The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten (26 page)

As if reading my mind, the old man smirked. “Besides, I can tell the pretty boy things you don’t want him to know. He’s trying hard
not
to be a monster. Think he’ll want to shack up with a girl who
is
a monster forevermore?” He paused. “Not that I expect him or the rest of his kin to live forever. Winter’s coming, Bonnie Grayduck. It’s going to be an icy one. You’d best bundle up, or you might get caught in the cold yourself.”

After he was gone, back into the gym, I stood for a while longer in the dark, trying to figure it out. Why threaten me? Why say those things, if he didn’t want me to
do
anything? Why…
fuck
with me?

But then I knew.

He did it
just
to fuck with me. Exactly the way I would have. Purely for his own amusement. Hadn’t Edwin said Mr. Levitt was one of the only people, other than me, whose eyes he couldn’t hijack?

Because he
was
like me. “Ew,” I said.

Like I’d ever let myself get to be that
old
.

SLAYERS ATREMBLE

NARRATOR

T
hat night, after the dance, things got a little bit tense at the third ever meeting of the Interfaith Legion of Vampire Hunters, held in the Catholic reception hall and presided over by Stevie Ray in theory but by whoever felt like shouting the loudest—that was to say, Father Edsel—in practice.

Still, when one bit of news came out, Stevie Ray got pretty loud: “You
talked
to her? You told her you
knew
? Why… why would you
do
that?”

Mr. Levitt sat tilted way back in a plastic chair, a cowboy hat pulled down low, hiding his eyes. “Don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I thought it would be…”

“Funny?” Stevie Ray said, outraged.

“For her own good,” Levitt said mildly. “Willy Noir tried to warn her off, you said, but
that
didn’t work, so I thought, okay, maybe her beloved and respected high school principal might be able to convince her of the error of her ways.” He shook his head sadly. “That girl is pretty well steeped in depravity, though, I must say. Necrophilia or what have you I guess. I hate to see mental illness in one so young. Or maybe it’s just a lifestyle thing, like those what do you call
’
em, gothics? The ones who wear black and too much eye makeup and silver jewelry, you know the ones? They have their own day at Disneyland?”

“I don’t think Bonnie Grayduck is a
goth
,” Stevie Ray said, massaging his temples. “I think she’s just… enthralled, or whatever. Vampires can be very charming, you all know that.”

“Vampires?” Cy said. “I thought they were moon people? From the moon?”

“They’re probably space vampires, Cy,” Father Edsel said, rather kindly, patting their insane weapons specialist gently on the shoulder.

“Ohhhh,” Cy said. “I gotcha. That makes sense.”

“I still think it must just be a disease,” the former Pastor Inkfist said nervously, chewing his nails. “The Scullens, the Scales, that girl who, um, met her demise on the reservation, what if they’re just
sick
? They could have, ah, porphyric hemophilia maybe? Or even a psychological condition, there’s one called, um, ‘wendigo psychosis,’ actually, and its sufferers—”

“They’re demons!” Edsel shouted. “Demons in the skins of men!”

Stevie Ray groaned. This was his crack team? His contingency plan in the event of all-out war between the were-whatevers at the rez and the vampires in the woods? He glanced over at Mr. Levitt, who rolled his eyes as if to say, “Can you believe these guys?”

Levitt was a weird case. Edsel had recruited Inkfist to the cause—said another man of God, even a lapsed one, would be good for them, and he’d even said some high-minded stuff about how fighting literal actual no-fooling supernatural evil might help clarify Inkfist’s mind, and lead him back into the light of God, which would’ve been kind of heartwarming if Stevie Ray had actually believed in God. And Inkfist, who’d taken some convincing before he believed, had spilled his guts to Mr. Levitt, who’d always seemed pretty mild-mannered, but who took the news of deadly bloodsucking monsters in their midst with amazing equanimity.

“I still say we should just go out to their house and stake them all while they’re sleeping,” Eileen Munson said, not looking up from her knitting. She was a middle-aged brunette, and you could still see the homecoming queen she’d once been. She was the only woman in the group, and Stevie Ray had been hesitant to involve her at all, but she was the mayor’s wife—and, everyone said, the one who made most of the decisions, with her husband Brett pretty much just a hand puppet who happened to hold elected office and own a car dealership—so they’d decided to let her in on it. She hadn’t believed them until she saw one of the tribal elders transform right in front of her, and even then, she’d just squinted, nodded, and said, “Proof of were-bears doesn’t necessarily mean proof of vampires—not any more than it means proof of unicorns, leprechauns, or Democrats with two working brain cells to rub together—but I’ll go ahead and take that part on faith.” She was a hard-ass, no doubt, and if there was a need for anything really dramatic—evacuation, maybe, based on a false claim about gas leaks or radon poisoning or an imminent deadly meteor shower—she’d be the one who could organize it and mobilize the town through her husband’s influence and her iron-fisted leadership of the Lutheran Women’s Circle.

“I don’t think we need to go that far,” Dolph said. He was a big man, broad across the shoulders, a pillar of the community, owner of the local grocery store, big and bluff and always with a “Hey howya doing” for everybody, but in Stevie Ray’s professional estimation, he didn’t have the guts God gave a pocket gopher, and he had the soul of a cowardly mouse. Eileen had brought him in, for who knows what reason. Sometimes Stevie Ray felt like he was running a pyramid scheme—or a multi-level marketing business—where every person he told about the vampires told two other people, and so on down the chain.
At least Bernie Madoff got rich off his pyramid
, Stevie Ray thought glumly,
and had some good times before they put his wrinkled white ass away.

“For now, we just wait,” Stevie Ray said. “The Scullens told me they’re planning to move on in a couple of years anyway—people will start to notice when they don’t age—and they won’t come back here until we’re all long dead.”

“They might be back in a generation or two, though,” Eileen said, her knitting needles clacking. “You don’t mind that? That they’ll seduce our great-granddaughters, like they have that pretty little Bonnie Grayduck?”

“I don’t know that it’s
seduction
exactly,” Stevie Ray said, “as far as I can tell it’s more like true love—”

“Demons cannot love!” Edsel boomed.

“Hard to believe,” Levitt drawled. “When us humans are all so loveable.”

“We wait,” Stevie Ray said again. “All right? No one do anything. No one
talk
to any of these people—or these
things
, yes, Father—until we have a reason to. The Scullens haven’t done anything that warrants… direct action.”

“But if some more of those traveling vampires come through,” Levitt said. “
Those
we can kill, right?”

“I guess… I guess, yeah,” Stevie Ray said. “If we can, we pretty much
have
to.”

“Long as we get to kill something,” Levitt said, and bid them all goodnight.

BIRTHDAY PARTY

FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCk

A
bout a month after the Fall Formal, when the leaves had all dropped off the trees but the snow was only just starting to come down, Edwin came to pick me up for my birthday party. It was supposed to be a surprise party, but for a guy who has a bona-fide double life that must be protected from discovery at all costs, Edwin is pretty lousy at keeping secrets, and enough hints had dropped that I’d picked up on things—mostly when he said he had a “big surprise” for me on my birthday over and over again.

I was secretly hoping his present to me would be the dark kiss of vampirism, but I didn’t expect that. He was pretty stubborn about being unwilling to risk my life and my soul. Our sex life wasn’t progressing as much as I wanted, either. He kissed me pretty regularly and copped the occasional feel, but we hadn’t even graduated to dry humping, let alone wet humping. Edwin was still too concerned about killing me not-so-softly if he got too excited, and our make-out sessions often ended rather suddenly with him literally jumping out the window. He said he was gradually becoming used to my scent, though, and had hopes that someday we’d be able to consummate—after we got married.

Yes. That’s right. He dropped the A-bomb. The
abstinence
bomb. I think I just gaped at him, because he was so matter-of-fact about it—“Don’t worry, we’ll make love on our wedding night,” some crap like that.

I said, “So… wait… you don’t want to sleep together until we get married?”

“I think we’re both worth waiting for, don’t you?” he said, and I remembered he thought I was a blushing virgin. Edwin really was from another time, I had to remember that, and his dad was Argyle, who was so old he came from a time where they probably killed you with rocks if you had sex out of wedlock.
Craaaaapppp
.

Were Garnett and Rosemarie and Hermet and Pleasance married? Turns out, yes, they were, in ceremonies presided over by Argyle. Not a
legal
marriage—it’s tough to have one of those when all your identity papers are forgeries and you have to pretend to be your own children or whatever every few decades—but one the Scullens and Scales considered totally binding.

Mrs. Bonnie Grayduck-Scullen didn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but if that’s what it took to get some hot vampire loving, I’d go along.

So: not getting turned into a vampire, and not getting laid. But he was still smart, strong, funny, and so beautiful I was content to spend hours just staring at his eyelashes, and I had to remember, we had
time
. Patience isn’t my virtue, but Edwin was a hundred years old, so it made sense he didn’t want to rush into anything.

I put on a pretty dress for the party (with leggings, even though I hate leggings, because there’s no other way to wear a dress and not freeze in October in Lake Woebegotten. Though I heard October wasn’t so bad, and that it wouldn’t really start to get cold until November, when most days would barely get above freezing, and things would get steadily worse and stay mostly frozen until April or so, which I had trouble wrapping my head around. Too many years in Santa Cruz, and only hot muggy summers spent in Lake Woebegotten before that—I just wasn’t
prepared
. And while I had a boy to keep my bed warm, he didn’t actually come through on the
warm
part unless he’d drank down a whole deer recently. I’d have to sacrifice my thong-and-tank-top for long underwear and flannel pajamas soon, which would probably inhibit my nightly subtle attempts at seduction considerably.)

Edwin picked me up in the Jeep, and his jaw dropped quite gratifyingly when he saw me. “You look good enough to—ah.” He chuckled.

“Good enough to eat? Don’t you
dare
. Besides, I’m eighteen years old today, no longer young and tender, but old and stringy and tough.”

“You still smell fairly fresh to me, my love, and happy birthday to you. You’re older than me now, you know—not in calendar time, but in body-time.”

I put my hand on his thigh as he drove, piloting the Jeep with his usual supreme and casual confidence. “My boy toy,” I teased. “We definitely have a May-December thing going on.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was the one sore point between us, really—his reluctance to turn me.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “And talking to Argyle. And—don’t laugh—even praying. And, if you’re really sure, that you want to become one of us… Argyle thinks there’s a way to make the transition less dangerous.”

My heart started beating faster. “Really?”

“He’s been studying it, you see, the mortality rate, and he thinks it has to do with the period of transition from life to… unlife. The moment can be long or short, you see, and if it’s long, as it often is, the brain is starved of oxygen, and the… subject… dies. He’s noticed that the ones who turn successfully turn
quickly
, for whatever reason—metabolism, genetics, he isn’t sure—while the ones who turn more slowly never turn at all. He believes, with the right equipment, a breathing apparatus to keep oxygen flowing to your brain, and a more clinical approach—injecting my venom into your veins instead of letting me bite you, as is more traditional—that the chances of success would be much, much higher than otherwise.”

“I… that’s… wow, Edwin.” It wasn’t quite what I’d envisioned—him tearing my clothes off and sinking his teeth into my neck and ravishing me as I transformed—but I’d give up erotic romance for a hospital bed if it meant I got to
live forever and have superpowers
.

“Don’t get too excited,” he said. “He wants to study the problem more—he isn’t confident enough in his research to do it soon—and we both
strongly
believe you should go to college and think about the possible transition for a few more years. We can get married before you go to college, now that you’re of legal age, if you want to. But my father points out, rightly, that you and I are in the first throes of love, and while I do not expect my feelings for you to ever diminish, Argyle counsels caution. But if, in five years time, if you still love me, and you still want to become one of us… We can do that.”

“If you weren’t driving,” I said, “I would jump into your lap and kiss you so hard your fangs would poke holes in your lips.”

“I’m happy, too,” he said solemnly. “If it can be done safely, and if we take time to make sure it’s definitely what you want, I believe it could be good for us. To be together, always.”

“I’ll still be pretty hot at twenty-three,” I said thoughtfully.

“And that way there will still be time for us to have a child,” he said, casually, and at that, dear reader, my blood froze. Well, not literally—
that
would wait until I was a vampire and I went outside in Lake Woebegotten during January, I guessed—but very much figuratively.