Suck It Up and Die (11 page)

Portia stroked his back. “Mom, I think he’s had enough of politics.”

“Haven’t we all,” Penny said, moving into her office.

Portia pushed Morning’s head back on the couch. “Shut your eyes.” He obeyed as she stroked his forehead and scalp stubble. “When people get fired up and start seeing the world as black versus white, Leaguer versus Lifer, bloodsucker versus blood-suckee, you know what I think of?”

“What?”

“My favorite page on the IVL website.”

“Which one?”

“I’ll give you a hint.” She lifted his shirt and kissed his belly button.

Her lips tickled his skin and launched a bubble of excitement in his solar plexus. He smiled at the memory of the page. “ ‘How to see a vampire in three easy steps.’ ”

“Right. Just go look in a mirror, ’cause that’s how we all begin, drinking the blood of our mother through an umbilical cord.”

Morning opened his eyes and took her in. That was
why he loved her so much. She could make the whole bad world go away with just a few words and her lips. He sat up, pushed her back, lifted her shirt, and returned her belly button kiss. “Thanks, I needed that.”

Portia giggled. “You’re welcome.”

He reached over the end of the couch and pulled up his backpack. He dug out the card and the wrapped present.

“You got me something?”

“For Out Day, sure.”

“But I didn’t get you anything,” she said.

He handed her the card. “You know me, I don’t like to take, I like to give.”

She opened it and chuckled at the corny joke about vampires always being able to outdrink mortals. Then she read his note.

She mimed plucking his heart strings—“Twang”—then gave him a kiss. Holding up the long box of a present, she had an idea of what it might be. She opened it and laughed with recognition at a croquet stake, painted with multicolored rings. “You kept it?”

“Of course,” he said with a warm smile. “It was the first time we held hands.”

A year before, the two of them had pulled the stake out of Morning’s chest after he had been staked by a clueless
vampire slayer that Ikor DeThanatos had hired to destroy him. When Morning had pressed Portia’s hand over the wound as it healed, it was the first time she had felt herself dive into the quavering current of true love.

“Yeah,” she said with a puckish smile, “when a girl pulls one of these out of your heart, you don’t toss it in the sports closet.” She leaned in and planted another kiss.

They fell back and made out. Portia was amazed by what a great kisser Morning had become since the disaster of their first kiss, when he had gotten
maximus dentis eruptus
and his teeth had blown up like microwave popcorn.

Throat clearing cut short their makeout session as Penny passed through the living room. They shot upright.

Portia tried to cover being busted by lifting the stake and waving it. “Hey, Mom, it used to be that girls got pinned; now they get staked!”

The next morning at the fire academy, Morning’s crew gave him a good dose of teasing. “Yo, McCobb, if I lose my head and they reattach it, you gonna turn into a leech and suck my neck?” “Hey, Morning, I hear they’re gonna put you on Rescue; with all the road spill they clean up, you could be a one-leech wet vac.” Morning took it and gave back as best he could. He didn’t mind the trash talk. If his fellow probies
didn’t
tease him it would’ve been worse. Talking trash was part of the brotherhood, part of the glue that bonded a crew. By lunch, the talk had swung to Rachel.

“Hey, Morno, can you get me a date with Earth Angel?” Armando asked. “If that babe wants to turn into a dove and spank me with an olive branch, I am so there!”

“She doesn’t have to dove-up for me,” another probie added. “I’d have her turn into Siamese twins.”

Another urged Morning to take them for a night on the town in which they pretended to be Leaguers so they
could meet hot goth girls who wanted to hook up with vampires.

Sully snorted. “Last I checked, you didn’t have to be a vampire to get babes. You just had to be a fireman.” He leaned across the table to Morning. “Here’s what I wanna know. When you were marching in the parade, what was that thing around your neck? A peace sign? I mean, isn’t being the first vampire firefighter enough? You also wanna be the first
hippie
vampire firefighter?”

“It’s not a peace sign,” Morning corrected. “It’s a good-luck thing.”

“Cool.” Sully waggled his fingers. “Let’s see it.”

“I don’t wear it here.”

“C’mon,” Sully pressed, “if there’s anywhere you need good luck, it’s here.”

“Wearing loose stuff is against the rules, you know that,” Morning reminded him.

Sully gave a sneering laugh. “But you’re a vampire, McCobb. Bustin’ rules is what you do.”

Armando cut in, trying to break the tension. “Give it a rest, Sully.”

Sully stared at Morning. “After I see it. C’mon”—his hand raised—“give it.”

Morning didn’t move. “I told you I’m not wearing it.”

Sully’s hand flew at Morning’s collar. Morning yanked back, but Sully’s fingers snagged his shirt long enough to rip off a button. The button skidded off the table as a probie uttered a warning. “Clancy.”

Every probie in the dining hall jumped to their feet, standing at stiff attention.

“At ease,” Clancy ordered. “Everyone but this bunch.” He moved around Morning’s crew. His eye caught the
skewed angle of Morning’s collar. “I wasn’t planning an inspection, but sometimes I have to surprise myself.” He moved in on Morning and fixed on the frayed threads of the missing button. “Your uniform’s incomplete, McCobb.”

“Yes, sir, I’m missing a button.”

Clancy went drill sergeant. “When you’re a probie your uniform is the only gear you’re a hundred percent responsible for. If you show up to school wearin’ faulty gear, you’ll show up to a fire wearin’ faulty gear! You do that and you’ll get a brother killed! You just earned yourself a demerit, McCobb!”

“Sir,” Sully said, “it wasn’t his fault.”

Clancy whipped around to his nephew. “Whose fault was it, Sullivan?”

“Mine. We were roughhousing and—”

“You were
roughhousing
?”

“Yes, sir, and—”

Clancy cut him off. “Is this a mess hall or a romper room for booger eaters?”

Sully answered. “A mess hall, sir.”

“The way I see it,” Clancy shouted, “if you
were
roughhousing and a probie’s button was on the floor, he’d be crawling around lookin’ for it!” He got back in Morning’s face. “Am I right, hose weenie?”

Morning stared dead ahead. “Yes, sir. There was no roughhousing. I wore a defective shirt to school.”

Clancy sneered with satisfaction and lowered his voice to menacing. “That’s right. Just a few more screwups, McCobb, and your shirt, along with the pathetic probie inside it, won’t be
comin’
to school. You got that?”

Morning nodded. “Yes, sir.”

On the way out, Clancy’s boot crunched on the button. He never looked back. “At ease!”

The probies sat and stared at their lunch trays.

Sully finally muttered, “Why’d you do that?”

Morning shrugged. “What?”

“Cover my ass.”

Morning stood up and grabbed his empty can of Blood Lite. “You don’t have to like me, Sully. You just need to know I’ve got your back. Isn’t that what we’re here for?”

As Morning walked away, Sully flushed red. From embarrassment or anger, no one could tell.

At LaGuardia Arts, Portia was cramming books in her locker. Nearby, Zoë was on her knees, waving her outstretched arms toward Portia. “Go ahead,” Zoë said. “Guess what I am.”

“I don’t know,” Portia huffed. “Toulouse-Lautrec doing a Frankenstein impression.”

“No. Hint: I’m a blood obligate.”

Portia shut her locker with a bang. “I know you’re a bloodsucker. It’s the only impressions you do.”

“Yeah, but which one?” Zoë stretched her waving arms toward Portia’s jeans and monotoned, “Pant leg, pant leg.”

“Don’t have time for this.” Portia moved around Zoë and started down the hall.

Zoë jumped to her feet and followed with outstretched arms. “I’m a questing tick! Pant leg, pant leg!”

Cody sat in the editing room watching TV. Ally Alfamen was finishing a special report when Portia and Zoë came through the door. “You’re not gonna believe it,” he said. “The Bureau of Vampire Affairs yanked
The Shadow
.”

Portia stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“Yeah, show’s been canceled,” Cody added. “After the big fat leech went Edward Scissorlips on Skid’s head, and the clip went pan-viral on YouTube, the network and the BVA got avalanched with protests.”

Zoë threw up her hands. “It was just a blood obligate being a blood obligate!” Then she collapsed in a chair. “Do you know what this means?”

“Yeah,” Portia said flatly, “my mom’s gonna take hormonal rage to uncharted territory.”

“That,” Zoë lamented, “and I’ll never be on
The Shadow
. I’ll never be top shadow!”

“Zoë,” Portia pointed out, “you’re not a vampire.”

“I would’ve been by next season!” Zoë bounced in her chair like she was about to explode. “But that’s not the worst part! It’s the beginning of the backlash, of shoving vampires back underground, of massive blood shortages!” Her eyes popped wider. “The beginning of blood
prohibition
!”

Cody took her shoulders in both hands. “ZZ, it’s only a TV show. You might be overreacting.”

Zoë shook him off and leaped up. “Maybe.” Her face hardened. “But a year from now I’m not gonna die of thirst!” She started out.

“Where are you going?” Portia called.

Zoë didn’t turn back. “To start my blood stash!”

Before Portia and Cody could confer on the mental stability of their friend, the TV grabbed their attention.
It carried a shot of the steps in front of the U.S. Capitol, crowded with members of the Mortals Only Party. Becky-Dell Wallace was beginning a press conference.

She stepped up to the microphones. Light bounced off her glasses. She began soberly. “For those of you who think of me as a stake-rattling, conspiracy-theory nutcase, I respect your right to keep your head firmly buried in the sand. But last night, we saw more than an episode of
The Shadow:
we saw more than a Leaguer turn into a leech and drink human blood. We saw a vampire suck its first blood from the American soul. We saw the true agenda of the International Vampire League.” Her voice rose with fervor. “Their cape has been pulled aside and we’ve seen their one desire: To gorge on our blood! To welter in bloodlust!”

The MOPers shouted and booed.

Becky-Dell cleared a lock of hair from her glasses, and fixed the camera with eyes of steel. “We have seen the red menace of this century. We are going to fight it from the halls of Congress to the streets. We will defeat the Vampire Rights Act! We will not let them turn our country into the new Transylvania! Because we are a nation of the mortals, by the mortals, and for the mortals!”