“What are you drinking?” I asked him, like I was going to order the same thing.
He told me, but his eyes told me more. Like the fact that he didn’t feel worthy enough for me to be talking to him. This would be fast.
I ordered the same drink he had, even though I would probably only take a few sips, and then I started to pour it on thick. Touch, looks, tone of voice. I had this guy ready to leave with me in five minutes.
Matt was sitting by himself at a table near the door. When I walked out with my new friend, I let Matt know he should follow behind us.
As we walked outside, I maintained conversation as I searched for a good place for Matt to feed.
Maybe you have this idea that it would be easiest for me to simply lure my victims back to my own place. This is a bad idea for several reasons.
First and foremost, when you’re finished, you’ve got a dead body on your hands. I want to leave those bodies far from my home, and I don’t want to have to carry them or try to move them. I want to leave them right where I finished with them. That way it looks like they overdosed or something like that, especially in an area known for nightlife.
Although, there’s one thing I’ve never understood. The neck bites seal up and heal after a vampire has fed, but the entire body is drained of blood. I’ve never once heard about a body being found with no blood in it, and I have never been able to solve this mystery. None of the other vampires I have known over the years have any idea either.
I mean, what must someone think when a person dies and has no blood? Are they so freaked out that they don’t say anything? Are there entire rooms full of files in the police department of every city of every country for bodies found with no blood in them? This had always troubled me, but it didn’t seem to worry any other vampires. So I let it go.
Anyway, I kept my eyes peeled for a nice nook or cranny to bring my new friend to, and finally I found the alley where I had transformed Matt. There was something poetic about bringing him here to feed for the first time, and something sad too. It was the perfect spot.
Before my victim understood what was happening, I had pulled him into the alley, right near the trash cans and cardboard boxes that Matt and I had kept company the night before. I bit him and then led Matt, who had caught up to us, toward the holes in the man’s neck
Like an infant seeking a nipple, Matt knew exactly what to do as he got close to the man’s neck. He latched on—I could see Matt’s fangs before he bit down—and began to feed. His worry about feeding on a man was completely gone.
Matt grabbed the man’s shoulders as he latched on to his neck, and it looked a little awkward. Like middle school kids making out, but I knew Matt would pick up the finesse of hunting and feeding soon enough. After this week, he would be as expert as the rest of us.
The man’s head drooped backward, his eyes closed, and I knew the warm blanket of death was descending on him. A minute later, Matt dropped him to the ground, wiped the blood from his mouth and exhaled loudly.
The man lay crumpled by the cardboard boxes, and I grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled before he could stare too long at his first victim. It was easiest that way. The first was always the hardest.
Matt looked a little stunned as I pulled him back out onto the street and looped my arm through his, like we were a couple out for the evening. I checked him over once, to make sure he didn’t have blood on him anywhere, and when I was satisfied turned my head forward and walked us back to my apartment.
3
“I feel really, really good,” Matt said.
He was sort of bouncing around my living room as I read an article on my tablet. The first time you ingest blood into your body is unforgettable, and it’s never quite as good as the first time.
I looked up periodically to watch Matt inhabit his new body, so to speak. He would pace, look down at himself, flex his arm muscles, and put his hands through his hair. He had energy, and like a puppy, needed to expend it.
I hadn’t wanted to take him out right away because his blood needs were so high, but he was starting to drive me a little crazy, and anyway, I wanted to test a theory I had.
“You want to go out?” I asked.
“Hunting again?”
“No. For a little exercise.”
Matt looked perplexed but interested.
“Well, okay. Can I do stuff? Like cool stuff. Super speed? Jumping off really high things?”
He looked like he was continuing to think of all the cool things he possibly could do, but apparently couldn’t come up with anything else.
“Let’s find out,” I said and smiled.
We left my apartment and got in my car, which was parked in a nearby garage. I drove, and I knew exactly where I wanted to take him.
It took us about a half an hour to get there, and at this time of night no one was around.
I parked and the gravel under my feet crunched as I exited the vehicle. Matt got out too. It was quiet except for the insects.
There was a field in front of us, and then the trees started. The trail I wanted was straight ahead of us.
“I can see so clearly,” Matt said, and I laughed as I realized I hadn’t told him about that.
“You’re a creature of the night, now, so the dark is where you see most clearly.”
After all these centuries, I had forgotten how beautiful it really was. Night vision.
Not like through those glasses, where everything is green. Night vision for vampires was like watching everything in the highest definition you could imagine, and the darkness became—I don’t know how else to say this, but bright. It was as if the darkness glowed.
I watched Matt as he looked all around. Down at the grass, up at the sky, at the trees ahead of us, and for a moment I felt brand new again myself.
We made very little sound walking across the field, and as we entered the trees, Matt made a sound of surprise. Though it was almost pitch black, to us, every little detail of the dark forest was illuminated. I smiled as I realized Matt had seen nothing yet.
We didn’t speak to each other as we walked along the trail, not in words and not in thought. We walked together, but separate, each one of us occupying our own world. I had never come here with anybody. I was always alone, and despite Matt’s presence, a part of me wanted to preserve that.
The trees got fewer and farther between as we got close to the clearing, the sound of water rushing through our ears.
The air was cool for a warm summer night and the sky was incredibly clear. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of stars dotted our little piece of the sky.
“Matt. Do you see that tree, over there, with the branch that’s hanging funny?” I said as I pointed. “Run to it.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t understand my request but was curious anyway. He turned his body toward the tree and in a flash he was gone, and even to my sight, seemed to reappear a second later by the tree. He had the gift of speed.
He ran back to me, and a second later was by my side again.
“What happened?” he asked, thrilled and a little frightened at the same time.
“This is your gift. Speed.”
Matt took off. He zipped around the clearing, appearing here and there. Dotting the clearing like the stars dotted the sky, and finally came to stand with me again.
“Whoa! Can everyone do that?”
“Every vampire? No? That’s your particular gift. Other vampires with the gift of speed can do that, but not all of us. I can’t, for instance.”
“So you’re not fast?”
“I’m faster than any human, of course, but nowhere near as fast as you.”
I took off at a run to the same tree I had sent him to first, so he could see the difference, and then ran back.
“So wait? There are things that all vampires can do and there are things only some vampires can do?”
“Yes, exactly,” I said and thought for a minute about how to explain all of this. “Every vampire is faster and stronger tha
n any human. Every vampire has extra-sensory abilities—like the ability to communicate without words—more than any human. We can attract things to us more than any human can. We can know things. And of course, we can survive almost anything. In almost every way, we are more and better than any human being.
But each vampire is also given a gift that is better than other vampires, although some vampires have the same gift. Yours is speed.”
I knew exactly what he would ask me next.
“What’s yours?”
I smiled, wishing I didn’t have to tell him, but at the same time knowing I needed to.
“Seduction.”
He looked taken aback, but then he appeared to gain his composure.
“Is that why you hunt so well?”
I nodded.
“But that’s not a physical gift. It’s more...”
“Psychological,” I said, not waiting for him to come up with the word.
“Yeah. I guess when you said I had speed, I thought all gifts would be similar to that.”
“That’s reasonable. Especially if you’ve seen all the movies and read all the books,” I said, smiling again. “But there are a variety of gifts. They can be physical, psychological, intellectual. And some are...”
“What?”
“Well, I don’t know how to describe this exactly. Spiritual comes to mind, but that might not quite be right.”
Matt looked back at me and squinted his eyes a little as he took in this new information.
“The point is, there are all kinds of gifts.”
“Got it,” Matt said. He looked like he wanted to ask more, but for some reason didn’t.
The water from the river caught my attention at that moment, and I walked over to the drop-off and looked over.
It was thirty feet or so down to the bottom. Not real high. But Matt would enjoy this anyway.
“Hey,” I called back, as Matt was still standing where I left him. “Want to do something fun?”
“You mean more fun than running around this clearing?” Matt said as he came to stand beside me.
“For you, maybe not more fun, but still pretty fun.”
“Sure,” he said and grinned.
“Watch me.”
Matt barely had time to turn his full attention on me before I leapt off the ledge and landed thirty feet below on my feet in a squat position, one hand touching the ground for stability.
“Your turn,” I yelled up to him.
“Are you sure I can do this?” he yelled back.
“Yes!”
Before I knew it, Matt was next to me, in his own squat position, his hand touching the ground.
“Cool!” he said. “Can we jump back up?”
“If we had the gift of height we could. So no we can’t. But we can use this tree.”
I jumped to the closest branch, about ten feet away, climbed a little after that, then jumped again to the top of the ledge, standing right back where I had started.
Matt imitated my moves and in several seconds was standing right beside me.
“I think I’m starting to get the hang of this,” he said, smiling like a child who had just done something he knew was approved of.
“You’re right. But it’s time to go back. Your energy is going to drop again soon, and we can’t hunt until tomorrow night.”
Matt didn’t protest and I wondered if he was already beginning to feel the energy drop.
We walked to the car, back along the trail, and spent several minutes in silence. I was actually beginning to worry that I had overexerted Matt when he spoke up.
“How many of us are there?”
“You know what,” I answered, “let’s ask Lola.”
4
As we walked through the door to my apartment, I knew Lola would be there waiting for us. I had called her on the way home. Not literally, of course.
“In this city? Or in the entire world?” she asked, as if Matt had just posed his question to her, even though he had asked me over thirty minutes ago.
“Uh,” Matt said, as he looked, once again, taken aback. “Both, I guess.”
Lola unfocused her eyes as I’d seen her do many times, and took a minute, counting.
“Twenty-seven in the city.”
“That’s a—,” Matt said, but Lola cut him off with a wave of her hand.
“One thousand three hundred in the entire world. Now that’s not accurate to the number, you understand. The larger the area the less accurate I am.”
“That’s not very many,” Matt said, and he almost looked disappointed. Then curiosity shot through his face. “How did you do that?”
“I have the gift of location.”
“And that means you can locate where other vampires are?”
“Exactly. But like I said, it depends on how large an area I’m trying to work with. In this city, I know to the number. I can feel it almost immediately if a vampire were to leave or enter—or be created—in this area. But trying to locate throughout this country, for instance, my sense is fuzzier.
“Is that how you knew...about me?”
“Yes,” Lola smiled. “Other vampires in the area might have picked up on new—I guess you could say, vampire energy, in the area, but my sense is much sharper. I knew the minute you were created.”
“Hmmm,” Matt said, as he considered this new information. “So, what do you use it for?”
“Parlor tricks, mostly,” Lola said, as she rolled her eyes.
I knew she had never been particularly pleased with her gift. And I had to admit, it seemed to have very few practical uses. But, then again, every gift had a purpose.
“I would have thought that after three centuries, its purpose would have become clear to me,” she said as she cast her gaze down to the floor, unable to hide her disappointment.
She had never been good at hiding her true emotions, unlike me. With my gift of seduction, I had always been able to pick and choose which emotions to project, whether or not they were true.
About a hundred years ago, I had started trying to remember what I had been like as a human, emotionally, and I couldn’t quite remember.
For a seducer, your emotions were your weapons, and I had learned to wield them like an expert warrior. I would have preferred them to a sword any day.
The three of us were silent for a moment, me with my thoughts, Lola with her emotions and Matt with his newfound life. Finally, I felt the need to break this party up.
“Matt, you should rest.”
He looked up at me like I was his mother, telling him it was bedtime.
“Why?”
“You’ll conserve more energy that way. You’re going to get hungry again, soon.”
Lola was still staring at the floor, her mood having taken a dive.
“Yeah, I’m gonna go,” she said, and then she said to Matt with a smile but no real mirth, “if you ever need to count vampires, I’m here for you.”
I had always wanted to tell her that her bitterness was dangerous, but never had. It never felt like the right time, and now was no different.
She walked out the door without any good-byes, and once again I worried about her.
“You can take my bed,” I said to Matt. “I’m not going to sleep today.”
“Not at all?”
“Nope. I don’t feel like it. And I don’t need it.”
I grabbed my tablet and lay down on the couch, preparing to read. Matt had not moved. He looked like he wanted to say something, but eventually he just turned and walked to my bedroom. I knew he would wake up very hungry.
“Hey,” I called back as he went through the door to my room. “If you need anything, just ask.”
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t respond. It was just me alone with my novel.
I read voraciously. It passed the time and always took me someplace new. When you barely need to sleep and only need to eat once every two weeks, you have a lot of time on your hands. It was what I had the most of, and what I wa
nted the least.
I glanced back toward my bedroom doorway and felt like I had a child to care for. I just needed to get him through this week. That much I owed him. After that, he could be on his own. And I could go back to being on my own, which was how I liked it.
I never saw any of my family again after becoming a vampire. Not because I didn’t want to, but because they were all dead.
I had been the only one spared, if you could call it that, and had never seen my creator again.
He was a man, new to our village. A doctor, which made him important immediately, and not from this country, which made him interesting immediately.
He had wanted some of our animals, I remember, and my father had refused him. Not out of spite or malice, but because they were our livelihood, as they were for many in those days. It would almost have been like giving up your children.
I never knew why the doctor wanted them or what happened afterward, until the night he visited our farm and drained my family dry. Both of my parents, my three brothers. But, me, he left to go through the transformation.
When I came to and realized what had happened, I ran. And I kept running, until I got so hungry I caught a rabbit and bit into it while it still squirmed in my hands. That’s when I realized I didn’t want its flesh, but its blood.
Trial and error, as a new vampire, is not fun.
After days of drinking animal blood, and ravenous from what you could essentially call vampire malnutrition, I stumbled upon a farm and the first person I saw was a young man working the land.
He was not the head of household. He was too young, but he was of age. In fact, I was surprised he wasn’t already married. I had the distinct feeling that this was his father’s house; that he lived at home still.
I walked up to him and tried to evoke his pity, as I was dirty and ragged. I told him I wanted food, but I knew, in that instant and for the first time, that what I wanted was his blood.
He walked off toward his house to find any scraps that could be given to me, and in my head a plan formed that seemed to come from nowhere.
There was a barn close to where I stood at the edge of his family farm’s fence. I would lure him in there.
Bored To Death Page 4
