How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (21 page)

Tough

I
can’t think about that yet. Maybe I won’t ever be able to. But I know why vamps
hate holy things now. Crosses, Bibles, holy water don’t burn them—us—they don’t
burn us. It hurts in their soul, remembering they gave that up.

Oh,
God. I gave that up.

Tiffani

“Stop,
Tough,” I yelled. “Let it go. You have to let Him go.”

Even
though my mouth was next to Tough’s ear, he didn’t hear me. I tightened my arms
around his throat and stomach and braced my feet against the base of the
toilet. He bit me and twisted until he smacked his head against the tub.

“Listen
to me, you little bastard!” I wrenched his head back and smashed it into the
tub again. A fractured skull would slow him down. “It’s gone. It’s never coming
back. You have to let it go. You’ll just make it that much harder on yourself
if you don’t.”

Good
thing I had kept the old cast-iron claw foot instead of updating the whole
bathroom. I doubt porcelain or tile could stand up to something as hard as a
twenty-something-year-old boy’s head.

One
last solid hit. I let Tough drop and put one knee up on the edge of the tub.
Good thing, too, that he hadn’t had any blood yet, the crow magic was only
half-done. Until then, he was still in that middle ground between dead and
undead, and I could still knock him unconscious. My jeans and shirt were
ruined, though. I should have gotten undressed again when I heard Tough waking
up. Should’ve remembered how violent making a male vamp is.

My
connection with Mitzi opened.

You
made Tough?
She was pouting.
I wanted to make him!

Sounds
like something he’d trust you to do after you let Jason steal his voice,
I
said.

Jason
can actually make something out of that voice without getting dragged back to
Halo,
she said.
If anything, we did Tough a favor. Now the
world can hear him sing.

Yeah,
you’re saints.

My
foot slipped a little in the mess.

Kind
of knee-deep right now, huh?
Mitzi sounded more amused than
sympathetic.

More
like ankle-deep,
I said.

Shit’s
shit, no matter how deep.

Tell
me about it,
I said.
What was the name of that last guy
you made?

There
in Halo? Finn.

Finn.
Not much going on upstairs, but easy on the eyes.

That’s
why I liked him,
Mitzi said. She checked out the scene through
my eyes.
I always thought Tough was all right. You know, minus the shit. But
that’ll wash off.

I
shrugged.
Jailbait’s your thing.

We
used to call them innocents,
Mitzi said.
A few more years
and he might’ve filled out into something more your style. Then he could’ve
taken St. Lover-boy’s place mooning over you.

I
bit back what I wanted to say. Vamps mature as they get older. They gain
strength, speed, and cunning, get a better handle on their reflexes, hone their
abilities. Mitzi was at least twice my age. I didn’t want to start something I
couldn’t finish.

Tough’s
body started struggling to breathe again as he regained consciousness.

Got
to go,
I told Mitzi.
Time for round two.

Have
fun.

The
connection closed. I kneeled on Tough’s throat and got a slimy handful of hair.

“All
right, kid, listen up.” He gritted his teeth, but his arms were still trying to
get ahold of something. I yanked his hair. “You think that crack in your head
hurts healing up? It’s about to hurt a lot worse if you don’t stop fighting me.
Got it?”

He
almost threw me off, so I hit him in the nose. The bone crunched under the heel
of my hand and the rotting blood-like venom that’s inside of vampires seeped
out of his right nostril.

“Get
control of yourself, Tough, or I swear I’ll end you. Give me some kind of sign
that you heard me.”

There
was an unfolding sensation in my brain. A new connection.

Tough

What
was I supposed to do, sing her a song? Say something clever?

Smartass.
Tiffani’s voice was like a radio turning on inside my brain. She got off my
throat and let me go.
I was trying to keep you from destroying my bathroom
and massacring the first ten people you got ahold of.

I
slid myself up. Then I inhaled through my nose and the world turned into a
fuzzy black and white picture someone had smeared with ashes. Except for the
blood. It was cold and dead and packed in sterile plastic bags, but it glowed
red like a taillight in the middle of the night. I tried to lunge for it, but
Tiffani smacked my head against the bathtub again and lightning flashed behind
my eyes.

I
know you think you’re starving,
she said.
You’re not.
It’ll pass.

Her
smudgy black and white arm reached past me and picked up one of the glowing
bags. My shoulder hit her in the stomach and pinned her against the bathroom
wall.

Before
the blood bag hit the floor, I was flat on my back again with one of her knees
on my throat and the other on my chest.

“Dammit,
Tough, stop,” she yelled. She kicked with the knee on my neck and I gagged.
“Just give me a second.”

She
tore open the blood bag and the smell filled up the bathroom. Pain stabbed
through my upper jaw like someone was shoving a pencil down through the gums.
The bone on the right side popped and creaked and felt like it was going to
break unless something made room. Then a tooth dropped out of my gum. I almost
choked on it, but Tiffani shoved her hand in my mouth to grab it.

“Bite
me and I’ll beat the piss out of you,” she said.

As
soon as she pulled the tooth out, I reached for the blood bag again. She
slapped my hands down and squeezed it into my mouth. I was so hungry I couldn’t
even taste the blood, just felt it sliding down my throat and into my stomach.
It burned in my chest the way liquor did right before it hit me. The world got
a little clearer, and in the back of my brain somewhere, I felt Tiffani smack
my hands away again, this time from her breasts.

The
blood bag ran dry and she reached for another one. Almost before I thought
about moving I was on top of her.

Tiffani
kicked me in the balls. Pain exploded all the way up into my stomach and I
almost threw up everything I’d just drank. It hurt so bad I forgot I couldn’t
yell.

Son
of a bitch!

I’m
always going to be faster and stronger than you,
she
said.
Don’t try anything else or I’ll rip them off and never give them back.

Tiffani
rolled me onto my back and sat on my chest. It was so hard to hold still while
she ripped open another blood bag I thought I’d lose it. Time got stuck in
place. My teeth kept snapping together and tearing at my cheeks. I was trying
to bite something. There was a noise, too. Like the sound of a growl without
vocal cords to support it. Tiffani was teasing me—the way Mitzi used to when
she knew I was dying for her—letting me go crazy waiting. I could rip her apart
and she wanted to dick around. The first glowing red drop hung on a jagged
strip of the torn plastic. By the time it finally started to fall, my whole
body was shaking so bad that Tiffani looked like she was vibrating.

Is
it good for you?

Drink
your blood, smartass,
she said.
I’d like to take a shower
sometime today.

A
couple more bags of blood and the smoky, ashy smears faded out of my vision. By
about the seventh one, I could smell and see why she wanted a shower.

I’d
never been big on embarrassment. When I took the biggest crap of my life—which
I guess still held the record now that I was dead—I went and got Harper and Jax
and a tape measure. But that was in a toilet and I didn’t try to mud wrestle
and grope and I think possibly rape someone in it.

How
was there even that much inside me?

Then
I remembered Tiffani could hear what I was thinking. I waited for the top part
of my cheeks to start burning, but nothing happened.

It’s
easier to seem alive after you feed from a human,
Tiffani said.
You’ll figure out how to close the connection, too. Just takes
practice.

I
tried to run a hand through my hair and ended up with a handful of
crap-pudding.

Tiffani
stood up and grabbed me under the arm. “Come on, let’s wash off. Then you can
clean my bathroom.”

Tiffani

I
changed the heat setting on the oven, then leaned with my back against it to
soak up the warmth. Closed my eyes and listened to my tablet playing an old
X-Files
episode. The one where Krycek ends up locked in the abandoned missile silo.

It
used to be that watching
X-Files
made me feel like I was with Shannon.
She had gotten me into the show back when she was still with the Derringers.
She loved it so much that she had “Believe the Lie” tattooed up her arm, the
centerpiece of her right sleeve. Whenever she had a concert during the show’s
timeslot, my priority job went from body-guarding Shannon to making sure I got
the latest episode taped so we could watch it.

Tough’s
voice came through in my brain—
Are you seriously daydreaming about my mom
right now?

If
you don’t want to know what I’m thinking, learn how to shut the damn
connection,
I told him and forced myself to think about
something else.
Are you still cleaning?

Just
got done,
he said.

If
I can smell—

You
won’t. I got it all.

I
checked the clock. It had taken more than five hours for Tough to clean the
bathroom because he couldn’t figure out how to make his vamp speed work for him
and his muscles were still fighting rigor mortis. Any time you slow down in the
first couple days after you’re made, you have to worry about that. Mitzi
claimed she met a vamp once who couldn’t move his legs because he sat in a
chair for too long after his transformation, but I couldn’t say how true that
was. Sometimes you had to take her with a grain of salt.

Right?
Tough
thought.
One time she told me she’d had sex with lots of black guys because
I didn’t like her hair dyed red and she wanted me to be insecure about my dick.

Then
I heard water running through the pipes.

What
are you doing?
I asked.

Taking
another shower,
he said.

Praise
be.

Don’t
say that, okay?

It’ll
get easier,
I said.

Well,
it’s not right now, so don’t fucking say it,
he snapped.

Not
having Him anymore is part of the reason it feels so cold,
I
said.
Once your body cools off, it’s going to be twice as bad.

Great,
Tough
said.
Something to look forward to.

I
took a deep breath through my nose. About twenty seconds left on those scones.
Then a grainy video-clip of Tough’s girlfriend sucking him off flickered
through my head.

Can
you wait until you learn how to close the connection before you masturbate?
I
asked.

But
it’s cool for you to think about nailing my mom?

I
wasn’t—

You
think I don’t know what happened? You can’t keep a lid on shit in this town.
Especially not a preacher’s wife fucking a vampire.

Keep
talking, kid.

What’re
you going to do, stake me?

I
shook my head and pulled the scones before they started drying out. Changed the
oven temperature for the bread knots. Things could get out of hand between
vamps fast and I wasn’t going to end Tough because of something a dumbass kid
like him couldn’t even understand.

If
you don’t want to know what I’m thinking,
I repeated,
Learn
to shut the damn connection.

Can’t
you shut it off?
he asked.

You
opened it, you have to close it.

Damn
it.

I
started knotting bread.

Have
I been, uh, dead for very long?
Tough asked.

Overnight.

Shit.
What time is it?

Four
fifty-one.
I slid the knots in the oven and started plating the
scones.
Running late?

By
about seven hours,
he said.
Hey, cool.

If
I hadn’t had the vamp senses, Tough would’ve scared the hell out of me, going
from my upstairs bathroom to standing beside me and pulling his ratty John
Deere ball cap on his still-damp hair in almost no time. The post-death
skin-tightening had given him a shadow of stubble along his jaw and grown his
hair enough that it flipped out a little at the ends. He had inherited
Shannon’s curls.

What
you watching?
he asked, leaning over my tablet.

Telling
him to mind his own damn business would just fuel the fire, so I ignored the
question.

“Going
out?” I asked. “You know the sun comes up in about twenty-nine minutes.”

I’m
just headed to the house.

“I
can’t babysit today,” I said. “I’ve got a business to run.”

I’ll
be fine.

He
probably would. He’d eaten the equivalent of a person and a half when he woke
up. Most vamps can run on a whole lot less than that.

Tough
leaned over the scones and took a deep breath. His stomach growled with phantom
hunger pains.

“Don’t
touch,” I said.

They
smell good.

“Does
the term ‘violent rejection’ mean anything to you?”

He
shook his head.

“It
will if you swallow anything but human blood or vamp venom from here on out,” I
said. I started putting the plated scones in the display case. “It’s like food
poisoning for vampires, except it happens immediately and the ‘violent’ part is
really an understatement. They don’t make a detergent that washes out stomach
lining.”

I
can’t believe you’re going to let those cool down before someone eats them.
It’s like sacrilege or something.

“Big
word.”

Smart
girlfriend.
He stared down another scone as it went into
the display.
How often do you slip up and eat one?

“I
don’t anymore.”

But
you own a bakery because you like torture?

“Weren’t
you going somewhere?”

Yeah,
he
said, glancing up at the clock. He left the kitchen and I could hear his
footsteps headed for the door.
And the Tracker’s probably looking for me, so
that’s a thing.

I
dropped the plate I was holding and had to kick in the vamp speed to catch it
and the scone before they hit the floor.

“The
Tracker? Tough!” The bell over the door jingled, closing his scent off.
Why
the hell is the Tracker after you? He’s going to be able to smell you all over
my place.

I
missed a meeting with my probation officer,
he said.
How did I
make the speed work before?

Shove
it up your—

Oh,
there it goes.

I
slammed the display case shut. The Tracker in my bakery. I’d have to scrub the place
down with lye. Maybe I could meet him outside, tell him Tough had already left.
Zombies almost never deviate from their commands, but it was worth a try.

You
damn well better hope he doesn’t insist on coming into my bakery to follow your
scent,
I said.

Will
you quit your bitching? You’re getting whatever you want out of this deal.

I
looked down at the scones and tried not to think about what I wanted more than
anything. On my tablet, Krycek started banging on the missile silo door and
screaming for someone to let him out. I reached over the counter and shut the
sound off.