by Trisha Telep
Oscar would just get the overhead bulb flipped on as I passed his room.
Twenty minutes later I ran a brush through my dripping hair on my way to Luci’s room. Next door, Oscar was groaning and mumbling because I’d thrown his pillow into the hall when he tried to use it to block the light from his face.
“Lucüüinda . . .” I sang softly, walking past her bed to the window. Luci rolled over and pulled up her blanket. I flipped the latch on her shutters and folded them back to reveal a beautiful starlit night beyond the glass. “Come on, Luce! Time to get up.”
As I twisted the switch on her lamp, my baby sister sat up reluctantly, blinking huge eyes at me, her irises so pale they were nearly colourless. I’d always been jealous of those eyes. Mine had more colour than was fashionable. But then, so did my hair. Luci and Oscar had nearly translucent curls, like our mother. But my hair was so dark and coarse it was practically yellow. It was my father’s hair and every time I saw it I remembered him. And wondered where in the hell he was.
He’d been gone for three years, and Luci barely remembered him.
“Come on hon, let’s get you dressed and fed before we have to fight Oscar for the bathroom mirror.”
I dressed her in two layers, because the note Mom had left on the fridge said it would probably dip below freezing near midnight. Again. I was so ready for spring, in spite of the shorter nights it would bring.
With Luci clothed, pigtailed and at least half awake, I aimed her at her usual chair in the kitchen and continued to the fridge, from which I pulled a package of sausage links and a carton of eggs. The sausages I stuck in the microwave, set to a precise 98.6 degrees. A degree cooler, and Luci wouldn’t eat them.
While the sausages warmed, I made breakfast smoothies. One egg and whole blood for Luci; two eggs and red cells only for me. I was watching my waistline.
Oscar joined us several minutes later, his curls straightened into the usual white points. He topped two slices of toast with congealed pig blood and popped open a can of platelets.
I turned the television on while we ate. The evening anchor for Headline News appeared on the screen, listing the top stories of the night. The first one, naturally, was the charred body found in the mall parking lot.
Sometime during the afternoon, she’d been positively identified as Phoebe Hayes, and with the confirmation of her identity had come the first break in the case. Two of Hayes’ classmates had seen her get into an unfamiliar, pale-blue sedan after school on Monday morning.
I nearly choked on my smoothie when the screen showed her school photograph. I’d known the Hayes girl was only nine – the morning anchor had said that much – but somehow, seeing her staring at me as I ate my breakfast made the reality much harder to accept. Or even comprehend.
“I don’t like sausage.” Luci poked at one untouched link with her fork.
“You liked them yesterday,” I said, my glass halfway to my mouth. And suddenly I was glad her chair faced away from the television.
“Today they’re gross,” Luci rolled her meat into a thin puddle of blood. “I don’t like them cold.”
I rolled my eyes and speared a link of my own. “They were warm when I got them out of the microwave.” My gaze wandered over her head to the screen, where the reporter was giving a brief bio of the dead girl.
Phoebe Hayes was a fourth-grader at an elementary school across town. Luci couldn’t possibly have known her, which meant I wouldn’t have to explain the ritualistic murder of small children to her in out mother’s absence. Thank goodness.
“You want some toast?” Oscar held his last slice out to her. “Yeah. But no pig’s blood. I like lamb. Smooth, not chunky.”
Oscar just stared at her for a moment. Then he shoved the last of his breakfast into his mouth and got up to fill her special order. Mom would have made her eat the sausage. But Mom wasn’t there, which was probably part of the problem.
I pulled into the student lot, braked to avoid some idiot on rolling shoes and parked in my assigned spot. The lot was illuminated by at least a dozen huge, automatic lights, beneath which students loitered in groups, bundled against the plummeting temperature.
“Look at them,” Oscar spat, staring out the windshield. “Like bugs drawn to light.”
I followed his gaze to the largest gathering, a loose knot of students clustered around Amelia Garrison and her new car. No one was obviously fawning, but everyone seemed to find a reason to touch the car or talk to Amelia.
“It’s disgusting,” Oscar continued, shoving a textbook into the backpack propped between his feet. “And the worst part is that it isn’t really their fault. We’re biologically programmed to be attracted to a certain physical ideal, to a combination of features that speaks to us on a cellular level, telling us a potential mate is healthy, and will probably produce healthy children.”
I blinked at my socially challenged brother. What kind of twelve-year-old talked about biological programming and healthy offspring? “You know, this is why people make fun of you. It’s not because you’re short; it’s because you’re weird.”
He scowled. “I’m serious. I mean, look at her.”
I looked.
Like the rest of us, Amelia had the usual pale hair, skin and eyes – all the result of millions of years of darkness gradually eliminating our need for pigmentation. But Amelia Garrison was the embodiment of that evolutionary ideal. There was less than a shade’s difference between her irises and the whites of her eyes, and her hair was practically clear. To emphasize that enviable trait, she brushed some kind of glittery gel through her mane every morning, so that she virtually glowed beneath any light that shone on her. Rumour had it she’d even had her fangs surgically augmented. I wasn’t prepared to swear by that bit of gossip, but I knew for a fact that her cuspids hadn’t been that long – or that white – the year before.
“You’re just jealous,” I shoved my car door open, and bitterly cold air curled around my ankles.
“I’m not jealous. I feel sorry for them. They don’t even realize they’re at the mercy of urges and instincts they can’t control. I’d rather take a morning stroll than run that particular rat race.”
No wonder Oscar wanted to dye his hair when everyone else was bleaching. Not to blend in, but to stand out. To separate himself from the world he both envied and despised.
“Just do me a favour and don’t say stuff like that where anyone can hear you.” I did not want to have to rescue him from another pounding.
“You think I’m stupid?” He lifted one pale brow, then shoved his own door open, tossing his bag over one shoulder. “Don’t wait for me after school. I’ve got science club.”
“You got a ride home?” I slammed my door and eyed him over the roof of the car.
“I can find one.”
I frowned for a moment, then nodded, knowing damn well that his ride would come from the faculty adviser, not from any fellow student. “OK.”
He took off towards the building and I grabbed my backpack from the rear floorboard, glancing at the seat to make sure Luci hadn’t forgotten her lunch when I dropped her off.
The back seat was empty except for my phone, which I grabbed and flipped open. The display said I’d missed a call from Titus ten minutes earlier. But my phone never rang. I started to call him back, then spotted him walking across the lot towards me.
I kicked the back door shut and shoved my keys into my pocket, dropping my bag higher on one shoulder as I leaned against the car.
“Evening beautiful.” Titus dropped his bag next to mine and bent down for a kiss.
I pressed myself against him, loving the contrast between the delicious warmth of his body and the cold metal at my back. His lips met mine and I opened for him, everything else forgotten with his taste in my mouth, his tongue teasing mine.
The points of his fangs brushed my lip, not hard enough to break the skin, but firm enough to threaten. A thrill shot up my spine, tingling all the way into my fingertips at the hint
of danger. At the possibility those barbs – those evolutionary remnants – represented.
Kissing Titus gave me biological urges Oscar wouldn’t understand for several more years. They made me want to do things (to let Titus do things) that I’d told Luci were unacceptable.
And in polite society, they were.
But we weren’t in polite society. We were in the grip of a desire untempered by age, unspoiled by experience. And from the perspective of youth and passion, with the tips of his fangs on my skin, the cravings of our ancestors didn’t seem quite so savage.
They seemed . . . yummy. The most pre-eminent delicacy and the ultimate penetration all rolled into one. But we’d resisted the urges, content with teasing each other so far, because the taboo was inescapable, with good reason: psychos like the Midday Mangler had rendered the consumption of fresh blood forever synonymous with brutality, debauchery and death.
Those bastards really ruined it for the rest of us.
Finally, Titus pulled away, and I let him reluctantly. “You know you’re the only reason I come to school,” he said, his voice gruff with need, as his hand wandered up from my waist.
I smiled and pushed his hand down. “After school.” I grabbed my bag and tugged him towards the building. “Hey, did you call me?” I asked, as he fell in next to me.
“Yeah, before bed this morning. And thanks for returning the call, by the way. It could have been an emergency.” He smiled to let me know he was joking and I shoved him with the hand still holding the phone.
“Whatever. I just got the missed call. What’d you need?”
“A summary of chapter fifteen in the history book.” A stray chunk of white hair fell into Titus’ face as he blinked at me innocently.
I rolled my eyes at him, well aware that I was a big sucker. “Worldwide economic ramifications of Global Conflict the Second. It’s mostly just the same stuff she talked about yesterday in class.”
“Yeah, and if I hadn’t slept through that, I might have some idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s what you get for playing video games all day instead of sleeping.”
“Sleep is overrated.” He pulled open the front door and held it for me as I passed under his arm, then glanced back at him, smiling.
“Well passing grades aren’t.”
The rest of the night was uneventful. Boring, even. So when the last bell rang, I was ready for a little excitement.
Titus didn’t have a car, so I drove to his house (his parents wouldn’t be home until shortly before dawn). My shirt hit the floor the minute the front door closed behind us. My pants lasted until we got to the hall, and my bra fell onto the dresser as I passed it on the way to Titus’ bed. I dropped my phone on the nightstand and turned to look at him.
He was still dressed, because I liked to help him out of his clothes. It was like unwrapping a present. A very yummy present. And I was never very careful with the wrapping.
His lips found mine as we fell onto the bed, my head sinking into a soft feather pillow that smelled like his shampoo. He held himself up with one hand, while the other roamed my body with frustrating self-control.
I wasn’t so patient.
My eager fingers urged him on. My body arched into his touch. My mouth sucked at his, my tongue flicking lightly over the points of his fangs, teasing us both. All it would take was a little bit of pressure. Just a scratch. Somehow I knew that a single drop of my blood in his mouth would be all the prelude either of us needed.
Titus pulled away from my mouth, staring down at me with heat smouldering behind his nearly white eyes. “Do you want to?”
He’s asked before – he was a guy, after all – but never like this. Of course, I’d never spent quite so much time molesting his cuspids before, either.
I thought about it. I mean, I really thought about it. Part of me did want to. Rumour had it that several girls in the senior class had tried it. Just a drop was supposedly enough to make run-of-the-mill sex extraordinary. If it could do that for pedestrian lovers, what could it do for us? Because ordinary had never been our problem.
But in the end, I couldn’t do it. The idea of bloodletting was incredibly hot. Erotic. But that was in part because it was taboo. And it was taboo for a reason.
I shook my head, and Titus smiled. He was OK with waiting, because he viewed every no as temporary, and I was never inclined to argue with that assumption. It had held so far.
He kissed me again, exploring my mouth with renewed eagerness, as if to assure me he was OK with my decision. My fingers trailed down his back as he positioned himself over me. His muscles flexed beneath my hands. His knees parted my thighs and my legs wrapped around him.
My eyes closed as he entered me. That part was new enough to still be special. And as we moved against each other, I knew I wanted it to always be like that. Always special. And always Titus.
He made a sound of contentment against my cheek as he withdrew, only to plunge forwards again, grinding against me with delicious earnestness, and . . .
My phone chirped, signalling a new voice message.
“Ignore it,” he begged, watching me as he withdrew again.
“I can’t.” I reached for the phone, and he groaned, collapsing against me to one side. “Sorry. Oscar’s ride probably fell through. “I selected the new message and held the phone to my ear, more than a little excited by the knowledge that Titus was still inside me while I performed so routine a task as checking my voicemail.
There was a new message from my mother. Only it sounded like she’d actually left it at least a couple of hours earlier.
“Keziah, I have an office meeting late this morning, so I need you to pick up Luci from school. Love you, sweetheart, and thanks!”
“Dammit!” I shoved Titus off me harder than I’d meant to, and winced at his hurt expression. “Sorry, but I have to go.”
The elementary school got out ten minutes earlier than the high school, and Titus and I had been at his house for at least fifteen minutes after the last bell, which meant Luci had been on her own for almost half an hour. She probably thought we’d all forgotten her.
“What’s wrong?” Titus asked, pulling me close.
“I gotta go get my sister, and I’m already late.”
The disappointment on his face was blatant, and more than a little flattering. I smiled to soften the blow. “I’m sorry.” I pulled my boots on in front of the door and grabbed my keys from the floor where I’d dropped them. “But hey, my mom won’t be home before dinner. Meet me at my house in twenty minutes, and I’ll get Oscar to watch Luci.”
He nodded reluctantly, and I kissed him on the way out of the door. I jogged down the driveway to my car, deftly avoiding several solid sheets of black ice. My clunker protested with a mechanical groan when I slammed the gearshift into reverse and stomped on the gas.
The crosswalk in front of the gym barely registered as I drove through it, and a girl in tight jeans and a puffy, quilted jacket leaped back onto the sidewalk just in time to avoid my front bumper. She hissed and bared her fangs at me as I roared past. I silently cursed my second-hand cell phone.
If Dad had stuck around, we could afford shit that actually works!
I wasn’t really worried about Luci getting lost. Her school was only four blocks from our house, and she’d been driven that route every school day for the last year and a half. But it was awfully cold, and she always forgot to zip her coat. And if she got sick, Mom would have to take time off work to watch her all night, which meant her cheque would be short next month.
However, as I drove, our financial worries slipped to the back of my mind, replaced by a much grimmer possibility. What if something went wrong? Six years old was too young to walk home alone, even in a kid’s own neighbourhood. Especially with some psycho out there draining children and exposing their bodies to fry at dawn.
Suddenly my errand seemed much more urgent, even as I told myself that she was fine. There was no way the school would l
et her walk home alone.
I ran two stop signs and one yellow light on my way to the elementary school and, when I finally got there, my heart seemed to sink into my stomach, anchoring my fear. The parking lot at the rear of the school was where kids usually waited for their parents. They stood on the sidewalk next to the building, watched over by a selection of teachers until their parents’ car made it to the front of the line wrapping around the school.
But when I got there, there was no queue of cars and no children lined up on the sidewalk. Instead, a single adult presided over at least a dozen kids fighting for a basketball lit from within by a flashing LED.
I didn’t bother inspecting the children. The lot was well lit and Luci was not among the players. Even if I hadn’t known what she was wearing – and I did since I had dressed her myself – I knew she hated basketball.
My keys jangled as I pulled them from the ignition and shoved them into my front pocket. I licked the car door shut and crossed my arms over my chest to hold my jacket closed as I ran across the narrow strip of crunchy grass and shoved open the rear entrance.
The halls were a maze of mostly closed doors and walls covered in student artwork. An antiseptic smell permeated the air as the custodians cleaned in the children’s absence, and it took every bit of self-control I had left to keep from running full-out to the front of the school.
I settled for a fast walk instead, my shoes squeaking on the tile, my heart pounding at least three beat per step. Logically, I knew Luci was most likely perfectly safe. Probably sitting in a chair in the principals office, snacking on whatever they had handy, filling in pages in a colouring book. But every moment that passed without Luci throwing herself into my arms and pouting over how late I was, deepened the sense of panic rapidly tightening my chest.
Something was wrong. I was sure of it.
I rounded the last corner and the office came into sight, its two windows covered by white mini-blinds, blocking the view from within. I jogged the last eight feet and pulled the office door open much harder than I’d intended to.
