How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (20 page)

Colt

With
soft, burning hands Mikal wiped the sweat and saliva and tears from my face,
unbuckled the restraints, and cleaned the gouges my fingernails had left in my palms.
Then she carried me to the shower and washed me with hot, soapy water. I wanted
to push into her touch, to soak up the comfort like gauze soaks up blood.

Fuck,
I was so weak. How long had it taken me to give up? A few minutes? An hour? I
wanted to put a .45 in my mouth and empty the magazine.

Mikal’s
lips grazed my temple and I relaxed.

Good
dog,
my burning angel said.

Tough

“You’re
late,” Tiffani said when I got to the bakery.

I
checked her clock. Ten to seven. I shrugged. Only by twenty minutes, and
anyway, I’d figured since she had the super-smeller, she would prefer I take a
shower before I showed up smelling like sweat and sex and the best fucking
afternoon of my life.

Ha—literally
fucking.

“This
is serious,” Tiffani said.

I
shrugged. I got that, but I couldn’t think about just how serious it was. If
you let yourself focus on how much something is going to hurt, all you’ll do is
make yourself sick.

“What?”
Tiffani said. “You think I drink some of your blood and you drink a little of
mine and you’re a vamp? Easy as pie?”

That
was exactly what I thought.

“That’s
not how it works.” Tiffani closed the last big-window blind in the bakery and
turned back to face me. “I need to drink most of your blood because you’re going
to drink most of the blood-like stuff inside of me. The volume of vampire venom
has to be greater than the volume of human blood for the crow magic to work.”

I
nodded. Drinking was something I had a real talent for.

Tiffani
shook her head at me and leaned her hip against a table.

“Don’t
think you’re going to slurp, slurp, done, either. It’s not easy to drink. It
burns like hell going down and it’ll start poisoning you before you get enough,
but you can’t stop drinking. Too little and you’ll come back as a zombie and
I’ll have to kill you for good. Understand?”

I
gave her the double thumbs-up.

“Can
we wait ten years to do this?” she asked. “Vamping turns you into a more
intense version of yourself and your self is an asshole.”

It’s
probably a good thing I couldn’t talk because I would’ve told her she didn’t
wait, so I’d take my chances, too. What did she want me to do—sit there and let
her change her mind because she didn’t think I could handle voluntarily
drinking a couple gallons of poison?

I
tapped my chest and mouthed
I. Can. Do. It.

“You
know you’re not going to get your voice back doing this,” Tiffani said. She
pointed at my black eye. “Most of those bruises and all the swelling will go
down because of fluid loss, but however you die, that’s pretty much how you
stay.”

I
nodded. That whole voice thing was something to worry about later.

Tiffani
stared at me for a long time. She took a breath and sighed.

“Change
your mind, Tough,” she said. “There’s got to be a different way to save—to save
them both.”

I
shook my head.

She
pursed her lips and headed for the stairs, then turned back when I didn’t go
after her.

“Well,
come on,” she said.

I
waved my hand at the open space.

“Yeah,
right. Making someone is a messy process. Maybe I can get this place cleaned up
before I open tomorrow if I go all-out vamp speed all night, but I’ll still be
able to smell it.” She pointed at the ceiling. “We’re doing it in the bathtub.
End of discussion.”

I
agreed to that, but I didn’t agree to do it naked, which is why we hit our
second speed bump in the upstairs bathroom when she told me to get undressed.

“Do
you have another pair of jeans with you?”

I
shook my head. I didn’t have another pair of jeans, period, or I wouldn’t be
wearing Ryder’s raggedy-ass hand-me-downs.

“Then
you’re going to want your clothes off and probably far away,” she said. “Hand
them here and I’ll throw them in my bedroom.”

I
didn’t take anything off.

“Fine.
If you’re comfortable with your body flushing twenty years’ worth of binge
drinking, junky food, and generally bad decisions out of every hole you’ve got
and onto your clothes, then keep them on.”

I
made the gesture for her to turn around.

“That’s
what I thought.” Tiffani crossed her arms and faced the door. While I was
taking off my jeans, she started talking again. “You know, I’ve seen you naked
before. Mitzi showed me.”

She
let you listen in while we did it, so why wouldn’t she let you watch?

“And
I’m going to have to have my eyes open while I make you.” Tiffani shrugged. “I just
didn’t figure you for the shy type.”

Normally,
I wasn’t. Even though some people thought I looked like Ryder, I was okay with
my body. I wasn’t real tall and I could’ve probably stood to bulk up some, but
I was solid enough. On a normal day, walking around naked wouldn’t have
bothered me any, but the seriousness of this whole thing kept trying to push in
through the cracks in my make-Colt-and-Desty-undead-happily-ever-after fantasy.
I was getting a little freaked out.

Tiffani
took my clothes and John Deere hat to her room.

I
took a deep breath and blew it out. Tried to imagine Desty and me having
insane, fast and hard vamp-sex. No condom, no need to stop and catch our
breath, and if every vamp was like Mitzi, no need to convince Desty it was okay,
she could let go with me. That calmed me down some.

When
Tiffani came back, she was naked. She looked down at my hard-on.

I
hoped my glare said,
It’s not for you.

Tiffani
just pointed to the bathtub, one of those old cast-iron claw foot ones retrofitted
with a showerhead above it. I stepped in and she followed me.

“Okay,
here’s how it’s going to go.” She grabbed my hair, tilting my head back and to
the side, then touched her thumb to the vein in my neck. “I’m going to bite you
here. I can’t use bite sedative while we do this, or you won’t be able to drink
and I can’t force down enough venom on my own to make you. So, don’t struggle.”

I
nodded.

Tiffani
didn’t look convinced.

“If
you struggle, it could blow the vein, and I’ll have to go to another one.” She
grabbed a handful of my package, making an already awkward boner the good side
of painful and the bad side of your mom’s friend just grabbed your dick.
“There’s a nice, big vein here. That’s number two on my list if you blow the
one in your neck struggling. It’ll hurt about ten times worse.” She squeezed
tighter and I started sweating. “Blow that vein—” In any other situation I
would’ve laughed until I cried. “—and there’s a good chance this is the last
time you’ll be able to get it up. Are you getting an idea of the gravity here?
Do. Not. Struggle.”

Whatever
Tiffani saw in my face must’ve convinced her. Or maybe it was the fact that you
could hear me gulp across town. As long as it did the job, I don’t care what
ended up making her believe that I wouldn’t struggle. She let me go and stepped
back.

“Change
your mind, Tough,” she said again.

I
couldn’t.

Tiffani
took a really long breath so she could let out a really long sigh. Then she
balled up her fist and tore through her wrist veins with one fang. Reddish-brownish
vamp venom oozed up, but didn’t drip or run down her arm.

“If
it starts to heal over, I’ll cut it open again as fast as I can, but it’s not
that easy to pay attention while I’m drinking,” she said. “So try to make it
fast and maybe we won’t have too much trouble.”

I
nodded.

Tiffani
bent my head to the side again. Her fangs grazed the vein under my jaw and
goose bumps jumped up all over my chest and back. For a second, I remembered
Mitzi running her ice-needle fangs down my neck on purpose because she thought
it was funny that I could get goose bumps. Then Tiffani put her torn wrist up
to my mouth and the burning-hair, rotting-blood, hot sauce smell of the vamp
venom hit me in the back of the throat.

I
was going to have to gag that down. Whiskey or ‘shine was one thing, but that
was real-life actual poison.

I’m
going to die. I’m going to drink that and die and come back full of that shit.
I’m never going to turn twenty-two. I’m never going to get the rest of my chest
hair in or get old and when someone finally puts a stake through my heart, I’m
going to Hell.

“Last
chance to back out.”

But
what about Desty? I could protect her from Kathan. If I didn’t make her a vamp,
that dick would enthrall her so he could have a twin threesome and take over
the world. That would kill her—maybe not her body, but that thing inside her
that was so innocent and funny and awkward.

I
could get her out of town. I snuck out twice, and I’m high-priority. How hard
could it be to get a random girl out of Halo? Rowdy gets deliveries on
Thursdays. Just load her into the back of the truck and never see her again.

But
Kathan had her scent. He would send the Tracker after her.

You
think Dad was just preaching to hear himself preach? Even Mikal’s scared of
Hell, and we’re talking an eternity of hellfire, not just a visit.

What
about Colt? He was still fighting, holding out indefinitely.

He
doesn’t think anybody’s going to ride in and save him. He’d never know I backed
out. I’m supposed to damn my eternal soul to Hell on the off chance I’ll be
fast enough to make him before Mikal stakes me?

Colt
would do it for me, though. Sure, we’d been assholes to each other over the
Mitzi thing, but this was serious. “I got you, Tough, I got you”—that’s what he
was yelling when I got cut off from our troops in the last
up-close-and-personal battle of the war. He came after me, semi-auto and sword
blazing, and he got me back safe.

Even
if all I ended up doing was kill him, at least he would be free from that
bitch.

“Tough?”

I
grabbed Tiffani’s hand and pulled her wrist into my mouth. The venom hurt more
than it tasted—like concentrated pepper-spray sauce—so bad that I had to shut
out everything else just to choke the shit down.

Thank
God.

That
was the last thing I thought before everything inside my body caught on fire.
Somewhere along the line my heart gave out. I died. I remember feeling relieved
that it was finally over.

Desty

“Oh, I
fell asleep.” I yawned and stretched. I was alone and the room was dark.
“Tough?”

Maybe
he was in the shower, getting ready to head to the bar. I turned over and laid
with my face in the pillow, breathing in his smell—beer and men’s body spray
and sweat.

Jeez.
And I had called Tempie a stupid twee-girl. 

But it
felt like maybe I loved Tough.

Tough

Only
a handful of people were ever supposed to come back from the dead—Jesus, Lazarus,
Dorcas, a couple little kids—and only because God told them to. Vamps are
damned to Hell forever and ever because they come back outside the Will of God.
They use crow magic to trap their soul in this earthly body, denying Christ’s
offer of eternal salvation in exchange for a little more time.

Heck,
I guess I did pay attention to some of Dad’s preaching after all.

Tiffani

I
sat on the toilet lid and lit a cigarette. Held it with the cherry up, the way
the Smoking Man always did. Times like that I hated my super-smelling. The
smoke didn’t even begin to mask the bathtub filled with a half-inch of various
bodily wastes.

Forcing
the last couple of mouthfuls of vamp venom down Tough’s throat had worn me out.
No matter how prepared a person thinks they are, the human body panics and
fights back when you try to poison it.

At
least my skin was warm. That’s one thing about drinking from a living
body—blood feeds the crow magic, so for a little while, you get to feel alive.
And the smoke helped give me the illusion of heat from the inside out.

Another
lungful, then I reached over and turned on the shower.

When
you’ve been a vampire long enough, you start to get these feelings of coming
full circle. You see things begin and then, later, you see them end. Seeing
Tough’s corpse lying in my antique claw foot bathtub gave me one of those
full-circle feelings. I’d known him before he was born. The day Shannon got the
ultrasound, she came into the bakery to tell me the news and to order a batch
of clove cookies with “Another penis!” written in blue icing as a surprise for
Danny.

I’m
a bisexual divorcée who chose vampirism and eternal damnation over dying alone,
so even ignoring my history with Shannon, there were plenty of reasons Danny
and I never got along. We tried to keep things civil for Shannon’s sake, but
making Tough a vamp… If Danny was still alive, this probably would’ve been the
end of his no-staking rule.

If
Danny was still alive, though, he would have to face the fact that this was his
fault. If he would have just taken care of his damn kids instead of convincing
them they needed to start a war they couldn’t win for the sake of a woman who
was already dead, none of this would’ve happened.

I
took another deep drag on the cigarette and let the smoke out with a sigh. It
didn’t help that I understood Danny’s motivation now more than ever. Just made
me hate us both.

The
scratches on my arms and face started itching, but they weren’t as bad as the cut
on my wrist. The worse the wound, the worse the healing process. I pinched my
cigarette between my lips and used my left hand to scratch the scabbing and
dying skin from that spot so the new layer could grow through.

Tough
had always looked more like Shannon than like Danny—him and Ryder both. They
had the black hair and Whitney eyes, but they were shorter, with her oval face
and long nose. Something about death made Tough look even more like her. Maybe
how hell-raisers always seem to go so young.

There
was still time to stop this. I could put a stake through Tough’s heart and burn
his body before he came back. But he looked so much like Shannon lying there,
and he’d been so sure he could get Colt away from Mikal.

I
flicked my filter into the tub and grabbed some toilet paper to wipe my eyes.
One of the great things about being a vampire is not having to worry about
smeared makeup. The vamp venom gives your skin a more even tone and undeath
means no new wrinkles or blemishes. Of course, if you want a haircut, you had
better get one you’re ready to stick with. After that initial post-death skin
tightening, your hair and your fingernails never grow again.

I
stood up and found a pair of needle nose pliers in the sink drawer. Tilted
Tough’s head back and held his mouth open with my thumb while I pried the
canines out of his upper jaw. It hurts like hell to feel your fangs force your
canines out. I always figured if I ever made anyone I’d save them the trouble,
but pulling teeth was harder than it looked. Tough’s left canine was already
loose—maybe from that ass-whooping he took—but the right one really had some
roots. It cracked and broke off when I tried to get a better grip.

“Damn
it.”

Well,
it was probably better than nothing.

I
washed my hands and the pliers, then reached for the door knob. It’s eerie
being in a room with a corpse. Makes you feel as if you need to talk out loud.
Explain yourself.

“Going
to go get some blood,” I said. “You’re going to be starving when you wake up.”