Suck It Up and Die (9 page)

Zoë studied him. He looked like the parade had marched right over him. “Nah,” she said, “I’d rather give the most good-ass vampire in the world a ride home.”

On the ride downtown, Morning told Zoë everything that had happened, including his attack of
wordus eruptus
with Portia. When he told her how Rachel’s group CD and MOPer terrorization would only turn more Lifers against Leaguers, Zoë disagreed. “I don’t think you get it.”

“Get what?”

“There’s millions of Lifers who still want vampires, even if they’re Leaguers, to be a little badass. A lot of us get turned on by the danger of it—from just reading about it to the crazy ones like me who wanna get turned. Then there’s the in-betweens who just wanna experience the ecstasy of exsanguination.”

“The what?”

“The ecstasy of exsanguination,” Zoë repeated. “That’s what they call it.”

Morning shook his head in dismay and fell silent.

Zoë turned the pedicab onto his street and looked back. “I’ve always wanted to ask, A.M. When you got turned, was it all bad?”

Shuddering at the memory, he lied. “I don’t remember.”

She chuckled. “Like I believe that. The point is, from what I saw of the parade on TV, there were a ton of vampire wannabes and wanna-bleeds, right?”

“Yeah, it was gross.”

“Gross or not, there’s secret underground clubs in the city that cater to consensual bloodlusters.”

“That’s urban legend.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“Oh, right, like you’ve been to one.” Zoë silently coasted to a stop in front of St. Giles. “Have you?” he asked.

She flashed a big smile. “Ride’s over. Catch ya later, good-ass.”

As she rode away, Morning’s head was filled with the racket of cross-talking thoughts. He had to clear it. There was one place where he did his best head-clearing: the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Morning started across the walkway–bike path that arched through the bridge like a spine. He stripped off his blue probie shirt and got down to his white tee to be less conspicuous. Luckily, the walkway was almost empty.

He stopped halfway across and looked through the anti-jumper fence at the Statue of Liberty floating on the distant harbor. His cell phone rang. It wasn’t John Lennon; it was the heavy opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth:
dun-dun-dun-duuunn!
He answered it.

Luther Birnam was on the other end and spoke in a husky voice. “I wish you hadn’t left the parade.”

“I wish you’d been there to stop Rachel from flying off the handle.”

“And to stop you from putting your foot in your mouth?” Birnam asked.

Morning huffed. “How do you know about that?”

“I have my sources.”

There was no doubting it. Birnam could disappear for two months, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have eyes and ears everywhere. “Where are you?” Morning asked.

“At Leaguer Academy.”

Morning was shocked. “You mean you’re just up the Hudson and you couldn’t—”

“Not the new academy,” Birnam said. “The old one.”

Why he was there baffled Morning. The old Leaguer Academy, where Morning and Rachel had become Leaguers, was inside a mountain in California’s Sierra Nevadas. The hidden academy had been abandoned when the new one was opened after American Out Day in an old boarding school up the Hudson River. “What are you doing there?”

“That’s not important,” Birnam replied. “What’s important is that we halt Rachel’s dangerous behavior.”

Morning didn’t like the sound of “we.” “Why don’t you tell her to stop? You’re the president of the IVL.”

“I’m not king of the vampires. That’s not how we play it these days. I’m going to turn my videophone on.”

Morning was taken aback; he hadn’t seen Birnam’s face in two months. The few times they’d Skyped, Birnam had been audio only. He always had an excuse like “computer-idiot” or “technical difficulties.” Morning switched his phone to speaker and looked at the screen as it blipped on. Instead of Birnam’s face, the screen showed a piece of paper.

Birnam continued. “Since Rachel turned the parade into a showdown between us and them, I want to end the first anniversary of Out Day with a real peace offering, not one delivered by doves with hawks’ talons. Read the post I’ve written for the website.”

The writing was so tiny it challenged even Morning’s vampire eyes. “ ‘In celebration of this day, I am requesting that every Leaguer refrain from all CDing whatsoever. In the same way we have proved we no longer draw blood from the human well, we will prove we have no intention of using our powers to our advantage, or to the advantage of Lifers wishing to harness our powers. If even a white dove, the symbol of peace, can frighten a Lifer, then we must stop all CDing. We must show the most skeptical and fearful that the only CD every Leaguer wants to perform is the one that transforms us into citizens endowed with all the rights enjoyed by our mortal brothers and sisters.’ ”

Morning stared at the screen as it went back to black. “Rachel’s never going to go along with this.”

“Why not?” Birnam asked.

Morning clicked the speaker button off and re-eared his phone. “If there’s no more CDing, it’ll destroy her show.”

“Our goal isn’t the success or failure of a TV show,” Birnam said. “It’s getting the VRA passed.”

Morning frowned. “I’m not sure she gets that.”

“That’s why I need your help.”

Before Birnam could give him an assignment, Morning veered. “Mr. Birnam, you really want to know what I think of your post?”

“Yes.”

“It’s all good and noble, but a lot of Leaguers are tired of all the compromises.”

“What do you mean?”

“You compromised Worldwide Out Day into American Out Day. Then you compromised us to second-class citizens.
I’m not sure how much more you can ask Leaguers to swallow before they …” He paused, looking for the right word.

“Before they bite back?”

“I wasn’t thinking that, but yeah. I mean, if you wanna stop Leaguers from playing loosey-goosey with the rules, why don’t you force them to stop?”

“Force them?”

“Yeah, go old school, vamp up, and thrall them into obedience.”

Birnam chuckled. “Did I vamp up and thrall you into obedience when you were feeding on Portia?”

Morning cringed.
Why had he brought that up?

“No,” Birnam answered. “I trusted in the self-control you had learned. I let you stop yourself. My vamp-up days are over. I am only here to guide us from the
selva obscura
.”

“I thought we were out of the dark woods.”

“We are … but they will always be behind us, trying to lure us back in.”

The weariness in his voice made Morning wonder:
Does Birnam know more than he’s admitting? Does he know about the secret consensual bloodlust clubs Zoë mentioned?

“The bottom line is this,” Birnam explained. “If Leaguers behaving badly, like Rachel, keep stoking the fires of Becky-Dell Wallace and her Lifers behaving badly, it will come to no good. This country has a long history of suppressing the minority it fears. We could be forced onto reservations or put in internment camps. And it’s not like we can return underground. We’re all registered with the BVA.” He paused. “Work with me, Morning. Help me stop
Rachel from waking up the vampire slayer that still lurks in all Lifers.”

After hanging up, Morning’s eyes traveled back to the harbor. The Statue of Liberty held her torch aloft. He sighed over the irony. All he wanted was to be a firefighter and put
out
fires. Now Birnam wanted him to take up the torch of freedom again, and wave it for the Leaguer cause.

In the White Mountains of California is a forest of bristlecone pines. The trees are gnarled, bald trunks topped with sparse tufts of green needles. If God were a barber, this would be His worst haircut.

Vampires call it the Mother Forest; it is their cradle and grave. The first vampires, the Old Ones, evolved here from an ancient tribe of cannibals, who, as they ate their way through the neighboring tribes, also began eating the bark and nuts of the bristlecone pines. The trees, being the longest living things on earth, imparted the Old Ones with the gift of immortality. When the Old Ones devoured their last neighbor and faced starvation, the tribe disbanded. That was when the first vampires, the first ambassadors of bloodlust, spread across the globe.

Ever since then, when a vampire is slain and reduced to a pile of ash, it transforms into a seedpod, which rides the wind until it returns to the Mother Forest. There, the
seedpod buries itself in the soil and grows into both a vampire’s last form and its tombstone: a bristlecone pine.

At the edge of the forest, in the shadow of an older, larger tree, a twisting pine grew. Unlike the bark of the older tree, with its smooth twisting lines like gray taffy, the bark of this young bristlecone pine was different. It was russet red; its lines twisted with a pace and energy that made it appear to be more like fire than wood.

As dusk fell, the tree’s green needles rustled. There was no wind; the large tree towering above it was as still as stone. The small tree quivered from crown to root. The twisting creases racing up its trunk vibrated and began to split. One seam in the trunk split wider than the others; a human hand snaked out. Another followed. The hands grasped at the air like fleshy spiders looking for a grip. They found the edges of the widening rift in the trunk, and pushed. With a shattering scream of ripping wood and human lung, the red tree exploded in a cloud of splinters. What remained of the tree’s cleaved trunk toppled to the ground in a dusty crash.

Where the tree had once risen, stood the issue of its birth. A man: tall, lean, naked. His skin was copper colored, not unlike the bark of the tree that had birthed him. And even though it was smooth, and streamlined with taut muscles, his flesh bore a pattern of wavy lines. His skin was grained, as if he were partially made of wood.

But this was no Pinocchio. This was a vampire like the world had never seen.

Even though Penny Dredful had become a millionaire by managing talented Leaguers, including her biggest star, Rachel Capilarus, the Dredfuls had stayed in their duplex apartment in the lower half of a West Village town house. The mom in Penny was trying to keep it real for Portia by remaining in their modest home.

In the living room, Morning and Portia lounged on the couch, watching the first airing of the newest
Shadow
episode. Morning had his Out Day card and present for Portia in his backpack, but he wasn’t producing them until he had her full attention. At the moment, Portia was like a surge protector feeding energy to various devices. There was the TV, and she was on her iPhone, texting to Cody, who was at home, editing the footage they had gotten that day.

This second distraction irritated Morning. Talking on her cell while on a date was bad enough, but texting was worse because it robbed him of at least one side of the
dialogue. He figured this might be intentional on her part if they were texting about the footage of him being a jerk and implying that Penny was gouging vampires.