Suck It Up (16 page)

His insides ballooned with pride. He changed his score to nine-point-eight.

23

The Flyer

While Gabby emceed the Aquatorium's inaugural show with a cast of trainers and hundreds of marine animals, Penny hoped to slip out of Okeanos unnoticed. After retreating below stage, she, Morning, and Portia hopped in a VIP courtesy cart with tinted windows.

When they arrived at the receiving area below the park's helipad, Penny realized she had underestimated the hunting skills of Morning's growing legion of followers. A couple hundred teenage girls and some boys pressed against a makeshift barricade manned by a half-dozen security guards. As soon as the crowd saw the VIP cart pull up, they let out a collective scream. They didn't know if Morning was behind the tinted windows, but the possibility was worth a scream. Penny had seen enough flocks of crazed fans to make a quick assessment. The security guards stood as much chance of controlling the crowd as weekend cowboys holding a herd of wild mustangs in a toothpick corral. And there was a good stretch of open ground between the cart and the stairway that led to the helipad.

“Can we get any closer?” Penny asked the driver.

“Sorry, this thing won't go over a curb,” he said. “And the ramps haven't been installed yet.”

She turned to Morning. “It takes luck and talent to become a star. But if you want to be one for more than a day, there's one more thing you need.”

“What's that?” he asked.

“A good forty-yard dash.”

The driver lifted a remote. “When you get there, I'll pop the gate. After you get through, it locks automatically.”

Portia yanked her camera out of her bag and started shooting. Morning's first fan dash was a must. The cart's doors flapped open and the trio ran for the gate. The fans screamed, “There he is!” Fortunately, they did more jumping up and down, arm-flailing, and screeching than barricade-busting. As she ran, Portia got a shaky shot.

Seeing that the barricades were holding, Morning rewarded the screaming mob with a wave. Their reaction was odd. They gasped. A split second later he knew why. The blow came from behind and almost knocked him over. Two arms encircled his chest. He regained his balance, reached around, and pulled at the clinging body.

It was a teenage girl, on the chubby side, with major goth makeup and short brown hair. She was panting from her sprint and blindside tackle. Still clutching him, she threw her head back, exposing her pale neck, and cried, “Take me!”

Stunned and at a total loss, Morning noticed the security guard running toward him and the faces behind the barricade. They resembled a wall of masks. Their expressions ranged from envy to fear.

Penny grabbed the girl's arm and started to pull.

“Mom, don't,” Portia protested from behind her camera. She answered her mother's look with a gesture to the crowd. “We're not in danger. He's a star. He's gotta learn how to deal with this.” She censored her biggest reason for seeing this play out. This was Morning's first invitation to the all-you-can-drink buffet, and she was getting it on film.

Realizing her daughter had a point, Penny let go of the girl and waved off the approaching security guard. “It's okay. We'll handle it.”

Morning averted his eyes from Portia's camera. He didn't want her catching the anger boiling inside him. He fought the impulse to do one of two things: swat her camera away for putting him on the spot or chomp into the girl's flesh. Not because he had popped a couple of fangs and wanted to feed, which he hadn't. There was piece of him that wanted to give 'em what they wanted, confirm their worst fear, and slap Portia with the sensational footage she craved.

A voice cried from the crowd: “Go ahead, Morning. Take her.”

He stared at the girl's alabaster neck, and the spot where her pulse tapped a steady beat. His throat tightened. From revulsion at the thought of plunging into her flesh or anger at Portia, he wasn't sure. He only knew he wasn't who they thought he was. And that his worry about Portia was true. She was more story vampire than friend.

He glanced up at Penny. “Gimme a Sharpie.” She pulled a marker from her purse and handed it to him. He pulled off the cap with his teeth and autographed the girl's neck:
MM.

The girl moaned with pleasure and fainted in his arms. The crowd released a collective sigh mingling disappointment and adoration.

Morning turned and glared at Portia's camera. The tension crept back into his throat. “I don't take, I like to give.”

His dark eyes and cutting edge jarred Portia out of her trance. She turned off the camera. She started to say something but was cut off by a cry from the crowd. “Sign me!” It mushroomed into a chant. “Sign me! Sign me!”

Penny scanned the crowd with a worried look. “Let's go.”

Morning handed the limp girl to the security guard. The threesome started toward the gate. Before they got halfway, the crowd surged forward, toppled the barricades and rushed forward like a wave licking up a beach. The trio sprinted for the gate.

Portia reached it first and tugged at the handle. It was still locked. “Open it!” she shouted back at the driver standing near the courtesy cart.

Having gotten out to watch Morning sign his first neck, the driver had left the remote in the cart. He reached through the window.

It was too late. While the leading charge of fans trapped them at the gate, the rest continued their stampede forward. Morning, the Dredfuls, and the first wave of fans were slammed against the gate and the wall by a human bulldozer. A bulldozer whose blade could push no farther but pressed with greater and greater weight. Lungs emptied in protest. Their pleas were drowned out by the shrieking chorus of “Sign me!”

Flattened against the gate, Portia could barely breathe. Being taller than the girl welded to her, all she could do was turn her head toward Morning. He was smashed face-first into the gate. Portia watched in horror as the girl pinned to Morning's back lost consciousness. A second later, the girl's lips tinted blue. Unable to fight the rib-breaking weight on her chest and the iris of darkness collapsing her vision, Portia expelled her last breath. “Do something!”

Hearing her, Morning pressed his head back, dragged his face across the chain link, and found Portia saucer-eyed with fear. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't scream loud enough to make the human battering ram stop. He didn't have the strength to repel it. He saw her eyes roll back. He couldn't believe a moment before he'd resented her. And the last thing he might ever say to her had been sarcastic and bitter. Her head dropped onto a coiled bun of auburn hair. The sight of her cheek, blanching in the nest of hair, sparked an idea.

He squeezed his arms up the rough edges of the gate and wrapped his fingers through the chain-link. He pulled with all his might. He squirmed up and away from the crush until he got high enough to prompt a scream from the back of the mob. “There he is!” He shut his eyes and dove into the wormholes of transformation.

A moment later, his T-shirt flattened against the fence, except for a lump the size of a small bread loaf. His empty shirt collar delivered a feathery gray head with a pink beak. Two wings popped out, and a pigeon flapped away from the gate.

As the fans who had seen Morning's transformation screamed with delight, the pigeon flew over outstretched arms trying to touch him. The yearning arms and bodies surged backward like shells and stones chasing a wave back into the ocean. Released from the crush, the bodies at the wall decompressed, lungs ballooned with air.

Penny watched the pigeon fly over the park. But she didn't have time to marvel at what Morning had done. The limp bodies around her wavered in the expanding space. She caught the closest one. Her daughter.

She lifted her chin and shook it. “Portia!”

Portia's eyes opened and swam into focus.

“Are you all right?”

“Mmm,” she moaned with a nod. Her eyes took in the scene of chaos and crying girls. “Is it over?”

“Yes.”

“Is everybody okay?”

Penny glanced at other girls being revived. “I think so. Maybe a few bruised ribs.”

Portia's eyes clouded with confusion. “Where's Morning?”

“He had to fly.” She ignored her daughter's baffled look. “And so do we.” She grabbed the handle to the gate, which finally opened, and pushed Portia through it.

Before leaving Okeanos, the pigeon circled back to see if anyone was hurt. Everyone was on their feet or sitting up. The bird wheeled over the ocean, and flew down the coast. While he let the hardwiring of his pigon brain set a course back to the hotel, Morning's shadow-conscious fixed on a decision.

24

Change of Heart

Fortunately, the maid who cleaned the Babylon's presidential suite took so many pictures for the “Famous People Slept Here” art show she dreamed of hanging in a Melrose Avenue gallery, she never got around to closing the window in Morning's bedroom.

The pigeon flapped through the opening, CDed back, and Morning collapsed in a chair. The dolphin transformation had been tiring, but the last CD and the long flight had totally wasted him. His body ached, his mouth felt like Death Valley, and his gut growled for nourishment.

He caught his breath, fetched two Blood Lites, plopped back in the chair, and chugged the first. Putting the can down, he noticed an acrid smell. He raised his arm, took a whiff. His face scrunched in disgust. He smelled like a chicken coop. Not a surprise. Being able to shed a creature's skin but not its scent was a sign of exhaustion.

He showered, changed into a fresh shirt and jeans, and speed-dialed a number on his cell. He was glad to get Birnam's voice mail. That way he wouldn't be interrupted as he delivered the speech he'd composed in the shower. “Mr. Birnam, when you see me on
The Night-Night Show
tonight everything's going to look like it's going great. But you won't see what happened afterward. I almost got a bunch of girls killed. It's only a matter of time before something worse happens. I can't do this anymore. I'll do whatever it takes, move to the jungles of Borneo, I don't care—I quit. If you don't come get me at the Babylon by midnight, I'll disappear on my own.” He didn't want to end on a threat. He liked Mr. Birnam. He just had the wrong vampire to break the ice with mortals without breaking skin. “Please come soon.”

Morning jackknifed the phone shut and opened the second Blood Lite. Within minutes, bone-weary fatigue rocked his head back in sleep.

He awoke to the thudding whop of a helicopter rattling the window. His eyes blinked open. He sat bolt upright. Recognizing the sound of the chopper, he sagged back in the chair. It was Gabby's big chopper, not Birnam's.

He had hoped to avoid a goodbye scene with Penny and Portia. He thought about changing back into the pigeon and hiding on the roof until Birnam came, but the possibility of being too weak to fly and plunging into the hands of the protestors who thought he was the Antichrist made saying goodbye the lesser of two evils. He heard the door to the suite open, voices, and then a gentle knock on his door.

“Morning,” Penny called. “You in there?”

He got up and opened the door. Behind Penny, he saw Portia detach the battery from her camera. “Everyone was okay, right?”

Penny nodded. “Just shaken and bruised. It would have been a lot worse if you hadn't done what you did.”

Portia locked the battery in her charger and it beeped. “You saved a bunch of lives.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, right.”

Portia caught his sour look. “Oh, do you regret it?”

“Not the saving part.”

Penny eyed him with concern. “You want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

Penny wasn't convinced, but she knew enough about teenagers, even eternal ones, to know sometimes they needed to stew in their own hormones. “Then we won't.” She turned away. “I need to firm things up for tomorrow's gig. Next stop, Las Vegas.”

Before he could tell her not to bother, Portia took her mother's place. “I wanna talk about it.”

He put a hand on the doorframe. “Sorry, no cameras allowed.”

“No cameras,” she agreed.

He didn't budge.

“C'mon, Morning. Can't a girl thank a guy for saving her from being turned into girl pâté?”

His scowl softened. He was going to miss her morbid sense of humor. He dropped his arm and turned back to the room. “I'm expecting a visitor.”

“I'll leave when he, she, or whatever comes.” As she followed him in, her mother began talking on the phone. Portia shut the door behind her.

“House rules,” Penny called.

Portia reopened the door, reentered the sitting room, and headed for the minibar. “Mom, an hour ago, he had a chance to jump a girl's veins and he didn't even pop a fang. He's a mensch.”

Penny held a hand to her phone. “I don't care if he's a eunuch. House rules.”

Portia heaved a put-upon sigh, grabbed a soda from the fridge, and hurried back to Morning's room before he changed his mind and bolted the door. She plopped on a couch opposite his chair. “Guy in any bedroom, the door stays open,” she explained. “House rules.” She took a swig of soda.

Morning sipped his Blood Lite.

An uncomfortable silence followed.

“Okay, lemme try this,” Portia offered. “A penny for your thoughts, and I'm not talking about my mother.”

He half-smiled at her dumb joke. “I was thinking that when you got squashed, the nosy filmmaker got squeezed out of you.”

She cocked her head. “Oh, why do you think that?”

“Just now, you didn't ask about my visitor.”

“Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint your impression of who you
think
I am, so”—she feigned a hard-boiled squint—“who's your visitor?”

“That's better. Now I know you're a hundred percent okay.”

“Hey, no one got hurt. No harm, no foul.” Her brow knitted pensively. “Actually, that's not true. There was a”—she did a single-finger air-quote—“fowl. You.”

He chuckled.

She shook her head in mock disgust. “Very bad joke. I'm sorry I missed it. Your pigeon, not the joke.” She stopped herself, took a drink. “Have I persuaded you I'm a blithering idiot yet?” She shot up a hand. “Don't answer that. Okay, here's the deal. I'm trying to cheer you up. But I don't get it, why so glum? You just saved a dozen damsels in distress. You should be walking on air. I mean, what's the problem? Are you mad at me for shooting your encounter with that girl?”

“No,” he lied. There was no point in getting into that. There wouldn't be any more moviemaking.

“Then what's bugging you?”

He looked out the window. “Every time I change, something happens that wasn't exactly planned, that's out of my control. I flattened the Mallozzi twins. I scared the crap out of Ally Alfamen. And today, things got a lot worse.”

“It wasn't your fault.”

“Of course it was.”

“It was an accident.”

“It could happen again.”

“It won't because my mother won't let it happen again,” she assured him. “From now on, if we don't have proper security, we don't go.”

He chuffed with disdain. “Oh, great, we get to live like caged animals.”

His pissy mood finally provoked her sarcasm. “Oh, it's more than a cage, Morning. It's got a little turnout area where you can wallow in self-pity all you want.”

Her words stung. The same wave of rage rose inside him, like when he wanted to smash her camera. But now he wanted to leap across the space between them and shut her up forever.

The coldness in his eyes pushed her back against the couch. She'd seen some nasty looks from guys, but this was different. It made the knives he'd shot her after signing the girl's neck seem like butter knives. His newest volley were daggers of menace. She was glad the door was open. If he loaded his mouth with a couple of fangs, she could bolt.

She squashed her fear and tried a different tact. “Sorry to be so harsh, but I think you're forgetting the big picture. I mean, last Thanksgiving you almost died, but you got a second chance. You're showing people that being a vampire doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be a good thing.”

The kindness in her voice softened his mood.

She continued. “You're showing people that you don't want to hurt anyone, you want to help them understand, to rescue them from their ignorance.”

One of her words hit him with the shock of a late raindrop falling off an eave. “That's all I've ever wanted to do,” he muttered. “To rescue people.”

She smiled with relief. The Morning she knew was back. “And that's what you just did.”

He answered with a rueful look. “Sure, but what kind of hero comes to the rescue
after
he set the fire.”

She sat up, jolted by a connection. “Ohmigod. That's why you went to the firehouse. Before you were turned, you wanted to be a firefighter, didn't you?”

“No!” he blurted. “I didn't.” The lie startled him, but he didn't regret it. The way she said it made it sound like such a childish dream, an embarrassment he wanted to hide.

The rising color in his cheeks was all she needed to catch him in his lie. “You could still be one.”

“Even if I did,” he said with a scowl, “you have to be eighteen.”

“Are you nuts? With your skills, they'll rewrite the rules.” She jumped up and began to pace. “Think about it. As a dolphin, you could be a rescue diver. As a bird, you could spot people on the roofs of burning buildings. As a cat, you could go up trees and talk down other cats!”

While Portia circled the room and continued her litany of rescue animals, Morning was distracted by another sound. It began as a dim thud. At first he thought it was the thump of Birnam's chopper overhead. But the thumping didn't come from outside. It came from within. Inside his head. And it was more than a sound. It was a sensation. A dull throbbing in his mouth, under his upper lip. It reminded him of the tension he'd felt the night before which he'd written off as the ache of grinding his teeth. But this was different. It felt like his gums contained two tiny beating hearts. He had read about it, and heard about it. It was the first sign of
dentis eruptus.

A riffle of fear shot through him. Not the kind that makes your hair stand on end. The kind that drains your strength. The kind that swells in your gut. The kind of fear that rises on a tide of pleasure.

The bass chords of his cell phone rang, yanking him back to the room.

Portia stopped, looked at him, and caught his tight smile.

Sliding his tongue across his throbbing gums, he spotted his cell phone on the side table. “That's probably my visitor.”

She headed for the door. “Then I'll give you some privacy.”

Watching her go, his eyes drifted over her slim figure. After she shut the door, he opened the phone. “Mr. Birnam—”

Birnam brusquely cut him off. “I got your message. I'm sorry you want to quit.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Obviously.”

“No, I mean I
don't
want to quit. I want to keep going.”

After a pause, Birnam's voice sounded relieved. “So you don't want to move to Borneo?”

“No.”

“I'm glad to hear that. But I'm curious, what changed your mind?”

Morning fished for an excuse. “I think I was just exhausted from the double CD and flipped out. But after a couple of Lites I feel much better.”

“And no one's twisting your arm?”

“Not at all. I mean, Portia just reminded me that I'm doing more good than harm.”

Birnam let out a pensive grunt. “I see.”

His tone made Morning regret bringing her up. “Don't worry, Mr. Birnam. Everything's cool.”

“Good,” Birnam said, sounding convinced. “Try to avoid the double CDs, and keep up the good work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you need more Blood Lite?”

“No, I still have plenty.”

“Excellent.” Then Birnam added with a chuckle, “Wouldn't want you suddenly deciding to drink something else.”

After hanging up, Morning wondered if Birnam had mind-reading powers and knew the real reasons he wanted to keep going. Portia had reignited his hope of becoming a firefighter. And, as dangerous as he knew the throb in his gums was, he wanted to feel it again.