Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [34]
“And then it’s a beautiful moment. Lying on top of someone, feeling the quivering of their heart and just slowly, smoothly, silently pulling their lifeblood out of them. It’s a very gentle-feeling death. Eventually, they just stop struggling.”
He stands back from me. The frog is silent in his pond. “And remember,” he says. “Lolli is up for a date whenever you want to have your first experience. I imagine Chet can teach you a thing or two, but Lolli has a good head on her shoulders and can show you the ropes. If you don’t feed soon, your blood-lust is going to become overpowering, your fangs will come out, and people will start to notice things.”
Chet holds out his hand. “We’ll be in touch,” he says.
“Chet,” says Dr. Chasuble, shaking.
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“And we’ll be in touch, too,” says Dr. Chasuble. “Hope you’ll join us during the Sad Festival of Vampires. Long reign Tch’muchgar.”
“Long reign Tch’muchgar,” I agree hastily.
“Hey, ditto,” says Chet the Celestial Being.
We walk down the drive toward Chet’s car.
Tom and Jerk are toppled in the back seat. Jerk has curled up awkwardly with his cheek on his knee, and there is drool on the denim.
Without talking, Chet starts the car, puts it into drive, and heads back down the cracked road. We drive for a ways before we start to pass small bungalows in the woods, some of them with sagging aluminum toolsheds or car trailers for boats, resting on the pine needles.
Chet seems mildly triumphant. “Very well done,” he says. “You cut it a bit fine there at the end. With the ‘you.’”
“Now do you cure my vampirism?” I ask.
“Yes, of course,” says Chet. “I’ll send someone around. I’m not authorized to do it myself. But I’ll arrange for an annulment of the curse. Do you know your social security number?”
“No,” I say.
“Hm,” he says, pondering as he taps on the steering wheel. “It may take a couple extra days then. But there will be someone, don’t worry.”
“Have you figured out any more about how I got cursed?” I ask. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever been bitten or anything.”
“No, I haven’t. As to guesses? Difficult to say. It might have been years ago, and it’s just taking effect now because of puberty and hormonal changes, sort of like asthma or allergies. In any event, we’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy.”
We approach the highway. And we are soaring along it, the wind whiffling in through the back window.
We drive along, and I am half dazed by what I have seen. In my head I am picturing what I will be able to say to Rebecca during the Sad Festival of Vampires: We are standing by the reservoir, and the air of the summer’s night is as sweet as wine, and she’s saying, “Come on. Did you really enter Tch’muchgar’s world and set in place the seed of his destruction?”
“Yes!” I say, laughing. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“You did just say that, but also you were lying.”
“I was not lying.”
“Okay. You weren’t lying.”
And her soft face is lit by the fireworks going off above, as the towering vampire Tch’muchgar explodes above the lake. There are vampire parts blowing up every which way, and he’s yodeling as he blows up and falls in sizzling chunks into the reservoir. People on the beaches lie together with their head in one another’s lap, or lean against one another, and when Tch’muchgar does a particularly colorful explosion, everyone says, “Oooh! Aaah!”
And I turn to Rebecca and look at her smoky eyes and her careful lips, and I feel the warmth of her against me. We lie stretched out beneath the trees, looking up at the stars and the exploding Vampire Lord, and our thoughts are so content and similar that they rub up against each other like cats.
I sit up. The car is idling, sitting on the dark lane near the water tower. Chet has undone his seatbelt and is twisted in his seat. His arms shoot backward, and his fingers are pressed against Tom’s and Jerk’s foreheads.
“We’ll set them where they were. Erase their memories. Then you can rejoin them.”
I look into the tangled woods. “What about