by Chloe Garner
“I’ve gone three days without feeding, and it feels like my kidneys are getting sunburns during the day,” Tina said. “I have to feed tonight, or I’m going to go insane. It might literally be true.”
“I have to eat or I die,” Tony said, and Tina nodded.
“Pick up the menu and tell me where I find something that keeps me alive,” she said.
“I’m sitting right here,” he answered. She frowned.
“Have you ever thought about having to walk up to a perfect stranger and put your mouth on them, drink their blood in order to survive? To survive? Their blood. I mean, how much of your time do you spend thinking about how to keep people’s blood off of you? I drink it.”
“They all seem to enjoy it,” Tony said, and she nodded.
“I know. And what’s worse, I get it. But they aren’t human. You… I don’t think I can explain it. You are food to them. To us. To me. And I hate that about myself. I’m not better than you, and I don’t want to be different from you. But I look at you and I wonder how long it’s been since I fed off you, and whether it wouldn’t really hurt anything to do it again, even if it hasn’t been long enough, because I’m hungry and if I pushed it, you wouldn’t say no. You wouldn’t ever say no.”
“That’s actually insulting,” Tony answered, academically. “I’m not an automaton and I’m not some kind of mindless addict. Yes… Okay, I like it. I like you. It’s… There’s something satisfying to be so intrinsically and physically important to someone else. Even if most vampires don’t ever even know my name. But I’d say no, if you were going to hurt me, because I need to take care of myself for my degree. My whole life is riding on my ability to learn and prove what I’ve learned. And letting you feed off me tonight, yes, that would probably knock me back too far, and…” He nodded. “I would say no.”
She looked at the table and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… that’s how it feels, you know? I’m separate.”
“Okay,” he said. “I believe you.”
She nodded, putting her hands on the notebooks.
“So, whatever temptation you may have to go after their science for resurrecting people, you need to resist. It’s bad stuff, and we just killed everyone who knew enough about it to try to recreate what’s here in my notebooks. I’m trusting you. Tell didn’t want me to, but I am. If you’d met them, Tony… You would never make another person live through what they’re dealing with. I’m serious.”
“Okay,” he said. “So we’re just looking at how they made the compound that turned you back to human.”
“Temporarily and locally,” Tina said. “Though I’m pretty sure they had an aerosolized version that would work more broadly. I haven’t tested it, yet, but I need to, to figure out how broadly it has an impact.”
“So are we just trying to make their drug permanent?” Tony asked.
“It’s possible,” Tina said. “But I feel like it’s going to be more of a roadmarker than it is a solution. Whatever Tell has going on in his chest and in his blood… That’s going to be a big part of it.”
“How do you know?” Tony asked.
“It’s a secret,” Tina said. “And it isn’t my secret.”
“Okay,” he said. “I have a new rotation coming up in the next couple of weeks, and I don’t know if I can focus on this as much as I’d like. I’ll call you if I find anything.”
He paused, tapping his fingers on one of the notebooks.
“You said you and Tell injected yourselves,” he said, and she nodded.
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t think that vampires could get drunk or high on their own,” he said.
“That’s mostly true,” Tina answered.
“You had to have a fountain be the vector to ingest most things.”
She nodded slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re right. That’s right.”
He nodded.
“It’s just interesting.”
She licked her lips.
“Yes, it is.”
She had almost three weeks to wait.
Colette settled in to the extra guest room, more stir-crazy than Hunter and threatening to go back to Albert from time to time, though she never sounded very serious.
Tina went through Elroy’s formulas, line by line, figuring out what he’d put into the serum that had gone into the bullets and the bomb.
He really had approached the whole thing as a magic art, with the archaic names rather than the pharmaceutic names, and rituals rather than recipes, but as she teased it out, she kept coming back to the same set of conclusions, the same set of drugs.
She could get all of it with the right set of prescriptions and supplements.
That no one had ever figured it out boggled her mind, sometimes. It was so simple. It just wasn’t obvious until you had the knowledge that Tell’s special health considerations were related, and that the Order had solved part of the problem.
And then.
Well, and then Tony had laid the rest of the solution in her lap without even knowing it.
Tina wished she had a sample of the Nag’s blood to confirm, but the woman would have never given it up, and her blood was a temporary solution anyway.
Tina needed a permanent one.
That was really the only thing worth chasing after.
And so, finally, came the day that Tina asked Tell to call Kirsten at Everyone & Everything and ask for Tony.
He showed up on time, a little before midnight. Tina had asked Hunter to be upstairs for this part, and Colette had transitioned to night-sleeping because she was opening the windows during the day and pretending like she was on vacation. Or something. She seemed happier than she had been at first, and Tina was glad for it.
So it was just Tina and Tell waiting for the young man when he got off the elevator.
“Evening,” he said happily.
“How is your rotation going?” Tina asked.
He’d texted her a few times, just keeping her up to date on what he was doing as a sort of substitute while he wasn’t working on her notebooks, so she had some clue what that meant.
“Good,” he said. “I don’t want to do pediatrics, but it’s really interesting to see how everything is different.”
She swallowed.
“I have a test,” she said.
“Oh, good,” he answered. “I’m good at those.”
She shook her head, taking out a vial and holding it between her fingers.
“I need you to take this,” she said.
“What is it?” Tony asked, coming to take it from her. She took out a sheet of paper, having anticipated that he’d ask, and showed it to him.
“This isn’t… I see.”
“This is the antidote,” she said, taking out another vial and showing it to him. “After I feed off of you, you take this.”
“Like poison,” he said quietly, taking the second sheet of paper and reading over it. “I need to look some things up, first.”
“I’ve tried to do my homework, but you’re welcome to confirm anything you want. I’d ask you use my computer, though. It has the best security on it.”
He paused.
“You think you’ve solved it,” he said, and she nodded.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think… I thought it would be years,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I was prepared for that, too, but the pieces were all there, just laid out for me to put them together. And that’s what you have there. All of the pieces in one place.”
Tony spent more than an hour going through everything, one by one, and then he stood.
“You did it right,” he said. “It’s… I’m not going to call it safe by any stretch of the imagination, and I have professors who would expel me for taking it without having a real doctor go through it, but… It’s simple.”
“It is,” Tina said. “It’s deceptively simple.”
He opened the vial a
nd tipped it back into his mouth, then coughed as he swallowed.
“Have you tasted that?” he asked, covering his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No,” Tina said. “Sorry. Is it awful?”
“It needs something,” he said, coughing again. “Wow.”
“Thirty minutes,” Tina said, aware that Hunter was laying on the bed upstairs, listening to every word.
Colette didn’t know what was going on, but everyone else did.
“It has to be me,” Tina had told Tell and Hunter. “It has to. Tell, it would kill, if he went back, and Hunter, you don’t want to be human, plus you have people trying to kill you. You need every natural advantage you can get, in case they actually get in here. It has to be me, because I need to stay human long enough to prove it isn’t temporary.”
“If it even works,” Tell had said.
“I don’t bet against her,” Hunter had answered. “I don’t like it, but I don’t bet against her.”
“I need to do this,” Tina said. “It has to be me, to test it.”
“And what if it goes wrong?” Hunter asked.
“There’s no midway test on this,” Tina said. “I’ve done all of the intermediate testing I can do. I have to try it on a vampire, and there’s no one else.”
She sat down now across from Tony, wanting to ask him how he felt, but knowing that nothing in the concoction he’d taken would have any impact on how he felt.
“You have a girlfriend, Tony?” she asked, and he snorted, covering his nose with the back of his wrist.
“What now?” he asked.
“Making conversation,” she said, trying not to sound overly-intense. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No,” he said. “I’m kind of busy. I know it seems like I’m not, because I can always show up at the drop of a hat in the middle of the night like this, but I don’t have a lot of time. Medical school, you know. It’s really busy.”
She nodded.
“You’re a nice guy. Gonna make a lot of money. Don’t let her take advantage of either of those.”
Tell was standing over against a wall, his arms crossed, just watching.
“Okay,” Tony said. “Are you feeling okay?”
She licked her lips.
She was hungry, certainly. She’d been stretching her feeds more and more just to prove that she could. But there was a stomach-deep twitchiness to her that she couldn’t control by force of will.
“If this works, I’m going to be human again,” she said.
“And the entire vampire world is going to want to kill you for it,” Tell said. She nodded.
“You know… You need to forget that list. Even knowing about what I’m doing is dangerous.”
“You keep saying,” Tony said slowly.
“She cares about you,” Tell said. “Don’t know that you’ve really registered it, but she cares about you as a person. You’re helping her put her life on the line, and she’s trying to protect you from that.”
She wasn’t that much older than he was.
A couple of years.
Certainly a respectable dating range.
A realization that came at her out of nowhere.
“I’m helping her get her life back the way she wants it,” Tony said. “I should at least get credit for that.”
“I’m not saying that I don’t want her to be successful,” Tell said. “I’m the one who killed her.”
“The lizard killed me,” Tina said.
“Nope,” Tell answered. “I certainly jumped in line, but it was me. Tell me something, Anthony. Are you in love with her?”
“No,” Tony said. “I like her, but… No. I’m too busy for that kind of thing.”
Tina looked over at Tell, and the corner of his mouth came up and he nodded.
Yes.
She didn’t want to lead him on.
On the other hand, she was going to be human in… twenty-six minutes… give or take, and then what?
He would have never noticed her if she hadn’t been a vampire.
If she hadn’t been paying him to turn up and let her feed.
Well, Tell was paying him, at any rate.
She didn’t love him, either.
He was interesting and he was fun to talk to, but mostly he was attractive because of how attracted he was to her.
Maybe, though.
She shook her head, knowing that Tell could read more of her thoughts from her face than she would have chosen.
Hunter was upstairs.
What was she thinking?
It was all a mess.
“You play poker?” she asked suddenly, standing. “I’ve got nothing for conversation.”
“I can wipe the board with the two of you in thirty minutes,” Tell said, stepping forward to sit on an armchair. Tina nodded, going to get a deck of cards and a box of chips form the den.
Twenty-four minutes.
Tell was true to his word.
He won the last hand all in on a pair of queens. Tony had been out for ten minutes, and Tina was convinced that Tell was bluffing.
And then it was done.
She collected the cards and shuffled them a few times, then looked at Tony.
“I should get that antidote into me,” he said. “It’s time.”
She nodded.
“I know. I just…”
She didn’t know what she wanted - success or failure.
She nodded again.
“Yeah.”
She stood and went over to sit down next to him, and he tipped his head off to the side. The entire apartment was silent as she leaned in and bit him, the flow of blood up into her head the same as it always was, like drinking something cold and carbonated on a hot day. The air smelled sweet and crisp, and everything around her went crystal clear.
Tony put his hand up on her elbow, just breathing, but she could hear the way his heartbeat took off, and she knew Tell could, too.
This was what fountains did.
This was what it meant.
She fed simply, then her fangs withdrew and she turned her face away.
There was a very long pause as Tina tried to feel out her own body, as Tell listened to her, as Tony waited for something, anything.
“So?” the young man finally asked.
Tina shook her head.
“I don’t know. I don’t feel any different. It might take some time.”
Without warning, she sneezed, covering her nose with the back of her hand, and when she took her hand back down, she found it splattered with blood.
“Or not,” Tell said. “Anthony, you should go. She’s got a long night ahead of her.”
“Are you okay?” Tony asked, standing.
Tina looked at her hand, astonished.
“I can’t believe that happened,” she said. “Does that mean it worked?”
“It means something happened,” Tell said. “I mean it, Tony. You need to go now.”
“Text me to let me know that she’s okay,” Tony said to Tell.
“She will,” Tell answered. Tony shook his head.
“She never does. I need you to.”
Tell motioned him away, nodding dismissively.
“Okay. I will. Go on.”
Tony left with a sense of being torn, like he would have stayed if Tina had signaled to him that he should, but he eventually got onto the elevator and he was gone.
Tina looked at Tell.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” she said.
He shook his head, motioning for her to sit.
“So long as it isn’t pain, you’re doing great,” he said. “No one has ever transitioned to human this way, so there’s no telling how it’s going to go. Hunter? You want to get the medical supplies ready?”
“What are they for?” Tina asked, and Tell, took her hand between his.
“We have to keep you alive through this,” he said. “And there’s no telling how hard that’s going to be, so we’re going to be ready.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Tina said, and he shook his head.
“No. You shouldn’t.”
From the way Hunter reacted, Tina expected worse than she got. All the same, the transition to human wasn’t one she would have chosen to do recreationally, just to spend some time in the sun.
She could see how it would have been fatal, if she had hit a bit of bad luck.
Colette sat up with her through the late morning, after Tina was almost entirely out of the woods and the guys had to get to bed or end up on a couch instead.
Hunter hadn’t left her side. He’d taken her pulse and listened to her chest and directed Tell for almost eight hours straight, at that point, his hand always, always on hers.
By the next evening, Tina had ordered a pizza - one that Vince brought up personally, raising an eyebrow at her and lifting his chin but not saying a word - and had consumed the entire thing on her own.
Colette apparently didn’t eat much pizza anymore, anyway. She was in the process of making hummus, in point of fact.
“I think I’m going to move out soon,” Colette told her as they sat over their empty plates. Tell and Hunter would be up any minute, by Tina’s clock.
“You think it’s safe?” Tina asked.
“I texted Kyle a couple of weeks ago,” Colette told her. “And I’ve been looking at apartments online. Tell set me up… I mean, he made sure I wasn’t going to need anything again in this lifetime, when he ditched me in Albert, so I’ve got enough money to go try to figure out what my real life is supposed to be, you know?” She looked out the window at the sun as it set. They’d have to close the curtains before either Tell or Hunter could come downstairs, but Tina was appreciating sunlight for the first time in months, and she was stalling.
“I hope everything goes okay,” Tina said. “Did he give you any sign whether the Order has stopped stalking you?”
Tell went out, still, and he was keeping an eye on the Order most nights, but Tina was still concerned that they might have managed to get past him, or that they were just waiting for Colette to leave to come after her.
“Kyle left,” Colette said. “He couldn’t take it that they were ready to murder him like that. The nerd actually does have some sense.”
Tina nodded, resting her head against the glass.
“Well… Good for him.”
“You ready?” Colette asked. “Tell is usually up around this time.”
