Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (12 page)

"Eat," Dad said, finally. "You're coming
up on
your seventeenth birthday,
aren't
you?"

I nodded. My hair fell forward.
I
swiped it back, took a drink of milk, and immediately wished I hadn't.

"You've got your permit, and you'll have your license soon. Have you thought about the kind of car you want?" He smiled
like
it was Christmas, pleased with himself.

I made all the appropriate noises. I told
him
a Volvo like Mom used to have would be
nice,
and watched
him
flinch. I ate as
much
as I could, and when
he
was finished I
fled upstairs, turned up the music in my room, and threw up everything in a curdled rush as the sun slid toward the horizon and the wind rasped, moaned, and whistled.

When
it
was done I rested my feverish forehead against the cool porcelain
of
the toilet. It felt good. I cleaned myself up and felt a little better now that
I
didn't have the food
weighing
me
down,
and it was getting to
be dusk.
So I brushed my teeth, gagging at the
mint in
the toothpaste, and put on a pair of jeans and a cami, and went out in the backyard. Consuela was washing dishes and my dad was in his home office on the phone.

Nobody saw me leave.

* * * *

The gardening shed was full of cobwebs, the smell of oil and grass clippings, and weird shadows. The riding mower hunched under a tarp, for those times when Dad got a bug up his ass about the lawn. I sat on an old concrete bench that had been hauled in here probably before I was born, and waited.

Night filled the one little window. It was hot and the wind moaned, flinging dust everywhere. My hair filled with electricity, but the waves were springy. Go figure, the day I feel like shit warmed over is the day
I
have good hair.

I waited, chewing on my fingernail. The scab on my left palm throbbed, and the two little puncture scabs
on
my throat sent a zing through me every time I moved.

The door quivered. I swallowed hard and sat up straight.
Lift your chin, sweetheart,
it
takes years
off.

Goddamn.

"And what are you doing in here?" The red dots were back in his eyes.
He
shut the door casually. "You've said your good-byes, I guess. Right?"

He sounded so
sure.
I curled my left hand around the wood. "Yeah."

"You certainly don't disappoint. Are you thirsty, darling? Say yes."

Just say yes.
Sourness filled my mouth. "Yes."

"Well, come on. There's a whole world out there." His eyes glittered and his teeth gleamed. The fangs all but glowed.

I held up my right hand and smiled. It felt like wood on my frozen face. "Okay."

He stepped closer. His fingers closed around mine. "You know, as a rendezvous, this isn't—"

I jerked at him
hard
with my right hand, brought the stake up in my left. It was braced against the wall, a long round piece of wood left over from the bonsai experiments that had been here when we moved in. It had taken a little bit of hacking with a rusted machete before the end was sharpened enough. It went in with a meaty sound that would have made me throw up again if I wasn't already so sick.

Jack's face went slack. The red lights in his eyes dimmed, but his teeth champed together twice. His head dropped like he'd just fallen asleep, and he almost fell on me. The end of the long-ass stake skritched against the wall of the shed, and I landed on my knees. He folded to the side, landed slumped against the bulk of the riding mower, and a long rattling hiss like an angry snake filled the shed, overpowering the sound of the wind.

I let out a coughing sob. Stumbled for the door. The stake whapped against things as his body convulsed. I don't know what I was expecting. I thought maybe he'd turn to dust, or explode, or something. But he just kept making that hissing sound, and the end of the stake kept hitting things. It seemed to last forever before he fell down between the riding mower and the shed wall, the stake pointing up before cocking over to the side. His legs made one final little dancing movement and then were still.

Deathly still.

It was like a nightmare where you can't run fast enough. My dumb fingers closed around the doorknob. I ran, the door slamming shut behind me, lungs bursting and heart pounding, and made it into the house. I shut the pool door, locked it, and stepped quick and soft up the stairs until I reached my room.

As a plan, it kind of sucked. But it was all I had. And here in the house the lights were bright and they were all on. I slumped against my bedroom door, hyperventilating. My throat throbbed. When I put my hand up to touch the little puncture wounds, my fingers came away wet and red. I sucked on them while I stumbled to the bathroom. I had to pee like damn.

"Tragic," I whispered around my fingers, and giggled. "I'm so tragic."

It took a long time before I could stop crying. The divots in my neck stopped bleeding after a little bit, re-scabbed, and I stood in the shower for a long time, shaking and shuddering.

I tossed the mashed-together chunks of soap in the garbage. Faint bubbles on its wet surface gleamed before they popped.

Then I went to bed and I dreamed of Chel. Only she was on the riding mower, and she was cutting down banks of bubbles and leaving a river of blood behind her. And when I woke up the next morning, I was still thirsty.

* * * *

Consuela flipped the television on. "You eat," she told me, sternly, her eyebrows coming together. "Don't starve yourself,
mija."

I eyed the eggs and potatoes, the bacon, the toast. My stomach turned into a knot and the news came on. I picked up the glass of orange juice. Dad was already at work.

"—the so-called Schoolgirl Murders," the television said.

Consuela reached for the knob.

"Don't!" The orange juice slid from my hand. The glass didn't break, but half of it slopped into my plate and she gave me a reproachful look. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

She whisked the plate away and the television kept yapping.

"Again, the chief of police has just issued a statement. Theodore Michael Briggs, a twenty-four-year old handyman in the Valley, has just been charged with the Schoolgirl Murders." The screen filled with a mug shot of a dark-haired man with a narrow face. He didn't look anything like Jack, really, but his hair was dark and curly and he was skinny.

Consuela started mopping up the orange juice. I stared at the television screen.

"The murders have held the entire city in a grip of fear," the blonde anchorwoman intoned as the picture shrank and retreated to the upper right-hand corner of the screen. "Police arrested Briggs in the company of a young girl from St. Mary's Academy, where two of the victims attended school. The girl's parents are calling it a narrow escape—"

"Mija
?" Consuela said softly.

"A source close to the investigation says Briggs was found with several items belonging to the victims, including four cell phones—"

"Holy
fuck,"
I
whispered, and slid off my stool. Consuela called my name, sharply, but I
was already at the back door and running for the shed.

When I got there the door was open, and there was a dark stain on the cement floor. But no stake.

And no body. The shed was hot, airless—and empty.

* * * *

The wind is up. It mouths at the edges of the house and the air-conditioning is working overtime. It's a fall heat wave, ninety degrees in the shade and no hope of a break for a while. And with the wind, well, everyone's crazy. The news was full of rapes, fires, other stuff.

"At least they caught that bastard," Dad said before
he
kissed my cheek and went out for another partner dinner. Consuela fussed at me.
I
tried eating, ran upstairs and threw it
all
up afterward.
I
didn't even fucking care.

I'm sitting on my bed, staring at the window. Sunlight is draining out of the sky. The wind moans, and moans. The two little wounds on my throat are pulsing-hot. The inside of my throat is on fire, and part of why I ran upstairs after dinner is because I could hear Consuela's heart working, each chamber throbbing open and clapping shut.

I
could smell the blood in her veins.

It smells good. Even now, upstairs, with my door closed and the lights on, it smells so
good.

It's almost night. They expect the Santa Anas to blow themselves out soon. I have my hands knotted together into fists. I'm waiting. My entire body aches.

I should have said no. Jesus Christ, I should have said no.

I'm thirsty.

And I'm waiting. God only knows what he'll do when he comes back.

But the thing that really scares me?

Is the idea that he might not.

Letters to Romeo

Nancy Holder

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene:

Romeo attacked the old man in the foyer of the villa's home movie theater while busy servants decorated the room with festoons of orange-tree flowers, dried pomegranates, and silver leaves. He bent the drugged-out, half-dead bag of bones backward beneath the hanging pots of deadly nightshade and sunk in his fangs. Immediately he spit out the blood. It was contaminated with tetrodox— rank, disgusting. It rendered its victims paralytic. Sometimes it stopped hearts. It was a chemical sister of the poison Friar Lawrence had given to Juliet, to fake her own death.

"Who did this?" Romeo shouted. "Who dared?"

The servants kept to the shadows, rats fearing the king of the beasts—Romeo Montague, seven hundred years a nobleman of Verona, seven centuries
the lover
of Juliet
Capulet,
and a vampire.