Suck It Up and Die (25 page)

“No, I’m stressing over Zoë’s getting a vein popped. It’s a sympathy pimple.”

Portia smiled. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you. You’re the most sensitive guy I’ve ever met.”

He took the compliment like a punch to the gut. In just a few days, love had wilted to “like.”
And why stop at “sensitive guy”?
he fretted.
Why didn’t she just say what she meant? “I like you because you’re like a girl.” What’s next? Finding out that “EB” means “eternal beliked”!

Cody and Zoë coming out of the drugstore saved Morning from further torture.

Zoë threw on her game face. “Let’s do it!” She grabbed Portia’s arm and strode across Tenth. The guys followed in Zoë’s train of words. “But this thing I’m about to do, what is it really? I mean, ‘ecstasy of exsanguination’ is cool, but is it putting too much pressure on me,
and
my date?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “ ‘Consensual bloodlust’ is way too health class. I could say I’m a ‘blood meal on wheels,’
but it makes me sound like a carhop. What about this? ‘I’m just meeting a friend to have a necktail’? No, sounds like some Chinese takeout: General Tso’s necktail. Hey, I got it! Bloodletting used to be called ‘breathing a vein.’ ‘I’m going for a little breather.’ ‘You wanna go for a breather?’ ‘Sure, let’s take a breather.’ ‘C’mon, big boy, take my breath away!’ Yep, that’s it. I’m not going on a date with a vampire. I’m takin’ a breather!”

Not even trying to get a word in edgewise, her friends simply listened. They knew Zoë was burning off nervous energy by going motormouth. Actually, they were all apprehensive. There was no telling how this would play out. They stopped across from the old stone church that housed Goth ’Em. Zoë walked across the street and Cody followed.

As Portia started, Morning grabbed her arm. “Portia, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Please, call it off.”

She had her game face on too. “Morning, you’ve got a thing for running into burning buildings. I’ll never ask you not to. I’ve got a thing for chasing stories. Don’t ask me not to.”

He loosened his grip, letting her go.

He watched the trio approach the bouncers at the entrance to Goth ’Em. They flashed their invitations. A bouncer bent forward and whispered something. The threesome walked to the corner of the old church and disappeared into a dark, narrow walkway running beside it.

Adrenaline surged through Morning like an alarm. In a matter of minutes, some Leaguer was going to fang up on Zoë and do a little blood tasting. He had to go in and make sure sipping didn’t turn to sapping.

He jogged across the street and into the dark passageway.
A rectangle of light was collapsing, swallowing Cody and the two girls in front of him. A huge bouncer stood in the wash of red light coming from a single bulb over the door he had just closed. Morning moved toward him.

“Got an invite?” the bouncer growled.

Morning glanced past him at the distant sliver of light. “Just taking a shortcut to the next street.”

Morning slid by him and continued along the passageway as the bouncer grunted menacingly. “Don’t do it again.”

Spiraling down a narrow stone staircase, Zoë, Portia, and Cody finally reached the end. It delivered them into a long room with a low vaulted ceiling. In the past, it might have been a mess hall for monks, a wine cellar, or a crypt, but not anymore. It was packed, throbbing with music, and dominated by a long, sharp wedge of a bar.

Zoë tried to defuse her jangled nerves and shouted a joke to Portia and Cody. “I’d say ‘Welcome to the Tasting Room, suckers,’ but we’re
suckees
.”

Cody took in the mosh of dancers gyrating under a disco ball that resembled a fiery red mace. The dancers were decked out in goth regalia, vampire capes, or lurid-colored dresses. “It’s like
Rocky Horror Picture Show
on ’roids.”

A guy walked by with raccoon eyes and the lower half of his face tattooed like the jawbone and bared teeth of a skull. “Or worse,” Portia said, “if that’s Zoë’s date.”

Zoë scanned the packed bar. “Like the invite says. My date’s gonna find me.”

Morning hustled farther down the narrow passageway. Looking back, he saw the bouncer turn toward a couple who had just entered the walkway. Morning ducked behind a thick support abutting the church. He stood for a moment, eyes closed; then his clothes collapsed. His shirt thrashed and a pigeon popped out from its collar. The bird stretched its wings; one extended at an odd angle.

The shadow-consciousness Morning retained as a pigeon caught the weird sensation. His left wing felt stiff and lumpy where it joined his body. Then he remembered the bandage on his shoulder. It had been absorbed into his pigeon body along with the Epidex.

He flapped into clumsy flight. The moment of distraction had ruined his timing. The bouncer was already shutting the door that led down to the Tasting Room.

The pigeon soared over the building, sampling the air for clues. Given his olfactory malfunction during the Arson Awareness test, he was worried his nose would fail him again. But the CD to a pigeon had cured the problem, and his nose holes were sucking up smells like a vacuum.

Hitting a plume of rising heat, Morning picked up a tangle of scents: sweat, booze, the acrid exhaust of human excitement. His head cocked; an eye spotted the open air duct spewing the plume of scents. The bird circled down and flapped into the air duct.

Zoë led the way as the trio squeezed through the throng at the bar. She had seen her share of vampire wannabes and goths but mostly on the street and at parties. The goths in this place had taken body art to new extremes. It ranged from a woman with a target tattooed on her neck, with
the bull’s-eye being two puncture wounds, to a guy with crossed steak knifes piercing his nostrils.

As they got a half-dozen bodies away from a tall woman with a Mohawk spike of shocking red hair, the woman turned and spotted Zoë. Her eyes, set in spirals of black makeup, widened with recognition. She raised an arm from under a black mini-cape, revealing her body-hugging vermilion tuxedo, and pointed a long purple fingernail as she mouthed
Zoë
over the din.

Zoë answered with a backhand wave so the woman could see they were wearing practically the same nail color.

Cody fingered Zoë in the armpit, making her drop her arm in a ticklish giggle. “Your date’s a
she
?”

Zoë turned back to explain. “It’s not a lesbian thing, it’s an ob-gyn thing.”

Cody double-taked. “Huh?”

“Getting my first vein exam from a woman is gonna eliminate the whole skeevy, this-is-too-weird thing.”

Portia weighed in. “You’re gonna let her suck your blood, isn’t that weird enough?”

“No,” Zoë answered with dreamy expectation. “I’m thinking of it as a vein-opening, eye-opening, soul-opening experiment in breathing.”

The pigeon skidded and flapped down the air duct. While Morning’s shadow-consciousness realized a pigeon wasn’t the best choice for infiltrating a subterranean club, he nixed CDing into something more functional, like a rat. He didn’t want to waste CDing energy he might need later.

The bird slid toward a kaleidoscope of light and banged beak-first into a metal grille. The pigeon shook its feathers and peeked through the grille at the miasma of light and motion.
Good news
, Morning thought,
found the Tasting Room; bad news, I might have to CD to get through this grate
.

Despite the throbbing music, his bird hearing picked up voices in the Tasting Room. Scanning the sea of revelers, he spotted Zoë walking beside a woman with a towering crest of red hair. They were coming toward him. Portia and Cody were following a ways back. Cody had his arm around Portia. Morning had to fight the temptation to CD
into a poisonous snake, slither through the grille, and sink his fangs into Cody. But he told himself it was probably part of their cover. To get close enough to Zoë and her date to film them, they had to pretend to be hooking up for a little dip and sip.

Morning watched the Leaguer with the red Mohawk pull Zoë through a section of S-shaped love seats. They sat on a banquette against the wall, directly below him. He pressed his pigeon head against the grille to get a better view. The wall was lined with a long row of scalloped booths, each one big enough for two and curved for privacy.

Portia and Cody slipped into a love seat opposite Zoë and the redhead. Portia sat facing the room, while Cody faced the couple in the booth, giving him a good angle to shoot with his sweat-cam. Cody’s sweatshirt spasmed over his right pec. He had started shooting.

Zoë was so jacked with nervous energy she bounced out of the booth and sang a “Part of Your World” chorus that she had written for her date. “Down where they stalk, down where they feed / Down there I go, willing to bleed / Bloodlustin’ free—I’m going to be / Part of your world.” As Red Mohawk applauded, Zoë slid back into the booth.

To everyone’s surprise, Zoë popped out of the booth again. “I’m so excited,” she exclaimed, “I gotta pee!”

Red Mohawk laughed. “Go, little bloodmaid,” she said in a husky voice. “Absence will make my fangs grow longer.”

Morning eye-rolled, which, being a pigeon, turned into a head roll.

Zoë body-crunched like she really had to go. “Where is it?”

Red Mohawk waved toward a far corner. “Over there.”

As Zoë scurried away, Morning saw Cody’s left pec jump, turning off the sweat-cam. Then he and Portia put their heads together, feigning intimacy to look inconspicuous.

Morning ruffled his feathers, but his protest was short-lived. He was distracted by a young man, a goth, approaching Red Mohawk’s booth. He stopped and droned to her, “My date stood me up. Can you spare a fang?”

Cody started to rise to stop the guy from cutting in on Zoë’s date, but Portia grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. Morning couldn’t hear what she muttered to Cody, but there was no mistaking the twirl of her finger in a “roll ’em” gesture. Cody’s right pec jerked.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Red Mohawk said seductively to the young man. “And I’ll show you my answer.”

Goth Guy slid into the booth.

Morning pressed his head into a gap in the grille, but Goth Guy and Red Mohawk had disappeared from view, into the recess of the booth. A second later he heard the
smack
of a mouth sucking blood. Even as a pigeon, he felt his throat jerk with a gag reflex. But there was no getting sick: not with what he had spotted through the grille.

Coming across the room, gliding toward the booth, was a familiar figure. DeThanatos.

Morning’s pigeon heart went into hyperspeed. Before he could CD into something that would get him through the grille and stop whatever was about to go down, DeThanatos flicked his hands at Cody and Portia like a gunslinger without a gun. They went comatose.

Reaching them, DeThanatos seized the logo on
Cody’s sweatshirt and, without breaking stride, ripped the logo away. Then he threw a flick back, unthralling his victims.

Portia and Cody came to with a jolt. Portia blinked at the gaping hole in Cody’s sweatshirt.

The pigeon flew up the air duct and shot out the end like a feathered cannonball. The bird flapped down to the passageway.

The bouncer guarding the entrance turned as the pigeon disappeared behind the stone buttress. The next moment, the Tasting Room door blew open, sending the bouncer sprawling. He did a face-plant on the paving stones.

The door had been thrown open by DeThanatos, who ran down the passageway toward the street at the same moment that Morning, back to human form and in his Epidex, shot around the buttress in pursuit.

Hearing him, DeThanatos looked back and did a quick assessment: he was in no mood for a chase, and the bouncer, struggling to his feet between Morning and himself, hadn’t seen him yet. In a flash, DeThanatos shape-shifted into a skinny teenage girl—Zoë—wearing nothing but dark shadows.

Before Morning reached the bouncer getting to his feet, DeThanatos, as Zoë, thrust an arm at Morning and screamed, “He took my blood, my dress, what’s next?”