Read How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town Online
Authors: eden Hudson
Tough
Rian
wasn’t still dicking around the west side of Halo—which was probably for the
best or I might’ve ended up a really short-lived vamp—so I rolled on into town
with the radio blasting. Rowdy’s was filling up, but I didn’t even slow down
when I passed. I should’ve wanted to go in, but I had this feeling creeping up
on me like I couldn’t face more than Harper and Jax right then.
Suddenly
the radio was up too loud. The music hammered on my skull. My hands started
shaking to where I almost couldn’t hold the wheel. It didn’t feel like a rigor
mortis thing and it wasn’t from the cold. My heart pumped and that shocked me
into breathing. Then it did again, hard enough that I felt it bang against the
wall of my chest. I wasn’t seeing right anymore. I had to pull over.
What
the hell?
When I panicked, the connection with Tiffani opened.
Please.
Help.
Cold
sweat dripped into my eye and more ran down my back. I couldn’t get goose bumps
anymore, but I started shivering.
Where
are you?
Tiffani asked.
I
don’t— I’m going to throw up.
I
opened the door and fell out of the cab. A car hit its breaks. I tried to drag
myself out of the road, but nothing would move. I was gagging and trying to
breathe at the same time. Dying. This is what it felt like to die for real, forever
dead. Hell dead.
“Tough?”
It wasn’t Tiffani’s voice, but I knew it. “What’re you doing? Are you okay?”
A
girl’s hand touched my face. Then she grabbed under my armpit and the back of
my neck and pulled until we both fell onto the sidewalk. The heat of her body
soaked into my skin and I hugged her against me.
“Are
you all right?” she asked. “Do you need to drink? Here.”
She
pushed on my jaw until my mouth was at her throat and I bit into the glowing
vein there. I think I sighed. Her blood burned in my chest and the warm buzz
filled my brain almost immediately. The shaking faded and my heart went still
again. I kept drinking. I could hear her making shushing sounds and feel her
rubbing my back. It felt so good. She slid her other hand between us and pressed
against my erection through my jeans. Instinct was what made me push back.
Trying to get at that heat. Grinding against her hand. When I came, I turned
loose of her neck. I rested my face on her shoulder.
“Better,
huh?”
Shit,
shit, shit.
Now I could tell who she was.
“Probably
just a reaction to drinking that punk Desty’s blood.” Scout kept on talking,
even though I got my arms to work enough to shove myself off of her. “Harper’s
so retarded. I can’t believe she wants you to keep drinking that crap even though
it does this to you.”
My
head spun like I’d just chugged a fifth of Wild Turkey. I fell back on the
concrete and pulled down on the bill of my hat with both hands.
Scout.
I just got off on Scout.
“I
bet Harper didn’t even show her that trick. Everybody knows vamps stop sucking
when they come.”
The
first time I’d had sex with Mitzi after she put me down—and I mean really
stomped my heart into the ground—I felt hollow. Brittle, like any little thing could
break me. Afterwards, I don’t know how I got myself home, but I went to bed and
didn’t get up the rest of the day. Laying there on the sidewalk beside Scout, I
knew I should’ve been tougher. I knew I shouldn’t feel hollow, like I’d just
smashed something glass that could never be put back together. Something had
happened. My body had freaked out. It could’ve been anybody who saw me and let
me drink.
Which
meant it could’ve been anybody I got off on.
Shit,
I wished it had been Desty. Her blood would’ve lit me up like a Taser, but at
least I wouldn’t feel like there wasn’t anything inside of me. What the hell
did I run out on her for, anyway? Telling me not to fight with Colt? She was
just trying to keep me from fucking him up worse.
Scout
was still talking. She tried to touch my arm, but I jerked away from her.
“Well,
excuse me,” she snapped. “You’re freaking welcome for the blood, by the way.”
Even
if I could talk, I don’t know what I would’ve said to her. I stood up. After a
second, the dizziness went away and I headed for the truck.
“She’s
not like us, Tough,” Scout yelled after me, sounding all pissy and teenage.
“She’ll never understand you like I do. She can’t give you what you need!”
Climbing
up into the truck popped my broken rib like an M-80. The pain helped clear my
head some more. I fired up the truck and headed for the house. I needed to stop
fucking up just long enough to get something done right.
Tiffani
Tough
jumped when I slammed his truck’s passenger side door. Vamp speed and reflexes
plus moving vehicles can make for some impressive entrances.
I
lit up a cigarette and he glared at me. The connection opened.
Don’t
smoke in my truck,
he said.
“It
covers up the cum smell,” I said.
He’d
just eaten, so a faint blush spread out over his cheekbones.
You’d
be okay with the smell, though, if I was a chick,
he
said.
“Anybody
ever tell you it’s illegal to feed off of a minor?” I let the cooled smoke roll
out as I talked. “Even a seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old.”
He
huffed through his nose, a combination of a sneer and a laugh. My ex used to do
that when he wanted me to know he thought I was being petty. But it was hard
not to be petty with Aaron. More and more toward the end of our marriage.
Thanks
for stopping me,
Tough said.
I forgot how much you like
watching.
“I’m
not your damn mom,” I said. “And even if I was, I think it’s better for kids to
learn from their own mistakes.”
Tough
snorted again.
He
drove and I watched the embers shifting in the cigarette’s cherry. If vamps get
too hungry, our ultimate predator senses take over and it’s as if we can see
the blood under everything else. I’ve heard that it’s not really seeing, but
that’s how the semi-human brain understands it.
Tough
caught the drift of my thoughts.
I
wasn’t hungry,
he said.
I
nodded. Rubbed my forehead with the heel of my cigarette-hand. This was what
happened when you made someone without thinking about the consequences.
“Damn
it. Should’ve had you dry out before I made you.”
He
looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. Dumbass kid like him
probably didn’t, either.
“Delirium
tremens?” I said. “Alcoholic goes on a binge, then stops cold. His body
panics.”
Bullshit.
I’m not an alcoholic.
“Sure
you’re not,” I said, rolling down the window to tap some of the ash off of my
cigarette. “No one in Halo is.”
I’m
not!
“It
layers into your skin, kid. If I wanted to, the super-smeller could take me all
the way back to the first drink you ever had. Which—since you were probably
sneaking it from Ryder and Colt—I’d guess was Southern Comfort.”
Tough
looked at me for a second as if I’d hit the nail on the head. It wouldn’t have
been as impressive if he’d known the whole story.
He
pulled into the drive of the crappy little house he shared with Harper Ives and
Jax Carpenter. Shut off the truck. Pulled off his John Deere cap, scratched his
hand through his hair, and tugged the hat back on.
I
thought I was dying,
Tough said. He was trying to figure out a way
to tell his girlfriend.
“If
she really wants to stay with you, she’ll have to get used to it,” I said.
“There’s always somebody waiting for a vamp to lose control. Especially around
here with all the groupies looking to get off on death.”
I’m
not fucking around on her again,
he said.
“Tell
that to your body the next time the DTs hit.”
Tough
went still. Obviously, he hadn’t considered there being a next time.
“The
way you die is the way you stay,” I said. “Whatever diseases or injuries you
die with—you’re stuck with them. I told you that.”
Tough
stared down at the steering wheel.
Scout
said it was Desty’s blood that did it.
“If
you’re hell-bent on telling her, I don’t think I’d open with that.”
He
glared at me.
“Blood’s
blood,” I said. I took another drag on the cigarette and waited while the smoke
cooled in my lungs. “No human’s blood is different than any other human’s.
Otherwise, vamp protectors would eat out a lot more often.”
Tough
shook his head.
Scout’s
was like the blood bags, like a shot of whiskey. Desty’s was like bad meth.
“Can’t
be. I drank some of hers the other day.”
That
got a rise. Never fails that guys like to daydream about their girlfriends
getting some girl-on-girl action, but when the other woman is an alleged
lesbian, they freak out.
“Keep
your pants on, it was in a blood bag,” I said. “She sold me some Sunday.”
Why?
“Why
do people sell anything they need? They’re out of money and desperate.”
He
looked down at the steering wheel for a while. A few chauvinistic
woman-barefoot-and-chained-to-the-stove thoughts flitted through his head.
Things like he’d never let her get that desperate again. Well-intentioned, but
offensive, the way men around here are still conditioned to think. Women who could
take care of themselves made guys like Tough uncomfortable and had to be queer.
And because I used to bodyguard for Shannon and her band, I must’ve been one
hell of a bull-dyke.
Tough
rolled his eyes.
Yeah,
body guarding is why people think you’re a bull-dyke,
he
said.
“This
is the reason men don’t last as vamps,” I said. “Everything’s so black and
white. There’s no—”
Thanks,
but I didn’t sign up for the feminist bullshit rally.
Smoke
clouded out when I laughed. Both Colt and Shannon used to give me the business
about “Tiffani’s feminist bullshit.” But growing up in the fifties gives a
person a whole different perspective on what people call feminism these days.
Tough
wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. His mind had wandered back to his
girlfriend.
Who’re
you supposed to be protecting?
he asked.
“You
remember Brady Johnson? The guy who drove for the Red Cross?”
Good
job with that,
Tough said.
“Just
because you’re protecting someone from other NPs doesn’t mean you can keep them
from getting hit by an asshole who’s texting when he should be driving.”
That’s
been five years ago at least. Where do you get your blood?
“I
don’t cause any trouble for the big, bad boss man, so it doesn’t matter.”
Tough
gave me a wry smile.
Vamp-groupies looking to get off on death like that fat
Goth at the bakery the other day?
I
shrugged and put out the cigarette on my palm, savoring the lingering heat
before the healing began.
“You
remember what you had for dinner two days ago?” I said, flipping the butt out
the window.
Cold,
cold heart,
he said.
Colt was right.
I
felt the wrinkle appear between my eyebrows. “He said something about me?”
About
vamps. He said it gets hard for them to feel after they’ve been dead for a
while.
“Guess
you’ll have to take his word for it.”
Tough
gave me a look.
“No
‘feminist bullshit’ this time.” I took another cigarette out, but when he
scowled at me, I sighed. Tapped the filter on the dash. Damn kid was too much
like Shannon to listen to someone who had already been there. He’d have to try
chewing toothpicks and straws himself before he took up smoking to ease the
mouth boredom. “No, I’m betting you won’t even make it to your first violent
rejection. You got a head start on stirring up shit. Step out of line just
right and Kathan’s going to give Mikal the order to end you. So I’m going to
tell you what my sire told me the day she made me.”
Tough’s
eyes narrowed. The vamp senses had let him know I was a threat.
“I
won’t think twice about staking you,” I said. “Male vamps are strong, but females
are made for killing. Stir up shit for me and you’re Hell-bound dead.” I put
the unlit cigarette between my lips. “And if you’re too stupid for that to
scare you straight, then remember the super-smeller. There’s nowhere your
girlfriend can hide that I can’t find her.”
That
set him off.
Put
one of your fucking dyke hands on Desty and—
Mitzi
picked a bad time to turn the connection into a three-way.
You’re
still here, Romeo?
she said.
I was going to ask Tiffani if she
had to stake you yet.
Tough
did the equivalent of slamming the phone down on his connection. Then he shoved
open his door and jumped out of the truck. He grabbed his side when he hit the
ground, but he didn’t look back.
Somebody’s
touchy,
Mitzi said, watching him through my eyes.
He
just popped his feeding-cherry and he doesn’t know how to tell his girlfriend.
That’s
one thing you can say for the guy—he doesn’t screw around,
she
said.
Not even when I went on that two-week trip to Cancun. Horny as all
hell when I got back, though.
Hope
that kid knew to wear a condom,
I said.
You
haven’t been with the same snack twice this month, slut,
Mitzi
said.
If anyone’s spreading postmortem STDs—
Shut
up a second.
Tough
had stopped moving a few paces from the porch. He swayed where he stood, then
did a face-plant, head bouncing off of the bottom step. He didn’t get back up.
I
could feel Mitzi laughing.
Holy
shit, Tiffani, you made a vamp that sleeps at night!
Even
I had to laugh at that.