Oh Yeah, That Thing

“Um, can you do it? Follow Moshe? I need to check on something. Dennis nodded and began speedwalking to keep from losing the vampire, who was about to turn a corner. “I’ll try to catch up. Don’t let him talk to you,” I called after him.

I darted in the other direction. Each time I neared a light, the image would flicker out and reappear under the next one, but it seemed to be growing more and more substantial, more fully there, with each reemergence. By the time I got to the end of the main corridor, it was definitely resembling a dark-complexioned woman. I turned in each direction to see where she would lead me next, and I found myself navigating through the passages I’d been one of the few to explore in recent months, until I arrived at Trudy’s last interim abode, the one she’d taken up residence in after her first encounter with Moshe and before they’d become friendly. The one where the coral charm was supposed to be stored over winter vacation.

I looked around, but my ghost was nowhere to be seen. Using a shelf as a ladder, I reached my arm up into the ceiling cubby and searched by touch. At first, I only felt the rough plywood panels stretched between rafters, coated with a light layer of dust and a sprinkling of mouse droppings. I climbed up one more shelf, and immediately felt my fingertips bump against something more solid. I grasped it, jumped to the floor, and felt some relief to see that it was, indeed, the coral charm.

Then I realized that relief was not the appropriate emotion. Not right at all. Where the hell was Patrick?

“Thank you!” I said out loud, hoping there was someone listening who in fact deserved my thanks. “Wherever—whoever—you are, this is what you wanted me to find, right?”

“You said you’d take care of it.” The voice was loud, clear, and coming from just behind my shoulder. It nearly made me jump out of my skin. I spun around to face a pair of eyes that had once read mine regularly with the intensity of a seer, now as corporeal as they had been when last I accepted their recognition of responsibility. I was momentarily reminded of Medusa. But this was not Medusa.

“Bella,” I whispered.

That Thing

Trudy’s room was unoccupied when we arrived, leaving us to discuss whether to stay and see if the others returned or to travel to Applewood in case they were looking for clues or—it was Friday, after all—to head to the Crypt. Within a few minutes, though, we did that thing where one person says, “Do you hear that?” and the conversation stops, both people listen, and the other person says, “It’s probably the wind/the house settling/the rats/etc.,” but then it sounds louder and the two people, now in agreement, decide to investigate. It turned out to be nothing mysterious or shocking or even, really, intentionally hidden from view. It was Trudy’s police radio, significant merely for being there. It ruled out Applewood and possibly the Crypt. Dennis and I did that other thing where you exchange worried looks.

Moshe appeared in the door.

“Oh! I’m glad you showed,” I said. “I need to find Patrick. Do you know where he is?”

He said nothing at all. He looked at me and then at Dennis. Then he turned and started walking out again.

I followed him out to the hall, calling, “Moshe! I’m serious. This isn’t a good time for grudges. Come back.”

“Maybe we’re supposed to follow him?” Dennis offered.

“Oh, shit. I think he’s under again. Yeah, we’d better.” We started trailing him down a main artery that, I knew, ran underneath the quad the long way.

There were lights on at intervals—this hall actually received occasional traffic of the buildings-and-grounds sort—as far apart as they could be and still prevent people from bumping into walls. The dimness is hard on the eyes; you would have to squint to see your own feet. We were approaching the next light, yellow from the layers of dust accumulating on the bulb, about halfway down the corridor, when I thought I saw someone standing underneath it. The figure was blurry and seemed to flicker in and out of the beam. I glanced over at Dennis, but he didn’t seem to notice it.

As we came nearer, it didn’t come any more into focus, even appearing to fade. When finally we were within feet of the light, I felt a strong but concentrated disruption in the air around me. It wasn’t a draft, exactly, but a patch of atmosphere that had taken on a vibration out of sync with the air around it. For a moment it pressed against my chest, as if to prevent me from moving forward, and the next moment it expanded, lost density, and coiled its way between my molecules and out the other side. When I stumbled back a couple of paces, Dennis finally noticed; Moshe, of course, continued on his oblivious path. I turned to face the way we’d come and saw, some distance down the corridor, the same dark image barely visible in the last lamp’s light.

“You all right?” asked Dennis. He was following my gaze back down the hall, apparently not seeing the shadowy form.

Pit Stop

The boys rent half of a duplex in an older part of town. Their apartment was dark, not unexpectedly since it was nearly midnight, but I knocked anyway. I heard the slightest movement behind the door, the squeaking of old hardwood. There was a pause in time between the squeak and the voice about the length of a heavy breath. “Patrick’s not home.”

“Dennis, are you OK? Do you know where he is?” I answered through the closed door.

“I… no. I don’t know.”

“Dennis, can I come in?” When he hadn’t opened the door at first, I figured I’d caught him at an inconvenient time and he needed to throw on a bathrobe or something, so I wasn’t surprised when a lengthy moment intervened before the bolt and chain locks disengaged and the door creaked open a small space. But that would not explain why there was no sound of motion in the meantime, nor the fact that he appeared fully clothed and groomed when he came into view.

“I don’t know where he is,” he repeated.

“I understand. I wanted to make sure you’re OK, too.”

“Me? Why? Um, I’m fine,” but his forehead and the muscles around his reddened eyes looked tense.

“If you say so. Mostly I meant alive, and you’re that, at least.” I smiled in that way you do when you’re trying to inspire someone else to reciprocate. “Uh… you are, right?” Of course, the question turned the original statement from a light joke to morbid reality. Fortunately, it went somewhat over his head.

“Huh?”

“Dennis. Did you ever meet Richard?”

His mind was apparently someplace else, since this was plainly not the direction he expected me to go. “I, uh, don’t think so. Museum guy, right?”

“Right. So consider this a public service announcement. He’s become a vampire sometime in the past couple of weeks. And he’s looking for that coral charm Patrick’s been hanging onto. He got mine.”

“Vampire? But how? I thought he was supposed to have a—whaddyacallit—transitive soul? Wouldn’t it be too sticky for that?”

Well, at least the kid could focus. Something was bothering him but apparently he can sublimate with the best of us. “Actually, it’s cuz he’s sticky that he must have transformed completely right away. No grace period. His energy wasn’t gonna deplete in small portions, so it’s probably found a new body already. Whoever he is now, he doesn’t even remember Richard’s past lives.”

“Oh. So he’s a dangerous vampire.”

“Which is why I came by. You think Patrick’s with the other, uh, non-dangerous vampires?”

Dennis looked like he’d rather talk about the dangerous one. “I don’t… I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since….”

Not too hard to follow this train now. “Saturday?”

It was easier for me to say it than to wait for him to try, but as soon as I did, the same tiny muscles that had briefly relaxed were tightening again, between his eyebrows and around his mouth, and his handsome, shy-boy visage was about to become less so. “He was home Saturday night, but then he went back again on Sunday.” As if to defend him, he added, “He’s been texting.”

“Texting what, hon?”

He shrugged and dug out his phone. I scrolled through the saved messages. “‘Miss U.’ ‘Thnkng abt U.’ ‘Out in Aplwd.’ ‘Wnt B home 2nite.’”

I handed it back to him. “You haven’t gone to Trudy’s?”

He shrugged again.

“You don’t want to be, like, stalker boy, huh?”

He lifted his eyebrows and grunted. I think it was a confirmation.

“And you figure if he wanted you there, he’d’ve said so. And you know he’s OK, so…. Hey, can I see that again?” This time I took note: no messages in the past twenty-four hours. “Dennis, sweetie, I gotta go. You wanna come with?”

A look of hopefulness appeared but then he said, “No, I, uh, have a lot of work I should do.”

“Please? I could use your company. Maybe your help, too.” It wasn’t totally untrue, but I suspected it applied to him at least as much as it did to me.

Poetry in Commotion

She looked at it disgustedly. I tried to make my smile look simultaneously understanding and teasing, continuing, “You don’t earn the bad-ass award until you can clean up your own mess. Be glad it doesn’t look more like that.” I indicated Richard’s rust-colored blotch on the floor. “Besides, you will need it now.”

She took it from me and carried it slowly to the kitchen for a thorough rinsing. In a few minutes, I felt comfortable getting up. I went to my room, wrapped an ACE bandage around my chest, and pulled on a new shirt. I joined her by the sink, where she still seemed not to know what to say. “You know,” I offered, “I kind of wonder what a poet would have to say about this situation. There are all those metaphors about broken hearts, right? Would it be cheesy if I said that by breaking mine, you’ve captured it?”

She turned from her soapy sponge and her stake and said, “Um, yeah. Yeah, it would be. Completely cheesy.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Her forehead wrinkled, and I was a bit dismayed that the question seemed to require some thought. “Not yet.”

“How do you feel right now?”

She exhaled forcefully and organized her thoughts. “A little traumatized. But also kind of buzzing on that rush of energy. More confused than I was before, if that’s even possible. I know you told me you’d survive that, but I still can’t believe you did. Pissed you didn’t say how much it would hurt you. My god, Marya.” She threw the sponge into the sink. “What am I not feeling right now?”

I looked down, away from her, as if in regret. I owed it to her to appear contrite. She continued:

“Oh yeah, and I’m expecting a hell of a lot more than a chunk of wood out of that.”

“I know.”

“And you. You are one patronizing bitch, you know that?”

“Yes, I do.” I turned my head away so she couldn’t see my mouth curl into a grin. She hadn’t meant it as a compliment and wouldn’t appreciate me taking it as such.

Turning back, I said, “And I’m sorry.” God, I hate saying that. “I don’t want to hurt you with any of this, but I know you’ll understand once you hear the whole story.” I touched her cheek gently. “If you get your stuff together, I can start to tell you on the way.” I picked up my drawstring bag and my phone, starting to dial Patrick’s number.

She’d almost been calmed by my apology, but she stiffened once again. “On the way where?”

“Remember I said before we were running on a deadline?”

“Um, yeah, but…”

“I have to get to Patrick.”

“Now?”

His phone was ringing while we were speaking, and now it went to voicemail. I hung up and headed toward the door. “Yes, now. We could already be too late. Come on.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Yeah, no. What are you thinking?”

“Um, I’m thinking that if the guy who left me unconscious last night and tore my flat apart gets to Patrick before I do, things are kinda gonna suck for him and possibly for a lot of other people. This is life or death, Jeanine. I didn’t just give you a stick and say, ‘Poke me with it.’ Why? What are you thinking? That you have time to get your thoughts in order? That you need to let your feelings heal before you race into action?”

This stunned her, quite appropriately. She stood like a pillar in the middle of the hall, almost as rigid as the weapon she clutched at her side. “Then go.” Her voice was either cold or hurt but probably not both. “Do what you have to. I’ll let myself out when I’m ready.”

It took me a few moments of staring into her stillness to accept that there was nothing to say. I couldn’t keep apologizing for things I’d done moments after apologizing for the last. I kissed her frozen and unresponsive lips and left. She wouldn't have to know that this was just what I'd hoped would happen.

Hitting Home

She looked slightly disappointed as the stake—she’d let go of it once she made contact—dropped to our feet. But what was key, she saw the small cut she’d made in my flesh heal itself almost before the stake hit the carpet. Looking into my eyes, winded, she asked, “What are you?”

It’s funny what kind of distractions can impose themselves on even the most bizarre circumstances, and I was momentarily reminded of the scene in The Princess Bride between Westley and Inigo and, though the original prompt is Who are you?, I was still tempted to respond to Jeanine, No one of consequence. But that would be a bald-faced lie, and she’d asked me to be honest. So all I did was smirk.

Suddenly, I found my feet once again swept out from under me. I’d seen it coming, but after Richard had done similarly, it seemed a good idea to analyze the vulnerability; I had only a split second to make a mental note of my position before she was kneeling over me, stake back in both hands, plunging it deep into my heart with all her weight behind her. Lying on top of me, nothing but an inch of wood between us, she growled, “Tell me everything.”

I’d known it would be extraordinarily painful when I first instructed her to do it, but I hadn’t wanted her to know that, lest it deter her from following through. The searing, burning ache that seemed to reach into my every nerve ending almost made me regret that decision, but honestly, there's no gentle way to drive a stake through a living person's chest. My breath too restricted for speech, I sputtered and gasped and held up a give me a minute finger, and Jeanine, shocked back into silence, readily slid off of me. I crawled to the mirror now leaning against the wall. I grasped the end of the stake and removed it slowly, waiting for the soft tissue to heal itself each millimeter of the way. Two ribs had gotten cracked in the process, and I’d have to bind my chest before going out to make sure they’d set properly in the next couple of days. When, finally, the full stake emerged and the last fold of skin closed up, I felt the air resume its unobstructed movement. I dropped back to the wall and gave myself time to recover myself fully.

Jeanine had moved nearer to watch. Her face communicated awe and a little surprise. She was probably unsure whether to be more amazed that she’d done it, stunned that I’d survived as I’d promised, or angry that it had taken much more out of me than I’d implied. She was entitled to all three, and I held out the stake, streaked with the same blood that had been taken by force from me twenty-four hours earlier. “That’s yours now,” I said a little weakly.

I Bit.

“I promise,” she muttered as she covered my mouth with hers. The kiss was so deep, so indulgent, the moment so heated, that I’d nearly forgotten what she expected of me until she pulled her lips away from mine and, grasping my hair between her fingers and turning us around so that she was against the wall, arched me toward the spot on her neck that complemented the one on mine that was now burning from within from the previous night’s trauma and from without from the friction of her mouth.

I must be clear here. I am not a vampire fetishist. The circumstances of my amortality have made me extremely uncomfortable with the symbolic flirtation with death. My instinctive drive is toward self-preservation rather than self-destruction, and my too-recent and remarkably non-erotic run-in with Richard had done nothing to change this. I was little better than a tough, bloody beef jerky to him, not the subject of a kinky mega-hickey that Crypt kids and people like them seem to imagine themselves to be. I had no desire to roleplay with Jeanine a persona I could not and cannot relate to and that was still largely abstract and theoretical to her as well. But I had to acknowledge that this was the situation I’d constructed for us. I had set my terms, and now she was setting hers. Accepting that the next few minutes would be entirely different experiences for the two of us, I bit.

Fangless, however, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hurt or provoke her as she seemed to want me to and she wouldn’t be spurred to action, but as it turned out, she needed much less “motivation” than she’d let on. I sank my teeth bloodlessly into her flesh; she pushed me away, hard, and I let myself fall against a dining room chair. My prior encounters with Richard and Kay notwithstanding, my self-defense training is considerable (part of that self-preservation dimension), and I can generally hold my own. I held back somewhat as I tussled with Jeanine.

I tackled her to the floor and made as if I were going for her neck again but gave her room to kick me off. I rolled into the coffeetable and looked up just before she reached me. I caught her hand as she went in for the kill and pushed her away against the couch. I jumped to my feet, but not as quickly as she did, so that when I lunged toward her for the last time, she could use my forward motion to slingshot me past her and into a now half-empty bookcase. Seeing that her adrenaline was sufficiently elevated, I exaggerated being stunned from the exertion long enough for her to thrust the wooden stake at my chest… but only a fraction of an inch, coming nowhere near the amount of force necessary to penetrate the ribcage.

Replenished

She was about to cry. I knew the confusion and frustration must have been overwhelming, but I had to impress upon her the gravity of her demands, and this seemed the best way to do it. Her face scrunched up and turned a shade of pink that was not especially attractive against her red hair. Partly so I wouldn’t see the corners of her mouth force their way downward and mangle her face any further, I moved toward her and pulled her into an embrace. I held her close while she sobbed, her head on my shoulder and mine on hers. She hugged me back, and I took happy note that instead of dropping the stake, she was clutching it in one hand while she squeezed me. We stood like that for a while, until it was no longer about emotional comfort and was for reaffirming our affection. “I need to go soon,” I said reluctantly.

“Why?”

“I can only tell you if….”

“I know, I know, if I stab you.” She didn’t start crying again, but her muscles tightened, including her staking hand. She turned her head and kissed the side of my neck, where the upper layers of skin were newly developed and sensitive to the touch. She continued kissing, feeling with her lips my throat, my jawline, my earlobe. She pulled my head forward a tiny bit to bring my ear closer to her as she whispered into it, “What did you mean I can’t kill you that way?”

“That much you can figure out. At least some of it,” I whispered back.

“This blood is yours. And it’s from a vampire.”

“Yeah.”

“But… no wounds. No marks at all.” I might not have minded the fact that her kisses were turning into nibbles—I might have thought she was doing it absent-mindedly, or deliberately for macabre emphasis—except that one of her legs had slipped between mine, and she’d begun rubbing her upper thigh against my pelvis and thus mine against hers. I kept taking small, subtle steps backward, but she followed with steps of her own until she was leaning against me with my back to the wall.

“No. No marks. This happened last night, and I think I’ve replenished the blood I lost by now.” Her rubbing was becoming a frotteuristic grinding, which I half-hoped would be defused by boring, technical words like “replenished.” But at least she was picking up on the important parts.

“If you want me to hurt you, you need to attack me first. I—I think I can do it, but… I need… motivation.” I wasn’t sure if I liked how seductively she said it.

“You promise?” My concern was that I’d hurt her if she couldn’t bring herself to retaliate, but I ended up sounding as sultry as she did.