An Unattractive Vampire (10 page)

Over the next several hours, Amanda went to work saving lives. She lost count of the number of chest compressions she did, blood bags she changed, and injections she gave. Needless to say, it was somewhere between several and a shit ton. And every time, there were those strange, jagged puncture marks on arms or wrists or necks that needed bandaging.

“What a night, huh?” a doctor remarked. Amanda muttered her agreement. Doctors don’t become doctors to be ignored. “No idea what would make so many patients self-harm like that, clawing at their wrists and necks. Must be the full moon.”

“Must be,” Amanda responded hollowly. She glanced down the hall where the dance of light from the TV was just visible through the cracked door.

“Oh well. They’re out of the woods. That’s the important thing. Good work, Amber,” he told her, unaware what her name was, and then went off to call his wife.
²⁴

Amanda slowly made her way toward the coma-patient’s room, gathering her rage as she went. Not just for herself but for all those who’d almost died. If anger were electricity, by the time she reached the door, she’d have been a Tesla coil. She inhaled and braced herself to once more face the vampire.

The least he could have been doing was watching something other than reality television.

“Can we go to the vampyrs now?” The fiend grinned from his chair.

Shaking with fury, Amanda barely managed to answer.

“No.”

“No?” said the confused vampire.

“No,” she said again. “I have to work.”

“Your work is done. I took care of that. Let us go.” Yulric made to walk past her. Amanda stepped in his way.

“No,” she said again.

The vampire, looming, with all his dark power, looked her straight in the neck, her slender, vein-filled neck. “We had an arrangement, little girl. I hope you do not intend on backing out of it, otherwise”—he licked his lips with his black tongue—

“you will find my patience, like your blood, is only skin deep.”

“I haven’t forgotten our
arrangement
, monster,” Amanda said with the hint of a smile. “I was merely saying, no, you haven’t killed anyone.”

Yulric laughed dismissively until he saw the smug, satisfied look on Amanda’s face.

“You lie,” he said with rather less certainty than he meant to. “I don’t,” she replied.

“Impossible. Impossible!” the vampire spat with increasing volume and venom. “I drained them of their life’s blood. Took them past the limits their bodies could handle. Believe me, I know exactly how much to take out.”

“And we,” she bragged, “know how much to put in. And what type. And where to put it.”

Yulric looked murderous, quite a feat, considering he was capable of murder when looking utterly bored.

“Now, you listen to me,” she said. “You want to meet the vampires? Fine, I’ve agreed to help you. But from here on out, I’m in charge. You do what I tell you. You do not try to outwit my orders or undermine them or fulfill their letter and not their meaning. You do not
help
me without being asked. You don’t do anything without being asked. What you will do is wait at home, until such time as I come get you and say, ‘Dearest Unkie Bile, shall we go play with the vampires?’ And you will say, ‘Oh yes, Mandy, dear, let’s.’ Until then, you do nothing. Sit. Sleep. Watch TV, using a reasonable volume and without yelling every twenty minutes. Do you understand?”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. “I could kill you where you stand.”

Amanda’s grip tightened on her cross. “Try it.”

The pair held their standoff for a tense minute, each waiting for the other to give in. Then, at long last, and for only the second time in his thousand-year history, Yulric blinked first.

“Good,” Amanda said. She couldn’t believe that had actually worked. All that was left was to get him out of there before her legs buckled and she started crying. “Now go home and wait.”

Without stepping down off the wall, Yulric made his way to the window, opened it, and with a final, spiteful face, became a bat and fluttered away. This had been a humiliating experience for him, an incident that would only become worse because of the three windshields he would collide with on his way back to the house.

Amanda stumbled backward, her nerves shot, her legs no longer capable of holding her up. She caught herself on the edge of the bed, though not for long, as the nearby heart-rate monitor started to wail.

“Sorry! Sorry!” she cried, reattaching the wires she had knocked loose from Catherine’s arm. Once done, she collapsed into a chair and just shook. She checked her watch. It was a bit early in the evening to take her break, but she definitely needed it.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Amanda said, reaching for the TV’s remote. She put on a hospital drama about doctor’s tonguing each other in storerooms. Catherine didn’t mind in the least. She loved this show.

Rusty dreamt of cheeseburgers. Double Angus cheeseburgers. And pizza. A large—no, extra-large—sausage with stuffed crust. And milk shakes with whipped cream and nuts and hot fudge and caramel and banana flavoring. Not real banana flavoring but the completely fake banana flavoring, which tasted like banana only inasmuch as candy companies had decided that flavor of sugar was banana.

Rusty dreamt of all that, and he wasn’t even asleep. In fact, when Rusty wasn’t dreaming of food, he was dreaming of sleep. And resting. Lounging, slacking, hanging, lying about, and all forms of do-nothingness that involved food, a TV, and, if possible, the first three seasons of
The Phantom Vampire Mysteries
, for which he also dreamt of a Blu-ray player.

What Rusty had instead was hours and hours on a treadmill.

Rusty hated running. Part of the reason he hadn’t done any for the better part of a decade was because he hated it so much. Growing up, his parents had forced him to “participate.” This meant he spent the better part of his grade, junior high, and high school years padding out the B squads and JV teams of various sports he was no good at. However, once college had come along, he’d hung up all attempts at athleticism in favor of Frisbee golf, beanbags, and Halo tourneys, none of which required anything more than a saunter and a beer-free hand.

But now, here he was, in another man’s loft, running. He didn’t want to and he didn’t like it, but he was doing it.

Why?
Rusty asked himself as his heavy feet thudded out a rhythm. Of course he already knew the answer. It had been explained to him two weeks earlier in a strong, deep voice that held all the authority of perfectly enunciated Queen’s English.

“When did you ever see a fat vampyr?” his host had asked him, about twenty minutes into his first run on the treadmill.

“Well . . .” Rusty rattled off a list of fat vampires he had seen in various TV shows, movies, and graphic novels. Many of them had honorifics or epithets that emphasized their robust size, like The Grand or The Round or The Fat. Vampires chose nicknames a lot like mobsters.

His host looked at his pocket watch and sighed. “And were those shining exemplars of vampirism?”

Rusty had to admit they were not. Anytime you saw a fat vampire in fiction, they were lazy, evil, or comic relief. Usually, they were all three.

“Perhaps, then,” continued the voice, “we should aspire to something a bit better. A bit more . . .” He gestured to the TV in front of Rusty, which was currently playing the musical episode of
The Phantom Vampire Mysteries
.

“Phantom!” cried Rusty, completely forgetting to run. This caused him to trip and fall face-first onto the still-moving treadmill. The voice let out another sigh. It seemed frustrated that its dignity had not yet rubbed off. Rusty rolled onto his back and again whispered, “Phantom.”

“Yes,” said the dignified voice. “
The Phantom Vampire Mysteries.
A television show about vampyrs acted
by
vampyrs. Of course, one as clever as you wouldn’t have doubted what that meant. Surely, you of all people knew better than to assume these were mere mortals pretending.”

“Of . . . course I didn’t,” Rusty lied, likely quite obviously. Fortunately, his host didn’t seem to care; he had already turned back to the television.

“Tell me,” the man asked, “is Phantom fat? Does Nora have acne? Are any of these characters less than the physical embodiment of perfection in any way?”

Rusty shook his head. Then he spit blood. The owner of the voice looked at that blood intensely as he continued. “And do you know why?”

“Be-because they’re vampires,” Rusty huffed.

The man smirked, condescendingly. “Oh, my dear Vermillion. Beauty is not some innate power of the vampyr. The gift of the vampyr is immortality, pure and simple. And that gift can serve no greater purpose than the preservation of great beauty.”

“I see,” Rusty lied again. He did see the logic; he just couldn’t see how he personally fit into this philosophy.

As if he could read Rusty’s mind, the Englishman patted him in a fatherly way. “Rusty, do you really think those of natural beauty could truly appreciate such a gift?
Truly
appreciate it?”

“Um, no?” Rusty guessed.

“Beauty, my dear Vermillion, true beauty does not occur without work. Without transformation. And only such beauty, created through great effort, is worth preserving.”

The man crossed to look out upon a nearly panoramic view of the New York skyline. Rusty had the unnerving feeling that he was no longer present in the world. “The pyramids of Egypt. The Sistine Chapel. Beethoven’s Fifth. All required time, work, and sacrifice, not only to create but also to be worthy of the immortality they have achieved. The wonders of nature, mountains and oceans, flora and fauna, only came to be through the violence and change of geology and evolution.”

He turned back to Rusty, continuing this seemingly well-rehearsed speech. “A person’s beauty is no different. It must be forged, worked on, sacrificed for, and only those who are willing, who give themselves over completely, who pay the highest price are worthy of being preserved for all time.”

His host had finished. Rusty wasn’t quite sure of what to do or say. He had an urge to start clapping, but that seemed awfully awkward, and pitiful, as he was the only one there. Instead, he got back on the treadmill and started running.

“Very good, Vermillion,” said the man. “You do that. I’m going to check your belongings for contraband snacks.”

That had been two weeks ago. Since then, Rusty had spent every day in his host’s upscale loft working out—running on the treadmill, lifting weights, doing sit-ups, even yoga, though the stretch pants made him feel rather silly. On top of that, he had been put on an all-natural, organic, vegan diet. No meat, no dairy, and no carbs. After all, “If you can’t exercise self-control over your natural appetites, what hope have you of controlling supernatural ones?” Rusty had stuck to it—mostly. Okay, so he’d sneaked in a few candy bars and a slice of pizza or two. Man cannot live on soy alone. Hell, man can barely live on soy at all.

Even with these lapses, Rusty was shedding pounds. He had already traded in his old pants and belts. He wouldn’t be modeling underwear anytime soon, but you had to start somewhere, right?

“Very good,” his host said later that night. Rusty wasn’t quite sure how the pair of forceps measured the folds of his stomach, but they obviously did, because the man continued to make encouraging sounds as he poked Rusty with the cold metal. “Very good, indeed.”

The forceps were placed in a black leather doctor’s bag. In their place came a tailor’s measuring tape. This went around his waist, chest, arms, legs, and neck. The numbers were then written on a clipboard, checked, and compared.

“This couldn’t be better,” commented the host. “Even cheating on your diet hasn’t thrown off your schedule.”

Rusty shifted uncomfortably. Cheating on his diet might make him unworthy, but lying about it might make him more unworthy.

The man chuckled. “Don’t worry. Everyone cheats.”

Rusty let out a sigh of relief. As he did so, he was encouraged to lift his arms. It was a moment or two before he realized what was going on.

“Um, why are you drawing on me?” Rusty asked.

The permanent marker in the man’s hand stopped somewhere around his kidneys.

“You didn’t think we were going to do all of this so slowly?” he said with a smile. “That would take forever and you are not immortal yet. People, like wines, have an ideal time in which they are at their best. Past that, they begin an irrevocable decline. It’s important we improve you before you hit yours.”

“Um, and when is that?” Rusty asked.

“According to my calculations, we have about six months. Maybe a year. So, we speed up the process where we can,” the man explained. “Besides, I am eager to begin working on your face.”

Like an artist at an empty canvas, Amanda stood in front of her wardrobe. Her gaze shifted as her mind threw this dress with those shoes or that blouse with these pants, searching for a look that both fit in and stood out. And it had to be supersexy, as she was about to walk into a nightclub of ultrahot vampires and wannabe vampires alongside a walking cadaver who didn’t understand why commenting on her weight was inappropriate.

“I don’t see the problem,” he had said as Amanda seethed and Simon excused himself from the room. “You can afford to eat. Unlike those poor wretches on TV. Actors being destitute and hungry. Time may have passed, but some things never change.”

And so she needed something that would instill enough confidence to offset anything her tagalong might say. The dilemma was really on her choice of top, as that would decide what she wore with it. If she wore a halter style, well then a pair of tight-fitting black leather pants might go nicely. If she went with a proper blouse, then a short miniskirt and glasses would be needed to complete the sexy-librarian look. If she went with a form-fitting black
²⁵
dress, the whole top-and-bottom decision became moot.

Tonight, her eyes kept falling upon the corsets. She didn’t get to wear them often and was on her way to one of two places in the modern world where they were acceptable.
²⁶
Plus, a corset would send the right message: “Yes, I do look good, but I’m not going home with you, and if you think any differently, try figuring out how to get this off me.” With very little finesse and quite a bit of struggle, she wriggled into the garment, using some practiced flailing and the handle of her closet door to tighten it—not to beauty-is-not-breathing Victorian standards, but enough to give it the proper amount of squish up top.