The Vampiric Housewife (4 page)

    
“You’re a good friend, Valerie. Thank you. Oh, they’ve got your human all packaged at the check out. I should let you go. I’ll talk to you later.”

    
“I’ll call you early next week to set a date, okay? Take care Betsy.”

    
“You too.”

    
Her heart cringed for Betsy. Valerie had been extremely fortunate—and rare—that she conceived and carried her first two children with so little trouble. It was a well known fact—even if one not often spoken—that vampires of different races had difficulty reproducing. She was of the Living Coven of vampires and Charlie was of the Silent Coven, same as Betsy and Bill. The only real difference between the two races were their chests. The Living Coven had a beating chest, and the Silent Coven had, well, silent chests. The Good Book told them that God created the first two vampires Adam and Eve who were both of the Living Coven, as were their two sons, Cain and Abel. After God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s, in jealousy Cain murdered his own brother. God marked him by silencing his chest. And as decades and centuries passed, it seemed God had also taken away his ability to reproduce. Two vampires of the Living Coven could bear children without problems. The Silent Coven couldn’t have children at all. For Valerie to conceive twice without Dr. Venjamin’s medical aid, then carrying both babies to term was unheard of. In fact, she and Charlie had more children than any other inter-race union. Thankfully they had all been born like their mother with a beating chest. But after Amelia was born, Valerie suffered two bloody, heartbreaking miscarriages of her own, a series of painful tests and procedures done by the great doctor, then her own long period of being unable to conceive. When she and Charlie finally decided to accept their family as it was, Harry stirred in her womb. It was a blessing. Close to a miracle. She loved her children above all else in this world and could not imagine Betsy’s pain of barrenness.

    
Valerie paid for the food with the allowance Charlie gave her once a week and asked the bagger boy to deliver everything to her house in a half an hour.

Chapter Four

Harry the Menace

    
“Come on! Hurry up Bobby!” Harry whispered in a voice half exhilarated, half annoyed. The two boys were making a prison break from Sangre Valley Elementary School. Melody Homer, a pudgy, tattling second grader had thrown up her lunch’s blood by the swings and the playground monitor Ms. Hatcher was attending the mess. Harry couldn’t have created a better diversion himself.

    
His partner in crime was Bobby Miller. Even though Harry was in the sixth grade and Bobby in the fourth, the two boys were best friends. Both were bright and funny and bored out their minds by the monotony of school. They wanted to have adventures and run free and laugh, not sit quietly in their seats and learn what they already knew: seven times seven was forty-nine and Mississippi had four S’s, four I’s, and two P’s.

    
So when Harry saw an opportunity for escaped, he grabbed his best friend, and they made a run for it. Once a block away from the school and sure no one had perceived their disappearance, they slowed their sprint to a walk. Neither child was out of breath.

    
“Did you see all that blood? She must have eaten a whole cow for lunch,” Bobby laughed.

    
“That was pretty cool.”

    
“So what do you want to do? I’m going to get a whipping for this so we better make it good,” Bobby said.

    
“Let’s go to the market.”

    
“For what?” That hardly seemed adventurous or fun.

    
Harry shrugged. He had a plan in mind though. Harry almost always had a plan. That’s why he rarely got caught. It was times when he acted on impulses like when he went after his peer’s throat with teeth bared, that he got into trouble. Today, like the day he had gotten into the fight, Harry had been starving since breakfast and the pulses on the playground were once again becoming too tempting. He needed to divert his attention and satisfy his thirst.

    
Main Street had a steady trickle of people. As the only school age children around, they would have stuck out like a sore thumb, but the boys, both devious to a fault, knew how to be inconspicuous. No one really looked at them. Everyone out on the street had their own business to attend to, just as the boys did.

    
As they came closer to the Blood Market, Harry’s mouth began to salivate. He could smell the humans inside. When they became visible from behind the glass, he almost lost control. Almost. It would have been worth it, to sink his teeth into a warm human, the paddling from Dad, the lecture from Mom. But if he kept himself in check, he could sneak a taste without anyone being the wiser.

    
“So what’s the plan, daddy-o?” Bobby asked as they stood in front of the store. “I don’t have any money.”

    
“Neither do I.”

    
Bobby’s face lit up. “Whoever gets the most blood vessels wins?” That had always been a shop lifting favorite.

    
Harry slowly shook his head. “Whoever can sneak a bite of a human.”

    
“How are we supposed to manage that? These two are in the display. And the human stock is right next to the meat counter. There’s always a butcher keeping an eye on them. And what if the human shrieks? We had one once that howled. Right in the middle of supper. Dad had to break its neck.”

    
“We can do it. I want her.” He looked up at the female in the window. She was around his brother’s age, lanky blonde hair, a pretty face if you bothered to notice, a long exposed neck. He could see her pulse beating through the skin. She had large, plump breasts half bared in a scoop neck shirt. For a reason he didn’t quite understand, Harry wanted to bite them too. Her blue eyes were glazed over, the eyelids almost drooping. She wouldn’t scream. But what a thrill it would be if she could. He could hear her heart, strong and vital, the taste of her would be sweeter than other humans. Pretty ones were usually sweeter. His mom thought him weird when he told her that. John teased him about falling in love with humans. But John was usually a butthead. Dad whispered in his ear that he always thought so too.

    
“In the window? With everyone walking by able to see you?”

    
“That’s what makes it a challenge.”

    
Bobby frowned.

    
“Are you a chicken?”

    
“No!”

    
“Good,” he said. The bell on the door chimed as they walked into the market. The window did seem more risky, but no one on the street had even paused to look at the humans. The butcher would certainly have his eye on the human stock—not so much worried about thieving but monitoring the humans’ sedated state. There had been stories about humans suddenly becoming violent and attacking vampires. But they were just stories as far as Harry was concerned. Stories that John told to scare him, or that Mom and Dad said to keep him out of the pantry. He had never seen a human do anything except stand there waiting to be devoured. He would have loved to have been at Bobby’s house when one shrieked.

    
They pretended to look over the blood vessels and severed fingers that could be sucked dry. He saw Bobby pocket a couple. Causally Harry walked over to the front window display and slipped behind the rope. Bobby kept lookout incase a cashier or customer wandered by. Harry wasn’t worried about the view from the street. He thought about going for her breast, but that’d be too noticeable, so he crouched down and rolled up her pant leg. She stood there swaying a bit, the way they usually do, and he bit into her calf. He could hear his teeth break the skin with a crunch and the blood gushed into his mouth, metallic and sweet, warm—almost hot. A little bit of the sticky sweetness trickled down his chin.

    
“Okay, that’s enough. Harry! That’s enough! Let’s go!” Bobby said in a rushed, hushed tone.

    
Harry couldn’t hear him. He was lost in the ecstasy of the blood rushing over his taste buds and pouring down his throat. Better than the taste of the blood, was the satisfaction of his hunger, the gnawing inside his stomach, inside his soul, being fulfilled. Suddenly there was a blood curdling scream. Startled he broke away. The girl was staring down at him. Her eyes no longer glazed. Her pale mouth extended in a wide O. She saw him. Harry smiled up at her, blood staining his teeth red.

    
“Harry!” Bobby grabbed his arm.

    
“Hey! What’s going on over there? What are you boys doing?” the butcher yelled storming from the back of the store.

    
They sprinted out of the store, Harry laughing, Bobby running for his dear life. People on the street cursed at them as the boys wove between the grownups, accidentally bumping and knocking purchases out of their hands. That was the most fun he had had in his entire life. He couldn’t wait to do it again.

    
They ran all the way to the park.

    
“Did you see its eyes?” Harry asked. “She saw me. Really saw me.”

    
Bobby shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

    
Harry laughed.

    
“You think the butcher recognized us?” Bobby asked.

    
“Nah. For all he knew, the human just freaked out and we ran because we were scared.”

    
“You sucked enough blood out of her. He’ll know.”

    
Harry shrugged and began climbing a tree. What could the butcher do to him anyway? “Bet I can climb higher than you.”

    
“No way,” Bobby said and followed up the trunk behind him.

    
They hung out at the park until school let out then began wandering home. He knew the teacher would have reported him missing and that his mom would have gotten a call from the principal. But he would be able to talk himself out of it. He was smaller than the rest of the kids in his grade. All he had to say was that a bully was picking on him so he hid in the rest room. It was a lie, but because of his size, she’d believe it. No one in school ever picked on Harry though. Except for Bobby, they all kind of stayed away. Especially since the fight. He didn’t care though. He had Bobby.

    
“See you tomorrow,” Bobby said.

    
“Are your parents bringing you to the dinner party at my house?”

    
“After the school calls saying I skipped? Hell no.”

    
Harry smiled. “Then see you tomorrow.”

    
Soon as he entered the house his mother’s voice bellowed out, “Harry Edward Murray, you get into this kitchen right now!”
 

    
Shuffling his feet with his head hung low, he entered the kitchen. Valerie stood there with her hands on her hips glaring down at him.

    
“Principal Jordan called.”

    
“I’m sorry Mommy.”

    
“You’re going to have to do a lot better than ‘I’m sorry Mommy.’ First getting into a fight at school and now skipping? Where were you?”

    
“The bathroom.”

    
“For three hours?”

    
He nodded and sniffled.

    
“Why?”

    
“There was a kid picking on me . . . I was scared to go back into the classroom. He said he’d beat me up and suck all my blood and turn me into his zombie.”