Suck It Up and Die (31 page)

After school, when Morning hopped off the bus at 125th Street, he got two surprises. Zoë and her pedicab were waiting for him, but Zoë wasn’t on the bike seat; Cody was. “What brings you guys over here?” he asked.

“My tour customer canceled this afternoon,” Zoë explained. “And I gotta get my daily dose of endorphins, so I thought I’d give you a ride home.”

Cody hopped off the bike. “And I’m just lending ZZ a leg before she spins you downtown.” He grinned at Zoë. “And giving her a chance to ogle my butt.”

“You wish,” she quipped.

As Zoë straddled the bike, Cody slapped Morning’s arm. “Now it’s your turn to ogle hers.”

Morning scoffed. “I don’t ogle Zoë’s butt.”

“Oh, right,” Cody said. “There’s only one backside for you: the rear end of a Porsche.” He and Zoë laughed and he hefted his backpack. “I say ogle the one you’re with.”

As Cody disappeared into the subway, Morning climbed into the pedicab. The scene was being watched by a falcon perched on a flagpole jutting from a building. Zoë started pedaling; the falcon took to the air and followed.

Cruising along, Morning felt like an olfactory
sponge. Each block offered another mouthwatering, brain-expanding cloud of pleasure: hot pretzels, hot dogs, garlic, the pungent smell of sauerkraut, charred beef, falafel, pizza, fresh-baked bread. While the smells were familiar, the urges they triggered were long-lost sensations.

Meanwhile, Zoë kept a running commentary on her latest scheme to get turned. She had been researching companies that employed Leaguers and had discovered the Bureau of Vampire Affairs was hiring a lot more Leaguers to do investigation work into illegal Leaguer activity. She had applied for an internship the next summer at the BVA in Washington. “I mean,” she bubbled, “with all those Leaguers coming and going, I’d be eye candy waiting for a nibble. And you know how they treat interns in D.C.: low-hanging fruit ready for picking.”

As Morning frowned over Zoë’s tireless quest to join the immortal set, she lived up to her reputation for verbally blindsiding friend and foe. “Speaking of low-hanging fruit, has Mrs. Dredful figured out you’re a Leafer yet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, you’d probably know if she thought you weren’t sterile anymore. She’d totally freak if she thought you could knock up Portia.”

He reacted with a mega eye roll and wondered if Portia had told Zoë about their plans for the night of the End Is Upon Us Ball. “Zoë, do we have to talk about this?”

She didn’t let up. “Are you? Still sterile, I mean.”

He felt his skin get hot. “I don’t know! How would I know?”

“I can think of one way: we take you to a sperm bank and have you tested.”

“Zoë!”

She ignored his protest. “Nah, there’s only one way to test the Morning bullet mystery: real or blanks?” She started a playground chant. “Morning and Portia sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

“Knock it off,” Morning growled.

But she was having too much fun. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Portia with a baby—”

“If you don’t shut up, I
will
turn you!”

She laughed, tossing over her shoulder, “Big talker.” The next light turned yellow, and she braked to a stop.

The trailing falcon pulled up and landed on the streetlight above them.

Zoë turned back to Morning with a wistful expression. “Problem is, I don’t think you could turn me anymore. I’m betting you’ve swapped your vampire-making skills for a set of baby-making skills.” She flashed a sweet smile. “But don’t worry, A.M., I don’t think less of you for it. We’re still friends, right?”

The light turned back to green and he waved his hand for her to go. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

After a block, Zoë asked, “Are you going to Portia’s tonight?”

He was glad to get back to a normal subject. “Yeah, she’s making me a good-luck dinner before the beginnings of finals at the academy.”

“She’s making you dinner?” Zoë turned with a shocked look. “If you’ve turned into a solid-food obligate—”

“No, no.” He cut her off. “She’s making herself dinner, and pouring me a can of the usual.”

“Oh, then maybe I’m bustin’ your fangs too soon. Maybe you could still turn me after all.”

He realized whether he was Leaguer or Lifer or somewhere in between there was no winning with Zoë. “ZZ, could you just take me home?”

She shot him a thumbs-up. “You got it, A.M.”

Above them, the falcon banked toward the Village.

The falcon swooped into the garden behind the Dredful town house. It landed near the open kitchen window and cocked its head at the smoke wafting out. Inside, Portia was pan-searing a two-fisted, jaw-straining chunk of ground sirloin she called “a comfort-food portion.”

She had reason for needing comfort. She had just come back from her first shoot for her knitting doc: an interview with an old lady in Queens who held the world speed record for the stocking stitch. Portia was on the phone to Cody, telling him how much her footage sucked. “I mean, Michael Moore couldn’t make this stuff interesting.” After that, she didn’t want to talk about it anymore because it was so depressing. “How ’bout you?” she asked. “Have you figured out a new angle on the Leaguer doc?”

“Not really,” he told her. “Fact is, I’m lost. I mean, who wants to see a doc about the failure of a movement, about how Becky-Dell and DeThanatos win and the VRA goes
down in flames? It’s such a downer. Bottom line, I’m floundering without you, Porsche. You sure you don’t wanna come back and help me figure this out? I mean, c’mon, even a story about loser vampires has gotta be better than any story about competitive knitting.”

“No thanks,” she said, fighting the temptation. “I promised my mom and Morning. I’d rather stick a knitting needle in my eye than go back to making a doc on vampires.”

She got an incoming call and put Cody on hold. Morning was calling to tell her he was running a few minutes late.

She flipped her sizzling burger and got back to Cody. For a second she wanted to tell him that there was actually
one
winner in the vampire story: Morning. She had to bite her tongue not to tell him about Morning’s re-aging, and that if she did go back to the vampire doc with Cody she had a potential new title for it:
The Rise and Fall of Morning McCobb
. Instead, she told Cody to hang in there and said goodbye.

By the time she hung up, the falcon had taken off.

The falcon flew across the Hudson and glided over the Jersey side of the river. With its binocular eyes, eight times more powerful than human ones, it spotted what it was looking for: a henbane bush, gone to seed. It landed next to the bush and scooped three henbane seeds into its beak.

By the time Portia finished cooking her burger and went upstairs to change, the falcon was back in the garden. The
bird flapped through the open window, landing on the counter. Portia had placed the massive cheeseburger on a paper towel. The falcon dropped the seeds from its beak onto the burger’s slather of melted cheese, then tapped the seeds into the cheese.

Having been a monk in another millennium, DeThanatos had never forgotten his skills as an herbalist or the medicinal power of plants. Henbane, or
insana
, as it was called back then, in the right form and dose could rob a person of reason and restraint.

After getting to Portia’s, Morning locked his bike to a street sign out front.

A few minutes later, he and Portia sat at the kitchen table over their respective dinners. She gripped the fat cheeseburger, with its multiple overhangs of lettuce, bacon, and caramelized onion, while he popped a can of Blood Lite from the supply she kept for him in the fridge. He had started to drink it chilled to hide some of the tang that his Leaguer taste buds had once craved but his re-mortalizing taste buds were souring on.

After being caught ogling Armando’s roast beef, Morning was careful to look away when Portia opened her Jaws of Life mouth, bit down on the burger, and rained reddish blood on her plate. But he couldn’t avoid the wonderful waft of charred meat that invaded his nostrils and stirred a growl in his stomach.

“Hmm.” Portia swooned as she chewed. “How wong ’fore you’re gonna whan onna dese?”

He wanted to say
Let’s split it right now
, but he hadn’t yet told her about his growing craving for food. Instead, he
washed down the mouthwatering aroma of charred meat with a swig of cold Blood Lite.

After Portia wolfed down her burger, she and Morning went into the living room. They sat on the couch. Even though the huge burger in her stomach had turned the three seeds into slow-release henbane, it was already beginning to take effect. The depression over her knitting doc, which had been mild before, was sliding into agitated despair. “You know what the problem with the world is?” she announced.

“Yeah,” Morning answered, “that I’m still a few days away from being a firefighter.”

She ignored his stab at humor. “No, that people start out wanting to do great things, and what do they end up doing? Knitting. They start out wanting to change the world, and they end up compromising. I mean, that’s exactly what happened to the Leaguer movement. Birnam had a vision of vampires being free and equal, and they end up being treated like illegal aliens. Rachel had a vision of vampires doing all this incredible stuff for the human race, of soaring like Earth Angels, but then out of jealousy, or hatred, or fear, the Becky-Dells of the world bitch-slapped Leaguers back to earth so they’re nothing but a bunch of knitters.”

Morning tried not to smile over one of the reasons he loved her: she was even funny when she was riled up. “Ah, you think maybe you’re exaggerating a little?”

“Not at all. It’s like all the vampires who wanted to be Earth Angels had their wings clipped, and now they’re running around like Boy Scouts doing puny good deeds. They went from Earth Angels to candy stripers like that!” she lamented with a finger snap. “I mean, where are the kickass
radicals of the Leaguer movement! Why don’t Leaguers grow a set of fangs instead of knitting needles? Why doesn’t one of ’em vampire up and just take Becky-Dell out?”

Her diatribe began to concern him. “Portia, you can’t change the world overnight. It’s still moving in the right direction.”

She wheeled on him. “Oh, really? Name one good thing that’s happened for Leaguers!”

He raised an arm and made a muscle. “I got biceps.”

She didn’t laugh. She stared at him for a moment with wild eyes. The henbane had done a number on her reason; now it was working on her restraint. She leaned toward him and spoke in a low voice. “You know, Morning, you’re right.”

He was intoxicated by her meaty breath.

“And we should celebrate that fact right now.”

The scent of charbroiled bliss derailed his brain. “Which fact is that?”

She pushed closer and whispered in his ear. “That we’re EBs forever and ever.”

Her tantalizing breath covered him in goose bumps. “Yeah, we are,” he whispered back. “How do you wanna celebrate?”

“The only way we can,” she purred as she turned his face to hers.

They fell into a passionate kiss. Morning was so enthralled by the double ecstasy of kissing her
and
tasting the virtual cheeseburger in her mouth, he didn’t realize she was pushing him onto his back. Their makeout sessions were usually slow builds up a yearning curve, but this one was more like a drag race, with Portia taking it from zero to sixty in seconds.

In the middle of their tonguey wet-fest, she raised her head for a breath, gave him a seductive grin, and wiped the kiss-juice shine off his chin. The makeup on his pimple went with it. She stared at the angry little chin mountain. “Is that a pimple, or are you just happy to see me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She let loose with a raucous belly laugh and dived back into his mouth like her first burger had been a slider and Morning was her second.

Her tongue went Christopher Columbus, searching for an unknown passage to the back of his head. Her hands went Magellan and Ponce de León: one circumnavigated his body, the other launched an expedition for the fountain of youth.

As Morning tried to breathe, he felt her hand slip under his belt. He escaped her mouth, grabbed her hand, and exhaled a breathy “Woo!”

She nuzzled his neck. “Is that ‘woo’ as in ‘woo-hoo,’ or ‘whoa’?”

“A little of both.”

She growled softly. “Well, let’s turn that ‘whoa’ into ‘woo-hoo.’ ”

He pulled up her probing hand and kissed it. “Isn’t your mom gonna be home soon?”

“Not for hours.” She gripped him in an eye lock.

Morning was used to seeing her eyes oozing pleasure, but there was something more about them, something he’d never seen before: total wild abandon.

“C’mon,” she cooed, “I know you want to.”

He swallowed. “I thought we were gonna wait.”

“That’s weeks away.”

“But I’m kinda in training.”

“So am I,” she growled, “for love.” In one swift move,
she rolled him off the couch, braced their fall onto the carpet with her arm, and rolled him on top of her. She caught him in another kiss as her hand snaked down his stomach.