Suck It Up and Die (19 page)

And just like that the boomerang whooshed through Morning’s head. Maybe his old friend was right. Maybe his relationship with Portia had to take a step backward before it could take two steps forward.

Portia and Zoë walked out of LaGuardia Arts and headed to a deli to pick up a sandwich for lunch. Portia grabbed the chance to tell Zoë about her breakup with Morning. She related how DeThanatos’s return had freaked her out and brought up too many old wounds, including the one
Morning had inflicted on her neck the night he almost drained her. Zoë and Penny were the only Lifers who knew about that, and it was the reason Zoë had hopes that Morning might someday backslide and turn her. But Zoë had kept her promise and never breathed a word of it to anyone.

However, Portia did leave out two beats in her breakup story. She didn’t tell Zoë about DeThanatos abducting her and putting her in a burning building. And she didn’t mention Morning’s brush with
dentis eruptus
when they had kissed. It was the last thing Zoë needed to hear. It might finally inspire her to try and turn Morning into the fang ferry that would deliver her to immortality.

But Portia’s censored version still shocked Zoë. “I can’t believe you broke up with him! How can anyone dump a vampire? I mean, he could knock you up with eternal life.”

Portia winced. “Eweee. I don’t wanna be knocked up with anything, especially eternal life.”

“You say that now, but wait till you’re a toothless old goober begging for another day on the planet.”

“That,” Portia said emphatically, “would be the last moment I’d want to be turned.”

Zoë punched her arm. “Exactly! You should get turned in your prime. Like now. I mean, I thought he was your EB.”

“He is, in my heart, but—”

“Look,” Zoë cut in, “he’s your eternal beloved or he’s not. You act like your heart’s a time-share. Like Morning’s gonna have an apartment in it for the rest of your life, but you’re breaking up with him ’cause you’re looking for another renter. That’s not fair to him, and it won’t be fair to the next guy you fall in love with and end up telling, ‘Hey,
amigo, mi heart es su heart, but did I tell you about the vampire in the left ventricle?’ ”

Portia chuckled. “Okay, can we just agree to disagree on the whole vampire thing?”

“We always have,” Zoë answered with a hopeless shrug.

“You just gotta promise me one thing,” Portia added. “Don’t tell Cody we broke up. It’s a secret.”

Zoë shot her a suspicious look. “Are you saying you’re not sure you did the right thing? Like this is a trial breakup?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

Portia huffed a sigh. “I don’t want Cody thinking I’m available.”

“You mean, you don’t want him asking you out, like to the End Is Upon Us Ball.”

“Right.”

Zoë frowned. “You’ve got two awesome guys in your life and you don’t want either of ’em asking you out? Are you going lesbo on me?”

“No!”

“What is it, then?”

“All sorts of amazing stuff is happening with our documentary right now. Cody and I have front-row seats at history in the making, and we’re a great team with him thinking I’m with Morning. I don’t want him thinking otherwise. I need him on the movie, not on me.”

“Pfff,” Zoë puffed in disbelief. “What makes you think he’s hot for you?”

“Believe me, I know.”

“Did he do something?”

“No, I just know.”

“Well, he’s probably gonna find out from Morning anyway.”

“No,” Portia said. “I think Morning’s so upset he’s gonna lay low for a while. So come on, ZZ, do you think you can keep your motormouth shut?”

“My lips are sealed,” Zoë said, and lip-zipped. Then she squeezed out, “But you owe me.”

Portia and Zoë took their lunch back to the editing room, where Cody was working on a rough cut of their interview with Rachel. As Portia kept one eye on his editing and the other on a TV tuned to CNN, Zoë got on her laptop.

She fired it up and clicked on the Vampower.com icon to see if any hot young Leaguers had responded to her matchup request yet. “What!” she yelped after the Vampower.com home page came up. It was covered by a big red heart pierced by a wooden stake. She tried to click it away like a pop-up; it didn’t budge. “My computer crashed!”

Something on the TV caught Portia’s eye and she turned up the sound. The shot cut to a press conference about to begin in the White House Rose Garden. The president appeared, leading a group that included Becky-Dell Wallace and several doctors in white coats.

The president stepped to the podium and spoke in his
calm, measured way. “This morning, thanks to the diligence of Congresswoman Wallace and the expertise provided by doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I was alerted to a national health risk. If the exchange of human blood between Lifers and Leaguers is allowed to proceed in the uncontrolled manner in which Vampower.com is proposing, it will present a health risk to the American people. Such blood exchanges could spread viruses like hepatitis C and HIV. For this reason, I have issued an executive order shutting down Vampower.com and banning all unauthorized blood exchange until Congress can write legislation regarding this matter.”

“But Mr. President,” a reporter asked, “where’s the danger of a mortal giving hepatitis C to a vampire when a vampire can’t get sick?”

“I’ll let Congresswoman Wallace and the CDC doctors handle the technical questions,” the president answered before turning and heading back to the White House.

Becky-Dell beat two doctors to the mikes and answered the question. “You’re missing the point. We have laws controlling the where, who, and how much of giving blood. By promoting consensual bloodlust, Vampower.com is breaking those laws. And trust me, canceling TV shows and taking down websites is the tip of the stake I plan to bury in the vampire agenda. After the VRA is defeated this week, we will be calling for a new amendment to the Constitution that will prohibit blood-drinking of any kind.”

As the doctors exchanged baffled looks, a reporter piped up. “Ms. Wallace, Leaguers can’t survive if they don’t drink
some
kind of blood.”

Becky-Dell fixed the reporter with hard eyes. “If they
can shape-shift into birds and leeches, they can shape-shift into red-blooded Americans who do what all red-blooded Americans do:
chew
their food.”

Reporters shouted questions. She paused, then gave their cameras her fiercest gaze. “Here’s my message. For two hundred and fifty years American patriots have shed their blood to water the tree of liberty. Our tree will
not
become a meeting place for vampires and mentally deranged citizens who want to shed their blood in debauchery. Our tree will
not
be poisoned by bloodlust. And if I have to pay the ultimate sacrifice defending that tree, I will die with these words on my lips: better dead than bled!”

Before the reporters could react, Becky-Dell marched away.

Portia, Zoë, and Cody stared at the TV. Cody was the first to find words. “Wow, Zoë, you were right. She’s talkin’ Prohibition Two. Like she’s gonna go Carrie Nation and smash up Goth ’em with an ax.”

“Or a stake,” Portia added.

Zoë flailed her hands. “And I’ll never meet my blood match! Or experience the ecstasy of exsanguination!”

Across town, DeThanatos exited the Javits Center and was surrounded by a media posse. Drake Sanders fired first. “Mr. DeThanatos, do you have a reaction to Vampower.com being turned into Vampower.
gone
?”

DeThanatos shrugged coolly. “Vampires may disappear, but we’re never
gone
.”

Another reporter jumped in with a barrage of questions. “What about your boss, Gertrude Blankenship? Where is she? Why have we never seen her? And what
about the rumor that she’s your pawn, and you’re the real mastermind behind Vampower.com?”

DeThanatos replied with a gracious smile. “I will address rumors and respond to Ms. Wallace’s hatemongering threats against Leaguers at a press conference tonight.”

“Where?”

“Washington Square Park, eight o’clock.”

Portia, Cody, and Zoë watched the TV screen as DeThanatos slid into a town car. Portia’s face pinched in thought. “Why is the evilest vampire on earth acting like he’s the Harvey Milk of the Leaguer world?”

Cody shrugged. “Maybe the leopard has changed his spots.”

Zoë feigned a swoon. “You mean the little deuce of spots he likes to lay on necks?”

“It’s not funny!” Portia snapped.

Zoë pulled back, hands raised. “Whoa, I bring up a neck nibble and you bite off my head.”

Portia knew it wasn’t Zoë’s flippancy that had upset her; it was seeing DeThanatos in full flesh again, and the terror he stirred up inside her. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that he’s a threat to everything Leaguers have worked for. Much more than Rachel and my mom and their puny attempts to push the envelope of Leaguer freedom. DeThanatos wants to rip up the envelope and torch it.”

“What can we do about it?” Cody asked.

Portia took a breath. She was on the fence all documentary filmmakers faced sooner or later:
What’s more important, personal safety or getting the story?
As much as DeThanatos scared her, she told herself she had to live by
her new motto:
Earn your death
. “The only thing we can do,” she said to Cody. “Crew up and add him to our doc.”

“Cool.” Cody grinned. “We’re goin’ to Washington Square and rampin’ this doc up to
The Fangs of War
.”

Zoë squirmed with excitement. “Can I go with you?”

Portia raised a finger. “As long as you remember we’re going to get this badass on film, not on your neck.”

Zoë clutched her neck. “Are you kidding? I’ll be wearing my chastity choker.”

Prowler’s advice on Morning’s romantic woes had kept the heartbroken Leaguer propped up through lunch, but after that things began to crumble. For the first time as a probie, he didn’t feel like he was living a dream come true; he felt like he was sleepwalking. His mind wandered in class; his body lumbered through roof training; and the thrill of firing up a huge saw and cutting through a roof vanished like dissipating smoke. Morning felt like he’d gone from the first vampire in the academy to the first zombie.

But there was an upside to his numb despair: it would help him meet the goal he had set for the Arson Awareness Chemical Identification test he was taking that afternoon. The test involved opening a dozen different containers, identifying the fire accelerant in the container by smell, and rattling off stats about each one. With a vampire’s extra olfactory powers, Morning knew he could easily ace the test. But doing so was a catch-22 for a couple of
reasons: (1) Clancy, having spent much of his FDNY career in the Arson Investigation Division, was the instructor, and (2) acing the test would give Clancy the chance to accuse Morning of using his vampire powers and violating his agreement not to do so during his firefighter training. To play it safe, Morning had decided to identify only nine of the accelerants, which was enough to pass the test without rousing Clancy’s suspicions and getting slapped with more demerits, or worse.

After lunch, Clancy led Morning’s crew to the ventilation shed, known as the stink box, where the test was administered, one probie at a time. As Morning waited with the others outside the shed, his head swirled with doubts. Besides suffering the malaise of heartbreak, and loss of appetite, his senses felt out of whack. The half can of Blood Lite he’d forced down at lunch had tasted thin and flat, and had been
odorless
.

Before going into a panic, Morning took his nose for a test-drive. He sidled over to Armando and sniffed. Armando always used Nivea for Men, which had a distinctive odor. Morning didn’t smell a thing. He still refused to panic. “Smart,” he said to Armando, “you skipped the Nivea so it wouldn’t mess with your nose.”

Armando shot him a dubious look. “Are you kidding? I’m wearing a double dose.” He lowered his head and inhaled. “It’s gonna clear my nose between accelerants.”