This Totally Bites! (3 page)

“Wow!” I exclaimed, looking at my great-aunt. “I think Bram just found someone he likes even less than me!”

“Emma-Rose!” Mom admonished me.

But Great-aunt Margo was laughing, and she reached out to squeeze my hand. Her fingers, like her cheek, were cold, but once again her gesture made me feel warm and secure. “You are right, my dah-link,” she chuckled. “Vhat can I say? Canines and I have never gotten along.”

“Same here,” I laughed as she and I settled down at the table. Dad went into the kitchen to start grilling, and Mom peered at the salad.

“Hon?” she called to Dad. “Which dressing did you use?”

“The Italian one,” Dad called back. “Why?”

Mom sighed, lifting up the bowl and carrying it toward the kitchen. “We can’t serve this then,” she told Dad. “Margo’s allergic to garlic.”

“You
are?
” I asked my great-aunt, jealous. “Ugh, I
hate
garlic! I wish I was allergic. Then Mom would stop trying to make me eat it!”

“Garlic is very healthy!” Mom called from the kitchen.

Great-aunt Margo leaned across the table, shooting me a mischievous smile. “Healthy, but disgusting, no?” she whispered, and I grinned at her.

For the first time in my life, I felt like someone in my family finally understood me. And I was really glad that Great-aunt Margo had come to visit.

Even if she was a little weird.

Over a delicious dinner of perfectly cooked hamburgers, Great-aunt Margo talked about her hometown in Romania. A small village with a funny name, it was nestled deep in the Carpathian Mountains, and it sounded beautiful. Margo described lush green forests, clear blue streams, narrow cobblestone streets, and ancient castles.

As she spoke — and Mom chimed in with memories of photographs her parents had shown her — I glanced out the window at the Manhattan skyline. Though I loved the tall buildings and concrete sidewalks of New York City, I liked the idea of such a rural, quaint place … the place my ancestors had lived! Suddenly, I realized that Great-aunt Margo
had given me a great starting point for my social studies project.

Excited, I helped with the dishes and excused myself for the night. Then I headed into my room, grabbed my laptop, and sat cross-legged on my bed.

I opened Google, then typed in the name of my family’s Romanian village, grateful for the
Did you mean?
feature after I’d misspelled it twice. Then I clicked on the Wikipedia page; it showed a pretty picture of the forests Great-aunt Margo had talked about, and gave the basic facts: population, map coordinates, and weather. Then, as I skimmed the page, I spotted a sentence that made my jaw drop.

I sat back, my pulse racing.
Transylvania?
As in, Count Dracula territory? I had no idea that my family came from
there.
Intrigued, I started to read more, but then my IM pinged. It was Gabby.

Bad news! she’d written. Dentist said I have to get braces!

I was still preoccupied by the whole Transylvania thing, but I tried to turn my attention to my best friend.

That totally bites! I typed back, hoping to make her smile.

Her response popped up immediately: Am so not LOL-ing. Of course u can joke about it, Em. U have perfect teeth!

I shook my head. Though my dentist had recently declared that I wouldn’t need braces (I’d celebrated with a candy feast that had resulted in three cavities), my teeth were
far
from perfect. I rose up on my knees so I was facing the mirror above my dresser, and I opened my mouth in an exaggerated smile. There they were, in the corners of my mouth — my super-embarrassing, super-pointy teeth. My dentist called them “incisors” and had even remarked that mine were sharper than most. I knew he was being nice by not calling them what they really were: fangs.

I heard another
ping!
and glanced back at my computer.

And ur “fangs” don’t count! Gabby had written.

She seemed upset, so I decided to call her. We chatted for a while, discussing Great-aunt Margo
(“definitely weird,” Gabby said), my dance vs. gala issue (“definitely dance,” Gabby declared), and braces (“get colored ones and make them a fashion statement,” I advised). By the time we said good-bye, it was late, so I finished the Edgar Allan Poe story I had to read for English, brushed my imperfect teeth, changed into my pj’s, and crawled into bed.

But, of course, I couldn’t sleep.

First, I flipped onto my side, then my belly, then my back. Passing headlights from cars threw strange shapes onto my ceiling. The falling raindrops sounded like fingertips tapping against my window-pane. I thought about Edgar Allan Poe, Halloween, Henry Green (for just a second), Great-aunt Margo, and the genealogy project. Then I remembered the Wikipedia page I’d stopped reading, and I sat up.

Without turning on the light, I eased out of bed and walked over to my desk. Sinking into my chair, I opened my laptop, and went back to where I had left off:

BANG!

The loud sound made me jump up so fast that I almost knocked over my chair. The bang hadn’t been a clap of thunder, or one of the many sirens I was used to hearing at all hours. It hadn’t even come from outside. It had come from right next door.

From the guest room.

Maybe Great-aunt Margo, like me, had trouble sleeping. Maybe she was unpacking, and the two of us could have a midnight snack. Maybe we could even discuss the vampire legends of her town. I was curious to learn more. For someone who enjoyed horror stories, I knew very little about vampires.

I tiptoed into the hallway. A window was open somewhere in the apartment, and I shivered in my thin pajamas. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that Bram was back on his pillow, fast asleep, and that the door to my parents’ bedroom was closed. But the door to the guest room was ajar.

Moving as silently as possible, I crept over and paused on the threshold. The long, narrow room was blanketed in darkness, and the one window at its far end was open. The damp breeze lifted the gauzy white curtains, making them dance like restless ghosts. Piles of fancy-looking luggage were in the indent of the room, and the scent of Great-aunt Margo’s perfume filled the air. But Margo herself was nowhere to be found. The bed was still neatly made, and the room was empty.

Except for the cages and cages full of bats.

Stuffed bats,
I reminded myself as I stepped inside. I held my breath, spooked by the sight of the dark, silent creatures. They all hung upside down from the bars of the cages, their leathery wings tucked against their furry bodies and their beady eyes shut tight.
Like they’re sleeping,
I thought, shuddering.

Great-aunt Margo was even weirder than I’d thought! Did she put her stuffed bats into these poses every night, as if they were her dolls or pets or something? And where
was
she? She couldn’t have gone outside in the rain. Was she in the kitchen?

Before I could turn to leave the room, lightning flashed outside, and I gave a start. For a second, the bat cage nearest me was lit up, and I saw that the cage door was swinging wide open. That must have been the bang I’d heard earlier: the wind blowing open the cage. I leaned over to close the small door.

Suddenly, one of the bats inside opened its eyes.

Its tiny, bright red eyes.

My knees turned to jelly, and I tripped backward. Before I could think, I dashed out of the room and into the hall, pressing my back against the wall and breathing hard.

Calm down, Emma-Rose.

I thought about what practical Gabby would say if she were there.
It’s just your overactive imagination,
she’d tell me, chuckling. She’d probably say that the moonlight had been playing tricks on me. That my mind was still full of the vampires and bats I’d been reading about on the Internet. That I should go back to bed, because there was absolutely no way that any of those bats were alive.

But then why were they in cages?

My curiosity took hold of me and didn’t let go.
Sliding my back along the wall, I turned my head and peeked into the guest room, not wanting to go inside again.

My heart stopped.

A glossy black bat with long, graceful wings flew in through the open window and balanced on the sill. The bat’s eyes were trained on the other bats in their cages. Like clockwork, all the bats in the room began unfolding their wings and opening their eyes, waking up. They even yawned, revealing pointy fangs.

And then —

The bat on the windowsill began to transform. The wings disappeared and were replaced by long, graceful arms. The squat, furry body lengthened out and began to take on a human form. As I stared, my eyes growing wider, my pulse pounding at my throat, the big bat ears shrunk. Then the tiny bat head began to morph into a human face. A
familiar
human face.

The face of Great-aunt Margo.

I clapped my hand over my mouth to silence my scream. All I wanted to do was run, but my legs wouldn’t work.

Please let this be one of those nightmares,
I prayed over and over.
Please let Mom call my name. Please let me wake up in my bed.

But I didn’t wake up. I stood there, trembling from head to toe, and staring at my great-aunt, who was no longer a bat. She now stood regally in front of the window, still watching the cages. She looked exactly as she had earlier that night, in her flowing black dress, with her hair in its bun. Only this time, the dark red lipstick on her mouth almost looked as if it could be — blood.

What should I do?
I wondered wildly.
Yell for help? Wake up Mom and Dad?
Even if I’d wanted to, my throat had gone bone-dry.

Slowly, Great-aunt Margo turned her gaze away from the bats, and in one choking second of terror, I realized she was about to see me. Finally, I was able to move. I spun around and tore toward my bedroom. With quivering hands, I shut the door. Then I flung myself onto my bed, burrowing under my covers and trying to stop my teeth from chattering.

Did I really see that? Did she see me? Am I going crazy? Is she about to knock on my door?
My mind was racing as fast as my heart.

After I’d pinched myself — hard — to make sure I really
was
awake, and I’d waited a good while to make sure Great-aunt Margo wasn’t coming after me, I lifted my head out from under the covers. The apartment was as silent as it had been before the fateful bang. There were no voices, and no sounds of flapping wings. If I strained my ears, all I could hear were Dad’s snores.

What was going on inside the guest room? Had the other bats also transformed into people? Or had they all flown out into the night?

On my desk, my laptop screen was still bright. The whole horrifying experience had happened so quickly that my computer hadn’t even gone to sleep. I knew
I
wouldn’t be sleeping much that night. But I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed and go back to reading the Wikipedia page. Besides, I wasn’t sure I needed to. I remembered almost every sentence, and the words drummed through my head now.

The fanged creatures. Knobs of garlic. Vampires who can shape-shift into bats.

Vampires who could shape-shift into bats … who came from the very town that Great-aunt Margo came from. Great-aunt Margo, who was “allergic” to garlic.

I drew my knees to my chest and sat still in the darkness while the storm raged outside. All my life, I’d suspected that there were secrets lurking behind the ordinary, that there was more to reality than met the eye. And now, I had actual evidence.

The realization struck me all at once, as fast as a flash of lightning. It was so crazy, but so obvious that I couldn’t deny it.

My great-aunt was a lot more than just weird.

She was a vampire.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Sunlight flooded my room, and Mom leaned over my bed, her eyes concerned. I was lying on my back, clutching my sketchbook to my chest. Last night, I’d started drawing to calm down, and must have somehow fallen asleep. Now, my hair was sweaty and matted, and I could barely lift my heavy eyelids. I understood why Mom looked worried; this was much worse than my usual morning grouchiness.

What’s wrong?
I thought.
Well, you see, Mom, I think Great-aunt Margo is a vampire, so we should all start wearing turtlenecks. Oh, and we should hang garlic everywhere.

But I was too drained to even respond.

“I’ve never seen you so pale,” Mom said, touching my forehead. “Maybe you’re coming down with a cold. Do you want to stay home from school?”

Normally, those words would have made me grin and snuggle deeper into bed, especially on such a sun-splashed day. But now, Mom’s suggestion only filled me with dread. I was
not
about to stay cooped up with vampire bats. I had seen far too much last night to feel safe in my own home.

And I had to warn Mom and Dad.

I tried to lift my head from the pillow. “Great-aunt Margo —” I began, feeling a shudder pass through me as I spoke her name.

“Oh, she’s not here, hon,” Mom said, and I felt a wave of relief. Maybe she’d flown (literally flown) back to Romania.

“She left very early, before sunrise, to take her bats to the museum,” Mom continued. “I’m supposed to meet her there soon, but I can go in later if you want. Dad has a deadline, so he’s going to be in the study all day.”

Panic rose up in me. “Mom, don’t — don’t go to the museum,” I gasped. “Not because of me — because of the bats. They’re real. They’re dangerous. Actually, you should call the museum and tell
them….” I struggled to sit up, and my sketchbook slid off me and clattered to the floor.

Mom knelt down to pick up my sketchbook. She glanced at the illustration I’d begun in the middle of the night: a woman with the head and wings of a bat. I couldn’t help it; I’d had to sketch what I’d witnessed. Drawing is what helps me make sense of things, even things that make zero sense.

“See?” I said desperately, pointing to the sketch. “I went into Great-aunt Margo’s room last night, and I saw something really scary.”

“Emma-Rose.” Mom sighed, setting my sketchbook on the bedside table. She frowned at my skull wallpaper and the Edgar Allan Poe book on my desk. “I know you have a taste for all things dark and macabre. And since Margo is a little eccentric, it’s fun for you to invent stories. But you’ve made yourself sick by staying up late and drawing!”

Fun?
Was she kidding?

“Mom, I’m not sick!” I cried. I felt a rush of frustration. “And I’m not making anything up. Great-aunt Margo is a —”

“I remember when you were little,” Mom interrupted, smiling down at me fondly. “You used to tell me our building was haunted! It was so cute.”

I rolled my eyes. I should have known Mom wouldn’t believe me. Then I had a thought. Maybe Mom already
knew
the truth about Great-aunt Margo. Mom was her niece, after all. Maybe Grandma had even told Mom about Margo’s secret identity, years ago, and Mom was acting this way as a cover-up.

But when I searched my mother’s face, her expression remained the same: amused and a little worried. But not worried that I now knew some deep, dark family secret — just worried that her daughter had gone off the deep end.

Besides, I thought, as Mom took my shoulders and gently laid me back down, if my mother knew what Great-aunt Margo really was, she wouldn’t have subjected me and Dad to such possible danger, would she?

And why
didn’t
Great-aunt Margo try to bite any of us last night?
I wondered. Was there some vampire code about whom you could and couldn’t attack?

I was so distracted by these thoughts that I forgot to protest as Mom covered me with my blanket. “You need to rest,” she was saying. “I’ll phone the school to tell them you’re sick today. Dad will be here, but call me at work if you need anything.”

No, you call
ME
if Great-aunt Margo’s bats come to life and start sucking the blood of the museum staff!

As Mom left, I wanted to yell after her that I was fine. Part of me was dying to walk to school with Gabby and have a perfectly ordinary day. But, at the same time,
ordinary
no longer seemed to be an option. How could I get through classes like social studies and gym while worrying about fangs and blood? So I staggered out of bed and texted Gabby that I was “under the weather.” I figured I could tell my best friend the terrifying truth once the school day was over.

Walking out of my room, I took a breath and glanced into the guest room: the scene of the crime. The bat cages were gone, and Great-aunt Margo’s luggage was stashed in a corner. The bright, sunny room couldn’t have looked more innocent. For a second, I wondered if I
had
imagined, or dreamed, all the horrors of last night.

In the kitchen, Dad had prepared me a steaming mug of tea and two pieces of toast. He seemed stressed about his deadline, so I knew better than to try to convince
him
about Great-aunt Margo. I did suggest that he serve garlic for dinner that night, which only made him give me a strange glance and
touch my forehead, like Mom had. Then he took Bram out for a walk, leaving me alone in the kitchen with just the TV for company.

As always, Dad had been watching New York 1. I took a sip of tea, distractedly glancing at the screen. Then I did a double take. The news reporter was standing on the corner of Central Park West and 86th Street — right in our neighborhood. Maybe I’d see Dad and Bram in the background.

The reporter looked very serious. “Residents of the Upper West Side are alarmed by a disturbing discovery made by a jogger earlier this morning,” she said. “The dead bodies of several squirrels and raccoons were found in Central Park, not far from the 86th Street Transverse. The animals all displayed the same bizarre, two-pronged bite marks on their necks, prompting some residents to wonder if a wild animal might have escaped from the Central Park Zoo.”

My mug began to shake in my hand, and some scalding tea sloshed over the side. I barely noticed.

An elderly woman I recognized from my apartment building appeared on-screen. “I remember that something like this happened thirteen years ago,”
she said in a gravelly voice. “Nobody caught the predator then, but I hope they catch it now.”

Next the camera went to a hot-dog vendor. “It’s definitely scary,” he said. “Sounds like the work of a hawk. Or it could be a cougar.”

Or,
I thought, chills tiptoeing down my neck,
a vampire.

Many vampires, to be exact. Vampire bats. I pictured them — a great black flock, flying out of our apartment, past the gargoyles, and into the darkness of the park.

“Residents are advised to avoid the park at night, if possible,” the reporter said. “We will keep you posted as events unfold.”

The weather forecast came on, and I sat on the edge of the chair, my heart hammering. It was too much of a coincidence — the location, the timing, the bite marks. Great-aunt Margo and her “stuffed” bats had to have been behind the attacks.

But at the same time I didn’t want to believe it. Yes, I’d seen her in bat form, but I still couldn’t picture my great-aunt — with her inviting smile and warm embrace — sucking the blood of innocent creatures. What
else
was she capable of? I wondered with a shiver. And was there any way to stop her
and her vampire friends without causing a mass panic in the streets of New York? I had to learn more.

I set down my mug, my fear and confusion suddenly replaced by determination. Since I was home from school today anyway, I could use the extra time to do research on vampires. That way, I’d have more information if I talked to my parents or —
gulp
— confronted my great-aunt.

Dad and Bram walked in then, and Dad made no mention of seeing news reporters outside. Instead, he went to his study, and Bram curled up on his pillow, glaring at me. It was the perfect opportunity to slip into my room and get to work.

First, I pulled down my window shade, blocking out the sunlight. Then I sat at my desk and woke my sleeping laptop. My heart jumped as the Wikipedia page reappeared. I skimmed it, but there was nothing new beyond what I’d read last night. So I tried something else: I typed the name of my family’s village along with the word
vampires
into Google.

I gasped. The search returned almost one
million
results! Some sites, I saw, just repeated the Wikipedia entry, while others mentioned that Count
Dracula himself had passed through the town. Then I spotted a link called “An Introduction to Transylvanian Vampires.” It sounded promising, so I clicked through.

The page was black with red type, and had an old-fashioned illustration of a man in a black cape, baring his fangs and leaning over a fainting woman. Underneath the drawing was a list, simply titled “Common Traits of Vampires”:

I nodded, overwhelmed. That last item had the biggest “check” next to it. Great-aunt Margo was precisely what I’d thought she was.

True, I had no evidence — yet — that she didn’t show up in mirrors or photographs. Or that she was immortal. But she definitely had pale, cool skin. Judging by the hug she’d given me yesterday, she was pretty strong. She’d definitely frightened Bram, and she
had
requested her burger rare.

Wait.

I paused, my fingers freezing on the keyboard. A cold sensation began to spread through my stomach.

Great-aunt Margo ate her burgers rare, and she was pale, and Bram hated her….

Just … like … me.

The cold feeling traveled to my limbs. I gasped for air, trying to calm myself. Then I read the list again, from the beginning, focusing on every detail.

I knew the word
aversion;
it had been on our English vocabulary quiz the week before. It meant a dislike of something. Such as my dislike of sunshine.
Sunlight
and
sunshine
were pretty much the same thing. And I had an aversion to them, didn’t I?

That fits,
sang a small voice in my head.

I held my breath as I moved down the list.
Nocturnal.
Another big word, but the list explained its meaning; it had to do with nighttime.
Nighttime, when I felt most awake, when my thoughts were sharp and my senses alert. Almost as if I were ready to …

Hunt.

No.

Tiny shivers were crawling up and down my arms like spiders. What was wrong with me? What was I even thinking? I needed to stay on track: I was supposed to be researching vampires. Great-aunt Margo. This had nothing to do with me.

I scrolled down past the list, and came to the paragraph at the bottom of the page. I read it hungrily:

I stared at the screen so hard my eyes burned. The word
maternal
had also been on our vocab quiz last week. It meant
motherly,
as in, the mother’s side of the family.

As in Great-aunt Margo, my mom’s aunt.

Which meant …

My pulse began to race.

My grandmother couldn’t have been a vampire. She was dead, and if vampires didn’t age and lived forever … well, then, that ruled her out. As for Mom, there was no way she was a vampire. Mom liked veggie burgers and sunshine. She slept easily at night. Bram liked her. And she was …
Mom.

Which left only one person to consider.

I swallowed hard.

Me.

Dizzy, I jumped up and glanced at myself in the mirror. There I was, in my rumpled pj’s, with my dark hair in a sloppy bun. My face was as pale as a phantom’s, and my navy blue eyes — so similar to Great-aunt Margo’s — were wide with terror.

See, you have a reflection!
I told myself. But then I opened my mouth, wider and wider, until I could see my sharp incisors.

That fits, too.

I was like Great-aunt Margo in so many ways. I had trouble sleeping. I had fangs. I had practically every trait on that list.

My heart was pounding hard enough to burst out of my chest.

Is that why I am the way I am?
I wondered.

I looked around my darkened room. Everything seemed so normal: my messy bed, my sketch pad with the drawings of the bat-woman, my purple curtains, my bookshelf. But nothing was truly normal anymore.

Last night, the Great-aunt Margo discovery had thrown me for a loop. But this was something much bigger. Something I couldn’t have thought of in a million years.