That last idea really made her feel rotten. Be that as it may, she ran a convenience store. She sold food items. She wasn’t entirely certain that having a walking corpse stocking shelves was sanitary. It could even be a health code violation. Knowing the health inspectors, they had a law for everything from rat feces to squid-headed beings from another reality.
“Listen, Sam. I don’t want to come down hard on you. I know you’ve been having a rough time lately. It’s just that . . . aren’t you done with this stuff? Working a crap job and drawing the crap wages I can pay you? Shouldn’t you be, you know, skulking around in a castle somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains?”
“Don’t make fun of me, D. That’s not fair. I’m really trying here. This—it’s all I’ve got. This and my cousin’s basement.” Sam’s voice, raw with hurt, broke into a strange and haunting overtone. Chin to chest, he stood there, a single shiver going through his thin frame.
Delia’s heart clenched. She knew better. Everyone did. The Dracula gibe was cruel. “Your parents . . .”
“They couldn’t handle it. I mean, I was a disappointment, but I wasn’t a night creature, you know? It was just too far for ’em. They only let me in the house to get my stuff and go.”
“You never said. I didn’t know, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
“Right, right. Everybody’s sorry. Lots of hand wringing and shrugged shoulders. Not many who offer to help.” An alarm went off on his watch. “I have to, ah . . .” He hooked his thumb to the small office in the back. “Drink my lunch.”
Delia trailed behind him. She’d never had the courage to watch. He picked up a thermos with Scooby-Doo and company running around in a faded imprint. The old plastic faded to yellow, big scrapes where the image peeled away. A relic, something from when Delia had been in school. He twisted the top off and looked at her, going into that weird stillness of those who didn’t breathe. The guys on the news said something about that. Something about the vampires pulling oxygen right through their skin. Maybe they weren’t really dead at all, just changed. The world resisted magic, but that didn’t make magic impossible. Just darker and stranger than any children’s tale.
Delia smoothed her blouse, that old knot of pain in her upper abdomen flaring worse than it had been in weeks. She kept it off her face. She owed him this much, owed him a kind word and a little acceptance. “It’s okay, Sam.”
He shook his head slowly. “No, D. Not okay. It’s all wrong.” He pinched his nose, looking away into the corner of the cramped office. He clenched his fists, and a look of intense pain shot across him. The wet noise of tissue ripping and reforming made Delia’s bladder threaten to empty, but she forced herself to stay, to see it at least once.
Darkness like bruises spread across his skin in mottled spots and stripes. His mouth bulged, the muscles of his jaw creaking and flexing to far larger than their natural set. Cruel teeth like a baboon’s pushed his lips outward. His eyes flared, no hint of white in them now, only blood and burning metal. He spared her a pitiful expression and then, hands shaking, he upended the thermos and consumed the blood. He gagged, fighting against every drop.
She couldn’t watch him gulp it down like some foul cough syrup. Delia had to turn away, had to retreat. Sweat burst on her brow, and she held her palms against that old pain, now flaring like a knitting needle piercing her guts.
“Don’t lose it, Delia Castleman. Don’t you cry at work,” she whispered. Somehow, she didn’t.
Sam came to her a few minutes later, returned to the listless and pale but human appearance that vampires maintained, except for when they fed. “Man, I hate that. Being a vampire blows.”
“The blood doesn’t . . .”
“It’s awful. Worst thing I’ve ever had to do. It’s that or go mad. They say it only takes us thirty-six hours to starve up here on the surface. You tear yourself apart from the inside, like you’ve got Ebola. They have to kill you if it goes too far. It’s all anyone can do.”
Delia reached out, putting her hand on his shoulder. Sam was just a kid, just a good, if unambitious kid. Nineteen. He’d had his whole life ahead of him. It wasn’t right. He covered her hand with his own. It didn’t feel like part of a person’s body. There was no moisture, no internal heat. It felt like the hand of a mannequin.
“We could stay open twenty-four hours, I guess,” she whispered. “Maybe then . . .”
Sam looked into her eyes. “Really? You’d do that?”
Everything slowed down somehow, and Delia wondered if she’d lost a moment of time. Like she had blinked far too long, and everything had changed around her. He had come closer, his eyes seemed larger, almost luminous. In the stillness of Sam’s face, she now saw something vaguely beautiful.
Delia withdrew her hand, shaking her head to try to clear it. “I don’t know what I could pay you. In a town like this, maybe there’d be damned slim business through the night, but I guess we could try it.”
He managed a smile, just a small one. “I’d hug you, but I guess that’s out.”
“A year ago, Sam, vampires were just a scary story, just the grist for a movie or a book. When they—I mean your people—came out of the ground in Oslo, it turned everything on its ear for all of us. I’m still getting used to the idea.”
“They weren’t my people then. Not yet. Now . . . I’m still waiting to be all handsome and brooding. I just went from loser to dead kid loser.”
“You’re not a loser, Sam.”
He put up his hand. “No Carpathian Mountains, D. Just the stock room and a cot next to the washing machine in an unfinished basement. I’m a loser.”
Delia took a breath. She didn’t have a counter to that. Nothing true, anyway. “It’ll be quiet most nights. Maybe you could take a correspondence course or something,” she suggested.
He chuckled. “Yeah. Small-engine repair. Paralegal work. Big plans. I’m not even a person, exactly. They don’t know what the heck to call us now. My own mom shoved a cross in my face when I was picking up my clothes. My dad only let me in while he was holding a shotgun. Like I’d try to bite my own parents.” Sam bit down on his teeth, the corners of his mouth twisting. “I don’t see us getting a real warm reception. You’ve always been good to me, D, and even you don’t want me around.”
“That’s not true.” Weak words. Too small a protest to ring true.
“It’s okay. I understand. I have to be somewhere, though. It would be easier to just lie in a grave, but I’m still moving around. I don’t have the guts to just die. I don’t want this to be the end for me.”
“You can stay here, sweetie. I promise. For as long as you want to.” Overcoming her own reticence, that fear that keeps people from putting their hand out to a wild animal, Delia took Sam’s still, mannequin body in her arms. There was no give in his flesh now, no squish and deflection of natural tissue. He smelled like the waters of a mineral hot spring. A damp, sharp scent, somewhere between safe and dangerous, just like Sam.
He accepted her arms, returning the embrace. The lack of warmth arising from his body felt so strange. The feeling that, without any action on his part, Sam could hold her like a loop of chain, a human-shaped set of restraints that she couldn’t ever break away from—this shook her as the conception of a day without dawn might. Something changed in him. A ripping, squelching sound filled her ears, and Sam’s body pressed against her more intimately. “That’s good to hear. I hoped you were on my side.” His words wore angular disguises, every syllable rasping, sibilant. “I’ve been so damned lonely. That’s what no one tells you about. How much you lose. How small your world gets when everyone turns their back on you.”
Delia shivered when Sam’s mouth touched her neck. A kiss? Not exactly, but not so different. Gentler than a kiss, almost. The touch of his tongue against her pulse point made a whisper of air escape her mouth. Her hands gripped his shoulders, not trying to pry herself loose, as if she re
ally could.
“Sam, I don’t know,” she started. “I’m not ready for this.” But she did know, didn’t she? And she was as ready as anyone can be to die. That picture had been painted in her mind for quite some time now.
“Easy, D. It’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt that much.” Sam’s arms tightened around her. The feeling of his long fangs piercing her neck was no more than the sting of a flu shot, the touch of a tattooist’s gun. All the darkness of the room swooped upward. She went blind, her mind thrown into a soft, timeless oblivion.
* * *
—
Sam handed the change back to Mr. Kirshner and gave a slight smile. The pain of the sun coming through the window wasn’t so bad, this close to a feeding. No worse than having dozens of bees stinging his skin. If pain served to let us know we were alive, it was blessed. He wasn’t alive. It was only pain, signifying nothing.
“Thanks, Sam. I haven’t seen you around lately,” Mr. Kirshner said. He had a fantastic mustache. He always wore a hat that had “PSE Archery” embroidered on it.
Sam wondered how he felt about the man. He found that he had no feeling one way or another. Everything was getting weighed and measured again. The entire terrain of his psyche shifted and began to rebuild itself. Just now, he understood how little he knew about himself. Traversing the boundary between prey and predator required a level of emotional distance.
Mr. Kirshner picked up his six-pack of Coors and his bag of chips, stowing them under his arm.
“I’ve been under the weather. Just getting back into the swing of things.”
“Yeah, you look pretty pale,” Mr. Kirshner agreed. “Hope you feel better.”
“Thanks. You drive carefully now, huh?”
The small bell rung, and the store held only a traveler who pondered the caffeinated drinks so seriously that the fate of civilizations seemed to rest on the proper choice. She stood, a long-jointed girl with brown hair and a crooked nose like a boxer. Her hand made a halo of fog on the window of the cold case. Deep in thought, she hummed a few bars of a melody Sam couldn’t recognize.
“Can I help you with something?” Sam didn’t raise his voice much nowadays. When he really leaned into it, the sound became strange, fracturing into a dozen pitches. It spooked everyone out. Including him. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that his lungs were just fleshy bagpipes now, just a weird instrument that lived inside of him, vestigial to his other mechanisms.
The girl looked back. “Do I want an iced coffee or an energy drink?” She twirled a little bit of her hair around her left index finger.
Sam inhaled. His nose told him so much now, far more than words could convey. This one was coming into her monthly, and she hadn’t eaten much of value in two days. She had that car smell, of confinement and nervousness and dried sweat.
“You want the chocolate milk and one of our sandwiches. That’ll keep you going better than some caffeine hit.”
“Yeah?” She put one thumb through a belt loop in her faded jeans, her mouth quirking in a way he’d never seen. He liked the way one eye crinkled up a little, the way her hips tilted nine degrees in one direction when she leaned back against the glass door of the cold case.
He nodded. “Trust me. This is what I do professionally.”
She did. She touched his hand longer than she needed to when she took the change back. A look of confusion wrinkled her brow as she felt it, the slight unreality of it. She smiled at him, walking backward out the door, though. As close to a victory as one gets, once they’re strange.
The sun pain escalated as the long evening hour lingered. Dusk couldn’t come too soon now, the energy in his limbs fading, his ability to ignore the pain at its limits. Sam made a fist and held it by his side, out of sight. He didn’t let the sun rule him. He could grasp this one thing. Just a normal moment, however fleeting. Just unremarkable life, the one grand wish of a dead kid.
* * *
—
“I’m alive,” Delia said, holding her hand to her neck. The bite marks formed two livid welts on her skin.
Sam stood at the counter with a cleaning cloth in hand, as if nothing unusual had happened. The Heineken clock on the wall read eight thirty. Well after dark. He looked absolutely drained, his eyes like those of someone who had survived a torture session. Even now, Delia wanted to go to him. Even bitten. She cursed herself for a fool. She’d always had a weakness for strays, for the injured ones who needed her. Perhaps no one had ever needed her quite like Sam did.
“The first bite won’t kill you. It takes three, even five bites to cause the change.”
“But . . .” She didn’t know what she wanted to ask.
“How do you feel?” Sam put his hands against the counter, leaning on it, hollow cheeked. He looked so exhausted. Why did she ache for him like that? After what he’d done, why?
“Were you out here, in the daytime?”
He indicated that he had been with some vague movement of his chin. “I was minding the store. I mopped and stocked the ice cream chest, too.”
“In the daylight, you did this? Didn’t it hurt?”
He shrugged. “I asked how you felt.”
Delia had to take a moment to think about it. Truth be told, she felt better than she had in a long time. That old pain high in her abdomen had gone away for a little while. It always came back, of course. It always would, until it killed her.
“You didn’t ever say you were sick,” Sam said.
“Sick?”
“You know what I’m saying. You can’t hide things from the dead kid.”
She looked down at her feet. “Sam, what could I say?”
“‘I’ve got terminal cancer.’ You could have said that. More than anyone, I’d have understood.”
“That’s nothing I wanted to put on your shoulders. You’ve got enough trouble without carrying mine.”
“See, that’s stupid, and you still didn’t say how you felt.”
Delia’s anger flashed up in her cheeks. “What the hell does that matter now? You bit me! You can’t just do that, and then ask about me being sick, like you’re still the puppy . . .”
“The puppy, huh?”
Delia’s legs didn’t want to work. She slid down next to the milk in the cold case, putting her head in her hands. “I just thought of you that way, Sam. I never meant to say it aloud.”
“You did. It’s okay. Guess the puppy bites, huh?” He sat down on his haunches near her.
“Did you bite me because I was sick?” she asked. Tides of emotions clashed inside her chest.
Sam’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yeah. You’re about three percent vampire now. Not enough to kill you, but plenty to change some things around in there. I’m betting that your cancer just met up with my vampire whatever-the-hell. And the vampire cells are eating it whole.”
Delia didn’t, couldn’t, believe it. “Sam, things don’t change like that. You can’t just wave a magic wand and make cancer go away.”
“No magic wands here. Just a biological process we haven’t figured out yet. The cancer will probably fester somewhere, maybe come back even stronger. The body has its own little dates with destiny, and nothing short of full change will derail that train. A bite, though, is more potent than any medicine yet devised. Feel it. You know I’m right.”
“No one said anything about that.”
“It’s not something we talk about. The trick is to find someone who doesn’t know they’re sick. The trick is to do your little deed and get out clean. Here’s the thing. I need you. I’m not ready to just be not human yet. I can’t let go of everything until . . . until I don’t know.”
Delia put her hand where the pain had so recently existed. Maybe it was temporary. She’d gladly take temporary. Any version of today without the gnashing jaws inside her counted as a blessing. “I guess you saved me.”
&nb
sp; “You can call it enlightened self-interest if you want. I hope you see it as more than that.”
Delia let out her breath. Wetness touched her cheeks. Not much, but enough to break her rule about crying at work. “I do. You can stay until you’re ready, as long as you need. I won’t turn you away, Sam.”
“Thanks.” Sam offered his hand, hoisting her up easily. He turned, beginning to wipe down the soda machine with his cleaning cloth. Delia pulled him away from it, turning him around so that she could look him in the eyes.
“Night work, Sam. Don’t be a damned fool.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and gave a sardonic little grin. “All right. I’ve still got work in the back, anyway.” He moved off in that direction, an orange cloth tucked into his ratty jeans, her own little monster.
“And Sam,” she called after him.
“Yeah?”
“No more biting me, ’K?”
“Not unless you ask me, boss.”
Delia went to the counter and looked out at the fluorescent-lit parking lot, watching Wally Patterson slide his gas card into the slot at the pump, then begin fueling his rusted Chevy. Asking him? Wouldn’t ever happen. Her fear of death didn’t rule her so much that she’d beg for his fangs again. She would stand or fall as she was now, no less human than the night found her. She’d be glad of whatever painless days she had left. After that? She’d grit her teeth and face the fate of every human, that unbreakable appointment with the dirt.
As Wally drove away, though, a hush fell over the store. Ten minutes before closing time, and only the sound of the cold case refrigeration unit called. Delia’s hand lingered near the power switch for the old radio next to the cigarette case, but never turned it on. She picked up the dog-eared paperback someone had left atop a gas pump two days earlier, perched on a stool, and watched the clock. The book rested between her palms, unopened. She found herself looking toward the closed door into the back room, wondering. Thinking of those beautiful, volcanic eyes, and the knowledge that the fangs didn’t hurt that much. For the first time in so long, she had hope again. She’d almost forgotten how that felt.
Fantastic Hope Page 26