Chapter Thirty-Two
Topside
3:23 A.M.
A sunset stretched across the landscape of John’s dream, streaks of orange and gold staining the sky, just like in real life about a half-dozen hours ago, when John had sat on the front porch of the safe house, holding a beer—he hadn’t been able to drink—propped on his knee. He watched the sun sink into the horizon; maybe the last sunset he’d ever see, according to Nurse Shaston, who’d shooed him out there.
’Course she’d said the same thing the last four evenings in a row, and here he still was, John Waterson, Humanoid.
John, you’re a vampire.
Yeah? Really? Sooooo…. Was he a nice, Muppety vampire, like Count Von Count, or a real nasty character, like Lestat? Or a version of Dracula? He hoped he wasn’t that, ’cause, gee whillikers, he would hate to be something so cliché. Or, golly, even worse, what if he was a teeny-bopper bloodsucker like Edward Cullen? He might have to kill himself if he actually sparkled. Although wasn’t he already dead ’n all?
You’re not an undead monster—that’s just a fable.
Huh. Interesting. How about him being something that actually existed?
Jesus Christ. The whole bogus thing belonged up his ass. If he was really and truly a vampire, then why hadn’t he changed over yet? Although—there was always an although, wasn’t there?—he’d never come up with any other reason to explain his bizarre cluster of symptoms.
You show all the signs of a vampire suffering from a voracious blood-need.
He brought the beer to his lips, then just set it back on his knee. Insatiable hunger yet the inability to keep down food… Great. He let his focus stray from the beautiful gold ball of the sun down to the stretch of street in front. Turned out this safe house was Toni’s old place, and so that curb was where he would’ve parked his car had he ever come to pick her up on the date they planned.
One night after working a criminal case together, he’d stolen a kiss from her, a tongue kiss, her body fitting sinuously against his, her welcoming warmth fulfilling a huge fantasy of his. After the kiss he finally convinced her to go out to dinner with him.
It was the date-that-never-was, because…
Because, why?
A lot of conflicting variables seemed to be going into making that an impossible question to answer. But maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Maybe what mattered was that Toni was back in his life. He could finally fix things between them. He’d be returning to her—she said she was going to send a transport to bring him back to her oddball town—and when he did see her again, he was going to make sure—make damned sure—they got their shot this time.
Exhaling, he returned his attention to the sunset. He probably should look at it, since it might be a monumental last or—
He startled as the sky suddenly turned gory, red liquid dripping off bloody clouds and the Pacific Ocean heaving into a viscous, sluggish stew. His heart lurched into a hard thud, and his head pounded. The sky boiled over into a stormy hell, silvery webs of lightning streaking across dark thunderheads. An overlarge face pushed between two black clouds. Gray-skinned, the creature had fangs. Twin bolts of lightning shot out from its sharp teeth, hitting John high up on both temples, right above the eyebrows. He choked on a gasp, his head pounding harder, like his skull was taking a serious bludgeoning from a police baton. More lightning, more painful, silvery whiplashes. He jerked in his bed, becoming vaguely aware of the cotton bedsheets beneath him.
The pain was waking him up…
The ocean went black.
Another lightning strike sent pieces of John’s cranial bones flying in all directions.
Seal-barking in terror, John spine-locked himself straight upright in bed, his eyes widened as far as he could stretch them. Shaston had left the nightstand lamp on dim, but even that small amount of light was agonizing. Nausea crackled like old parchment paper in his empty stomach. He clutched his head, hard, harder. It felt like his skull was sucking inward, then bloating back out, bulging, straining. Something’s about to…
His head burst out at the temples. The towers and pillars that made up his canine teeth crumbled like an epic Armageddon, chunks of enamel raining down on his lap. He made a waffling sound of panic and cupped his hands over his mouth, scrambling to the side of the mattress. Blood roared through his fingers.
Aaaahhh!
Hysteria engulfed him in a feeling so deep and drowning and black, he could only scream. And scream and scream.
Nurse Shaston exploded into the bedroom, her long, black hair flying, a pair of cotton shorts twisted sideways on her waist. She took one look at him, then whirled back around, returning a second later with a dark blue hand towel.
“Here.” She gave it to him, crouching down at his feet. “It’s okay,” she had the audacity to add.
He jammed the towel to his mouth, an action which thankfully shut up his screaming. He sucked air in and out of his nose. The smells of detergent and lint—and blood—blasted through his sinus passages. He stared at Shaston over the top of the towel, his eye sockets feeling overstretched, as if his eyeballs were pregnant slugs.
“I know this is bizarre and scary, John.” Shaston set a palm on his knee. “But it’s okay. We all go through it when we drop our fangs for the first time.”
His continuing gall over her failure to properly lose her shit over this apocalypse helped to substitute irritation for some of his panic. He’ll leave behind pre-blooding and move into his full blood-need. His fangs will finally descend…
Descend? This was way beyond mere fucking descending. A little more warning would’ve been nice.
“Do you want to see them?” Shaston asked. “Your fangs?”
Fangs. Fangs… He crept his hand underneath the towel and eased his fingers inside his sore mouth, exploring the area where—
Holy shit.
“Come on.” Shaston caught him underneath the arm and helped him to his feet. “I think you need to see them to truly believe.” She brought him into the bathroom and placed him in front of the mirror.
He lowered the towel, and—Jesus, his face was a mess. He looked like a two-year-old who’d just gone hog wild on a plate of spaghetti.
“Smile!” Shaston chirped.
He fixed a glare on her.
Her mouth tilted. “It’s okay.”
“Quit saying that,” he snarled, and, whoa. He’d never heard himself sound like that. He shot his attention back to the mirror. His eyes appeared brighter, sharper, more feral. He started to peel back his lips, then hesitated. Please. Just…don’t… Don’t let me have… He grinned.
And a beast was born.
He rocked back on his heels, dizzied by the strange sensation of his soul tripping and falling, tumbling away from himself.
The John Waterson he’d always known was gone.
The image in the bathroom mirror was officially his—same facial structure, familiar brown hair, those one-of-a-kind turquoise eyes. But he recognized the man staring back at him merely in form, cerebrally only. He couldn’t relate to or connect with the image emotionally, because…
The man in the mirror had canines stretching several inches down into a blood-smeared mouth.
Maybe he was hallucinating. A new symptom acquired.
John ran his tongue experimentally over one of his canines. The tapered tip was extremely sharp. No way could the thing be explained away as anything other than a fang.
He had fangs.
He fell forward against the sink, gripping the porcelain rim to keep from going down.
“Hey.” Shaston’s hand came to rest lightly on his shoulder. “They look great, John. Really. They’re quite a pair.”
He glowered at her. Bile rose. Accusations formed. He needed to blame someone for this, vent his overstock of horror. But all the things he wanted to spew stuck to his tongue.
He was snared in a net, trapped by the sudden, shocking honing of his vision as his eyes dropped to the veins in Shaston’s throat. He focused on her in a way he’d never done before, never knew he could do. It was a riveted, shallow-breathed, laser lock onto her carotid, and, holy crap, he could actually see the blood pumping through the light blue trail of it.
The sight pulsed into primitive parts of his brain. His canine teeth throbbed, not painfully, but with a wanting so deep, it was pre-evolutionary and…kind of sexual. His nuts throbbed, too. He was just getting into those sensations when his stomach chose that moment to be done with all the years of bullshit. It howled at the moon. For blood.
John doubled over in pain, feeling the seismic vibrations of agony in his pelvic bones. “Shit on a brick.”
“You need to feed,” Shaston told him.
He cranked his neck back up to peer at her.
She had the kindly Nurse Nightingale expression down pat, mouth curved into a soft smile, brows marred with a little stitch between them. “You’ll feel fine once you do.”
Fine… Healthy and fine… Healthy and fine! He stared at her vein, riveted…that vein… Drool drizzled over his lower lip—his mouth had just flooded with saliva.
“I’ll call Toni and tell—”
“I want you,” he growled. Straightening, he made a fumbling grab for her.
She came into his arms at once, pressing up against his blood-drenched T-shirt. An animal gleam darted through her eyes “I want you too,” she whispered. Her fingers threaded into the back of his sweaty hair and urged him toward her throat.
He sank his face into the crook of her neck—it fit perfectly—and hauled in a chest-swelling breath. She smelled of mint toothpaste, Vitamin C, body lotion with too much glycerin in it, and the granola cereal she must’ve eaten for breakfast this morning, and… Good God. How did he know such things?
“It’s okay,” she moaned, encouraging him on.
Some distant voice in the back of his head warned him that this “okay” should be just as galling as the ones before—for some unknown reason. But little voices were easily being out-shouted by big ones: calls of the wild, cellular-level drives to finally fill the massive void inside him, to find himself. Yes, he sensed it…no, he knew consuming Shaston’s blood would also make him feel whole and complete—like the real John—for the first time in his ever-loving life.
Once you realize your true nature, you’ll be healthy and fine…
He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and yet, somehow…he did.
Instinct took over.
His jaws pried apart.
His open mouth shifted in micro-movements over Shaston’s flesh until his fangs suddenly thrummed. There!
Synapses fired, and he bit down. He felt a liquidy pop, like squeezing a grape between his teeth, then something wet was on his tongue.
Every kid who’s ever bonked his thumb, then stuck it in his mouth to suck the pain way, knew what blood tasted like. It was the taste John had expected. It wasn’t what he got, not by a long shot.
He couldn’t even say there was a taste to the thick substance coating his tongue, not according to conventional expressions of that concept. More like a host of sensations—of rightness, of strength, of energy, of healing, of ease and relief. And, somehow, of life shifting onto a correct path at long last. How could he verbalize those as tastes? Not possible.
Overarching everything he felt a peace he hadn’t in years, maybe a lifetime, and he hugged Shaston closer, trying to gulp more blood down his throat. Amateur that he was, he made a mess of it, blood leaking past the inadequate suction of his lips.
It spilled down Shaston’s neck and onto her shoulder. She didn’t seem to mind, especially not when the muscles around his canines flexed and a vague pumping sensation started up in his fangs.
Shaston writhed and moaned.
She felt extra squirmy-good in his arms…sexy.
When he finally lifted his head and peered down on her, her eyes were gauzy. He blinked. The room came fully back to him, the drawn borders of the medicine cabinet, toilet, and sink, redefining themselves.
In the kitchen, the ice maker activated, the sound of cubes dumping into the freezer tray like a bin of billiard balls spilled onto ceramic tiles. He could hear it so clearly, it was as if the refrigerator was right next to him.
He felt so different now. One bite, and here he was…
Bite.
He focused on the two small holes in Shaston’s throat. He had made those.
Holy crap.
He was a vampire.