Great. Lovely. Jim-fucking-dandy.
I make the car roar. It’s a sporty little number—bloodred, natch—and is worth more than the valet’s entire life, counting tips and multiplying by forever. I had the heater on all the way up here, to get me in the mood. It’s still on, and I’m still in the mood, but for something else now. I let it drop to a throaty purr, then rev it again, and decide to see how fast I can make it go. Peeling out of the parking lot like a bat out of a cliché, I rip down side streets, jump sidewalks, slip, slide, skid, screech. I endanger my fellow citizens, treating stoplights like suggestions, recklessing my way to the nearest unlit two-lane.
Where am I going? That’s easy. Out. I’m goingout. Preferably, with a bang. I’ve already disabled the air bags and removed the safety belts because, well, I’ve been going through this little midlife crisis for some time now. So far, I’ve been leaving it to chance, but…
Sometimes, when it’s raining, when the heater’s cranked up all the way and I’m really going fast, I’ll let go of the wheel. It’s exciting. It’s an attention getter. It feels likesomething, instead of the nothing I usually feel. It feels like the Hope and Promise of Death as opposed to this night after night of longing for all those things I’ve given up to be bored forever. It’s theout I’m going for; it’s a plan, an exit strategy.
And then I see it.
Her.
Sizzling along in my bright red crisis, looking for something I can’t name because everything Ican name bores me senseless, I see it. A wisp. Just a single white wisp coming out of the darkness along the road. I skid to a stop, fishtailing into the oncoming lane. I look in my rearview mirror. Wait. And there it is again—another clean white puff swirling away in the cold and rain. I put the car in reverse and crawl slowly back to what I imagine is just a wounded dog, breathing out its last breath at the side of the road. I park and get out, waiting for another frightened plume to point me in the right direction. I say “frightened,” because it seems that whatever the breather is, it’s been holding its breath ever since I stopped the car.
The road I’m on passes through woods—evergreens, mainly. Pines. My crisis prefers rural settings, what with their narrow lanes and no lighting, no police, no pesky Samaritans, should the not-unforeseeable happen. It’s definitelynot the trees that have brought me out this way, whether evergreen or never-green or whatnot. Except for the antisocial demands of my crisis, I’m basically a city vampire. But Ido know a thing or two about pines. And one of those things is:
No feet.
Pine trees do not have tiny bare feet with tiny toes curling, trying to get a better grip on the muddy earth. They don’t have blotchy pink legs, either, trembling from the cold, speckled here and there with something dark—mud, maybe, or…
“Hello?” I say, brushing aside the branches of the pedestrian conifer in front of me. And there she is, my little escapee from statistics, a still-warm-inside, mouth-breathing fog maker. A mortal, which is rare enough, but a child, too. Areal child—not the freak show kind I stumbled here to escape. She’s plump in that baby fat way. Good veins. Farm raised, I’m guessing. From one of those farms that officially “don’t exist” but do. A free-range bleeder who’s gotten a bit too free.
And all for me. A little going-away present from the world, on this, my maybe-last night.
She’s wearing one of those retro “Got Milk?” T-shirts. The ones the Screamers think are funny, or sexy, or appealing to a maternal instinct that’s also retro, and getting more so all the time. She’s got blond hair. It’s been gathered up into a pair of asymmetrical ponytails that look like they were done quickly, and mainly to get the hair out of her face and into a couple of manageable clumps. A few loose strands hang down, heavy from the rain, clinging to her face and shoulders. Her thumb’s in her mouth, her eyes squeezed tight, her whole body shivering. The dark stuff on her legs speckles the rest of her as well. And now that I’m closer, I can smell it:
Blood.
Plasma and platelets and coagulating coagulants, but not hers. There aren’t any wounds big enough, nothing fresh gurgling out. Still, she was standing right next to whatever bled like this. Judging from the spatter, I’d say it was an arterial bleed, some major trauma that this little one apparently just walked away from.
Gently, I pull her thumb from her mouth, uncorking another plume of white. “Hello,” I say. Again.
“Don’t eat me,” the little girl cries.
Now, I hate to quibble, but this is one of my pet peeves. Vampires do not eat little girls. We don’t eat people, period. At least not in the chewing sense. We relieve them of their blood supplies, which involves biting, or cutting, or puncturing, but we don’t bite anythingoff. We don’t masticate, or grind with our grinders. Not that I’d mind feeling my teeth click through a pinched inch or so of well-fed neck flesh, especially now, but that’d be gratuitous; it’d be showing off and it’s just not something that’s done. Not anymore. Not in polite society. It’s like that bumper sticker I hate—“Chews Life”? No—aproper vampire neverchews. A civilized vampiresucks —get it straight.
Of course, I don’t imagine that these distinctions will mean much to the little mortal quivering in front of me. The difference between being eaten or just sucked dry is pretty much semantic, especially if you’re the one on the menu. And so I don’t quibble. Instead, I ask, “Why not?”
“I don’t taste good,” she says.
As if drinking blood is something you do for the taste! I have to smile, and so I do. “Oh yeah,” I say. “Why’s that?”
“I’m spoiled,” the little girl cries. “Mommy says…,” followed by sobs in place of whatever it is Mommy says. Orsaid, I assume—past tense. I also assume that Mommy’s being past tense explains all that blood covering her frightened little girl. The one who’s too old to be sucking her thumb but is back at it again, sucking and sobbing, sobbing and sucking.
The word for “human female parent” in almost every language on earth starts with anm. Mom, mater, madonna, madre. It’s usually the first word spoken by a child, and is rooted in the sound made while suckling. And that’s what it’s all about—our language, our relationships, our being at its very core; we suck, therefore we are. And the world is forever divided into the suckers and the sucked upon. It’s always been that way; we—me and my vampire friends—just made it a little more literal.
“So, you’re spoiled, eh?”
She nods her head. I pull out her thumb.
“Is Mommy dead?”
She looks at her feet. Her thumb, like a heat-seeking missile, starts heading back for her mouth. I stop it in midtrajectory, my big cold hand cupping her tiny warm one. “Don’t,” I say.
A minute goes by with nothing much to fill it but the sound of rain steadily shushing through the needles of the trees surrounding us. I still have her hand in my hand, can feel its borrowed heat invading my fingers, crawling just a bit up my wrist, and then stopping. It’s when my hand starts feeling like a human’s—when my hand starts feeling like her own—that’s when my pleasant little surprise finally looks up at me with something less than terror in her eyes.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Isuzu.”
“No, yourreal name,” I say. And that does it; that’s what makes her snap.
“Itis,” she demands. “Isuzu Trooper Cassidy,” she repeats—recites—pulling her hand away from mine, her thumb folding back into its fist. “Like it or lump it,” she announces—quoting, I’m sure, whatever brain thought of naming a little girl after a gas guzzler.
I laugh—I can’t help it; this little human is just so…human.Even soaked to the bone, even covered in blood, and standing next to a vampire twice her size, there is only so much shit she’s willing to put up with, and getting grief over her name is at the top of the list.
“What’s so funny?” she demands, about two seconds away from stomping my toes or kicking my shins. Or so I think.
“You are,” I say, casually pr
eparing myself to fend off whatever pathetic attempt my little sport utility might make at defending her mortal dignity.
Of course, it hasn’t been my night for making the right call. So:
She nails me.
Right as I’m reaching to tousle her blood-clotted hair, the little brat whips out a twelve-inch bread knife with faux ivory handle and plants it in my solar plexus. Where the knife came from, I have no idea. Somewhere behind her. Somewhere I wasn’t looking. Maybe the more important question is why I wasn’t expecting her to be armed. Did I imagine that baby bees don’t have stingers? She’s a mortal in a world full of vampires, for Christ’s sake. In her shoes, I’d be packing every kind of heat imaginable. Silver bullets, garlic, holy water—you name it. Not that any of that stuff would do any good. Real vampires can’t turn into bats or fly, but we’re also not a crucifix away from turning into bone and ash. No, if you want to kill us, you’ve got to get the head, or the heart, or trap us outside when the sun comes up. And that’s it. That’s yourA, B, orC when it comes to vampires and our killability.
But back to Isuzu and her kitchen knife. Out it comes, and in it goes—slurp-thunk—like that first good stab into a ripe melon. That’s the noise we vampires make when we get stabbed where I’m stabbed—just below the belly button, and just above the fun stuff. Isuzu’s just so high to begin with, and even when she’s holding the knife over her head with both hands and going up on tiptoes, my belt line is as close to my heart as she’s going to get.
Fortunately, there’s not much down there anymore. The virus or whatever it is that makes vampires cold and bloodthirsty, that turns our skin pasty white and our eyeballs midnight black—the same thing rearranges our indoor plumbing. We don’t have much of a digestive system, especially below what used to be our stomachs. The blood is absorbed directly into the bloodstream by the tongue, the membranes of the mouth, and the esophagus. As a result, a vampire taking in blood isn’t so much like a mortal drinking coffee as like a cocaine addict doing a line. It’s just a matter of biological efficiency—a way of mixing the old and new blood as quickly as possible without actually poking holes into our veins.
Not that getting stabbed where I’m stabbed doesn’t hurt. It does. It does forme, at least. Whether through dumb luck or the regular kind, Isuzu’s managed to find my last scar, the site of my last, very nearly mortal wound. Every vampire has such a scar, and it’s one of the few places on any of us where you can still inflict for-realpain pain without killing us. Some call it a vaccination scar, others, their second navel. But the flesh remembers and we don’t give up the location of our last scars easily—if we’ve any choice in the matter, if we can hide it with our hair or cover it with a turtleneck.
So, when I wince pulling out the knife, it’s for real. I’m not play-acting. Not about that, at least. Where the real acting comes in is my acting like I don’t mind, like I don’t plan on getting even. But I do. My little Happy Meal stabbed me with every intention of doing grave bodily harm, and it’s the thought that counts. And what I’m thinking is this:
Later.
Not now. Not when it’d be easy for me to snap, and for her neck to snap right along with it. No. Immediate gratification is overrated, anyway. Plus, her adrenal gland’s probably wrung out. The fact that a five- or six-year-old mortal girl who’s only so high could get a knife to stick into me all the way to the hilt…yeah, there was some adrenaline working overtime. But she’s on the downslope now. I can tell that by the way her breath puffs are coming out, by the way she’s just standing there, letting her skin hang on to her bones like a marionette hanging on to its strings. And Ihate stale adrenaline; it’s got that scared-past-being-scared aftertaste.
So, no. Not now. Later’s better. Later, when she’ll least expect it. Later, when I can scare out something fresh, when it’ll be more…
Fun.
And just like that, it hits me.This is why I’ve been depressed.This is what I’ve been missing. The coffee, the chocolate, the peeing, and canned peaches—red herrings. You want areal clue to the psychology of the modern vampire? It’s this: we’re cats. We’re feral cats who’ve been forced inside. We need to play with our food before killing it, but can’t. The world’s full of kibble—no problems there—but there are no birds, no mice, not even small lizards to hunt, catch, play with, and kill. Nothing to kill, not even to save our lives. Nothinglegal, at least.
That’s kind of where I am—have been,for years.
And the whole rest of the world’s been there with me, whether they know it or not. We’ve been taken care of. We’re well fed. We suck on bottles of blood, sip it from snifters, tip back mugs and cups and glasses—and not a damned one of them ever puts up a struggle. Not a damned one ever feels quite right. Sure, they spike the bottled stuff with adrenaline, but lab-grown versus the real thing is like Tang next to fresh-squeezed.
And look at me—Mr. Lucky. I just found myself a real live orange.
Not that I say anything. Not that I let that particular cat out of the bag. Nope. Instead:
“I believe this is yours,” I say, handing over the knife like a maître d’ the wine list.
2
The Tarp Guy
The problem with delayed gratification is, of course, the delay.
And the problem with not harvesting Isuzu right away is having to take care of her in the meantime. Take care of, and keep safe, and fed, and hidden from my no-longer-benevolent brethren. It occurs to me that this may be a bigger slice of life than I’m ready to chew at the moment. Or suck dry, for that matter. But then again, not too long ago, I was ready to chuck it all. And it’s not like I don’t have plenty of time to kill. So:
“Sorry,” I say.
I get the feeling I’ll be saying that a lot. I get the feeling I’ll be learning a whole new vocabulary of regret, penitence, contrition. I see a lot of flubs and oopses in my future. This time, the apology is for stopping Isuzu while she was trying to make a run for it.
We’re in my car at the time of the attempted escape. I figured that being inside with the heater running beats being out there, in the cold and rain. Not that the cold and rain were bothering me, but I figured it might get Isuzu to stop twitching—or, you know, shivering. Chattering. Stop her blunt little teeth from click, click, clicking away. It’s surprising how quickly that kind of thing can get on your nerves.
So we get into the car and she goes back to the rag doll routine, resting her head against the passenger window, making it fog. I think about reaching out, reaching over, placing a hand on her bloody little shoulder—to comfort, to reassure, to lull into a false sense of security. My own security’s secure; I’ve locked the knife in the glove compartment. No surprises, this time. But I hold back on my reassurance. The no-surprises thing works both ways, and I’m worried about the coldness of my skin. I don’t want to startle her. I don’t want to keep reminding her about our differences. About our respective places on the food chain. So I rest a hand on the dash first, borrowing a little heat before continuing on.
She glances. She sees it coming. But she flinches anyway. Just a quick twitch, and then it’s back to Raggedy Ann. I pat her limp shoulder. She lets me. I pet her hair, trying to soothe a frightened puppy. She could care less. I keep it up until it feels stupid, and then I pull my hand away, damp now with you-know-what.
You-know-whose.
What I do next I really shouldn’t, but it’s been a stressful evening. Lots of drama. Lots of gratification delayed. And really, it’s such a little thing. Just a matter of bringing my fingers to my lips, a quick run of the tongue. Just a taste. Waste not, want not. And Isuzu? Hell, she’s busy looking out the window at all that nothing out there, making a big show ofnot looking at me, so why not?
This is why not.
I’ve already told you that vampires reflect all the time. In mirrors. In chrome. In their lonelier moments, and over there, in the unfoggy corner of my passenger-side window. Isuzu’s been watching me all along—staring at me, at my
reflection. Watching every move, every idle gesture. She’s seen me lick her mother’s blood from my fingertips. And that’s all it takes. Her little hand goes unlimp, darts for the door handle, yanks up.
No.
Oh no you don’t, my little dumpling. No, no, no…
I flick a switch on my driver’s side armrest, and all the locks thunk down together. The once-and-future rag doll keeps on yanking pointlessly, jiggling the handle with one hand, two hands, working a foot up and kicking at my fine leather interior.
I should probably say something. This is when one of us should say something, and it looks like I’m it.
“Sorry,” I say, because every iceberg starts at the tip.
The problem with not harvesting Isuzu right away is having to humor her. I’d forgotten how kids can be. How they can get a thought into their heads and just fix on it, beating it like a dead…
DSosnowski - Vamped Page 2