Lust for Life (2 page)

“Good to see our clients getting into the holiday spirit. What about Ray from the
Pontiac dealership?”

“Franklin’s got him now.” She points past me, near the bar’s side door, where our
sales and marketing director is chatting up one of our most fickle advertisers. Neither
is in costume, but Franklin might as well be, with his animated, garrulous, downright
swishy public persona.

It’s all an act, especially these days. His boyfriend, Aaron, died of the same mutant
chicken pox that would’ve killed me permanently had I not been turned. Since then,
Franklin’s real-life demeanor has been even grimmer than usual.

The slithering strains of “Season of the Witch” creep out of the speakers, and the
partygoers wrap around each other in pairs, slinking together in the darkness.

Our punk/Goth DJ Regina spies us and starts to head over. Lori dashes for the bathroom,
covering her mouth. I’ll assume those events are a coincidence.

Regina strides toward me, the chains on her black leather boots and jacket clinking,
because she wants them to. She has the stealth of most vampires, but she likes to
make an entrance.

I step forward to meet her at the corner of the bar. “Vincent’s playing your song.”

“Ha ha.” She taps her black-lacquered fingernails on the bar’s polished brass railing,
so softly it’s barely audible under the blaring music. Still, Stuart the bartender
turns instantly.

“Another Bass ale?” he asks Regina, who just smiles.

I pull my list of clients from the pocket of my denim jacket and take a surreptitious
glance around, trying to figure out who I’ve yet to schmooze. “Vincent’s great with
the crowd. Best we’ve had since”—I clear my throat to force out the name stuck there—“since
Jim.”

“Vincent’s totally brill.” Regina leans back against the bar, crossing her arms over
her chest. “Shame we’re going to lose him.”

“Not another one!”

“He put in his two days’ notice tonight.”

“Two
days
? What did you guys do to him?”

“Nothing, swear. We even let him play cards with us.”

“You didn’t.”

“Just wanted him to feel like one of the gang.”

Playing poker against creatures who can sense the
slightest rise in body temperature or heart rate is the surest path to poverty. “How
much did you take from him?”

“Total last week? About six grand.”

“Regina . . .”

“David needs to hire one of us to replace Jim. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“The job description does not include the word ‘undead.’ Besides, Jeremy’s a DJ and
he’s human.”

She scoffs. “Despite his best efforts.”

Ever since he discovered vampires were real, our emotastic ’00s DJ has tried to become
one. Nothing’s dampened his enthusiasm—not even watching me bleed and suffocate on
the cold dive into death, then scream and shudder on the twisting climb into un-life.
Jeremy likes pain.

I spy him on the far side of the bar and offer a wave. Jeremy waves back with an actual
smile, making his lip ring glint in the overhead light. The cute (and surprisingly
straight-edge-looking) girl with him probably has something to do with his unusually
sunny mood.

I elbow Regina. “Isn’t that Lea from Legal Grounds?”

She glances away from the stage over to Jeremy. “I guess.”

“He told me months ago he had a crush on a girl who worked at the coffee bar. I figured
it was Emma-Rae, the only person in our zip code with more tattoos than he has.”

“Opposites attract, right? Look at me and Noah. Or you and Shane.”

“You think Shane and I are opposites?”

“That boy is a marathon brooder. But nothing bothers you.”

“Would I need six months of therapy after that zombie battle if nothing bothered me?”

“Most people would need six years of therapy after what you’ve been through.”

She has a point. In a four-week span last spring, I became a vampire to avoid death
by mutant chicken pox; staked my Control commander to save the entire town of Sherwood,
Maryland, from zombies; impaled myself on a fallen tree (don’t ask); and had my throat
nearly torn out by one of my coworkers.

I’m either resilient, shallow, or totally lying to myself, but whatever the reason,
I feel glad to be “alive.” Especially now that the nights are getting longer.

“We interviewed a new candidate for the sixties job,” Regina says. “Adrian’s the real
deal. Metaphysically, musically. He’s even got the hair.” Her lip curls a little.
Punks aren’t fond of hippies, even though their music shares a call for revolution.

“I don’t care if he’s a mummy with a mullet, as long as he keeps the ratings up.”
I chatter on, making alliterations with monsters and hairstyles, while another part
of my brain has zoomed in on the name Adrian.

First, the silliness test: The Vampire Adrian. Not bad. Many names are too tame or
diminutive to work with the vampire title. Someone named Bob, for instance, better
switch to Robert after he’s been turned, or he’ll be laughed at. By me, at least.

Second, the barrage of Adrian anagrams, which I can’t stop: A NADIR, AD IRAN, AND
AIR. I’m particularly proud of RADIAN—extra points for keeping it to one word.

Vampires tend to develop obsessive-compulsive behaviors,
a nasty side effect of our “temporal adhesion,” which is a fancy way of saying we
get stuck in time in the era we were turned. Most vampires still dress and speak as
we did when we were alive—we’re basically walking, stalking time capsules.

So the OCD quirks help us feel in control as the world changes around us. Usually
the weirdness takes years to manifest, but I started obsessing over wordplay and correct
grammar on my first night.

The phone rings behind the bar. I flinch as the sound cuts through the background
noise to scrape my spine. Stuart keeps the ringer turned all the way up so he can
hear it—he doesn’t know it hurts our sensitive vampire ears, since, like most people,
he doesn’t know vampires exist.

He answers after one ring. I turn back to Regina.

“What do you mean, this Adrian guy is the ‘real deal’?”

“I mean, he’s a bleedin’ flower child. If Jim is Altamont, Adrian is the Summer of
Love.”

I cringe inside at the name of my stalker and the violent incident she equates him
with. Jim loved the sixties for its recklessness, not its idealism. He was one of
that decade’s darkest children.

I spy Lori heading for the front exit with David, her husband and WVMP general manager.
She gives me a wave and a weak smile. Poor girl.

I wave back, then turn to Regina. “So I guess we won’t be hearing a lot of Doors or
Pink Floyd from Adrian.”

“He’s more folk-rock.” She examines the pointy end of one of her long black spikes
of hair. “He’s still mad at Bob Dylan for going electric.”

She might be kidding, but I laugh, anyway, mostly from relief, and the fervent hope
that WVMP has finally left the DJ-Jim era behind. If the programming lineup can move
on, so can I.

Suddenly my laughter fades. Not because I’ve seen or heard or smelled something that
stopped my breath. It’s a sense beyond senses, which in my more rational moments I
don’t even believe in, because I don’t believe in much of anything.

But now, as I turn toward the front door, where I know Shane will appear twenty minutes
early, I believe.

“What’s wrong?” asks Regina, in a tone that suggests she doesn’t care, though I know
she does.

I hand her my half-full bottle of beer. “Nothing’s wrong now.”

Even in combat boots, my feet seem to float as I cross the room. The crowd parts a
little, leaving me a path. Then it parts a lot, revealing Shane framed by the wide
wooden doorway.

I stop to drink him in as he searches for me. With his lithe form dressed from neck
to toe in the black Control Enforcement uniform, he stands like a statue: a monument
to badassery. Thick-soled, calf-high boots add even more height to his six-foot-five-inch
frame.

My sigh mixes desire with relief, at seeing him “alive” and well, and at the fact
that they didn’t make him cut his hair. The light-brown, nape-length strands still
frame his face, making the uniform look borrowed—or, better yet, stolen.

When his pale blue eyes find mine, eight weeks of loneliness melt like snow on a sun-drenched
road.

We take a long step toward each other, but the crowd
suddenly surges between us, pushed by a force at the other side of the bar.

Stuart is shoving his way toward the stage, his tan-weathered face twisted with urgency.
He speaks to Vince, who shuts off the music mid-song. The crowd goes silent and tense.

Stuart takes the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave the
bar calmly but quickly. Please walk to the nearest exit—do not stop for your coats—and
once you’re out, get as far from the building as you can.” He pauses, jaw shifting
as he mulls his next words. “Don’t panic, but a bomb threat’s been called in.”

The fear scent of two hundred and fifty people hits me like a shot of pepper spray.
I squeeze my eyes shut and stagger back. Everyone is screaming, even the guys. Terror
pitches their voices into an eardrum-piercing octave.

I slap my hands over my ears and struggle to open my eyes.

“Ciara!”

Shane’s voice breaks through the siren in my head. A watery glimpse shows him pushing
through the crowd toward me, fighting the flow of fear and frenzy.

I lurch forward, wanting to swipe aside the people between us like bowling pins. A
woman dressed as Cher stomps on the ridge of my foot with a spiked heel.

Shane, closer now, calls my name again. I put out my hand, but a crazed, um, person
dressed as Boy George shoves me aside with the world’s pointiest elbow.

I’m trapped by my superhuman strength, afraid to push these people for fear of shattering
ribs and limbs. But instinct reminds me what’ll happen if I’m touched by fire or sun.

I won’t scald, blister, or scar. I’ll disappear. After about ten shrieky, melty seconds,
that is. If I burn like flash paper in front of all these people, the world will know
vampires exist.

“Ciara!” Shane pulls me tight to his side. “Don’t let go.”

I let him lead me, my eyes shut against the sting of human fear. Someone to my left
has literally pissed herself.

Near the door, the panic and pressure grow as people sense that survival is close
but not quite within their grasp. I focus on keeping myself and everyone around me
upright.
Please let the door open out instead of in.

My foot hits something soft. I look down to see a hand, then behind me to see a body,
stretched and inert. Its pale blue shirt is torn and scuffed.

“Franklin!” I pull away from Shane and fight the crowd to stop in my tracks. It’s
like trying to tread water in a rushing river.

“Franklin, get up!” I tug at his wrist, then travel hand over hand up his arm like
I’m climbing a rope, making my way to his shoulder.

More feet stomp over his chest. I want to rip them off and leave these people bloody
stumps for legs.

Instead, I hunch over Franklin as I lift his upper body, shielding him with my less-breakable
torso. His head lolls back on his neck.

If I pick him up as easily as I can, I’ll be busted as supernatural, but I don’t care.
There’s no time to ask for help just so I can pretend to be a weak human girl. I slip
an arm beneath his knees and the other under his shoulders. Fighting the crowd’s own
field of gravity, I stand up straight.

Shane is there, looming in front of me. “Give him.”

“No time. Just hold me up and push us forward.”

The mass of flesh is thinning as the last wave of people squeezes out the door.

A step from the threshold, it happens: a sudden shift in air pressure, lasting a millisecond,
which to a vampire can seem like an eternity.

A roar, a thrust of air, and the world begins to melt.

2

I Walk the Line

“Ciara, wake up.” Shane’s voice is muffled, like he’s speaking through a wool scarf.

A cool mist touches my cheek, and I hear the faint rush of water. I swipe it from
my face, then realize I have hands with which to wipe. Hands with fully functional
fingers, not melted stubs.

I open my eyes to see the edge of a roof and, in the corner of my vision, a traffic
light. A siren screams, piercing the cotton wall of my ringing ears.

“There you are, thank God.” Shane’s face appears above me. The front of his uniform
is shredded, revealing hints of unbroken flesh beneath.

I touch his chest through one of the holes. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, we got thrown pretty hard, but we were lucky—the fire missed us. I carried
you around the corner before the paramedics could see you.”

“Franklin? Is he—”

“He’ll be fine.” Shane helps me sit and lean against him. “They took him to the hospital
for some bruises
and burns, maybe a cracked rib, plus the concussion that knocked him out. You saved
his life.”

“Too bad he’s not in charge of payroll.” Ah, good, my quip powers are undamaged. “Did
everyone else get out safe? And by ‘everyone else,’ I mean primarily our friends.”

“The other DJs were first out the door. You know how quick vampires are, and how good
at self-preservation. Regina grabbed Jeremy and his girlfriend. Some of the humans
near the back where you were got burned pretty bad, but I haven’t, well, smelled any
dead.”

I look at his outfit, or what’s left of it. “I thought we weren’t supposed to wear
our uniforms in public.”

“It’s Halloween. I figured people would think it was a costume. Besides, I couldn’t
wait to see you, not even long enough to change.” He leans in to kiss me.

My phone rings, making me sigh with frustration. I pull it from my jacket pocket,
marveling that it survived the impact against the concrete.

“Ciara, thank God you’re okay!” Lori shouts. “Wait, this is Ciara, right? Not some
bystander who grabbed her phone from the pile of clothes she left behind?”