The door next to it led to the bedroom.
My grandfather was lying on the bed.
CHAPTER 43
I blinked once, my eyes adjusted again, and I realized my vision, along with a healthy dose of memory, was playing tricks on me.
The person in the bed wasn’t my grandfather, wasn’t even a man. It was a small-boned woman, her hair a soft white and baby-flimsy.
She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, clearly laboring to bring air into her age-decimated body.
No, it wasn’t my grandfather. It was every sad memory I had of him.
Emma closed the door behind us and walked to the woman on the bed. She bent over the woman, as if to kiss her forehead.
My vampire hearing kicked in, and although anyone standing an inch away from Emma’s lips wouldn’t have been able to hear what Emma was saying, it came through my ear canal as clearly as though Emma were talking directly to me.
“Hello, lovely lady. I can tell you’re not feeling well. I can fix that. I can take away your pain and you can be done. You can go on to the next world. If you want to. Do you want to?”
The woman on the bed, whose eyes had been unfocused, looked up at Emma and nodded, almost imperceptibly. The word yes wheezed from her lips.
“All right,” said Emma. She bent to the old woman’s neck and lips met skin.
I was afraid to look, and afraid to look away. I knew soon, this was what I would be doing. What I must do in order to survive.
It was beautiful.
The woman in the bed’s eyes unfocused, then focused again, then closed, and she smiled and sighed. A few seconds passed. A minute. The woman’s lips never uncurled.
When Emma stood, she wiped her lips with her fingers.
A tear slid down my cheek. I was finally beginning to see what Wash meant when he said he was helping people to die, and overwhelmed me.
Emma turned, and I saw a wetness on her cheek that mirrored mine.
I didn’t want the moment to end but I knew we needed to leave. I pointed towards the door and Emma nodded.
CHAPTER 44
We drove back to our hotel in silence. We stayed that way through the night, Emma playing with her phone and I first staring at the wall and thinking, and then deciding I needed to write down my thoughts.
I opened up my phone, found a notepad app, and began typing.
I wrote “I am a vampire” on my screen, and then, I just kept adding to it, trying to get that one sentence to cohere with everything else that had happened to me since my birthday.
Writing on a smart phone sounds like a fun idea but it quickly became apparent why text messages were limited to 140 characters. After that, your fingers start to shut down.
But I took breaks to think and by the time I’d start writing again my hands would un-cramp I kept typing away.
I wrote until a little bit after dawn I realized I could stay up all day typing and pondering if I wanted to but I got used to the little routine I created for myself.
I woke up at dusk again and looked at Emma. “Plans?”
Emma didn’t even glance up from her phone. “I’ll let you know,” she said, tapping and sliding her fingers.
I started writing again, filling in gaps and rewording what happened when we went hunting for dinner for Emma. And once that was done, I kept on writing. Not really creating a narrative, but rather jotting down notes about the previous months and how I came to be where I was.
In the middle of it all, I realized I’d completely forgotten about my family and friends.
Well, not forgotten, exactly. The urgency I felt ever-so-briefly when I was told we were leaving my home state, and everyone I knew and loved hadn’t come back.
It wasn’t that I felt guilty about it, it was that I felt like I should feel guilty.
I closed down my notepad app and brought up my hometown newspaper. A quick search showed a few more homeless were dead and doctors were looking into it, trying to make sure it wasn’t a virus of some kind.
There was no mention of me .
I didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or hurt or happy or what. I went to the library on Friday night, and was turned into a vampire.
And now it was Tuesday night. I felt like there should have been some kind of story by now.
Except for one minor detail. I was eighteen.
As far as the law was concerned, I was old enough to move out on my own and never return. If my parents called my old phone and couldn’t get through to me, if Becca texted me and I never texted back, how long would it take before the police stopped telling my loved ones they were sure I’d call soon? How long after the cops started taking my disappearance seriously would the paper be willing to run a story about a legal adult deciding to jet out of their recently-divorced parents’ house?
For that matter, since I was eighteen, I didn’t have to go to school if I didn’t want to. I was free to decide I’d rather flunk out or get my GED, and I wasn’t even sure if someone needed to call in to say I wasn’t there. For all I knew, the secretary went, eh, she’s eighteen and didn’t make any phone calls.
Or, maybe the school called my cell, which had been turned into so much scrap plastic.
In a week? Two weeks? My name might appear in the paper. Or maybe it never would.
I turned my phone off, the TV on, and idly flipped from channel to channel. I bumped into a teen vampire series I’d heard about and kept it on out of semi-morbid curiosity.
“Love this show,” said Emma, though she didn’t look up from her phone.
“Want me to turn it up?”
“Seen it. They’re in reruns. Some kind of marathon this week. Plus I already have all the episodes on my phone. And the soundtrack. The soundtrack is great.”
My mind was blown. Apparently you needed to discuss television that inaccurately portrayed our lifestyle while featuring hot young twenty-somethings pretending to be in their teens to get Emma to talk.
I considered speaking my observation aloud, then thought better of it and proceeded to watch.
I missed a minute or two of the episode and thought about asking Emma to tell me who was who and what was going on but before I knew it, the episode ended, and a second one came on, and thanks to a generous “Previously On,” I knew, more or less, what was up.
When the second episode ended, I flipped off the TV and tried to figure out what to do next.
“Can we go to a library? Or a bookstore?”
Emma wiggled her phone. “You have one. You’ve got two or three e-book apps loaded up already.”
I picked up my phone and poked around. I started clicking through various titles. “How much can I spend?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I grew up in a one-income household with a carefully regulated allowance. Humor me.”
“You have money. Let’s leave it at that.”
“You mean, Sarah Jane Smith is well off?”
“I mean Sarah Jane Smith is a multimillionaire who lives off her very generous interest. Her money was a birthday gift from her exceptionally generous aunt Emma.” Emma looked over at me. “You’re welcome. Speaking of birthdays, in case a vampire ever asks you for yours, they want to know the date you became a vampire, not the day you came out of your mother’s womb.”
“Why would they want to know that?”
Emma looked back at her phone. “Because vampires like to pretend the older you are, the more authority you have.”
“So, then, how old are you, Aunt Emma?”
Emma smiled. “Older than you.”
And then we went back to being silent.
I downloaded a novel I’d been coveting, debated getting the entire series, figured it would be a waste of money if I didn’t like the first one, and then bought all the books anyway. Being rich was apparently one of my vampire powers, why not use it?
As it turned out, it was a solid series and I was well into the second book by the time the sun came up. At which point, I wen
t to sleep.
CHAPTER 45
Emma and I sat in the room through two more nights and my routine didn’t alter much. I’d wake up, shower, brush my teeth and change my clothes. I didn’t really need to do any of this as my super vampire powers kept me from sweating and getting morning (evening?) breath but I did it anyway. I like routine, I guess.
I read until my show came on. I watched the show, lamenting the fact that I had to sit through commercials I couldn’t fast-forward, until I remembered I could read my book if I chose and since I was going to live forever, losing ten minutes to commercials wasn’t that big a deal.
After both episodes rolled by, I went back to a combination of reading and playing around on the Internet, trying to figure out what was going on in my hometown. As far as my life was concerned, not much. One more homeless person died, and there was no mention of my mysterious disappearance.
Friday night I woke up feeling a little thirsty, which surprised me. I tried to think of the last time I’d felt hungry or thirsty or anything even remotely like that, and realized it had been last week just before John Smith decided to make me his dinner.
I went into the bathroom, grabbed one of the plastic cups, and got a drink from the tap.
Seconds later, I had to pee.
Moments after my bladder was empty, I saw Emma standing in the doorway.
“Privacy, please?” I asked, although I was already to the hand-washing portion of my bathroom experience.
“You’re thirsty, aren’t you?” Something on Emma’s face told me this was a not-good thing.
I nodded at her. “And?” Then it hit me. “I need to feed?”
Emma nodded. “This is a problem.”
“What? Why?” I know. I’m an elegant speaker.
“We don’t have anywhere for you to feed, that’s why.”
I had left the water running and turned off the tap. There must have been a slight clog in the drain because there was a pool of water still in the sink. I looked at it, and my vampire brain didn’t even view it as refreshment anymore. It was like looking at a gallon of gasoline. There was no urge to drink it. “So, let’s go back to the assisted living place,” I said.
Emma shook her head. “They only have one employee lazy enough to sneak by and she doesn’t work Friday nights.”
“Does she work tomorrow?”
“She does.”
“Then we’ll wait.”
“Not a good idea.”
“But…you waited. You got your eye removed on Friday, and then you sat around with battle damage while you looked for a place to eat. I’m not even,” I hunted for a word. “Broken.”
Emma held up seven fingers. “You have once again forgotten you’re seven days old. You are, quite literally, a baby.”
“So get me, like, blood from a blood bank or something.”
“You make it sound like it’s easy.”
I shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“That kind of thing doesn’t really work all that well, anyway. You can use blood from a bag but it’s like drinking soda instead of milk. It gives you the wrong kind of calories.”
“Why?”
“No idea. Vampire science is rough since no one wants anything about our existence written down. Any time someone starts researching us, they usually have to start from square one.”
“You guys should organize.”
“We should organize.”
“Right.”
Emma started tapping on her phone again. Finally, she shook her head.
“What?” I said.
“Here’s the problem. I know of exactly one place to eat in a city filled with half a million people and the buffet is closed until tomorrow at 10:00 PM.”
“There has to be another place,” I said. I could feel a worm of panic crawl through me, vanish, crawl through me, and vanish again. My lack of emotion felt like a boon.
“I’ve spent the last six days looking for one. I told you, I don’t really have any connections around here. It might be a big city but if two teenage girls start going from place to place, trying to get in, and getting turned away, someone is going to call the cops sooner or later. Prison is not a good place for us.”
I stared at the mirror, trying to think up some kind of solution.
“Our IDs say we’re legal. We could always hit the bars and try to locate someone who’s clearly on their way out.”
“Too many witnesses, and that’s assuming we find someone. We could run through five bars while you just keep getting more and more thirsty. Not a good idea when it’s your first time.”
“But you—”
“Yes, I know, I was fine for a few days. But I’ve had a long time to get used to the hunger pangs.”
“How long?”
Emma didn’t take the bait. “You can control them once you know what to expect. As I keep reminding you, however, you’re a baby. You don’t put a baby on a twenty-four hour fast. Not unless you have to.” Emma’s phone buzzed and she looked at the screen again.
“Apparently, I have to,” said Emma.
CHAPTER 46
Have you ever been thirsty? I mean, really, really thirsty?
Like, you go outside to mow the lawn, it’s three in the afternoon in July, and you’re just about done. Sweat is dripping off you and you’re licking your upper lip just to get moisture into your system.
You’re not even thinking about it. You’re just doing it.
Have you ever been hungry? Not just, oh, it’s one in the afternoon. I usually eat at noon and need a sandwich like, right now, but really hungry.
Becca and I did a poverty awareness project with our school once where we took pledges, locked ourselves into a gymnasium and promised to drink only water for twenty-four hours, from 6:00 PM to 6:00 PM. I ate at 5:00 PM. By 10:00 PM I was already needing a snack, but had some water, spread out my sleeping bag, and got some rest.
I woke up at 6:00 AM ready and raring for breakfast. Only I had twelve hours to go. By eight, I was ravenous. By ten my stomach felt like it was chewing on itself. By noon I had a headache so massive all I could do was lie down. When I tried to drink water, it made me nauseous.
I took sips of H20 and wanted to spit them out because my stomach wanted food. Only it was also cramping up at the same time.
By 5:00 PM I wasn’t hungry anymore, just numb.
Then six o’clock came. I felt like I would be willing to kill and eat a family pet just to get something in my system.
The pizza place that was going to help us all break our fast was an hour late with our order.
Most of us were pretty low-stress kids but by that time, we were well into a zone of pure adrenalized rage. At the school. At the pizza place. At each other. Becca and I hadn’t argued since the third grade, got into it hot and heavy over some perceived slight.
Even when the pizza arrived, the problem wasn’t solved. We all felt sick to our stomachs. It took most of us an hour to eat one or two slices of pizza. We still felt hungry, and nauseous to boot.
The next morning when I got up, my ailments were still there. Pained tummy, pounding head. I needed to eat but didn’t feel like it.
I’d like to say that experience changed me and made me a better person. For a while it did. Then being a teenager took over and it didn’t anymore.
Typical.
But at the very least, when I talked to people about hunger, about real hunger, I could say I understood it to some degree.
That degree, however, was nothing compared to what I went through during my first twenty-four hours as a hungry vampire.
Emma was right. I was a baby. Babies don’t know a bottle is coming in sixty seconds. They’re hungry right now. Right. Now. Anything less than milk is not a solution to the problem.
I needed food.
I needed food so badly.
And I couldn’t get it.
I demanded Emma give me some of her blood. She tried to explain that things didn’t work that way, then gave me a drop to
shut me up.
It felt like I was eating sand.
Emma tried to explain but it was a little tough to concentrate at the time. Something about how human blood becomes vampire blood after a vampire eats, and how vampires need human blood, not vampire blood. It’s kind of like how you can’t mix different blood types. Mostly it was all blah-blah-blah because I was so totally hungry.
The other thing Emma tried to explain, but I didn’t really get, was why everything hurt so much. It wasn’t a headache or a light body throb; it was full-on pain from the top of my head to the last skin cell on my toes.
She tried to explain it in human terms first. If a human was starving, the first thing that would happen would be the body looking for stored fat, and it would eat that up. Next, it would start consuming muscle.
A vampire’s body, on the other hand, revolves around near-constant healing and it’s remarkably efficient. When you’re converted from human to vampire, your body generally uses four of your ten pints of blood to turn you from human to vampire.
Emma thought we’d have some time because she’d guessed I’d lost about three pints when I was attacked, leaving me with about three pints to grow on.
But no. I’d probably lost about four, leaving me with two pints. Two pints will carry a vampire for about a week.
I know. Ain’t science interesting?
Maybe to you.
Me? I was starving.
So I sat there and tried to stay calm, all the while, my body screamed at me to eat, needed to eat, needed to eat!
Finally, it was Saturday night, 9:00 PM.
I took an agonizing walk to our car, followed by sixty horrible minutes as my body got ready to feed, upping the aching in my every cell.
We got to the assisted living center and the smoker with the lackadaisical attitude all but waved us in. Why not? All that happened last time we came in after visiting hours was some old lady dying in her sleep. No big.
Once again, we went up the stairs, I followed Emma’s lead as she walked by each door. And I do mean each and every door. We walked by all of them twice before Emma turned to me and said, “I need you to listen. Really listen.”
Blood Calling (The Blood Calling Series, Book 1) Page 12
