Suck It Up (20 page)

31

Dentis Eruptus

In a penthouse suite in Ducats, the largest hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Penny looked down through one of the corner windows at the dancing lights of the casino's pirate theme park. In Hangman's Square, police held back thousands of fans longing for a glance of Morning McCobb. Many scanned the hotel's lighted windows with binoculars, spyglasses, and telephoto lenses. Penny was on her cell phone, fielding requests from companies clamoring for Morning to be their spokesman. Or, as the CEO of a major auto company put it, “to go claw to claw with Tiger Woods.”

On the other side of the suite, a large screen aired a shot of EMTs wheeling the cameraman on a gurney toward a waiting ambulance. Morning was walking beside it, giving the revived cameraman his undivided attention. A reporter added voice-over. “Earlier tonight, while introducing Lycanthrope, Morning McCobb's newest shape-shift went from hairy to heroic. After his wolf stunt gave a cameraman a heart attack, Morning helped resuscitate him. The man got a near-fatal scare, and Morning got a few million more fans.”

“Change it,” Morning moaned. Slumped in a chair and nursing his second Blood Lite, he was back in blue jeans and a sweatshirt. The double CD of the Dalmatian and the dire wolf had drained him of everything but his foul mood.

In another chair, Portia held an ice pack to the knot on her head. It wasn't the only thing that had taken a hit. Her camera had been broken when it dropped to the stage. Even worse, her plan of playing the dead hand with Morning had suffered a major setback. Every time she replayed the memory of him transforming into a ferocious wolf to protect her, her dead hand flushed with a little more life.

She lifted the TV remote and hit a button. The new channel carried the same story. “Tonight at the Volcano, it was Nosferatu to the rescue, and Morning's latest transformation: Undead American Hero.”

Morning leaped out of his chair and punched the TV off. “I'm no hero! I almost killed a guy! Why don't they call me what I am? A freak!”

Portia stared up at him. “You're not a freak.”

Penny joined them, shutting her phone. “If you were a freak, I don't think companies would be begging to put you in their commercials.”

He scoffed. “Commercials for what?”

“Cars, soft drinks, you name it.”

“What about dog food?” He snatched a can of nuts off the minibar and pretended to hawk it. “I not only feed my dogs Alpo, I go wild for it myself. Grrrrr!” He slammed the can down, scooped up a can of Coke, and slid into Dracula-speak. “I don't drink…Pepsi.”

Portia might have laughed if she hadn't been shocked by his cynicism. It was so not him.

“Believe me,” Penny assured him, “if Birnam thinks doing endorsements are part of the playbook, we'll have creative control.”

“Control!” he blurted. “That's what I don't have. I totally lost it. The worst part of me took over.”

Portia tried to lighten his mood. “But you saved me from stoning by squeaky toys.”

“Exactly!” he shouted. “Everywhere I go I put people in danger. People get hurt!”

Penny jumped in. “You're not going to hurt anyone else.”

He wheeled on her. “How do you know? Next time I give someone a heart attack we might not be so lucky! But you're right; I'm
not
hurting anyone else! No more appearances—no more animal acts—no more nothin'. I quit!”

Before they could react, a cell phone bleated. Penny checked her caller ID. “It's Birnam. I'll be right back.” As she went into the bedroom she gave Portia an order. “Don't let him out of your sight.”

Portia said nothing as Morning stalked to the window. He stared down at the theme park. He winced as the muffled screams and shouts of recognition rose from Hangman's Square. The cacophony grew louder, but he didn't move. “Look at them. I'm nothing but some bizarre animal in the zoo.”

Portia got up and pulled the curtain across the window. “If you think about it, you're an entire zoo.”

She didn't even get a smile.

A cell phone sounded a four-chord ring.

Morning spun around and glared at his phone on a nearby table.

“You want me to answer that?” she asked.

“No.”

It sounded again. “It could be Mr. Birnam.”

“No, he's on the phone with—” The instant he realized someone else might have his number he darted to the phone and snatched it up. “Who is this?” There was a short pause. “How did you get my number?”

Portia watched his expression change from surprise to disbelief, then finally bend around a frown.

“There's only one problem—I'll never be eighteen.” Morning listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Then he snapped the phone shut.

“Who was that?” Portia asked.

“The firefighter I met in New York. Birnam gave him my number.”

“Why?”

“'Cause Birnam must have figured out how I feel about still being a firefighter, and it's his way of keeping the carrot in front of the donkey.”

Portia blinked in confusion. “What carrot?”

“The fireman said if I still wanna be a firefighter he'd talk to the Fire Academy about waiving the minimum age requirement.”

“That's great!”

“Yeah, really great,” Morning said flatly. “They'd get two for one, a fireman and a Dalmatian.” He turned away and gazed out the other window at the smog of neon encasing the city. As much as the fireman's offer had momentarily lifted his spirits, he didn't want to get his hopes up. If his buried dream of becoming a superhero was turning into a nightmare, there was no telling how his old hope of becoming a firefighter would backfire.

Portia searched for some comeback or quip that would pull him out of his sour mood. But nothing came. She stepped behind him and put her hands on his shoulders.

He flinched.

“Jeez, Morning, relax.” She rubbed his corded muscles. “Didn't Sister Flora ever give you a massage?”

He didn't answer, or object to her kneading fingers. His mind told him to move away, but his muscles, taut as bridge cables, told him to stay. Just for a moment.

“You know,” she said, feeling his shoulders relax. “I never got to thank you for coming to my rescue. It's the first time a guy's ever turned into a wolf for me.”

“I hope it's the last,” he muttered.

She kept rubbing. “Maybe sometimes losing control can be a good thing. Sometimes it's good to let your hair down.”

“Even if it turns into fur?”

She laughed. “Morning made a funny. He must be feeling better.”

“A little.”

She massaged for a while without speaking. “I don't want you to quit,” she finally said. “But if tonight was too scary, I don't blame you. It's your life.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And I want it back. I wanna go back to being a nobody.”

“That's impossible. You're too famous.”

“I could get a new identity, have my face reconstructed.”

“No, I've seen you heal before. Whatever cosmetic surgery you got would just heal back to what you look like now.”

“You're right.” He sighed loudly, then added with a mocking tone, “Nothing ever changes.”

“There's another reason you can't go back to being a nobody.”

“What?”

She turned him around, stopped massaging, and left her hands on his shoulders. “There's a bunch of people who want you to be somebody. The fireman wants you to come back and be a firefighter. Birnam wants you to be the Jackie Robinson of the Vampire League.” His chuckle made her smile. “I knew it was a good title. Which reminds me, I want you to be the star of a movie that has a happy ending.” She felt his shoulders tense.

“Is that all you want?”

She didn't break from his wary eyes. “No. After you walk into the sunset, or whatever the last shot's gonna be, I'd like to keep seeing you just like this. Without my camera.”

He felt the prickle of heat in his cheeks.

Watching his face redden, she tried to chase away his apprehension, and hers. “Is that Blood Lite in your cheeks, or are you happy to see me?”

He laughed and came back to her eyes.

The silence wound tighter.

As their eye-lock felt like it went on longer than a mission to Mars, Portia wondered how someone who knew so much about turning into animals knew so little about turning the right moment into a kiss. “Can I ask you a question?”

He nodded.

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

His nervous smile tightened. “No.”

“Has a girl ever kissed you?”

He shook his head and ignored the tingle under his lip.

“You know what one of those Greek philosophers had to say about moments like this?”

He fought off a grin. Leave it to her to think of Greek philosophers when all he could think of was the tightening in his gums. “What?” he mumbled.

“‘Is it our chief aim in life to avoid risks?'” She leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips.

The tension in his gums turned to an ache.

She pulled back. Her forehead wrinkled. “On a scale of one to ten?”

He murmured through his clenched jaw. “This is dangerous.”

Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “I'll take that as a ten.” She pushed in for another kiss, a more pressing one. She felt herself let go. The underground river swirled up, pulling her into the quavering darkness.

The ache in his gums pulsed to a throb. He groaned in discomfort and delight.

The sound brought her back to the surface. She broke from the kiss and wrapped him in a hug.

Freed from her lips but not from the pounding sensation, his mouth pushed open. Instead of two fangs,
all
his teeth were swelling. A new fear seized him. It was the worst form of
dentis eruptus.
The twentyfold fangs of
maximus dentis eruptus.

As Portia pulled back for another kiss, he broke away and stumbled for the door. He slapped a hand over his mouth, now ballooning like a bag of microwave popcorn.

She was mystified. On the one-to-ten scale, they'd been pushing eleven. “What's wrong?”

He tried to answer, but his ivory-choked mouth only managed “Mmrrf-mmmrf!” He yanked open the door and fled.

32

Friends & Flamethrowers

While Morning and Portia were fumbling through their first kiss, DeThanatos was in Morning's suite on the other side of the same floor. He was naked and stood over two things on the bed: the Ducats bellhop uniform he had borrowed to make his way to the room, and Morning's open case of Blood Lite. DeThanatos held an electron accelerator, known in the food irradiation business as an X-Irray Gun. A small blast from an X-Irray Gun kills the microscopic things in food that can make you sick. A megablast destroys almost all of a food's nutritional value. The megablast he was giving the dozen cans still in the case was fatal to a normal human being. Not a worry to the guy holding down the X-Irray's trigger.

The backup plan to destroy Morning was simple. If he didn't get his daily dose of protein from Blood Lite, his gut would start looking for it elsewhere. If his craving for a blood boost mixed with an attraction to Portia, bloodlust would ensue. And if Morning tapped Portia for the full five quarts, which was common for young vampires who didn't know when to stop, his reputation as the IVL poster boy would be ruined. With his reputation in tatters, physical annihilation would follow at the hands of whoever got to him first: mortals, Leaguers, or Golpear. And best of all, Birnam's blasphemous fantasy of living openly among mortals would be down the drain. Or, in this case, down the vein.

Hearing someone running down the hall, DeThanatos shoved the X-Irray Gun and the Ducats uniform under the bed, and closed the case. Then he wafted into a mist and slid out the window.

A moment later, the door flew open. Morning jumped inside, shut the door, and collapsed against it. His teeth had retreated to normal, but a sharp pang twisted through his gums. Vampires had a name for it: blue gums.

A loud knock propelled him off the door. “Who is it?”

Portia answered. “I know you're freaked, but I think we should talk about it.”

“No.”

There was a pause.

“So what are you going to do, Morning? Crawl back under a rock and never see me again?”

“I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm done being Birnam's guinea pig and your freak movie star. I'm done with the tour, and I'm done with you.”

His declaration was met with silence. He let out a sigh of relief.

“Morning,” Portia began calmly, “if that was meant to devastate me, make me burst into tears and go away, it didn't work. I'm tougher than that, and smarter. But I'm thinking about leaving anyway because it was such a lame attempt on your part. I mean, if you can read a guy's mind through a door, what does that say about the guy?”

“What does it say about the girl who's chasing the guy?” he fired back.

“Who said I'm chasing you?”

“Prove you're not by going away.”

There was another pause. He wasn't sure if she'd left. “You still there?”

“Aha! You don't want me to go.”

“Yes, I do,” he groaned.

“I will, after I say goodbye. To your face. And I don't care how many teeth are sticking out of it.”

“You saw that?”

“I caught a glimpse. But it's okay, I'm not mad at you. I used to have braces. I know what it feels like to have an alien invasion in your mouth.”

He eye-rolled in surrender and opened the door. He didn't offer to let her in.

She flashed him a smile. “So, what happened in my room?”

“I thought you were just going to say goodbye.”

“After we talk about the kiss.”

He looked at the floor. “I'm sorry about that.”

“Don't be. Did you wanna bite me?”

“No, no, I didn't!”

“So”—she searched for the right words—“is it just that when you kiss a girl and get excited, your teeth go ballistic?”

He shifted uneasily. “I guess so. I don't know, it's never happened before.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

Portia swelled with a heady mix of pride and fear. She was his first, but first what?

“There's nothing to worry about,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “I know how to handle it.”

“Right. You run out of the room.”

He wasn't amused. “Look, it won't happen again.”

“The kiss or the run-out-of-the-room part?”

He grabbed the edge of the door, hoping she'd get the hint and leave. “Both, okay?”

“Good,” she said. “That'll make it easier.”

He studied her face for a clue. “Make what easier?”

She gave him a Mona Lisa smile. “I think”—she extended her hand for a shake—“we should just be friends.”

It was fine with him, especially if this was the last time he was going to see her. He wiped his palm on his jeans and shook her hand. “Okay, just friends.”

She kept shaking past the squeeze-'n'-go timing of a guy's shake. “Your hand's awfully cold.”

He pulled away and moved back into the room. “It means I haven't had enough.”

She followed him into the room. “Enough what?”

He grabbed a Blood Lite from his case and popped it open. “Fuel to change into a Flyer and get out of here.” He waved at the window. “It's not like I can walk out the door and catch a cab.” He took a long drink.

“Where are you going?”

He swallowed. “I'll send you a postcard.”

“Will you send me one too?” another voice asked.

They both spun, startled by the man in the doorway.

Birnam moved to Portia and greeted her with a nod. “I'm Luther Birnam, the man behind the kid who's taking the world by storm.”

She didn't skip a beat. “I'm Portia Dredful, the girl behind the camera making a documentary that's going to take the Oscars by storm.”

“How long have you been out there?” Morning demanded.

“Long enough,” Birnam said with a playful cock of his head, then returned his attention to Portia. “At some point, I suppose you'll want to interview me.”

“Absolutely. All I need is a new Handycam.” She started past him toward the door. “There's an electronics shop downstairs.”

He stopped her with a touch. “It'll have to wait. I think we've all had enough excitement for one night.”

The blush that pushed into her cheeks from realizing how much he'd overheard was cut short when something dawned on her. “Wait a sec, weren't you just talking to my mom?”

“Yes, I was.” He turned to Morning. “She was telling me how you felt about your big bad wolf.”

Morning threw back another slug of Blood Lite. The wolf reminder deepened his resolve to escape as soon as possible.

“Right now,” Birnam said to Portia, “I need to talk Morning out of jumping ship at this crucial moment in our voyage.” She started to speak, but he cut her off. “Good night, Portia.”

She nodded. “Right. Good night.”

As she left, Morning threw himself in a chair and glared at the floor. “I'm through.”

“Almost.”

“No, I mean it. I can't do any more stupid shows.”

“You don't have to.”

He looked up. “What do you mean?”

Birnam sat in a chair facing him. “We're ready to launch the website.”

“What website?”

Birnam grinned like a proud parent. “IVLeague.us. It's volume two of the playbook. You've shown the world what a Leaguer is as an individual. The website is going to show them who we are as a minority.”

Morning felt a surge of hope. “That means I'm done.”

“Not quite. I want you to launch it.”

“Launch it?”

“It's not a public appearance. It's a little promo we want to shoot. You'll be passing the baton to the website. After that, you'll be free to do what you want. You won't be ‘Birnam's guinea pig' anymore.”

Morning bristled. “You heard everything.”

“Not everything, but enough to know you passed a very important test. You looked into the forbidden well and didn't fall in.”

“How do you know I won't fall in next time?”

“I don't. That's why I have something for you.” Birnam reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out a cookie-shaped wafer of wood, and offered it.

Morning took it. He felt the warmth of the wood and saw the gnarled reddish grain. “Bristlecone pine.”

“It's not only for good luck. It's a reminder of where you're from, and where you can go if you control your urges and stay on the Leaguer path.”

Morning turned the smooth piece of wood in his fingers. The other side was painted with a blue Maltese cross outlined in gold. The points of the cross displayed four red letters:

He glanced up, confused. “You want me to be a firefighter?”

“Not just a firefighter, a
superhero
firefighter.”

“Why?”

“It's part of the experiment.” Birnam answered his puzzled look. “I told you before. You're the very first Leaguer allowed to resurrect the dreams that died when you became a vampire. You're in uncharted territory. And I'd bet all the blood in China that the closer you get to seizing those dreams, everything will intensify. Your passions, your selfishness, and the temptation to fortify your ambitions by tasting the aspiration that runs in mortal veins.”

Morning threw up his hands. “But I'm already there! I popped a mouthful of fangs for Portia. Bottom line: my bloodlust-management skills suck!”

“No pun intended,” Birnam added.

Morning ignored his cavalier tone. “And if it's like you say, it'll only get worse! Why can't I just disappear? Why can't you go on with your website and Worldwide Out Day without me?”

Birnam stared at him with stone-cold eyes. “Too late. The world knows too much about you, and so does Portia. Believe me, if I could replace you with someone else I would. But I can't. In the eyes of Lifers, you
are
the IVL. And our little experiment has reached critical mass.” His mouth cracked toward a smile. “But don't feel bad, Morning.” His lips parted, revealing the prongs of emerging fangs. “The thrill of the endgame is getting to me too.”

         

While DeThanatos waited for Morning's anemia to bloom into self-destruction, he didn't give up on Golpear accomplishing a more traditional annihilation. A two-pronged offense comes naturally to vampires.

Later that night, fueled by a fresh feeding on a juicy Cirque du Soleil performer, DeThanatos used his skills to visit Penny's suite in Ducats. There, he ascertained where Morning would be shooting the commercial the next day. He then rendezvoused with Golpear, and they drove the truck to a production studio in the desert outside Las Vegas.

Before he disappeared into the back of the truck for the day, DeThanatos placated Golpear's frustration by giving him the second weapon in the three-step process of vampire slaying. He presented him with a flamethrower.

Golpear was thrilled. He had only used a flamethrower in his line of work once before. In Malibu, a homeowner had hired him to do a hit on a neighbor's hedge because it was blocking his view of the ocean. The prospect of hitting Morning with the one-two punch of a wooden stake and a flamethrower so excited Golpear he had to ask, “What's the third step? What's the coup de grâce on a vampire?”

Once again DeThanatos demurred and told him he would find out after Morning had been staked and baked.

Before sunrise, and before surreptitiously slipping into the back of the truck, DeThanatos gave Golpear one last order. “Even if you have the shot, do not stake him, or light up the flamethrower before sunset. After sunset, I'll return, we'll hunt him together, and then you'll learn the final step.”