by Peter Moore
Dad looked at Mom, then at Troy, eyebrows raised. Troy held out his hand toward Dad, palm up, like, go ahead. Dad turned to the girls. “Okay, here’s our plan. It’s really, really important—I can’t tell you how important it is—that you don’t tell anyone about this. Not friends, nobody. Danny’s life depends on you keeping this completely secret. Do you understand?”
They both nodded.
He explained the plan to them. We went over the fact that there would be deliveries, and there might be times when work would be done day and night. At a few points in the discussion, the girls looked at Troy to gauge his reaction, but he was totally with us, nodding, occasionally asking questions about how to work things out. Dad explained the cover story of finishing the basement.
And so we started the next day and stayed at it practically around the clock. Dad ate dinner with us a lot, since we didn’t have any time to waste while building.
We drilled deep into the cement floor and built a lattice of rebar, floor to ceiling. We put up a set of steel forms on both sides of the lattice, leaving an opening for a door. We drilled twelve two-inch holes around the doorway, putting eighteen-inch solid steel bars in each one—these would anchor the steel door frame. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past forty-eight hours.
I hold the last of the bars in place while Dad secures it. “You don’t think this is kind of overkill?” I ask.
“The door could be a way out if it isn’t completely solid.”
“You said it’s going to be a steel fire door, like the one in the boiler room.”
“This’ll be much sturdier than that. But if you can pull the door off the frame, then all this is for nothing.”
I laugh. “Like I’d be able to pull a steel door off its hinges.”
He doesn’t laugh. “You’d be surprised.”
Dad moves a portable cement mixer into the garage during the day when the neighbors are asleep.
Kevin Baker comes over for the cement part. “How you doing, kid?” he asks.
“Getting by,” I say. I always liked Kevin. Looking at him, most people would probably assume he was scary, maybe the leader of a homicidal biker gang. Hardly.
He used to be a cop in town, but about ten years ago there was some bogus brutality charge against him. Dad said it was a setup, which I believe. Still, he quit the force before the trial, and the charges were dropped. He went into business with Dad, grew a beard, a ponytail, and a bit of a gut, and he’s always seemed a lot happier than he ever was as a cop.
He squeezes the back of my neck. “Don’t you worry, champ. We’re gonna take good care of you.”
It takes almost seven hours for us to pour the high-performance concrete inside the forms. This is going to be a fortress.
The vicious glares Gunther throws my way in Gym are getting to me. The bell rings, and I just want to go upstairs to the locker room, change, and go to English.
I’m the first one up, and I should be able to get out of here before Gunther and his crew come in. I strip off my sweaty T-shirt as I walk toward the freshman lockers. I glance into the huge mirror as I walk.
I stop and look back at the mirror. There’s hair on my chest. Not a huge amount, but enough to see from a few yards away. I turn and look over my shoulder: hair on my back, too. And of course, now I see that there’s more hair on my forearms than vamps typically have. But it’s totally natural for wulves.
When Constance gave us the meaning of the word hirsute, I knew I’d remember it by thinking “hair suit.”
I don’t know how I didn’t notice this before. Is it possible that it just grew today?
Dozens of footsteps thunder on the metal stairs, and students flood into the locker room. Nobody pays any attention to me as they swarm past, shouting and laughing. I realize I’m just standing here like a statue. Not a good idea with my new hirsute condition. I pull on my damp T-shirt before anyone notices.
But I’m too late. One person is staring at me.
It’s Gunther. And he looks suspicious.
After working on the basement while I was in school, Dad’s ready for my help when I get home. I was planning to take a shower right away and shave my chest and arms, but I’ll have to do that later.
We take the metal forms down, leaving a twelve-inch-thick concrete wall crossing the basement. All these structures took three days and nights of hard work to put in place.
“Not bad for a rush job,” Dad says.
“Can we really get it all finished in ten days?”
“We’ll have to.” Dad hands me a short sledgehammer. “Let’s see how strong it is. Give it a solid hit.”
I give the wall a nice shot with the hammer. It doesn’t even make a mark.
“No,” he says. “I mean really smash it. I want to see if it chips or cracks.”
I wind up and take a good hard swing. The sledgehammer bounces off the wall and out of my grip. My hands buzz like beestings all the way to my elbows. And there’s not the tiniest dent in the wall.
“I guess that’ll hold,” he says.
“Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty solid.” I shake my hands out and smile at him, proud of our work. He’s not smiling.
I realize why. For a while there, I forgot the reason for all this.
It’s going to be my prison every month, maybe for the rest of my life.
At the end of the school day, Juliet gave me a naughty smile when she met me at my locker. That smile meant just over fifteen minutes of fun in the room over the stairwell. Except, as great as kissing her is, the closer we get, the guiltier I feel. “You okay?” she asks after pulling away a little.
“Better than okay,” I say. “Why?”
“You seem distracted.” She lifts my wrist and pushes the button on my watch that makes the time glow. “I have to go. My father’s probably already waiting for me out front.”
I walk with her to the entrance in B-wing, holding her hand. She stops before we turn the corner into the lobby. “Say good-bye here. My dad may be watching.”
“You could always tell him I’m just a friend.”
She smiles. “He’d know I was lying.”
I shrug. “Fair enough.” We lean in for a last kiss, then she hurries to the door. I go right up to the corner of the wall, trying to peek around it to watch her leave.
“You’re seriously going to make me vomit.”
Heart attack! I spin around fast enough to get whiplash. Claire is sitting on the floor of the hallway about ten yards away, her back against the wall and her legs out in front of her.
My hands are on my chest. My heart is pounding from the quart or two of adrenaline running through my body. “What the—”
“I’m not kidding,” she says. “That was completely nauseating. No offense.”
“Why are you sitting in the hallway spying on people?”
“I’m not spying on people. I’m spying on you. And I’m not even spying. You’re late. I’ve been waiting for you almost half an hour, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I have to sit through a creepy peep show, too.”
“Hey, I never told you to watch. And it’s not like we were going wild here in the hallway.”
“Yeah, well. It was more than I needed to see.” Her eyes are half closed and a little red around the edges.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Let’s just get out of here and I’ll tell you on the way home.” She drags herself to her feet and swings her backpack up, making sure it hits me in the stomach before settling it over her shoulder.
We’re on the narrow black asphalt path that goes by the tennis courts, and I feel really bad for Claire. “What exactly did she say?” I ask.
“Just what I told you. ‘We don’t have anything in common’ and ‘I don’t mean this in a bad way, but you’re really too young for me.’ What difference does that make?”
“Wait, she called and told you this, or she texted you?”
“I just said. She texted. She didn’t even have the decency to do
it in person.”
“Would that have been any better?”
“Yes. I don’t know, maybe not. But it would have been a little classier, more personal. I mean, seriously. Texting a breakup?”
“That’s pretty cold.” When we come to the end of the path, we go left on Judson. Instead of splitting off on Summit, tonight I’ll walk her all the way to her house and go home from there, unless she wants me to stay and keep her company.
She lets out a long breath. “Remember we were just talking about how amazing it is that we’re both in relationships?” She shakes her head. “I should’ve known better. Oh, well. One down, one to go.”
“Thanks for the optimism, but I haven’t given up yet.”
Claire lets out a short breath, like huh. “Oh, really? And so, what’d you decide to tell her about your little secret?”
“I’m still thinking about it.”
“You’re going to end up breaking up with her. You’ll have to.”
“Not if I can help it.”
She nods over and over, like she agrees. “Okay. But just a little advice from someone going through it this minute: if you’re going to do it, do it soon.”
I’m not sure if she’s saying that from a misery-loves-company feeling or if she’s so unhappy that she has a bleak attitude toward everything.
“Considering how you feel now, I’m surprised to hear you advising me to break up with her at all,” I say.
“If we had been together longer before she dumped me, it would have hurt even worse. I’m just saying: Don’t drag it out. If it has to die, kill it fast.”
She pulls up her hood and covers her head. I take it as a signal that she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. That’s fine, because I don’t, either.
The lobby of the apartment building is dark and grim. “This isn’t where we saw him before,” I say to Dad.
“This is where he said to come,” he says. If I think this place looks run-down, I can only imagine what Mom thinks. We trail behind Dad while he walks down the hallway, checking the numbers above the doors.
He finds the right one, then knocks. After about half a minute, I hear footsteps, then the sound of a peephole cover being raised. The locks turn and the door opens. “Come in,” Dr. Mellin says. He holds the door open, and after we walk through, he takes a look down the hallway, shuts the door, and turns the locks.
“I’m sorry for the location change,” he says. He leads us into an office that looks a lot like the one in his first place, but with even more books. There’s a musty smell, though, and light-brown water stains on the ceiling.
We take seats, and Dad introduces Mom to the doctor.
“So, do you have any questions before we do the procedure?” he asks.
“How long will it take?” Mom asks.
“If all goes well, I’d say about ninety minutes,” Dr. Mellin says.
Dad massages his temples. He’s getting worn out. “It won’t hurt much.” He turns to the doctor. “Right?”
“He’ll be asleep for the procedure. There will be some soreness for a few days. But his vampyric regeneration will speed healing and shorten the period of discomfort.”
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Mom says.
“It’s up to you,” the doctor says. “We don’t have to do it. But when he goes through the Change, the bones in his face could break in irregular ways. If I score marks into the bones, they should break cleanly. Right along the dotted line, as it were. They slide back into place after the Change. No deformities.”
“I think we should just do it,” I say. “We don’t want to risk ruining my good looks, do we?”
Mom smiles, but it’s tight. She’s been totally nervous since we got here. I can hear her heart beating fast, close to human rate, like seventy beats per minute.
“There’s only eight days left until the full moon, though,” Dr. Mellin says. “We can’t put it off, even for another day.”
“Let’s do it,” I tell him. I wouldn’t say I’m scared, exactly. Petrified might be a little more accurate. But I give Mom and Dad the best smile I can manage before following Dr. Mellin out of the office.
He takes me into what looks like a small operating room, except it isn’t white and sterile-looking like the ones on TV.
Some of the tiles are missing from the wall, and the rest of them are cracked. There are deep dripping sounds as water falls from the leaky faucet to the bottom of the metal sink.
“Um…why did we come here for this operation instead of the other office?” I ask, while I take off my shirt.
“I think my office is being watched. This is a colleague’s place.”
“Watched? You mean by the LPCB?”
“Maybe. I didn’t want to take any chances. This office will serve our purposes.” Dr. Mellin pats the table and I lie down.
“Nervous, eh?” he says.
“A little.”
He puts a sheet over my body, up to my neck. “We’re going to do everything we can to take care of you, Danny.”
“I know. Thanks.”
He pulls on one of those blue surgical gowns and moves behind me. I hear the snap of rubber gloves.
He opens up a wrapped tray of equipment, but I can’t see what’s on it. I hear metal clinking.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Just the instruments,” he says. “I’ll start your IV in a few minutes. Any new symptoms?”
“I still have major aches. Bones, joints, face, head.”
“Anything else? Are you eating and drinking normally?”
“I get a little sick after drinking SynHeme.”
“That isn’t surprising,” the doctor says. “I’ll check your blood today, but what I believe is happening is a sort of war between your vampyric Thirst and the wulven part of you, which reacts to SynHeme almost as if it’s a poison.”
“So what do I do?”
“I’ll prescribe some medications that will prevent most of the nausea. Anything else?”
“Just that my senses are really, really sharp.”
“And all of these things are happening all the time, independent of the moon phase?”
“Pretty much.”
He comes back within my view. Now he’s wearing a blue surgeon’s hat and mask. “That’s unusual. Typically, you’d be symptomatic only around the period of the full moon, right before and after. I assume your symptoms have something to do with the interruption of your genetic treatments. Little pinch now,” he says. He puts the IV needle in the back of my hand. “Okay?”
“No problem. So why would my treatments cause this stuff between full moons?”
“I couldn’t say. The truth is, genetic treatments alter your DNA in a fundamental way. When the treatment is stopped midway? Who knows?”
“Okay. So, um, not to change the subject, but do you use a chisel for this?”
“Not exactly a chisel, but the principle is the same. Here comes the anesthesia. See you soon.”
I start to float. I feel…
I open my eyes. I’m tired and my limbs feel like stone. “He’s not going to do the operation?” I ask.
“He already did it,” Dad says. “How do you feel?”
“Sleepy.”
I touch the skin behind my ears. There’s a tiny wet scab forming next to each one. There are more, concealed in my eyebrows and along my hairline. A few more in my mouth, between my cheeks and upper gums.
After a few minutes, Mom and Dad help me to my feet. I feel a little weak standing up, so I lean on them while we walk. We all go back into the doctor’s office. I sit in the chair.
The doctor comes in. “It went perfectly,” he says. “Here’s the post-op X-ray.” A front view of my skull comes up on the screen. Along my cheekbones, jaw, and forehead are a series of dotted lines that look like armies of ants marching across my skeletal face. “From my point of view, total success,” he says.
Total success, huh? I now have score marks to make the breaking of my skull eas
ier.
Painkillers and sleeping pills get me through the day and the whole next night. Now, waking up at 4 a.m., at least I’m rested.
So I’m just lazing in bed, the sheets damp with sweat. The joints in all my fingers are killing me. This must be what humans feel when they have arthritis. My teeth ache as if I’d been grinding. I check them with two fingers and feel a bumpy ridge, as hard as bone or teeth, under the gum line. It’s got to be close to the roots of my teeth.
In the bathroom I take a look in the mirror. My face is a tiny bit swollen, but not bad at all.
“Can someone take the dogs out for their last walk before it gets light outside?” Mom calls up the stairway.
I might as well do it. Getting some fresh night air will probably do me good.
It hurts to put on my sneakers. To add to all these body aches and joint pain, my fingernails and toenails are really sensitive.
Downstairs I get the metal leashes. In the short time we’ve had the dogs, they’ve quickly learned that the sound of the leashes coming off the hook means they’re going for a walk. I hear them come running from the living room.
They turn the corner into the kitchen, and once they see me, they try to stop running, skidding sideways on the tile floor. They come to a halt about five yards away, both looking at me. Poe tilts his head a little to the side, breaking eye contact. Lola does the same. Both of them lower their tails.
“Come on, guys. Walk time!” I clap my hands loudly, which usually gets them all excited.
They lower their bodies halfway to the floor, eyes averted, but still keeping me in their peripheral vision. Their ears go back flat against their heads, and I can hear their hearts beating fast. Their black noses are twitching as if they smell something.
“Let’s go. Time to walk.”
No barking, wagging excitement at all.
“Poe! Lola! Come!”
They turn and run.
I have no patience for this. I follow them into the living room, where they’ve backed themselves into a corner. When I get closer, I see they’re both trembling.
