by Trisha Telep
“I’ll take it,” Shane said. He shoved the spike back under the driver’s seat. “Well? Are you two just going to make out or what?”
Not that we weren’t tempted, but Michael hustled me into the car, slammed the door, and Shane hit the gas. We fishtailed in the grass for a few seconds, spinning tires, and then he got traction and the big car zoomed forward in a long arc around the field house, heading back toward the parking lot. Oncoming jocks dodged out of the way.
Pennywell showed up in our headlights about five seconds later, and he didn’t move.
“Don’t stop!” Michael said, and Shane threw him a harassed look in the rearview.
“Yeah, not my first night in Morganville,” he said. “No shit.” He pressed the accelerator instead. Pennywell dodged aside at the last minute, a matador with a bull, and when I looked back he was standing in the parking lot, watching us leave. I didn’t blink, and I watched until he turned his back on us and went after someone else.
I didn’t want to watch, after that.
We’d only gone about halfway home when Michael said, raggedly, “Stop the car.”
“Not happening,” Shane said. We were still in a not-great part of town, all too frequently used by unsavory characters, including vamps.
Michael just opened the door and threatened to bail. That made Shane hit the brakes, and the car shuddered and skidded to a stop under a streetlight. Michael stumbled away and put his hands flat on the brick of a boarded-up building. I could see him shuddering.
“Michael, get in the car!” I called. “Come on, it’s not far! You can make it!”
“Can’t.” He stepped back, and I realized his eyes were that same scary hell-red as Pennywell’s. “Too hungry. I’m running out of time.” And so were we, because Pennywell could easily catch up to us, if he knew we’d stopped.
“We really don’t have time for this,” Shane said. “Michael, I’ll drop you at the blood bank. Get in.”
He shook his head. “I’ll walk.”
Oh, the hell he would. Not like this.
I got out of the car and stepped up to him. “Can you stop?” I asked him. He blinked. “If I tell you to stop, will you stop?”
“Eve—”
“Don’t even start with all the angst. You need it; I have it. I just need to know you can stop.”
His fangs came out, flipping down like a snake’s, and for a second, I was sure this was a really, really bad idea. Then he said, “Yes. I can stop.”
“You’d better.”
“I—” He didn’t seem to know what to say. I was afraid he’d think of something, something good, and I’d chicken right out.
“Just do it,” I whispered. “Before I change my mind, okay?”
Shane was saying something, and it sounded like he wasn’t a fan of my solution, but we were all out of time, and anyway it was too late. Michael took my wrist, and with one slice of his fangs, opened the vein. It didn’t hurt, well not much, but it felt very weird at first. Then his lips closed softly over my skin, and I got the shivers all over, and it didn’t feel weird at all. Not even the buzzing in my ears, or the waves of dizziness.
“Stop,” I said, after I’d counted to twenty. And he did. Instantly. Without any question.
Michael covered the wound with his thumb and pressed. His eyes faded back to blue, normal and real and human. He licked his lips, making sure every spot of blood was gone, and then said, “It’ll stop bleeding in about a minute.” Then, in a totally different tone, “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Why?” I felt a little weak at the knees, and I wasn’t at all sure it was due to a sudden drop in blood pressure. “Why wouldn’t I? With you?”
He put his arms around me and kissed me. That was a whole different kind of hunger, one I understood way better. Michael backed me up against the car and kissed me like it was the last night on earth, like the sun and stars would burn down before he’d let me go.
The only thing that slowed us down was Shane saying, very clearly, “I am driving off and leaving you here, I swear to God. You’re embarrassing me.”
Michael pulled back just enough that our lips were touching, but not pressed together, and sighed. There was so much in that sound, all his longing and his fear and his need and his frustration. “Sorry,” he said.
I smiled. “For what?”
He was still holding his thumb over the wound on my wrist. “This,” he said, and pressed just a little harder before letting go. It didn’t bleed.
I purred lightly, and nipped at his mouth. “I’m Catwoman,” I reminded him. “And it’s just a scratch.”
Michael opened the car door for me, and handed me in like a lady.
Like his lady.
He got in, shut the door, and slapped the back of Shane’s seat. “Home, driver.”
Shane sent him a one-fingered salute. Next to him, Claire gave me a completely nonethereal grin and snuggled in close to him as he drove.
Miranda said, dreamily, “One of us is going to be a vampire.”
“One of us already is,” I pointed out. Michael put his arm around me.
“Oh,” she said, and sighed. “Right.”
Except that Miranda never got a thing like that wrong.
Hey,” Michael said, and squeezed my shoulders lightly. “Tomorrow’s tomorrow. Okay?”
I agreed. “And tonight’s tonight.” I put Miranda and her wild prophesies out of mind. “And that’s good enough for me.”
WET TEETH.
That was always the part of biting someone that Miles didn’t like. Sometimes, skin got on the teeth, too, and when he rolled his tongue around his incisors, it felt like little pieces of gravel. Some of his kind would say that the skin is a delicacy.
Not Miles.
Miles only fed on the homeless, people that society didn’t care about, which is why he liked the park. There was a water fountain by the entrance. He headed for it so that he could rinse the neck flesh, stringy veins, and clotted blood out of his mouth.
That’s when he saw her for the first time. She was sitting on a bench under a lamppost, wearing a raincoat and a scarf that covered her head in an old-fashioned way that felt so familiar to him. She had rhinestone-encrusted cat-eye glasses on and she was looking up, maybe at the stars, maybe at the moon, maybe at the shoes strung up over the telephone wires.
As he watched her, Miles put his lips to the water fountain and began to swish water around in his mouth and then spit it out. His mouth was still filled with leftover blood and skin. It ran down the drain. He watched the water as it went from bright red to pink. He kept swishing till it ran clear.
When he got up the girl was no longer looking up at the sky, but straight at him.
She waved.
Not knowing what to do, Miles waved back.
He headed out of the park and down the street and back toward his squat three towns over.
The girl had so unnerved him that even when he was long out of her sight and on an empty stretch of highway, he still hadn’t been able to transform, which was a drag because it meant that he had to walk all the way back to his lair instead of fly.
Miles had a rule to never feed anywhere near his house, so it was a long walk. By the time he got home, the sky was just beginning lighten as dawn approached. He had been a little bit worried about having to find a place to wait the day out.
By the time he had unwound enough to lie down, it was well into the morning.
All day he lay in his bed thinking about the girl.
He wondered why she was sitting there alone in the middle of the night near a park that was notorious for muggings and killings. It was because of that reputation that it was such an excellent feeding ground for the vampires in the area.
It was best not to be seen in the same place too soon after a kill, and he didn’t need to feed for another few days. But he was fixated on the girl.
Once the sun set, he wondered if he should go back.
Usually, he wouldn’t. But th
ere was something about the girl that tugged at him. He hadn’t felt compelled to act out of the ordinary since he’d been turned.
As soon as night fell, Miles transformed and flew to the park. He hung himself upside down on the lamppost next to the bench the girl had been sitting on and waited.
She arrived at 3 a.m.
With his sonar, he could see her approaching. He could sense her heart beating, her graceful walk, and the large object that she carried with her in her arms.
He was sure that she was human. There was nothing about her smell that suggested otherwise. She approached the bench and climbed onto it. Then she looked around. Seemingly satisfied that she was alone, she then pulled herself up onto the back of the bench and held herself steady by grabbing onto the lamppost.
She had to stretch as she took the object she had placed on the seat and began to attach it to the curly part of the lamppost. She was intensely concentrated. Miles could tell that she was happy and nervous at the same time by the way that her pulse quickened and then steadied, and by the smell that she excreted. It had the smell of hard work, not of fear.
The girl was so close, and yet, she was so fixed on her task that she did not notice him, in his bat form, hanging there. So he was comforted by the fact that he was not the reason why she lost her balance.
Miles could sense that her foot slipped before she did, and so he changed back to human form and grabbed her on her way down to prevent her from coming to any kind of injury.
They both fell to the ground gracefully. His arms were around her waist and they were crouched close together. His mouth was near her neck, and he could feel her rapid pulse. It was so close to him. So inviting.
He pulled away before he was tempted to do something that came naturally but that he consciously didn’t want to do.
They both stood up at the same time.
“You’re naked,” she said.
Not, “where did you come from.” Not a bloodcurdling scream because her neck, so close to him, had brought out his fangs. Not, “thank you.”
Just, “You’re naked.”
That was the trouble with transformation. If you went from bat to human, you didn’t have any clothes on. Miles got embarrassed, which surprised him.
He retracted his teeth.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The girl, now that he looked at her, really was a girl. No older than sixteen. She was staring at him hard, and then she put her hands to her face.
“Shit,” she said. “My glasses.”
They both looked around, and Miles saw them underneath the bench.
“There,” he said pointing to them. He didn’t want to make any movements that might change her state from strange calm to panic.
She scooted down and got them, and then held them up. They were smashed. Not only were the lenses broken, but the very frame had cracked in two. Irreparable.
“My mom is going to kill me,” she said. “These were my grandmother’s glasses. Vintage.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
She took the cloth bag she carried, fingered a hole in it, and ripped out the bottom. She handed it to Miles.
“Here,” she said. “You should cover yourself.”
He stepped into the bag and covered himself with it. It was as though he were wearing a tiny, snug mini skirt that said WHOLE FOODS on it. He felt ridiculous.
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she said.
“It’s not too often that I feel ridiculous,” Miles said. “Usually, I’m threatening.”
“You don’t look too threatening,” she said.
He considered this. It was probably true if you didn’t know what he was. Outwardly, he looked like an 18-year-old kid. He was tall and skinny, and looked a bit like the weakling in the back of the comic books that he had liked so much as a boy.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked.
“Miles,” he said.
“Miles,” she said. “I’m Penny.”
“Penny,” Miles said. “I used to have a girlfriend named Penny. A long time ago. She wore glasses that looked a lot like yours.”
He hadn’t thought about her since 1956. The night he’d been turned was the night of the prom, and Penny was supposed to be his date. He’d never shown up.
“Can you climb?” Penny asked.
“What?”
“Are you a good climber?” Penny asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Exceptional.”
“Could you make sure my pig is secure?”
He stared at her, not really understanding the words that were coming out of her mouth. She pointed upward, toward the lamppost, and his eyes followed her finger. There, precariously attached to the post, was a ceramic pig with wings.
Miles scooted up the lamppost using his special skills; he investigated and secured the pig to the lamppost.
“It’s all good,” he said.
“Can you push it to the right a little bit? I want it to swing,” Penny said.
He did as she asked. When the task was done, he came back down.
“I saw you here last night,” Penny said. “Are you trolling the park for action?”
“What?” Miles said.
“You know, are you a hustler?” Penny said. “In the papers today it said that they found an old dead guy in the park who they think was killed by a hustler.”
“No. I’m not a hustler,” Miles said.
But standing under the light of a lamppost, under a swinging ceramic pig, wearing nothing but a cloth bag, he felt as though he wanted to tell Penny the truth. He had never in his life wanted so badly to tell someone the truth. So he did.
“I’m a vampire,” he said.
Penny laughed.
“I used to be a vampire,” she said. “In seventh grade.”
She laughed again.
“My mom was so mad because I would only eat everything tartare, or very rare.”
“What are you now?” Miles asked.
“A street artist,” she said. “It’s way cooler.”
Then they both had nothing to say to each other.
“Well,” Penny said. “I would invite you to the 24-hour diner for a coffee, but no shirt, no shoes, no service.”
“Right,” Miles said. “I should get going, anyway.”
“Rain check?” Penny asked.
“Sure,” Miles said.
“How about Thursday?” Penny asked.
“Okay,” Miles said. “I’ll meet you there. What time?”
“Midnight?”
“Okay,” Miles said and then turned to walk away from Penny. He would transform once he had walked far enough away from her. Maybe when he turned the corner at the end of the block.
He was excited that they had made a date. He hadn’t had a date in fifty years.
Then he remembered that boys back in his day would always walk a girl home.
He stopped in his tracks, and turned around and called after Penny who was already halfway down the block.
“Penny,” he called. And then he jumped in the air and landed next to her. “You shouldn’t walk home alone at this time of night. There are dangerous people out.”
He didn’t say that he was one of the dangerous people to be afraid of, but she must have suspected something from the way he had jumped. After being so chatty, they now walked in silence.
Penny led the way, sometimes glancing at him while Miles looked straight ahead and tried not to feel chafed by the cloth bag he was wearing. When they got to her house she spoke.
“I’m not going to invite you on to the property,” she said. “You have to stay on the sidewalk.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“And I don’t want to ever see you again,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
“If I do, I’ll stake you in the heart,” she said.
“That doesn’t really work,” he said. “But I get it.”
“If you come near me again, I’ll tell
people what you really are.”
He could smell the fear on her as she turned and ran up the pathway to her house. He could hear her struggling with her keys at the front door. Miles stood there for a minute, to be sure that she got into the house all right, and then he released himself from his body and flew home.
The next night, Miles went to feed at a town to the south of his lair. There was an alley in the skid-row part of town that had a lot of homeless people. They weren’t tasty, but they kept him satiated. Once he got to town, he slowed down his extraordinary speed so as not to attract attention. He strolled down Main Street and over to Maple, down Independence and over to Metcalfe where all the shops were. He usually scanned the streets, checking the area for other vampires. He didn’t get along with many of them, and he tried to steer clear. But that night, something caught his eye as he passed by the Goodwill. In the window, on display with the necklaces, pins and scarves, was a pair of cat-eye glasses, just like both Pennys had worn. He stopped and looked at them.
It made him wonder about this new Penny. It was Thursday, and Miles wondered if Penny would go to that diner and keep their date despite the fact that she had told him to go away. He wondered if that was where she usually hung out.
He ducked into the alley and fed.
He found that when he thought about Penny, he thought about his other life, before he was turned. The life where he went to sock hops and learned to drive his dad’s car on Saturday afternoons. The life where he was team captain of the debate club and ran the projector at the cinema three times a week. The life where he had long make-out sessions with the other girl named Penny, the one who loved rock-and-roll as much as he did.
It made him lonely for the boy he used to be. It made him nostalgic for being alive. Now he was seventy-eight years old and a vampire. This new Penny made him feel human for the first time since he was turned.
He fed at the park again three weeks later. When he was done, he went to the water fountain and cleaned the bits of skin out of his teeth. While there, he noticed the ceramic pig.
It was swinging.
He decided that before he went home, he would go see if Penny was hanging out at the 24-hour diner. He would just go look.
