking at me with those dark brown eyes and smiling, and he is apologizing to me, and it seems unspeakably rude—rude even for me—to refuse to sit next to him. So I do.

  “Are you having a good time?” he asks.

  “Not really.” I taste the port. It is sweet and thick.

  “Don’t you enjoy seeing people’s shadow selves?”

  “I think I’m seeing them as their dorkoid selves.”

  Wayne/Draconius laughs. I take a larger sip of the port. It feels good going down. My stomach likes it.

  I say, “What about you? What are we supposed to call you?”

  “Tonight? Tonight I am Draconius. Tomorrow I’ll be just plain Wayne.” His smile is sad—or as sad as it can be, with all that red lipstick.

  “What about Draco?”

  “Ah, Draco.” His hand pats me on the knee, then pulls back before I can object. “Draco lives in cyberspace.”

  I shift a few inches away from him. “So you are Draco.”

  “At times.” He sips his wine, then wrinkles his nose. “This lipstick makes everything taste awful. I don’t know how you girls can stand it.”

/>   “You get used to it,” I say.

  “You look good without it. You are a very attractive young woman, Lucy.”

  I try to let that comment roll off me, but some of it sticks. “So what’s the deal with all the names?” I ask. “What’s your real name?”

  “I have many names.”

  “What’s the name on your birth certificate? Is it really Wayne?”

  “I don’t remember. I was very young then.”

  “I think I like you better as Wayne.”

  He laughs. “I thought you were into vampires. You certainly spend enough time in the Transylvania chat room.”

  “On-line is different.”

  “Is it?”

  “Do you really drink pig blood?”

  He holds his wineglass up to the light. “But of course!” he says, deepening his voice.

  I set my glass on the table. “That is so gross.”

  “I’m only kidding,” he says. “None of this is real, you know.”

  “I’m real.”

  “I’m talking about the poses we adopt. Why do you think you embrace the goth lifestyle?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not goth.”

  “Ah, but you are. It’s part of the goth mythology that one is not truly goth until they are not-goth. You’ve heard the jokes: I’m so goth I’m dead. I’m so goth I died and didn’t notice. I’m so goth I’m not-goth? Well, I’m so not-goth I’m goth, and so are you. But lifestyling isn’t reality. Reality is money and pain. And pleasure.” A monarch flutters down and lands on his arm. He brushes it away. “And butterflies. Butterflies are real too.”

  “Why did you tell Dylan to give me the chrysalis?”

  Draco—I am thinking of him as Draco now—says, “It’s my calling card. I wanted to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “I became intrigued by your on-line persona. You were always the most interesting creature in Transylvania.”

  “But how did you know who I was?”

  “You told me.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Ah, but you did. Every time you visited the chat room you revealed yourself. One time you mentioned that Anne Rice was in town signing books, so I knew we lived in the same city. Another time you mentioned walking to Crosstown Center, so I knew which school district you lived in. You’ve said things about how you dress. I even knew that you had diabetes, based on some of our chats about blood—who but a diabetic would use words like ‘hypoglycemic’ or ‘blood glucose’? You let on far more than you knew. It was a simple matter for me to deduce that you were a student at Seward High. All I had to do then was ask young Dilly to identify you. It was not difficult for him to pick you out of the student body. How many highly intelligent diabetic goths could there be in one high school?”

  “What is he, your secret agent?”

  “He does favors for me.”

  I think that I should be frightened, but for some reason I’m not. His voice sounds so reasonable, and he seems to appreciate me for my mind. It’s not as if he’s some demonic fiend lusting after my tender young body. It’s a little strange that he would go to all that trouble to find me, but maybe he’s just a lonely, pathetic middle-age man who likes to play vampire. I don’t really think he’s going to do anything. Not here. Not with all these people in the next room.

  Draco says, “In any case, I apologize for not being more direct with you. I just wanted to meet you without… well, I feared that Draco’s on-line reputation might frighten you. I wanted you to meet Just Plain Wayne.”

  “It’s not like I ever really thought you drank pig’s blood,” I say.

  “You never know.” He refills my wineglass from the bottle of port. I don’t remember drinking the first glass. “Sometime I’d like to talk with you about your theory concerning the origins of vampirism. It’s a truly remarkable piece of deduction. The idea of diabetes and vampire legends being linked—the first time you mentioned it in the chat room, I thought you might be a university professor. How did you come up with it?”

  “You mean about diabetics being the first vampires?”

  Draco nods, and I start talking. I tell him about finding the sick bat when I was six years old, and about the rabies shots, and about how I later read descriptions of untreated diabetes. Then somehow I got onto the topic of how everybody who ever got saved by technology is technically Undead.

  “Then I must be Undead too,” he says.

  “What happened?”

  “I was in a car accident. If not for the airbag I would’ve been killed.”

  “That doesn’t count. The car is technology. If technology kills you and saves you, they cancel each other out.”

  Draco laughs, and I laugh too. Beneath the white foundation makeup, smeared lipstick, and leather corset is someone I can talk to.

  I am not a fool. I know that Draco is no supernatural creature. He is just a man, old enough to be my father, who has never grown up. So what? Where does it say you have to grow up? Do rock stars ever grow up? What about old men who spend hours every week playing with model trains? Why is being a pretend vampire any weirder than a doctor who pretends to care about his patients, or a diabetic pretending to be normal? Or going to church and pretending to believe in God? People do these things all the time.

  Although Draco has never really grown up, he is not a boy. Nor is he a parent, a teacher, a doctor, or a shrink. He knows what it means to be different, to stand outside the safe, confining bubble of mundane existence. He is not afraid to be not-goth. He doesn’t treat me like a child. He gives me port wine. Words flow between us, megabytes of understanding, and when he is making an important point his hand touches my knee and he looks fearlessly into my eyes.

  We talk for what seems like hours. The port wine has settled my stomach. Maybe it is the alcohol, or some other magical property. Every now and then someone enters the greenhouse with a question, or just to say hello or good night or thank you. I am the Queen of the Damned, sitting beside Draconius the Vampire King as he deals with his subjects. One very drunk girl comes in to ask him if she can sleep in the spare bedroom.

  “Of course, my dear,” says Draconius the Vampire King. The girl stumbles off, and he turns back to his Queen. “You are also welcome to stay here. Anytime you want to, anytime you need a place to stay.” His hand is back on my knee, only this time it doesn’t leave. “You are family now.”

  For a few long seconds I fall into the fantasy. I don’t have to go home. I don’t have to go to school. I can stay here forever, raising butterflies and… I look down at his hand. When was the last time anyone touched me? I think it was Vice-principal Gruber’s meaty paws. Draco’s hand is smaller. It feels hot on my knee. And heavier.

  “Would you like to stay here with me tonight?” he asks.

  I look down at his hand. Its back is thick with cracking foundation makeup. The nails at the end of his stubby fingers are short and ragged, chewed to the quick. I swallow, and suddenly the nausea is back.

  “I’d better not.” I can’t take my eyes off his hand. A hollow, panicky feeling fills my chest.

  “I have to go now,” I say.

  “Why? You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  “No.” I’m not afraid of him, but I’m afraid of something. “I just have to go.” But I don’t move.

  Draco is giving me a searching look. He says, “Do you know what I would like?”

  “No.”

  “I would like you to have dinner with me. Would you have dinner with me? Here?”

  “Right now?” My stomach rolls.

  He smiles. “No, not now. A week from today. Are you free?”

  Free? I’ve never been free, I think. I’ve been trapped my whole life, and now it is his thick fingers on my knee holding me motionless. “What day is that? Friday?”

  “Friday, yes.”

  “Just you and me?”

  “Does that frighten you?”

  “No,” I say. But it does.

  “Will you come
?”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “A vegetarian vampire?” He laughs and I see his stumpy little teeth stained with red lipstick and port, and white foundation cracking at the corners of his mouth, and beads of sweat gathering at his hairline. His hand shifts, his fingers wriggle like fat white grubs on my thigh. The muscles in my legs flex and suddenly I am standing. Blood rushes from my head; I drop my wineglass and stagger to the side. Broken glass crunches beneath my heel. Draco grabs my elbow, steadying me.

  “Are you okay?” His voice sounds far away.

  The room is spinning. “I’m fine,” I hear myself say.

  “Sit,” he says, tugging at me.

  I pull my arm away. The spinning slows; the room shudders back into focus. “I have to go,” I say. Rubber legs carry me off as a woozy thought drifts across my brain: So this is what it feels like to be drunk.

  Draco calls after me, “Lucinda!”

  I push through the plastic curtain. The party is still going strong. Weevil has organized an apple-bobbing competition. The kitchen is full of grinning, apple-eating wet-heads. Their voices are the roaring of a waterfall and their faces are cartoons. I blink and afterimages appear on the walls. My legs seem to have grown another six inches. Is it the wine, or am I having an insulin reaction?

  I blink again and find myself in the library. I don’t remember leaving the kitchen. I stare at the shelves, the titles all running together: Exsanguinarius Rex The Practical Vampyre Book of Black Magic & Ceremonial Magic Pictorial Key to the Tarot Cream of the Jest….

  Maybe I am having an insulin reaction. I rubberleg my way to the next room and find a bowl of Halloween candy on an endtable. Butterfingers and candy corn and miniature chocolate bars. I grab a handful of the chocolate bars and start eating them one after another. Chocolate coats my mouth; I swallow and imagine a long brown syrupy rope flowing down into my stomach. Chocolate is my favorite way to treat an insulin reaction.

  Fiona appears in front of me. Where did she come from? “I thought you couldn’t eat chocolate,” she says.

  “I can eat anything I want,” I say as I shove another bar into my mouth.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I lie. I lurch off. I can’t remember how many glasses of wine I had. Everything is confusing. My gut hurts. Too much chocolate? I wander through three or four rooms and suddenly I am facing Fiona again.