3
Newly risen vampires are unpredictable. Handy items to have nearby: Bottled blood, silver chains, and a Snuggie.
—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires
On the third day, I insisted that Jolene, Zeb, and the kids stay away. In fact, I asked them to leave their home at the edge of my property and visit Jolene’s pack for the night. Not all vampires wake up, well, sane, and I didn’t want Zeb’s family to become collateral damage to Jamie’s newborn thirst.
Dick, Gabriel, and I sat in the kitchen, staring up at the ceiling, as if we could peer up into the room where Jamie was resting. Sometime around midnight, there was a buzz along my spine. It was as if I could hear Jamie’s body picking up its pace, the ripple of energy that would animate him, since blood and electrical impulses had waved bye-bye about three days ago.
“You feel that, too?” I asked Gabriel, who was staring up at the ceiling with trepidation.
He shook his head. I frowned.
“Is this a sire thing?” I asked. “Could you feel me when I rose?”
“It’s a one-time privilege,” Gabriel told me. “It ensures that you’re present when your childe rises. In some cases of particularly troublesome charges, such a tracking device would be handy in the long term.”
“I’m going to pretend that you’re not talking about me,” I retorted.
Dick put a hand on my shoulder. “Stretch, go slow, OK? Be careful. Newborns are tricky. And he’s a newborn teenager. It’s like a hormone double whammy. Imagine what Ophelia must have been like when she first rose.” Gabriel cleared his throat in that “Shut the hell up” manner he’d mastered so many years ago. The look on my face had Dick scrambling to reassure me. “I’m sure it will be fine. Nothing to worry about. Go on up.”
Rolling my eyes, I quietly took the stairs two at a time with my boys close behind. Jamie’s body was still and cold on the bed, but you could feel the undercurrent rippling along his skin. I sat on the bed carefully and began unbuttoning my blouse so he could pull the collar aside.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel demanded, while Dick seemed torn between laughing and desperately searching for meaning in the crown molding.
“He’s going to want to feed,” I said. “I don’t want him making a buffet out of the townsfolk.”
“And why does that involve taking off your shirt?”
“I’m not taking off my shirt.
I’m making it easier to access my neck,” I said. Gabriel frowned. “What? The first feeding I had was with you. I thought this is how it works.”
“But he can have bottled blood,” Gabriel protested.
“I thought you said the first feeding was a sacrament.”
“That was before it was coming from you.”
“Seriously?” I exclaimed. “Is this like the vampire version of the breastfeeding debate?”
“What if he fed from your arm instead?” Gabriel said. “It’s a little less … personal.”
“Gabriel, I’m trying really hard to understand your point of view here, but you’re a few syllables from pissing me off.”
Gabriel raised his hands in a defeated gesture. “Fine, I’m just going to stay back here. Watching. Intently.”
I shushed him and felt Jamie stir next to me. His eyelids snapped open, and he jerked as if coming out of a bad dream. He blinked a few times, his eyes adjusting to the sharp, startling clarity of vampire vision. He slowly sat up, stretching his re-formed muscles.
The undead are, generally, more attractive than before we’ve turned. Even vampires who weren’t conventionally attractive in life have a certain sensual sparkle after death. As long as they keep up with basic hygiene, they will stay that way. Jamie, who was already blessed in the looks department, now had a distinctly unfair advantage. The eyes were more jade than olive now, standing out starkly from his creamy skin. His full lips parted over unnaturally white teeth. The boyish charm was still there but layered over something more dangerous, more compelling.
Suddenly, I felt Gabriel’s eyes on me, and if I could have blushed, my cheeks would have been beet-red. I cleared my throat and kept my voice low, smooth. “Jamie, how do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a car,” he muttered. He jerked again, realizing that the feminine voice from his bedside was not, in fact, his mother.
Jamie grabbed the sheet and pulled it to his chest. “Miss Jane?”
“Jamie.”
He scanned the room quickly, saw Gabriel, and scrambled across the bed. He almost toppled off onto the floor, but his reflexes helped him stop just before his weight shifted over the edge. He did a sort of tuck-and-roll thing that landed him on his feet. His eyes took on a sort of panicked glaze, and he started gasping for breath. I could see the comprehension cross his features.
He didn’t need to breathe.
“Jamie, I’m going to need you to stay calm.”
“Calm? What’s happening to me?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
He chewed on his plump bottom lip. “Uh, I was working. I drove the truck up to your shop. You waved hello and smiled at me. I remember thinking how much I liked that sweater on you, cause it made your, uh”—Gabriel cleared his throat, Dick threw Jamie a warning look, and Jamie immediately recognized his subbasement position on the room’s totem pole—”eyes stand out. You screamed my name, and I turned around, saw the car headed for me … And that’s it.”
“That car ran you down. It was a hit-and-run. You were bleeding, and there was a lot of internal damage. You were dying, and you asked me to change you.”
Jamie rubbed at his Adam’s apple and swallowed, a sign of the thirst building in his throat. “I don’t remember. I remember a feeling of not wanting to die, but that’s pretty much it. So, I’m a vampire now?”
“Yes.”
“Cool.”
My brow furrowed. “Really, that’s it? That’s the sum total of your response?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged.
“We’re talking a total change in lifestyle here, new hours, new diet, new rules, new lifestyle. And your response is ‘cool’?”
“Do I get a long black coat like that Angel guy? Ooh, or Spike. My sister loves that show.”
“All that MTV and Twitterfacing has seriously dulled you kids to emotional response, you know?”
A note of genuine fear, of concern, crept into his voice. “Wait, do my parents know I’m a vampire?”
I nodded. “Someone from the Council, the governing body for vampires, went to your house the night you died.”
“What do you mean, ‘the night I died’? How long have I been out?”
“It takes three days for a vampire to rise.”
“I’ve missed three days of school?” he yelped. “Unexcused? I’m going to be kicked off the baseball team. Aw, man, my dad’s going to kill me!”
“I’m pretty sure calling in dead counts as an excused absence.”
“Were they pissed?” he asked. “Am I grounded?”
“Noo. They were upset that you were hurt. But they weren’t angry … at you.”
“Can I see them?”
“Not for a few days. We need to make sure that you’re, uh, safe, to be around humans. It’s sort of dangerous for you to be around people right now. And I know you would hate to hurt someone. You’re going to need to get used to feeding and the whole bloodlust thing, before we can let you around innocent bystanders.”
“Aw, man, why’d you have to bring up food? I’m starving.” He groaned, rubbing his washboard abs. “Well, not starving, really, but, thirsty, really thirsty. Like I’ve been stuck out in the desert for days. Is that normal?” he asked, voice garbled as his fangs stretched out and bumped his lip. “What’s that?” He slapped his hand over his mouth. “What the hell is that?”
“Those are your fangs,” I told him. “It’s a perfectly normal response to your hunger.”
“Oh, my God, this is so embarrassing! I feel like I should walk around with a big notebook over my face.”
I laughed, but Gabriel asked, “Why is that funny?”
“How do I make them go away, Miss Jane?”
“Well, right now, you need them. But we’ll work on the whole retracting issue. We’re just going to stay nice and calm, and I’m going to walk you through your first feeding, OK?”
“Is it going to be gross?”
“It takes some getting used to,” I told him. “But it’s no big deal. Were you embarrassed when I used to serve you smiley-face pancakes?”
“I’m embarrassed that you’re talking about it now,” Jamie said, shooting a pointed look at Dick and Gabriel.
“Well, this is just like that. It’s just breakfast. Now, I’m going to put my wrist up to your lips, and you just do what feels natural, OK?”
“Is it going to hurt you?” he asked, eyeing my arm fearfully.
“Not if you don’t want to hurt me,” I assured him. “Now, just put your fangs into the skin and bite down.”
“I can’t, it feels … I don’t want to.”
“Maybe we should just try the bottled blood,” Gabriel offered.
I shot a glare at him. “Are you going to helicopter-grandsire him, or do we want a fully functional vampire who won’t be living in our basement thirty years from now?”
“What?”
“Here, Jamie, I’m going to help you this once, but the next time, you have to do it on your own.” I bit through the thin skin over my veins, shuddering at the weird wet crunching sound it made, and offered it to Jamie. He tentatively ran his tongue along the wound and lapped at the cool rise of blood welling up from my skin. I could hear Gabriel growling behind me. Jamie latched onto the bite and pulled blood from the wound in earnest. His hands wrapped around my arm, and he leaned into me, nestling his back into my side. He relaxed, nuzzling the skin of my arm in a way that was distinctly not “platonic.”
Chewing my lip, I looked up to Gabriel and Dick. My fiance seemed to be debating whether to let me handle the situation or throw Jamie out a window, while Dick was struggling against hysterical giggles at my plight.
“Jamie, that’s enough, now,” I said, using what I hoped was a good impersonation of my mother’s “Jane, be reasonable” tone.
Jamie grumbled and tugged my arm possessively. He shifted his hips toward me, and my eyes widened. Jamie had a little problem. Well, not a little problem. It was a perfectly average “notebook-worthy” problem.
He opened his eyes and followed my eye line to the tent in his sweatpants. He immediately pulled away and grabbed a pillow to cover himself.
I was woefully unprepared for living with a teenage boy.
“Sorry,” he said, grimacing.
“It, uh, happens,” Gabriel acknowledged, moving ever so subtly closer to the bed to help me rise from it. “Just don’t let it happen around Jane. It’s not appropriate.”
“Who are you, again?” Jamie demanded of Gabriel.
“Did you want to try some of the bottled now?” I asked, pretending the embarrassment away by sheer force of will. “You need to get used to feeding both ways. If you want to feed on humans, that’s your choice. But as long as you’re living with me, I’m going to ask you to stick to a nonviolent diet.”
Jamie accepted the offered Faux Type O, took a sip, and blanched. “I’m good—Wait, I’m living with you?”
“Yes, I turned you, so I’m responsible for you. Like a foster parent. If you screw up and eat a busload of nuns, I am in some serious trouble. So, if I ever come down on you or seem like I’m being unreasonable, it’s just because you don’t quite get the rules yet. And I’m trying to keep us both from getting the Trial—the vampire version of ironic/painful capital punishment.”
Jamie’s eyes scanned the room, checking out his new digs. Considering that it was my room when I stayed with Jettie as a kid and still sported peppermint-striped wallpaper and a lacy canopy bed, I didn’t think he was terribly impressed. “How long will I be here?”
“Until you’re ready to live on your own.”
“But what about school?” he demanded, his voice cracking Peter Brady-style. “And work? Baseball? College?”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe, when you’re ready, we could have Ophelia arrange some home-school lessons so you could still graduate with your class … assuming that they’re willing to have a nighttime ceremony. And as for college, maybe in a few years, you could try it. Since the Coming Out, more schools have been adding night classes to their schedules. I know you were probably counting on baseball scholarships, but I can help out with tuition. I feel sort of responsible for this. I’m so sorry, Jamie. I know this is a lot to take in. Trust me, I’ve been there. The thing you have to focus on is that you’re alive, technically speaking. And that once you stop thinking about everything you’ve given up, being a vampire is pretty awesome.”
“Like what?” he demanded.
“Well, you’re superstrong, for one, like athletes on illegal substances times a thousand. And that thing you did to keep yourself from falling on your face? Doesn’t compare to what you’ll be able to do, balance-and agility-wise. You can run faster than you ever imagined. And some vampires get extra bonus talents.”
“Like singing?”
Dick snickered and muttered something about “karaoke,” which was clearly a reference to the last time we’d gone to the Cellar as a group and I’d performed a particularly sad rendition of “Love Is a Battlefield.” Gabriel tried to cover his laugh by clearing his throat but failed. I scowled at them both.
“No, like Gabriel can alter human memories. It’s a handy skill when you’re feeding off your neighbors and need them to remember falling neck-first on a barbecue fork.”
“Wow,” he marveled. “What can you do?”
“I can read minds.”
Jamie looked stricken, which made me wonder what he’d been thinking in the last few minutes.
“Only human minds,” I told him. “But I try not to go sifting around in other people’s brains. It’s just rude. I still can’t get the hang of reading vampires, unless I’m feeding from them. And that’s generally when Gabriel and I are … never mind.”
“I want to see,” Jamie said.
I frowned. “Gabriel and I are not doing that in front of you.”
“No, I want to see how fast and strong I am. Can you take me outside? I just, I want to run or something. Please? I feel like I’ve been sleeping for days.”
I looked up and saw Gabriel shaking his head.
“I’m not sure that’s a great idea, Stretch,” Dick added, casting nervous glances at our young ward.
Jamie gave me the big green puppy-dog eyes, and I felt a strange melty sensation in my chest. I groaned. This was not a healthy precedent to set, him persuading me by being adorably pathetic.
“Please,” he begged. “I have some questions for you, and they’re kind of, um, private.”
“What kind of questions?” Gabriel asked.
“The private kind,” Jamie shot back.
Unsure, I gave Gabriel the classic eyebrow lift, meaning, For the love of God, please tell me what to do.
Gabriel shrugged. “It’s up to you. You’re the sire now.”
“That is decidedly unhelpful,” I told him.
“Douche!” Jamie fake-coughed into his hand.
I turned on my young charge and gave him a withering glare. “Seriously, did you just douche-cough my fiance? What’s next? The dreaded slut-sneeze?”
Dick laughed under his breath. I whirled on Dick. “I so should have let you turn him.” I turned toward Jamie and poked a finger into his chest. “OK, but the first sign of you bolting for that busload of nuns, I break your ankles like Kathy Bates in Misery.” He gave me a blank look. I sighed and tried to think of a more modern cinematic torture reference. “I’ll go Jigsaw on your ass.” He laughed. “I am completely serious. You will do what I say, when I say it, or you won’t be able to walk for a week.”
He looked frightened for a moment, then nodded. “Believe it or not, my mom used to say that right before she’d take me and Daisy into Walmart.”
“Nice.” I snickered as I tossed him a T-shirt extolling the virtues of the Southern Festival of Books. “Take it easy. It’s your first time out.”
We trotted down the stairs with Gabriel and Dick close at our heels. I stopped on the front porch, sniffing the air, trying to sense any humans who might stumble into our path. Jamie was staring up at the sky, shielding his sensitive eyes from the light of the moon. He flexed his hands, marveling at the way the sinew and bone moved under his skin. He smiled, looking to me like a baby taking his first steps.
“You ready?” I asked.
Jamie was stretching his arms behind his shoulders in that jocky way that clearly communicated that he did not consider me athletic competition. “What happened your first time out?”
“I tried to eat my best friend.”
His arms froze over his head, and he frowned. “Oh, well, I’ll try not to do that, then.”
I laughed and took a few quick steps toward the pasture. Jamie quickly caught up to me. My new childe running was a thing to behold. How someone so bulky could be so lithe and light on his feet was a mystery. We ran across the width of my land, leaping high over the grassy hills for no other reason than that we could. Jamie whooped as he landed, a little unsteady on his feet, and then bounded over an old shed my great-grandfather used to use as a deer blind.
“This is great!” he crowed, flipping back into a handspring and walking on his hands on the tall silvered grass. I sat down on a fallen log and watched, a bemused smirk tilting the corners of my mouth. “I can see everything, every crater on the moon, every branch on every tree. I can smell everything, the grass crushing under my feet, the smell of your skin. Did anyone ever tell you that you smell just like peaches and cinnamon?”
“Easy,” I told him sternly.
“No, it’s just that the smell sort of sticks out in my mind, probably because it was the last thing I smelled as I was dying. That smell means safe, it means home, which is probably some weird vampire instinct thing, huh?” he continued as if I hadn’t just admonished him for inappropriate sire harassment. “How come we never hear about this stuff when they talk about vampires on the news? It’s all ‘Be respectful and cautious when you’re approaching the cranky undead.’ No one ever says, ‘Vampires are like superheroes. Ask one of them to leap over a tall building in a single bound!’ “
“Because vampires would get extremely annoyed if humans did that,” I mused.
“Whatever. If I get to go back to school, I’m going to convince the coach to let me keep playing baseball. We could totally win state with my new skills,” he said, springing back to his feet and executing several backflips. “We’d have to play at night, though.”
“Well, they might let you on the cheerleading squad, either way.” I laughed as he tumbled across the moonlit clearing.
“Hey!”
“I’m just kidding. If they let you back in school, I will go to every game and wear one of those big embarrassing pins with your picture on it.”
His face split with a huge, toothy grin. “Really?”
“Really. Someone has to keep you from snacking on the outfield. The Half-Moon Howlers couldn’t stand the loss if you were staked by angry spectators.”
“Funny.” He frowned, finally coming to a stop so he could sit beside me. “So, you said something about rules earlier? You should probably tell me about those now. Nothing that’s this awesome can come without some serious drawbacks. Like steroids or dating a hot chick with a crazy dad.”
“How much do you know about us?” I asked. “Like our origin stories, the reason we came out of the coffin, that sort of thing?”
“Well, I was in elementary school during the Great Coming Out, and my parents wouldn’t let me watch the news because they were afraid it would give me nightmares.”
“Thank you for reminding me again of how young you are.” I sighed. “OK, no one knows where vampires come from. Almost every culture has some sort of vampire creature in its folklore. I could bore you to tears describing how the most popular beliefs originated from the Slavic traditions, probably spread by Gypsies as they traveled through India and Egypt. But it’s your first night, and I’ll spare you. There are plenty of books in the library that you should study, anyway.”
Jamie blanched at the mention of assigned reading but maintained a respectful silence.
I continued, “Vampires had it pretty good for about two thousand years, lurking in the shadows, drinking their fill, looking all pretty and ageless. And then this doofus tax consultant Arnie Frink gets turned and sues his boss for nighttime work hours, citing the Americans with Disabilities Act. After the courts determined that Arnie was not, in fact, crazy—or breathing, for that matter—Arnie got his night hours, a handsome settlement, and an interview with Barbara Walters. Vampires were out, whether they wanted it or not. You probably remember everybody running around panicking, buying Vampire Home Defense Kits at Walmart, and making crosses out of tent stakes. Vampires were panicking, too, forming the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, making tentative agreements with the governments of the world, trying to keep the angry mobs at bay. But I realize that you’ll find all of this equally boring coming from me, so I’m just going to refer you to the Guide for the Newly Undead. It’s basically the survival guide for newly turned vampires. You need to memorize it, maybe carry portions of it around in your pocket.”
Jamie groaned at the thought of homework, so I moved on to more interesting topics. “The rules are pretty simple. The most important thing you have to remember is: Sunlight is bad. It will kill you. No arguments, no bargaining. You will be a little pile of dust. I tried using SPF-500 sunblock once but ended up with severe burns on my hands because I forgot to protect the creases between my fingers. The pain I can’t even describe. I would avoid it altogether to the best of your ability.”
“OK, but what about stakes and crosses and silver bullets and all that? ‘Cause I’m thinking a silver-bullet gun would be pretty awesome for self-defense. It would go with the black coat.”
I sighed and made a promise to myself to keep Dick and Jamie separated as much as possible. “We’re allergic to silver. Imagine sticking your hand into a hornets’ nest and being forced to listen to the Wiggles while the little bastards repeatedly sting you.” He shuddered. “Yeah, it hurts. And if you get dosed with too much of it, your healing abilities are overwhelmed, and you can have the vampire version of anaphylactic shock.”
“Huh?”
I sighed, reminding myself that I was dealing with a young person. “Anybody at your school allergic to peanuts?”
He nodded. “Tiffany Scott’s face swells up and turns purple if she gets near a PB and J. She has to sit at a special table in the cafeteria.”
“Same principle.”
“That’s kind of cool.”
I harrumphed. “Let’s see, wooden stake to the heart, beheading, and setting us on fire—all fatal. We can see our reflections. Crosses aren’t a big deal, unless you and God have some unresolved issues. We can go into homes uninvited, but we could be criminally charged if we do, so let’s not try that.”
“Can we turn into bats?”
“Sadly, no.”
“Garlic?” he asked.
“Stinky but not harmful.”
“What about sex?”
I tried to maintain the most neutral expression possible. “What about it?”
“Will I be having it?”
“That’s sort of up to you.”
Jamie moved toward me and put his hand on my thigh. I shot to my feet and backed away to a distance that wouldn’t get me put on some sort of watch list.
“No, no, no. That’s not how this works at all.”
“But you said Gabriel was your sire, and you’re … with him.”
“I’m with him because he’s my boyfriend, well, my fiance now.”
“Seriously?”
I mulled over whether he was more surprised that I was getting married or that I was marrying Gabriel. I nodded. “He just happened to become my boyfriend after I was turned. It has nothing to do with the sire thing.”
“But what if I want to date?”
I shrugged. “After you’re settled, you can date whoever you want, as long as they’re a consenting adult and you don’t do anything anatomically compromising in my house.”
Given the gleam in his eyes, I was suddenly very thankful that Jamie couldn’t get anyone pregnant. There wasn’t enough latex at Goodyear to contain that gleam.
“You have to be careful around humans, Jamie,” I said, my tone gentle. “Daddies who wouldn’t be happy to find you rolling around the backseat with their daughters aren’t going to be happier about it now that you have fangs. And while getting hit with a shotgun blast won’t kill you, it will sting like the dickens. And you don’t want to hurt the girls, either. You’re a good-looking guy. You could break a lot of hearts.”
He grinned at me and put his hand on my knee.
I groaned.
“I misread that again, huh?”
“Yes. And your hand’s still on my knee.” I sighed. “That settles it. We’re going to have to keep you away from Dick Cheney.”
“The vice president?”
“Oh, we need to talk.”