Suck It Up and Die (15 page)

Morning couldn’t remember the last time she had kissed him on the cheek. Watching the cab pull away, a terrible feeling swelled inside him. Sure, he’d saved her life, but he couldn’t save her
from
life. The adrenaline fueling him ever since the first scream had shot from the burning building was swept away by a wave of doom. Suddenly, he couldn’t face turning around and going back to the academy.

He walked to a vacant lot. He moved into it and disappeared behind a blind of sumac. A few seconds later, a pigeon flew up over the sumac and soared skyward.

Morning knew Birnam had asked Leaguers to stop all CDing, but this was an emergency. He needed to take his tumbling feelings to a place where he could sort them out.

The pigeon landed on one of the cables sweeping down to the center of the Williamsburg Bridge. The bird scanned the pathway below. A lone cyclist zipped along it.

While it was officially the Williamsburg Bridge, to Morning and Portia it would always be the Williams Bird Bridge. Because that was how Morning had mispronounced it as a little kid, and because the middle of the Williams Bird Bridge was where he and Portia had shared so many big moments. For Morning, it was always rush hour on the bridge, a rush hour of memories and emotions.

The bicyclist cleared the center of the bridge; there was no one in sight for a hundred yards on either side. The pigeon dropped down and reverted to human form just before landing on the walkway. Morning was back in his skin, but that was all he was in. He dropped to his knees, reached down between the railing and the anti-jumper fence, and pulled up a waterproof bag. From the bag he
quickly extracted a jumpsuit and jumped into the aptly named outfit. Morning had made this clothes stash in the event he did an unexpected CD and needed to cover up before he got arrested for indecent exposure.

He gripped the rail, looked out on the harbor, and flipped through the bizarre events of the day. Some vampire tried to kill Portia; he saved her; Portia wanted to cover it up; his gums were infested with
dentis eruptus
for the first time in a year; and, out of nowhere, his eternal beloved gave him a passionless cheek peck. “A cheek peck?” he muttered. “What was that about?”

The first answer was a horrific thought.
Maybe she knew
. Maybe when he held her foot so he could feel her coursing blood she caught a whiff of something: the scent of bloodlust. Maybe when they kissed she had felt the hardening buds in his gums before he pulled away. Maybe she was as afraid to kiss him again as she was terrified of some vampire trying to kill her.

But why now?
Morning wondered. He looked down at the river. Why would saving her life tempt me to throw myself back into the forbidden well of bloodlust?

The snap of a jacket in the wind pulled him away from the water; he turned toward the sound. At first, it seemed like a vision, a flashback to thirteen months before, when Portia had come to find him on the bridge. As she had loped toward him, her dark curly hair had bounced along with her baggy cargo jacket flapping open. It was the moment he had first thought of her as an ostrich on a bad feather day.

But this was no flashback. It was a tall young man with dark curly hair like Portia’s, a flapping jacket, and something between a lope and a long, smooth stride. Morning
immediately braced for the worst. It was the “brother” Portia had mistaken for her reflection.

The vampire held up a hand as he drew closer. “I mean no harm.” He stopped at the rail, standing a head taller than Morning. His skin was less coppery now, and the lines were gone, as if he had gotten a final exfoliation. His eyes were also less brown and shading toward gray.

“Who are you?” Morning demanded.

“My name is Varkos. I am the brother of Ikor DeThanatos, the vampire you and your girlfriend destroyed in the Mother Forest.”

Morning swallowed and wished the walkway was crowded with people. “So you tried to kill Portia in revenge.”

“Oh, no.” Varkos chuckled. “I knew you would save her. I have faith in you, Morning.” He flashed a charming smile. “Faith in your powers of destruction.”

“What are you talking about?”

“How do mortals say? That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Despite Morning’s fear, a thought dawned on him. “You’re a Loner, aren’t you?”

Varkos answered with a haughty look. “In the end, aren’t we all?”

“But”—Morning gestured at the blue sky—“how did you—”

“I took precautions so I could take a lovely afternoon stroll on a bridge and meet new people, like you.” Varkos covered a yawn. “But the sleepless days are killing me.” He shook off his grogginess. “Now, where was I?”

Morning frowned and took a chance. “Telling me your plans.”

“Ah, yes, my agenda. It’s really quite simple: to avenge my brother’s death.” He chuckled with satisfaction. “But not in some swift, boring nighttime raid. Been there, done that. No, I want to enjoy my new day,” he declared to the sky. “I plan to extract my revenge in the most leisurely, torturous, and excruciating manner.”

“Why don’t you leave Portia out of it,” Morning said, “and let it be between you and me?”

Varkos touched his chest like his feelings had been hurt. “But Morning, Portia was the one who buried the stake in my brother’s heart. And, having the powers of a virgin who had lost her heart to love, she was the one who made my brother’s annihilation so swift and final. To let such a vicious vampire slayer roam the earth would be unfair. But I tell you what, I promise to make no more attempts on her life.” He gave Morning a wink. “I’ll leave that up to you.”

“I’ll never touch her that way,” Morning protested.

Varkos leaned in close.

Morning refused to budge. The price was smelling the vampire’s breath. It swirled with scents of mushroom, earth, and iron: the tang of blood. He had recently fed.

Varkos whispered, “You touched her once, you will again. I promise, before it’s all over you will raise your fangs in the destruction of your love, and every Leaguer under the sun.” His mouth suddenly gaped with another yawn, startling Morning. Then he slid by, giving Morning a pat on the back as he went. “Happy hunting, my boy.”

The touch sent a chill through Morning. He watched Varkos stride toward Brooklyn. Then he hurried in the opposite direction. This latest twist wasn’t one he could handle by himself. He needed to sound the alarm.

Morning fired up his computer, got Birnam on Skype, and told him about Varkos and everything that had happened. As in previous sessions, Birnam’s camera was conveniently down.

Birnam responded to all the news with concern, but to Morning’s irritation, he never sounded shocked. He even clucked with satisfaction when Morning’s report solved one mystery: why a solar-phobia instructor at the academy had been found that morning wandering around in her pajamas. The only surprising thing to Birnam was the vampire’s name. He had never heard of a Loner named Varkos and had no idea that DeThanatos had had a brother.

“You’re right about one thing,” Birnam proffered. “If this Varkos simply wanted Portia dead, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of forcing you to rescue her. By the way, how did saving Portia make you feel?”

Morning thought the question came out of left field, and he didn’t want to answer it. “I’m thrilled she’s okay.”

“I’m sure you are, but did anything unusual happen afterward?”

Morning hesitated, but he needed to share it with someone; if anyone could help him understand it would be Birnam. “Yeah. For the first time in a year I got a twinge of
dentis eruptus
.”

“Don’t be shocked,” Birnam said. “It’s only natural.”

“But why? I never want to bite her again.”

“Of course you don’t, but you also want to protect her from danger, from death itself. So what better way to save her from all danger than to turn her into an immortal.”

Morning’s head spun at the cruel paradox of it. “That’s terrible.”

“Yes. What do you think Varkos was up to? He wanted to destroy both of you in a chain reaction. First you save her, then you turn her and destroy who you claim to be. When vampires seek revenge, it’s not death they’re after; they want to see the dreams of their victims drown in the forbidden well.”

“But that could mean the more I want to protect her, the more I’ll want to turn her.”

“Yes, that’s a danger,” Birnam concurred. “It’s the burden you bear when your eternal beloved isn’t eternal.”

Morning was shocked by Birnam’s use of the term, like he’d been reading his and Portia’s minds.
Or worse
, Morning fretted,
being a Centurion, maybe Birnam has one more level of Skype: mind share
. He did the only thing you can do when you think someone’s reading your mind: change the subject. “What are we gonna do about Varkos?”

“He’s a Loner. They play by their own rules. All we can do is wait for his next move.”

Morning heard a
crunch
on the other end, like someone biting down on something. “What was that?”

“What?”

“That sound, like a crunching.”

“Oh, that’s my pet rat,” Birnam answered dismissively. “I’m feeding him lunch.”

Morning was too worried and distracted to go back to the academy for his afternoon classes, even though his absence might earn him another demerit. He spent the afternoon watching TV and searching the web for any mention of the live fire incident at the fire academy. There was nothing; Clancy really had put a lid on it.

Morning debated how much he should tell Portia. He wanted to call and tell her that Varkos had promised not to hurt her, but he knew he couldn’t convince her she was safe unless he got into Varkos’s contention that it was Morning who would do the hurting. The last thing he wanted to talk to her about was his flare-up of
dentis eruptus
.

Yet he still needed to call her. Even if Varkos was no longer a direct threat, Morning knew she would be suspicious if he
didn’t
act concerned. So he called her to check in. After stepping out of the editing room where she and Cody were working on their Rachel interview, Portia told Morning she was fine and nothing else had happened. Then she told him that she and Cody had seen a flash-mob tweet about a MOP protest that night in front of Diamond Sky Productions. They had to be there. She invited Morning to come, but he declined. He was two days away from an exam in Arson Awareness class and had to study.

After hanging up, Morning had the haunting feeling that Portia was glad he had turned down the invitation.

Early that evening, Varkos stood in Times Square, watching the huge screen on the ABC Studios building. It was broadcasting a news segment on the rise and fall of
The Shadow
. He was highly amused by how the show had started with such noble intentions, like Leaguers flying off to earthquakes and turning into rescue dogs to save people. Varkos resisted rolling on the pavement in laughter as the show progressed from heroics to CDing for profit and finally to a big fat leech sucking on a rock star’s surgically replaced scalp. If there was one thing Varkos knew about his kind, it was this: vampires can shape-shift into superheroes, but sooner or later they all shape-shift into bloodsuckers.

On the top floor of Diamond Sky, Penny and Rachel were working on how to continue airing
The Shadow
. They were on a conference call with a honcho from Apple, and Penny had been pitching the idea of turning the rest of
The Shadow
season into an iCast for iPhones and iPads. She had even offered to change the show’s name to
iShadow
. The meeting wasn’t going well, and Penny had to raise her voice above the roar coming from outside, on the street below.

Surrounding the building were a few thousand demonstrators, all MOPers. They wore
MORTALS ONLY
T-shirts and were chanting the same slogan at full lung.

The executive told Penny and Rachel he wasn’t sure Apple and
The Shadow
were a good fit. As much as he liked
the idea of
iShadow
, he kept imagining the jokes Apple would be walking into: iSuck, iBleed, etc. He thanked them for their time and hung up.