Suck It Up (3 page)

HOW TO SEE A VAMPIRE IN THREE EASY STEPS

1. Get up.

2. Find a mirror.

3. Look at your first vampire.

Okay, you'll be looking at an ex-vampire.

How can you be an ex-vampire?

Every mammal begins life as a vampire. When you were growing and cell-differentiating in your mother's womb, you weren't playing video games. You were feeding on your mother's blood. You didn't feed on her with fangs; you drank her blood with a straw known as an umbilical cord. Then you were born and they cut the straw off.

If you still don't believe you're a former vampire, contemplate your belly button. It's where they cut off your straw of bloodlust. It's the birthmark of the vampire in all of us.

4

The Interview

Like the rest of the school, the headmaster's office was done in Spanish mission style: dark wood beams, simple lines, adobe, painted-desert colors.

Morning stepped through the doorway. Behind a large desk, the headmaster's high-backed swivel chair was turned away, facing a bay window overlooking a rock garden. Morning cleared his throat. The chair didn't move.

His gaze lowered to a twisted bonsai tree rising from a sunken planter in the desktop. Studying the minitree's gnarled trunk and its sparse bunches of dark green needles, he recognized it as a bristlecone pine. For many Lifers a rabbit's foot was lucky; for vampires it was the wood of the bristlecone pine. It was considered lucky because, next to vampires, bristlecone pines lived longer than anything else on earth. Some lived for more than five thousand years.

Morning reached forward to touch the tree for good luck. The chair swiveled. He snatched his hand back. Even more startling was the man in the chair.

“The headmaster let me borrow his office,” Luther Birnam said with a friendly smile. “I apologize for pulling you away from the party.”

“It's okay.” Morning tried to mask his shock with indifference. “I'm not big on parties.”

Birnam gave him a sympathetic look. “I imagine it's difficult when everyone is older and more mature than you.”

“They look more mature, but they don't act it.” Morning wished he could snatch the words back. He had just violated another Leaguer slogan:
No Biting, with Fangs or Words.

To his surprise, Birnam chuckled. “It sounds like you've learned to hold your own.”

“I try, sir.”

Birnam clicked the mouse on the desk and glanced at the computer screen. “I've been reading your file. I was surprised to see you've only been a vampire for ten months and two days.” His eyes shifted back to Morning. “Do you know why that's so unusual?”

Morning knew why, and he knew Birnam knew why. What he didn't know was why Birnam was asking a question he already knew the answer to. He decided to play along until he figured out what was going on. “It's surprising because in this day and age dweebs like me don't get turned into vampires.”

Birnam laughed. “I wouldn't have put it that way, but you're right. So tell me, why are you such a rarity?”

Morning was struck by his choice of words. He'd been called a lot of things but never a “rarity.” Even more curious was why the president of the IVL kept asking questions every Leaguer knew the answer to. “It's basic vampire history, Mr. Birnam.”

“Yes, it's a no-brainer, but if you don't mind”—he spread his hands in an imploring gesture—“humor me.”

Morning wished he'd brought his diploma. He wanted to wave it in front of Birnam and shout,
Look, I graduated! I'm done with tests.
But then he would never get out of Leaguer Mountain. He told himself to suck it up and recite the catechism that Birnam wanted to hear. Luckily, it came from the one class he'd gotten an A in: Twentieth-Century Vampire History. “I'm weird because after World War V, the vampire war between Leaguers and Loners during the second half of the last century, Loner vampires got a lot more selective about who they turned into vampires.”

“Blood children,” Birnam added.

“Right.” Morning plunged on. “Before the war, Loners turned all sorts of people into blood children. From my friend Dolly, the old lady who runs Vegan Veins in the quaffeteria”—he played the flattery card, hoping to cut this pop quiz short—“to Luther Birnam, the visionary who created the Leaguer Way, commanded the Leaguer Army during the war, and, after defeating the Loners, wrote a treaty that has kept the peace between Leaguers and Loners ever since.”

“I like your choice of examples. Please go on.”

So much for the flattery card ending the quiz. Morning took a breath and continued reciting chapter and verse from vampire history. “After the war, the Loners who survived and refused to become Leaguers numbered less than a hundred. They realized they were an endangered species and that their traditional lifestyle was facing extinction. So they decided to rebuild the Loner ranks with an Aryan race of vampires. They vowed to only make blood children from the young and most beautiful mortals.”

“Why did they target the young and beautiful?”

Morning repressed an eye roll. The pop quiz was turning into a friggin' test. “They targeted them because youth and beauty add up to self-obsession. And Loners believe that the self-obsessed make the best bloodsucking fiends.”

“Why?” Birnam asked.

Morning rattled off the answer he'd memorized during finals week. “Because there is no act more selfish than bloodlust: feeding on and killing a fellow human being.”

Birnam asked his next question with a satisfied smile. “And how has the Loner plan of replenishing their ranks with Aryan vampires been working?”

“Not very well. Their newest crop of vampires usually give the old method of hunting and feeding every night a shot for a few months, or even a few years, then most of them realize hunting is too much work and too much of a hassle. That's when the Leaguer Rescue Squads get their hooks in 'em, and they come to the Academy, learn the Leaguer Way, and get a steady, hassle-free supply of their minimum daily requirement: three quarts of blood-product.” By the look of Birnam's pleased expression, Morning knew he was acing the oral exam. To be certain, he went for extra credit. “Bottom line, what the Loners didn't realize is that vampires are people too. And if you can get your groceries from the local blood co-op, why waste your nights trapping and sapping?”

Birnam nodded. “Very good. You know the basic story of every cadet who's come here and become a Leaguer.”

Morning shrugged. “Almost every cadet.”

“Ah yes.” Birnam lifted his eyebrows. “Then there's you.”

“Yeah.” Morning frowned. “The Loner who turned me got the ‘young' part right, but he had a sketchy definition of ‘beautiful.'”

Birnam chortled. “I'm glad you have a sense of humor about being a SangFU.”

Morning's jaw tightened.

“They taught you what that means, right?”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled.

Birnam opened his hands, asking for more.

Morning couldn't believe the quiz was popping from history to biology. And he was tired of being under Birnam's microscope. “
Sang
means blood, and
FU
means”—as much as he wanted to shout what
FU
meant, he swallowed the urge. “You know what
FU
means.”

“Flubup,” Birnam offered.

“Close enough.” The tension in Morning's jaw spread to his chest. “But yeah, that's what makes me a ‘rarity.' I'm a SangFU.” He smothered his growing impatience with sarcasm. “I got bitten by fangs that went to sink 'n' drink, but somewhere between swilling 'n' killing, the vampire messed up and turned me into a big fat mistake.”

Birnam's eyes remained fixed on the young cadet.

Morning shifted uneasily and tried to suck back the heat rising in his face.

Birnam leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “I don't believe in mistakes. I believe everything happens for a reason. Do you know that you're also a SangV?”

The term surprised him. He had never heard it in any of his classes. “What's a SangV?”

“A blood virgin. You've never fed on animal or human blood. You've never touched anything but Blood Lite.”

He wanted to tell Birnam about the time he snuck a sip of a classmate's animal-blood drink to see what he was missing. But there was no point in confessing anything until he figured out why he was there. “Okay, I'm a SangV too. Is that a problem?”

Birnam motioned to the chair next to the desk. “Have a seat.”

Morning obeyed.

Birnam tapped his fingers together. “When you were a Lifer, what did you want to be?”

Morning slumped. If this grilling was going back to his pre-vampire years it could take forever. Without the powers of Dr. Chronos to hit fast-forward, he went with the only weapon he had: keeping his answers short. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a grown-up.”

Birnam eyed Morning's rail-thin frame with a bemused smile. “That may be what you want now, but it's not what you wanted to be when you were nine.”

Morning glared at the tiny tree on the desk. That was his other weapon: only responding to questions.

Birnam gestured to the computer. “There's no use hiding anything. It's all in your file.”

“So why don't you read it?” Morning demanded as his growing irritation sabotaged his battle plan. “Why do you keep asking me questions you already have the answers to?”

Birnam ignored his petulance. “Because reading a counselor's version of your life isn't the same as hearing it from you. Tell me, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Realizing he couldn't win, Morning went with his only other weapon: indifference. He monotoned the truth. “When I was little I wanted to be a superhero, but when I realized I didn't have any superpowers, I decided to become the next best thing, a firefighter. I started taking an EMT certification course, but then at sixteen years, four months, and eleven days, I got bitten. The next thing I knew, I was in the Academy.”

“If you ask me,” Birnam offered, “every vampire who learns to rule his appetites and conquers bloodlust is a superhero.”

“No way!” The leash on Morning's frustration snapped. “
Not
doing something doesn't make you a hero.” He jumped out of the chair and paced. “
Doing
is what makes you a hero. Heroes don't sit on their butts and play video games, heroes take action. There's no way Leaguers can be superheroes. We're just a bunch of vampires who've traded bloodsucking for
product
-sucking! It's right there in the Motto:
Drink Culture, Not Life
.”

He caught his breath, but he couldn't cage the bitterness in his voice. “And that's fine, that's what I'll do. I've got my Leaguer Goals.” He thrust a finger at the computer. “You can read all about 'em, but since you wanna hear it from me, here they are. I'm going to read comic books, I'm going to play video games, I'm going to get myself a Star Wars stormtrooper suit, join the 501st Legion, and march in the Rose Bowl Parade every year! I'll be a good Leaguer like everyone else, and I'll do it because I don't have a choice!”

Unfazed by Morning's outburst, Birnam slowly stood.

Morning didn't know what to expect. For all he knew, Birnam's eyes were going to turn into pools of fire and zap him with red-hot lasers, and he'd burst into flames.

Birnam was eerily calm. “What if I gave you a choice?”

Morning didn't move. “What choice?”

“What if I gave you a second chance to achieve your dream: to be a superhero?”

Morning blinked. “I don't get it.”

“I want you to be the first vampire to reveal yourself to Lifers.”

A chill shot through him. The same chill he felt when Birnam had stared at him at the end of commencement and talked about Worldwide Out Day. “You mean, come out?”

Birnam nodded.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. This had to be a last joke they were playing on him before he left the Academy. “You're kidding, right?”

“I'm never been more serious in all seven hundred and eighty-three years of my life.”

Morning stared, dumbfounded. “But why me?”

“I've been looking for someone like you for a long time: young, innocent, nonthreatening, someone who's more victim than vampire. You challenge every myth and fear of what Lifers think vampires are. But most important, you've never been tainted with bloodlust. You're a SangV.”

“Not really!” Morning blurted. “I tasted animal blood. I snuck a sip of Bled Bull from someone's bottle at a party.”

Birnam's forehead knitted. “Did you like it?”

“It made me hurl.”

Birnam's expression relaxed into a smile. “Even better. Everyone loves a hero with a weakness. You'll be a vampire superhero who's animal-blood-intolerant. No,” he added as his smile widened, “hemo-intolerant.”

Morning squinted in confusion. “I don't follow. How is coming out going to make me a superhero?”

Birnam's serious expression returned. “Think about it. As the first, you'll be a hero to all Leaguers. More important, if Lifers accept you for what you are, and if you blaze the trail to the day we all come out, we'll no longer have to
hide
our powers. We'll be able to use our powers to help people. You'll be the first vampire to be a superhero.”

As his words sank in, Morning's insides spun with wild exhilaration. The boring, obedient future he was dreading had suddenly been swept away. Birnam was offering him more than the chance to revive a buried dream. He was giving him the chance to live again!