Mere mortals, p.5
Mere Mortals, page 5
Reg hissed and pulled back his lips before he remembered he didn’t have fangs.
“Wow.” I cringed. “That really does look ridiculous.”
Reg said nothing, still fuming, but I noticed a slight pink to his cheeks as he covered his mouth with his hand.
The sidewalk gave way to the muddy shoulder of country road, and we emerged from the canopy of maples and oaks into full sun.
“I get it,” I said, squinting against the sudden brightness. “All day I just wanted to rip out someone’s throat and bleed them dry.”
“Like you did that boy?” he snapped.
This again.
“He lived.”
“No thanks to you.”
“That’s right!” There was only room for one bad attitude in this sibling relationship, and Reg knew damn well that was my job. “It’s thanks to you. Thanks to you leaving him outside that emergency room door. Thanks to you for confessing. Thanks to you, we’re in this mess. If you had just let me—”
“Let you what? Let you turn him? Let you leave him there to bleed until he died?”
I took a deep shaking breath. “I was going to say, if you’d just let me handle it, I could have come up with . . . something.”
“Handle it.” Reg shook his head. “When you take that much of their blood, the only way to ‘handle it’ is to turn them, save them, or bury them.” He ticked the options off on his fingers. “If we’d done anything but save him, the punishment would have been worse.”
“Like there’s anything worse than this.” I pouted.
“If you had violated the treaty and turned one that young, a stake through the heart would surely be your punishment. Better sunlight than a stake.”
I glared at the sun—or rather, since that was unreasonably painful, I glared instead at everything the sun touched, which was everything, period. It winked off golden corn tassels every time they swayed in a breeze; it caught the flat edge of worn rocks in the road so they glowed white; it shimmered in the distance like water that wasn’t really there.
The sun, if you asked me, was awfully full of itself. I preferred the subtlety of night.
“I’ll take the stake,” I said, my voice growing shrill. “Over the sun. Over Iowa. Over school.”
Reg slowed his pace, and the anger slid out of his voice. “You don’t mean that. High school may be hell, but it’s only a year—”
I shot him a look.
“Okay, two for you,” he amended. “But then we’ll both be adults, officially. Perhaps then we can renegotiate our immortality.”
“I can’t do this for two more days, let alone two more years,” I complained. “Reg, the way those kids looked at me—I just wanted to climb into a dark hole, curl up, and die.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, their meaning became something literal.
“I’m serious, Reg,” I said. “Darkness. Death. That’s what I want. I want to be vampire again.”
“Well, you can want that all night long, Charlie . . . and, come to think of it, all day long now . . . but that won’t make it happen.”
A quiet rage boiled up inside me. I’d already been told no too many times in the last few days—no to immortality, no to skipping high school, no to anything resembling fashion. After one hundred years of yes, I wasn’t accustomed to hearing no.
“This is the worst part of being human. This—this—negativity!” I shouted, breathing heavily. I pulled at the damp neckline of my sweater. “That and all the stupid sweating!”
“Well, what do you suggest we do about it?” Reg said.
The cottage was in view now, its sun-drenched stone walls twinkling at us. I scowled in return.
“I suggest we take back our lives,” I said. “Our immortal lives.”
“And how do we do that?”
I set my jaw. “Together. And at any cost.”
“Sounds diabolical.” Reg smiled for the first time since we’d left school and nudged my shoulder. “But until we’re all-powerful immortals again, maybe put away the Prada.”
Seven
The Slayer’s Secret
Sal was hulking in the doorway, leaning on the frame and smoking a pipe, when we got home, like he’d been waiting for us. I hesitated when we reached the gate, my hand hovering just above the white wood. Not flat and wide like other fence slats but thick and narrow. If the posts had been rounded like poles instead of squared off, they would be indistinguishable from stakes—clearly a slayer’s version of a picket fence.
Had it really been only days since we’d first passed through this awful gate? If I’d known then what I knew now—if I’d known pain, known fear, known shame—would I have walked into my doom so easily? I thought I had put up a fight, but that was nothing compared to the fit I should have thrown.
“We should have run,” Reg said, his eyes also on the gate.
“We couldn’t have outrun the Elders.”
Sal called out from the porch, “Come on, that fence don’t bite.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” I shouted back.
Sal’s laugh turned into a hacking cough as he puffed on his pipe.
I refused to be a source of amusement for a slayer—retired or not—and stormed through the gate before Reg could open it for me.
“How was the first day?” Sal asked, a smile still stretched above his grizzled beard as if he already knew the answer to his question and delighted in it.
I lifted my head as I passed him on the porch. “The students here are severely deprived. They could use an atelier. Or at the very least a mall. It’s sad.”
I glided into the house before he could respond, but I heard him behind me chuckling.
“So, I guess you’ll be borrowing some of my flannel tomorrow too?”
That night, Reg and I gathered at the heavy wooden table in the kitchen, our dinner plates pushed to the side and our heads bent low over a sheet of parchment and an inkpot.
“Is all of this really necessary?” I gestured to the paper and ink. “Can’t we just shoot the Elder Seat an email or something?”
My attention was half on the parchment and half on Sal at the other end of the table, where he was whittling a length of wood that looked suspiciously like a post for his fence. I guess we didn’t have any reason to fear wooden stakes anymore, but after a hundred years of being afraid of something, it was hard to just shake it off, so Sal’s project was making me squirm.
“Charlie, please,” Reg said. “Let’s be appropriate for once. This is the most formal letter we have ever written, and parchment shows respect. It’s just fortunate that I had the good sense to pack my calligraphy kit. Besides, I am sure the Elders do not have email.” He said email with disdain, like electronic communications were somehow beneath him.
I hoped, for his sake, that we did manage to appeal our sentence, because he was never going to survive in the modern human world without embracing technology.
“They do, you know,” Sal said, glancing up from his pointy stick, “have email.”
My head whipped toward Sal, half suspicious and half in awe of this information. I supposed he must have high-up connections if he helped carry out life sentences like ours, but I still had a hard time reconciling the idea that a slayer of the infamous Sicarius line could be working so closely with the governing body of all vampire-kind.
“They have a clerk with an email account, in any case,” Sal said. “But Reg is probably right that no one has ever submitted a digital appeal. I imagine they’d find that kind of informality . . . distasteful.”
Well, this letter was certainly formal enough. I turned my gaze back to our draft.
Dearest Sirs and Madams of the Elder Seat,
We write today to beg your favor and beseech you to reconsider our mortal punishment. We recognize and apologize for our recent transgression . . .
Blah blah blah.
I pushed the letter toward Reg. The rest of it detailed our overeager feeding on a teenage boy and the shame we supposedly felt over risking exposure for our kind. It did not explain how tasty this particular boy was and how all vampires got a little carried away sometimes without being punished and that the Elders only used this as an excuse to exile us for being young. Reg assured me that adding those details would not help our case.
“I wish I could remember all the bylaws regarding appeals,” Reg said, tapping his calligraphy pen against his lips.
“They didn’t spell all that out for you at your trial?” Sal asked.
Reg and I responded in unison. “What trial?”
“Reg confessed,” I added.
“And had I not, they would have pulled the memories from our minds anyway,” Reg said. “I thought a guilty plea might at least show some goodwill and regret.”
Sal snorted. “Goodwill. Guess you see how far that got you.”
“Well, what do you suggest, then?” I asked.
“Me? I suggest you stay human.” He held the piece of wood at eye level, squinting as he inspected his work. “But if you’re set on an appeal, you’ll need a sponsor.”
“What kind of sponsor?” Reg asked.
“A representative from one of the clans to stand for you. It’s a minimum requirement for appeal. No sponsor, no dice. Best bet is to get someone from your own house.”
“Yeah, right,” I muttered.
Reg and I had asked every last member of the Bone Clan, from House Drake to House Archibald, to testify to our good character, in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence. Every last one had refused. If they weren’t willing to help us when we had been kin, I highly doubted they would help us now that we were mere mortals.
So much for family.
“But technically, the sponsor doesn’t have to be Bone Clan?” Reg asked.
Sal shook his head. “Any vamp will do.”
Reg fidgeted with his pen and inkpot. “So, we look to the other clans.”
I wrinkled my nose. “But nobody likes us.”
“That’s because the Bones are elitist,” Sal said. “Can’t go around looking down on everyone, then expect them to come to your rescue.”
I sat up stiff in my chair. “Excuse me, but we are not elitist. Some vampires are just better than others.”
Reg cleared his throat. “What Charlie means to say is that the Bone Clan has been wise over the centuries about cultivating and carefully maintaining wealth and does not feel it should be responsible for the financial support of other clanships.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly what I meant to say, but close enough. I narrowed my eyes, daring Sal to argue, but he didn’t. He just ran his blade down the edge of his stake-like fence post, shaving off a thin curl of wood.
“Can you watch where you are pointing that thing?” I snapped.
Sal obliged, aiming the pointy end toward the floor.
“We don’t have to be BFFs with everyone to get a sponsor,” I said to Reg. “I’m sure we can find someone to take pity on us. Maybe a member of the Blood Clan.”
Reg disagreed. “They don’t take pity on anyone.”
“But they hate the Elder laws,” I argued. “If it were up to them, vampires would feed on humans without limits. They might be sympathetic to our cause.”
“You don’t want to get mixed up with the Blood Clan,” Sal warned. He blew a layer of sawdust off the flat side of his post. “Nastiest bunch of vamps I ever had the displeasure of meeting. Vicious.”
“Forgive us if we don’t rely on the opinion of a slayer,” I said.
“What about the Starlight Clan?” Reg asked.
I had to laugh. “No way. Do they even drink human blood?”
“Of course they do,” Reg said. “But not without permission. They ask mortals to make an offering.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly ask permission for what we did,” I said. “I doubt the Starlights would approve. And wasn’t the Treaty of Annis their idea? You know they think it’s wrong for anyone our mortal age to be vampire. I’m surprised they’re not lining up outside this cottage to become human again themselves.”
“They may not like the hunt,” Sal interjected. “But they still like the immortality.”
A dark cloud seemed to gather over him—eyes hooded and a deep frown creasing his face. “Some vampires won’t give it up for anything.”
He dropped his wooden post on the table with a loud clatter and turned to stare out the window, the darkness on his face clearly taking over his thoughts.
Reg and I exchanged a questioning look, not sure where Sal’s gloom had come from.
Finally, Reg spoke. “Well, that just leaves the Shadow Clan, then. Mysterious group.”
“Very,” I agreed. “So mysterious that I don’t think we even know any of them.”
“What about that Jonathan guy we met in Belize a few years ago?” Reg suggested. “Wasn’t he a Shadow? I think he had a crush on you. I bet he’d do us a favor.”
“I bet he would,” I said. “If he hadn’t fed on that over-intoxicated girl on the beach, gotten drunk from her blood, and stumbled off a pier.”
I shuddered at the memory. If Reg had seen it with his own eyeballs like I had, he would not have forgotten so easily. As for me, I could never forget the visual of Jonathan dropping chest-first onto the sharp wooden post holding up a “No Swimming at Night” sign. He had immediately turned to black smoke and been carried away by the wind.
“What about you?” I asked Sal, snapping him out of his trance. “You got any Shadow Clan pals who might sponsor us? Maybe you could put in a good word—”
“Vampires are not my pals,” Sal snarled, wrenching his gaze from the window and whatever far-off memory he’d been watching. “And if they were, I still would not help you become one.”
He snatched up his post and spread his arms wide. “What exactly is it you think I’m doing here?”
I tried not to flinch as the pointy end of his stick swung in our direction. “Well, excuse me for—”
“And anyway, you are wasting your time,” he said. “Every former vamp who comes through that gate tries to appeal to the Elder Seat, and no one—not one—has ever succeeded.”
He kicked his chair back and stormed out the front door, my narrowed eyes burning holes in his back.
No one ever?
Challenge accepted.
Eight
Eternally Yours
A few hours later, our bellies full of barbecue (some human things were nearly as good as blood), Reg and I moved to the fields behind the cottage to finish our letter—three letters, actually. On Sal’s information, we had decided to table the formal appeal to the Elders until we could secure a sponsor. Instead, we had drafted identical messages to the heads of the Blood, Shadow, and Starlight Clans, politely begging them to share our request for sponsorship with their vampire houses.
We sank into long, soft grass on the crest of a hill overlooking endless fields of corn and smaller plants that Sal told us were beans. A cluster of lilac bushes nearby showered us with tiny purple flowers every time the breeze blew.
“How perfectly pastoral,” Reg said, spreading his arms toward the valley below.
“If you say so.”
“And the air!” He took a deep breath. “You can almost taste it.”
“I’d rather not.” I made a point of holding my breath against the offending reek of manure wafting up from the fields. It was bad enough to smell cow dung. I had no interest in tasting it.
Gingerly, using only my fingertips so as not to smudge the still-wet ink, I laid our three letters out on the ground for a final inspection, but Reg didn’t even glance at them. His eyes were on the horizon, where the sun was starting its slow, sleepy descent. He rested his elbows on his knees and pulled a long blade of grass back and forth between his fingers.
“It’s almost enough to make you want to stay, isn’t it?” he asked.
I leaned away, alarmed. “No, it’s not. And don’t say things like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re thinking of staying human.”
He sighed. “I’m not, it’s just . . . being vampire was getting a little boring—always the same thing, night in and night out. Eat, sleep, hunt, repeat.” He gave me a look of mock disapproval. “Or in your case, eat, sleep, hunt, shop.”
I didn’t disagree.
“After a century of the same, I’m ready for something—anything—new.” Reg said. “Being human could be that new adventure.”
“But we’ve been human before.”
“Not that we can remember. At least this feels new.” He held out a hand to catch a fresh flurry of lilac petals dancing in the air around us. “And it’s not all bad. If it wasn’t for that wretched school, it could even be fun . . . not forever, of course. But for a little while.”
In the distance, the sun had now formed a giant orange dome over the fields, and Reg tilted toward it, soaking in the final blaze of day. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t that spectacular, but the words died on my lips as I watched the changing light alter everything it touched. The lilac bushes went from lavender to royal purple to dusty pink to ashy gray. Every inch the sun slipped on the horizon, the world was painted anew. It was a power I had never witnessed before. In contrast, darkness seemed only to steal color away.
“No doubt this has been a shocking punishment, but . . .” Reg spoke so quietly, I had to lean in to hear.
Stupid human eardrums.
“But it could also be an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?” I asked.
“To enjoy scenes like this.” He thrust an arm toward the sunset, as if he wanted to punch it now, rather than soak it up. “To see a clear Caribbean Sea with my own eyes. I’ve only ever seen it under a night sky or in photos. I have endless curiosities about taste and smell and desire beyond blood. There are so many things in the world that humans go on about that we don’t understand. Sunsets versus sunrises, chocolate versus vanilla, the obsession with smells like coffee and gasoline.”
“Gasoline?”
“Apparently, some people love the aroma. I want to know why.”
“So, we’ll find out, okay?” I touched my brother’s arm, a gesture that would have been uncomfortable with any other immortal. Despite the structure of houses and clans we formed to protect us from slayers and other hunters, vampires were loners by nature. But I had never been alone, thanks to Reg, and I couldn’t get through this without him. “We’ll smell gasoline and eat chocolate and get up early and stay up late so we can pick a side on sunrises versus sunsets. We’ll do all of it—and then we’ll get the hell out of here and back in the world where we belong.”
