Suck It Up and Die (29 page)

In the week following the VRA’s defeat, things returned to normal for all but a few.

Ironically, Zoë was reaping the benefits of having gone pan-viral on YouTube. The clip of her “little bloodmaid” song and putting off consensual bloodlust so she could go pee rocketed her to megastar status with goths and vampire wannabes. She became the It girl for a new concept gripping the goth underground: unrequited bloodlust. Also, due to her celebrity, Fanpire Tours was booked a year in advance.

When Cody finally got out of lockdown, he asked Portia to never reveal his part in the Tasting Room incident. His future as a professional cameraman would be destroyed if he became known as “the cameraboy who couldn’t hold on to his camera even when it was sewn on his chest.” Portia agreed and told him about her change of plans: to make a doc on competitive knitting. Thinking she was joking, he said, “Oh, you’re such a stitch.”

“No, really,” she insisted, “I did some research and competitive knitting exists.” When he asked if he could take over their doc on the Leaguer movement and finish it himself, she told him, “Take it. The only vampire I’m focused on is Morning McCobb.”

Rachel and Penny went back to the drawing board and started brainstorming TV shows that Rachel could host without getting canceled by the BVA. They settled on a new show,
Earth Angels
, which would profile Leaguers who did altruistic things for Lifers. Their first episode was going to be about a boy Leaguer who changed into a cat to rescue his Lifer friend’s cat, which was stuck in a tree, and save the local fire department for more-important calls.

DeThanatos, having been exposed as a Loner, did what Loners do when everyone starts sharpening their stakes. He took back the night and vanished. So everyone thought.

The person whose life was altered the most was Morning. Despite feeling awful about the defeat of the VRA and how Leaguers would remain second-class citizens for the near, if not distant, future, he was thrilled to be once again focused on the two things that mattered most: Portia and his training at the fire academy.

Whether it was his new happiness, the changes in his newly maturing body, or both, his performance at the academy had gone from screwup-waiting-to-happen to flawless. He was acing his classes and excelling in training drills without the slightest hint of using the vampire powers he still possessed. His fellow probies acknowledged as much when they voted him Probie of the Week. But the changes that excited Morning the most were ones he couldn’t brag about. Because his muscles were again firing with growth,
he was lifting weights in the gym that had once turned his arms into quivering sticks. For the first time in his life he was getting pecs, and, although he still didn’t have six-pack abs, he had a two-pack.

The only downside of all this was the effect it had on Clancy. Morning’s run of perfection was robbing the captain of his chance to nail Morning with that one last demerit and expel him. Even though Clancy suspected Morning was violating his agreement to not use any of his vampire powers, he had no proof. All he could do was pull Morning aside and warn him. “Just ’cause you’re rackin’ up the ’atta boys,’ I still got my eye on you.”

Needless to say, Morning and Portia were head over heels in love again. She even had more time for him now that she had turned her camera on the quaint world of competitive knitting.

Morning and Portia’s favorite activity, besides long makeout sessions at her apartment when Penny was gone, was what they called “going on
pneumabrotus
patrol.” These were down-to-his-boxers inspections of Morning’s changing body. They included scans for the latest chest hair and peach-fuzz-turned-to-whiskers and measuring sessions of his growing muscles. Not that he was getting as ripped as Cody. He just wasn’t built like Gumby anymore. He was like Gumby after two weeks of drinking steroid tea.

Going on
pneumabrotus
patrol was more than playing doctor. Morning had talked Portia into using a measuring tape, charts, and a still camera to keep records of his expanding chest, arms, and legs. It wasn’t a vanity thing. He had convinced her that if her knitting documentary didn’t pan out, she would have a backup project with a little more bite: the first record of a vampire reverting to mortality.
When she was surprised by his willingness to be the subject of another project, he told her he’d had a revelation about her filmmaking. He saw her passion as another one of her body parts that had to be bowed down to and worshipped like all the others. It was inseparable from her wholeness, her happiness, and everything he loved about her.

During one of these afternoon sessions in Portia’s room, which had gotten kind of hot, they were lying on the bed and taking a breather when Portia had an inspiration. “Hey, I just got an idea for a title.”

“Let me guess,” Morning said. “Take Back the
Knit
.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, not for the knitting doc. For the one on you.”

“Right, the backup.”

“
The Rise and Fall of Morning McCobb
.”

“
The Rise and Fall of Morning McCobb
,” he repeated pensively. “I don’t get it. What rise and fall?”

She scooched up on an elbow. “Your rise to immortality, and your
fall
back to mortality.”

He nodded. “Got it, kind of an Adam and Eve thing. I get kicked out of the garden of immortality.”

She squeezed next to him and nibbled his ear. “Yeah, and find your sinful Eve waiting outside the garden with a bushel of apples.”

He rolled onto his side and faced her. “So, how sinful does Eve wanna get?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

His eyes widened. “And?”

“I think we should make a pact.”

He jerked his head in an eager nod. “And?”

She rolled onto her back. “Well, if it looks like the world’s gonna end just before midnight, December twenty-first, do you wanna die a virgin?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Me neither.” She turned to him with a sexy smile. “So, come the End Is Upon Us Ball, I say we go out with a bang.”

Morning fell back with a giddy laugh. Then he quickly lifted his head, listening like Penny had come home. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“That roar. I think it’s the tsunami that’s gonna destroy New York ahead of schedule.”

She laughed and punched him again. “No, we have to wait till twelve-twenty-one.”

He offered his hand. “Deal.”

They shook on it.

Then they kissed on it.

A week after the VRA was defeated, Becky-Dell was still basking in the glow of “putting vampires in their place.” She did a few photo ops at BVA raids on consensual bloodlust clubs, where, as Cody had predicted, she went Carrie Nation and broke up the places with a huge wooden stake. But for the most part she had retreated to her home in the Washington suburbs for some well-earned rest.

She was in bed reading when she heard a crinkling sound outside her door.

DeThanatos entered wearing the hazmat suit.

Becky-Dell greeted him with a reproachful look. “When are you going to stop wearing that ridiculous thing and get some real clothes?”

He stopped abruptly, feigning shock. “Does this mean you’re not in the mood to celebrate our little victory?”

“It was hardly little,” she corrected. “The Leaguer movement has been permanently crippled.”

“Ah,” he said wistfully, “but crippled is far from an apocalypse. Isn’t that the endgame we agreed on?”

She put her book down. “Look, Mr. DeThanatos, I appreciate your help, but it’s a giant leap from killing legislation to slaying every Leaguer in America.”

He grimaced, putting a hand on his chest. “I don’t know what pains me more, your underestimating my capacity for evil, or seeing you underestimate your own.”

She tapped her book on the bed. “You’re keeping me from a very good book. Why don’t you cut to the chase?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He swept into the armchair near the bed so swiftly she flinched. “No need to fear,” he said solicitously. “I’m merely here to offer you”—he ran his tongue under his upper lip—“two
choices
.”

“Spare me your morbid sense of humor.” She scowled. “Let’s hear the options.”

“One, you rest on your laurels and leave America infested with Leaguers. Or two, you become the pied piper who rids America of the Leaguer plague.”

“And how would this pied piper pipe?”

Before he revealed the next step in his master plan, DeThanatos sensed a tiny tremor coming up through the legs of the chair. He recognized it: the subtactile call for a Rendezvous. But the length of the vibration told him it wasn’t just a Rendezvous for the Loners of North America. It was a Grand Rendezvous for all Loners worldwide.

He steepled his fingers. Before he took off, there was another rendezvous he had to finish first: his petit rendezvous with Becky-Dell, the pied piper of the apocalypse.

Twenty-four hours later, a falcon soared through the night over the Mother Forest. It wasn’t alone. Other birds of prey were silhouetted against the canopy of stars. They were heading for the great tree at the center of the forest, the Matriarch.

The falcon dropped toward the sea of Loner vampires already surrounding the Matriarch. To the sharp eye of the falcon, the sight was revolting. It wasn’t the lackadaisical nudity of Loners who came in all shapes, sizes, and ages, it was the sickening paradox of thousands of vampires jammed together who dared call themselves Loners.

Away from the throng, the falcon swooped below the treetops, burst into human form, and landed silently on the dusty ground. DeThanatos stood for a second, bracing himself for the idiot jamboree he was about to walk into. He disdained his fellow Loners for agreeing to the peace that had ended World War V, the conflict that had raged between Lifers and Leaguers for most of the twentieth century. The vast majority of Loners had signed a treaty preventing Loners from slaying any vampire who had become a Leaguer. DeThanatos had refused to sign it, and as far as he was concerned, the war had never ended.

The one thing he couldn’t refuse was a call to a Grand Rendezvous—those who did became marked vampires. He strode forward, fairly certain why this one had been called. He wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He was supposed to be in New York, ramping up the Leaguer apocalypse.

DeThanatos weaved through the outer ring of the crowd and pushed his way toward the Matriarch. When he reached the great girth of the Matriarch’s seven trunk stems, he raised his voice over the clamor and seized the
opportunity to sound the traditional invocation. “Who convenes this Rendezvous?”

“We do!” a chorus of voices answered back.

The mass of Loners wheeled toward a rocky slope where several torches bloomed with fire. The torches illuminated seven Loners seated behind the fallen trunk of a tree. Instantly, everyone knew this was more than a Grand Rendezvous: it was going to be a tribunal conducted by the Centurion Council. A wave of excitement passed through the crowd. If they were lucky, the night would end with something that had been the rage during the French Revolution but was now pitifully rare: public execution.

The man seated in the middle of the seven Centurions stood. His square-built torso bristled with hair. His name was Theodore Bosky. “We, the Centurion Council, have called you to the Mother Forest,” he declaimed. “For the hearing, trial, and sentencing of Ikor DeThanatos.”

Thousands burst into a chant. “Ikor! Ikor! Ikor!” It particularly thrilled the crowd that the name they were chanting was a variant of “ichor,” meaning “the blood of the gods.” If ichor was going to be spilled, flying halfway around the world would be worth it after all.

Bosky eyed the Loner he had summoned parting the crowd. Bosky raised his hands, asking for quiet. “Now that we’ve dispensed with the formalities, DeThanatos, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

DeThanatos took a few steps up the slope, turned, and struck a relaxed pose like Michelangelo’s
David
. “The truth stands naked before you.” The crowd laughed. He threw a glance back at the council. “Are you going to charge me with something, or just stare at my ass?”