Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (61 page)

Lucinda giggled again, and Oscar  continued as I snuck down the hall, my bare feet silent on the carpet. “Now do you want to hear the rest of it, or are you gonna talk all morning?”

“OK, I’m done!” she cried. “Tell me the rest.”

I peeked around the door frame to see Luci sitting up in bed, her purple-print comforter pulled up to her waist, white curls brushing the shoulders of a frilly yellow nightgown. The bedside lamp threw dim light over her, shining on pale-blue eyes, glinting on the points of her tiny, sharp incisors bared in delight.

Over her shoulder, a thin beam of sunlight shone through a hairline seam in the plush, purple-upholstered shutters covering her window, where moonlight had streamed an hour earlier.

Oscar sat in a ladder-back chair by her bed, reading the familiar lines of the fairy tale from a worn, leather-bound book that had seen its best days before our parents were even born.  “The old witch held Gretchen immobile, her lips locked on the little girl’s throat, her fangs piercing thin, fragile skin. She sucked hard, pulling blood from Gretchen’s body again and again, filling herself with it until the girl began to weaken and

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finally fell to the ground, motionless. Her eyes closed, her heart

was still.”

I frowned as Oscar ran one pale hand through his stiff blond

spikes. I didn’t remember Gretchen collapsing.

“When the little girl was dead the witch turned to her  brother, who still sat in the cage, staring at his sister’s lifeless  body in horror. Handel knew he was next.”

Luci’s eyes widened, and her lower lip quivered.

My jaw clenched in aggravation. I stomped into the bedroom and snatched the book from my brother, smacking the back of his head with my free hand. “Don’t ad-lib with her, you moron!” I scowled as he whirled on me, irritation bringing a drastic flush to  his enviably pale cheeks. “She’s six years old!  Give her the children’s version and save your horror stories for your idiot friends,” I snapped.

“It’s not a story Kez.” Oscar’s pale-green eyes blazed with  conviction. “It’s a morality tale, and the message is ‘don’t take  candy from strangers’, How is she supposed to learn anything if  the story doesn’t illustrate the possible consequences?”

He reached for the book, but I stepped back. “First of all, it’s not
 
your
 
job to educate her. But beyond that, appropriate consequences for a first-grader do
 
not
 
include cannibalism and death. Leave the lessons to her teacher and go finish your own homework before I tell Mom you went all gruesome on Luci again.”

Oscar scowled, but plodded into the hall without argument. Mom was still mad at him for the D he’d pulled in maths. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work  –  he’d skipped both second and fifth grade, and was now the youngest freshman in the school by nearly two years  –  but that he had no interest in sitting

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behind  a desk all morning. And until he figured out how to get  an A without doing homework, he couldn’t afford to piss her off  further.

“And you . . .” I smiled and settled onto the edge of Luci’s  bed, plucking a pink bear from the pile stacked against the  headboard, his plush fangs stark white and glittery. “It’s past  your bedtime, and you’re keeping Petals up.”

“Did that really happen?” Luci scooted down under the

covers as I pulled them up to her chest.

“Did what really happen?”

“Did the witch really bite  Handel and Gretchen and suck

their blood?”

“Of course not.” I lifted one corner of the blanket and  tucked Petals in beside her, his rounded, white-on-pink ear  nestled in a tangle of her sweet smelling curls. “Handel and  Gretchen aren’t real. It’s just a  story, and Oscar told it all wrong.  In the version Mom told us, Gretchen kills the evil witch and  saves her brother. And they both live happily ever after.”

But Luci wouldn’t be placated by my happy ending. “Oscar says people used to bite all the time. That was how we used to feed ourselves, instead of cutting meat with a knife and fork and drinking blood from a carton.”

“Well Oscar’s full of crap. And you can quote me on that.”

Luci grinned. “So we never drank blood from each other?

Then why do we have  fangs?”

Damn it, Oscar!
 
He was always telling her half-truths and leaving me to sort the facts from the bullshit. Medieval use and

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abuse of fangs was
 
not
 
something I wanted to explain to a firstgrader.

“OK, here’s the deal on fangs, but listen up, ‘cause I’m only

going to say this once. OK?”

She nodded solemnly, wrapping one small arm around

Petals.

“Do you know what vestigial organs are?”

Luci shook her head.

Of course not, I thought. She’s six. “Vestigial organs are the parts of our bodies we used  to need a long time ago. But we’ve evolved over time and now we no longer need them. Like wings on a bird that can’t fly. Or like your tailbone, which doesn’t really do anything because people no longer have tails. Our fangs are like that.”

Her grip on Petals tightened. “So we
 
used
 
to use them to

drink blood?”

“Well, yes. A long time ago.”

Her eyes widened again, and her pale brows dipped in

concern. “Did people eat kids?”

“No! Feeding from other people  –  including children  –  has  never been OK. Even when we all lived in caves. We ate  animals then, just like we do now. Only back then we didn’t  have refrigerators to keep the blood and meat from going bad, so  we had to drink and eat straight from the source. But there was  no evil witch who drank from children. That’s just Oscar’s  version of a story Mom used to tell us.”

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“Why didn’t Mom tell
 
me
 
that story?” Luci asked, and I

stifled a groan. She had a knack for asking the hard questions.

Because since dad left, she’s working two jobs and barely

has time to  sleep, much less tell stories
. But I couldn’t say that.

“Because she’s really busy right now. But I’ll tell you a

story any time you want.”

Her eyes brightened a little at that, and she hugged Petals

closer to her chest.

“You ready to sleep now?” I asked. Luci nodded, and I  tucked the covers in tight around her. With a twist of her lamp  switch, the room went dark, but for that slim crack of light from  the window, nowhere near enough to hurt her.

I was almost to the door when she whispered. “I love you,

Kez.”

“Love you too, Luce.” I left the door open an inch, then  trudged into the living room where Oscar sat on the couch in  front of the television,
 
not
 
doing his homework.

“What’s this?” I dropped onto the cushion next to him and

kicked his feet off the  cluttered coffee table.

“Bloodclot. Live.” On screen, a tall, thin man screamed at  the crowd through lips painted a gruesome shade of red,  reminiscent of drying blood. His make-up-whitened skin was  crowned by a shocking thatch of long, jet-black hair. “Ruben  Bensch is a
 
demon
 
on the guitar. I’m gonna get my hair  darkened just like his.”

I snorted. “You’re dreaming. Mom will never go for that.”  And even if she did, dying his hair black wouldn’t help Oscar’s social life. Considering his larger-than-average  brain and his

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smaller-than-average build, it would take a miracle for him to fit

in. Black hair was no miracle.

“She will if I get an A in maths.”

“Like I said . . .”

Oscar kicked my ankle, but before I could retaliate, the front door opened. I twisted  on the couch, squinting against the assault of harsh daylight as our mother rushed through the door.  The sun was bright and made my eyes water, but thanks to the covered porch (built so Luci  –  the most sensitive of us to sunlight  –  wouldn’t be burned even  if she was still awake at eight in the morning), no direct rays blazed inside.

Mom shut the door and stomped snow from her boots onto the mat. “Sorry I’m late again, guys.” She flipped the blue-velvet hood back from her head, untied the strings, then pulled her cape off and hung it on a hook to the left of the door. “Is  Luci in bed?”

“Yeah, but she’s probably still awake if you want to go say

good morning.”

“Thanks.” Mom kicked her boots off and tugged her blouse  down over a recently thickening middle.  She set her purse on the  end table next to Oscar, then headed towards Luci’s room.

She was back in minutes, plopping down on the couch

between us.

“Hey, Mom, if I got an A in maths this semester, can I get  my hair dyed like Ruben Bensch?” Oscar pointed at the  television, where Bensch was now yelling in painful disharmony  with the rest of the band.

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“Absolutely not.” Mom stared at the screen in mild disgust.

“That’s unnatural. You’d scare the shit out of Luci.”

“Too late,” I said, grinning as Oscar scowled. “He’s already

improvised a new ending to ‘Handel and Gretchen’.”

Mom frowned at him. “No more not-so-happy endings,

Oscar. Not while that real-life monster is still on the loose.”

And this time I didn’t think it was just Luci who was scared.

My alarm went of at 6 p.m., as usual, and I started to smack the snooze button. But then I remembered Mom had to work early again  –  on weekdays she answered phones and fetched luke-warm white cells for an attorney downtown  –  and I would need to wake Oscar up and get Luci ready for school. So I rolled over and glanced at the sliver of light shining through the crack in my shutters.

It dimmed a little more each second. Dusk was well underway, and by the time I’d showered it would probably be safe to open the shutters and wake Luci with a healthy dose of moonlight.

Oscar would just get the overhead bulb flipped on as I

passed his room.

Twenty minutes later I ran a brush through my dripping hair on my way to Luci’s room. Next door, Oscar was groaning and mumbling  because I’d thrown his pillow into the hall when he tried to use it to block the light from his face.

“Luciiiiinda . . .” I sang softly, walking past her bed to the

window. Luci rolled over and pulled up her blanket. I flipped

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the latch on her shutters and folded them back  to reveal a

beautiful starlit night beyond the glass. “Come on, Luce! Time

to get up.”

As I twisted the switch on her lamp, my baby sister sat up reluctantly, blinking huge eyes at me, her irises so pale they were nearly colourless. I’d  always been jealous of those eyes.  Mine had more colour than was fashionable. But then, so did my hair. Luci and Oscar had nearly translucent curls, like our mother. But my hair was so dark and coarse it was practically yellow. It was my father’s hair and  every time I saw it I remembered him. And wondered where in the hell he was.

He’d been gone for three years, and Luci barely

remembered him.

“Come on hon, let’s get you dressed and fed before we have

to fight Oscar for the bathroom mirror.”

I dressed her in two layers, because the note Mom had left on the fridge said it would probably dip below freezing near midnight. Again. I was so ready for spring, in spite of the shorter nights it would bring.

With Luci clothed, pigtailed and at least half awake, I  aimed her at her usual chair in the kitchen and continued to the fridge, from which I pulled a package of sausage links and a  carton of eggs. The sausages I stuck in the microwave, set to a precise  98.6 degrees. A degree cooler, and Luci wouldn’t eat them.

While the sausages warmed, I made breakfast smoothies.  One egg and whole blood for Luci; two eggs and red cells only for me. I was watching my waistline.

Oscar joined us several minutes later, his curls straightened into the usual white points. He topped two slices of toast with congealed pig blood and popped open a can of platelets.

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I turned the television on while we ate. The evening anchor for
 
Headline News
 
appeared on the screen, listing the top stories of the night. The first one, naturally, was the charred body found in the mall parking lot.

Sometime during the afternoon, she’d been positively identified as Phoebe Hayes, and with the confirmation of her identity had come the first break in the case. Two of Hayes’ classmates had seen her get into  an unfamiliar, pale-blue sedan after school on Monday morning.

I nearly choked on my smoothie when the screen showed her school photograph. I’d known the Hayes girl was only nine