Bite Me, A.J. Cole [hardest books to read txt] 📗

~ One~

 

 

No one understood. They had it all wrong. The funny part was, it had become such a suddenly and annoyingly popular topic that everything about it was just as suddenly meaningless. The truth had slipped into the realm of irrelevance, dragging her own life with it.

Vampires. Everyone on the planet was writing, talking, reading, and watching whatever was being spewed out about them. Books, magazine articles about movies about books about vampires. Popular scandal rags shouting unlikely headlines from the impulse-buy shelves at grocery store checkout lines about those who played in the movies about books about vampires. And blogs. First hundreds, then thousands, then millions, and now? No doubt well into government-deficit-like numbers by this time.

But they had it all wrong. Granted, one of the shortest name lists was probably "Vampires with Suntans," only it wasn't because they sparkled in the sun, burned to a crisp in daylight, or needed the native earth of Transylvania sewn into the soles of their shoes to avoid going all crunchy when the sun was up. Nope. The only reason their SPF rating was off the charts was because they simply didn't go out enough during the day. Why? Sunlight hurt their eyes! That was it. Nothing more radical.

"Hurt" was only a euphemism in this case, though, which was why sunglasses were useless. "Destroyed with mind-numbing agony" was more accurate. In fact, while she'd often gone outside during the day out of some necessity or other, she'd done so with a thick, black rubber blindfold over her eyes, a hooded jacket, and a seeing-eye dog a blind friend let her borrow for such emergencies.

It was very, very aggravating (she avoided saying anything "sucked," since that was yet another misconception that had been turned into a horrible pun).

Oh, and no one had bitten her. She'd been born with the condition, a genetic one she inherited from both parents, who had not surprisingly met at a Dungeons and Dragons convention. They weren't into drugs or alcohol, but they were hippies at the time, and after she'd been born, had celebrated with just a wee bit too much Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine and named their poor newborn Elvira. As soon as she was old enough to realize the connection to her vampirism, she had threatened to bite both parents for real, and promptly changed it to something a little less...stupid. Then, upon reaching majority, she'd gone to court and had it changed legally. There had been some satisfaction in that, but she still couldn't go out for lunch when most people did, and had to live with the infuriating social compost of vampire-lit.

That's how she saw it, anyway. Her friends told her she was a terminal grouch and continued enjoying every vampire story they could find.

Meloria Westfall, as she now signed her checks, was a night clerk (ha! imagine that!) at the convenience store two blocks from her apartment. She hated it. Not for the reasons one might expect, however. She wasn't worried about the kind of people who wandered in at crazy hours of the night and early morning, and the pay was actually rather good. No, she hated it because it wasn't what she felt she ought to be doing. "Overqualified" was an understatement, but getting work in her field of interest was next to impossible.

For one thing, there was the problem of food. The traditional lore about exclusively drinking blood was only partly false. She didn't exactly do that - she ate it. In the form of raw meat. One of the symptoms of her condition was the need to ingest raw animal protein, a practice that in the past had often resulted in a multitude of digestive disorders for most of her kind. The current trend toward organically raised beasties, however, had made life much better, if no less weird.

The family's holiday table was usually piled high with freshly-killed poultry, just-slaughtered beef or venison, and fruit. Yup. Fruit. Lots and lots of fruit. They all spent a great deal of time in the bathroom on most days. Which was yet another problem with the kind of job she really wanted to do. Lunch would become a horror-show for fellow-employees, and the number of bathroom breaks required would never be tolerated. So she worked at the convenience store two blocks from her apartment.

Valentine's Day was just around the corner when Meloria decided she hated that, too. It had never been a favorite, but had suddenly become intolerable. All those hearts - they weren't even shaped like real ones, for goodness sake! And the number of guys who bought those cheap, perfume-spritzed fake roses was downright staggering.

The week before V-Day, she was busy restocking cigarettes under the counter when she heard someone clear his throat, and she looked up. A man who was approximately I'm-way-older-than-I'll-ever-admit years old was standing there with one of those freaking roses, eyebrows raised with some generic brand of impatience.

"May I help you?" Meloria asked sweetly, refusing to look at the offending rose-wannabe.

"Well, uh, yeah." He thrust the object of her disgust right under her nose.

She winced involuntarily. "Oh. Er, just that, then?"

"No, I also need a pack of Dunhill cigarettes - blue box."

An almost imperceptible flare of her nostrils was the only indication that she was mere nanoseconds away from finding out how raw human meat tasted. Dunhill. Imported, expensive as hell, and all he could offer some poor (and obviously confused) girlfriend was a chintzy convenience-store fake rose? She nodded and took a deep breath as an alternate possibility occurred to her.

"The Dunhills are part of the gift?"

He blinked.

"Never mind." She blinked back, her gorgeous cobalt-blue eyes glinting with a fury that contradicted her smile. "Blue box." She ducked down behind the counter, coming back up a moment later with the item, and placed it with exaggerated care on the counter. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

"Nah, that's it. Think she'll like this?"

Meloria was about as close to speechless as she'd been since her birthday - her first one.

"I got her a stuffed bear last year, and she didn't seem too happy with it," he continued, pulling his wallet from a back pocket.

"It isn't real," she managed, her voice tight.

"Well, no, but she has really bad allergies. I just hope the crappy perfume on this thing doesn't bother her." He lifted it to his nose, sniffed, and made a face that echoed Meloria's earlier wince.

Allergies? Had she been wrong about the guy after all? "Uh, is that all you're giving her?"

"Nope. Got her a car, too." A huge grin followed, and he suddenly didn't seem like such a - a putz.

"A new one?!"

"Of course. No point in putting a big ol' bow on some used piece of garbage, right?"

Speechlessness settled over Meloria for yet a second time. She nodded, took the rose, scanned it; she scanned the cigarettes, too, told him the total, and took his credit card.

"Hey, mind if I ask you a question?"

"You, er, just did."

He laughed. "Right. Another one, then."

"Sure."

"What, um, what's up with your eyes?"

"What do you mean?"

He shook his head. "I've never seen - they almost don't look human. They're too...too blue and, and luminous, I guess. Are you wearing contacs?"

"No. I'm a vampire."

The Speechless Bug leapt off Meloria, crawled over the counter, and attacked the customer.

She grinned, handing him back his card. The cigarettes and rose went into a white plastic bag, which she gave him as she said, "Have a great night!"

He took the bag, relaxing as he seemed to make up his mind that she was just kidding, and bid her good night in return. As he went out the door, she could swear she heard him mutter "Vampire, my ass..."

She was still laughing when her manager came out into the store from the stock room.

"Should I be alarmed?" he asked drily, sounding ominously like Alan Rickman without the accent.

"Why? Because I'm amused about something for a change?"

"Hmm."

"It's nothing."

He frowned at her for a few seconds, then pursed his lips, crossing his arms over his ample chest. "You told someone else you're a vampire, didn't you."

"I did."

"Meloria. Really."

She shrugged. "Some people can't handle the truth, I guess."

"You can be such an ass sometimes."

"Bite me."

He gave her a narrow stare. "Not funny." Shaking his head, he went to the coffee urns and checked their contents. "So tell me, Mel," he said over his shoulder, "why are you working here if you hate it so much?"

"It's not my calling."

"Your calling?" He turned around, smirking, and rolled his eyes. "So what is? Are you a closet rocket scientist or something? I keep asking, but you always avoid giving me a straight answer."

"Hold on." She ducked down again and finished putting the last of the cigarette packs away.

"By the way - "

Meloria contained a shriek. He had leaned over the counter and was mere inches from her face. "Personal space?"

He straightened. "Sorry. As I was saying, vampire girl, would a stake through the heart kill you?"

Some people..."A stake through the heart would kill anyone, you idiot."

"Yes, but isn't that the only thing that would work on you? That and daylight."

She had told him about her condition when she'd applied for the job, listing it on her application as the medical anomaly that it was. At first, he'd thought she was playing a prank, but after further consideration - after all, she was twenty-two and actually looking for work - realized how silly that was, and they'd talked at length about it. Despite her explanations, though, he'd never been able to completely shake his pre-programmed beliefs about vampires.

"Look, maybe if I say it very slowly you'll get it this time." She wasn't afraid he'd fire her for being rude, knowing full well she was probably the only person around for miles who honestly wanted the late shift. "Daylight doesn't hurt me. It just hurts my eyes. If you cut my throat, or - or rip out a lung, or if I get brain cancer or something, I DIE! Just like everyone else, okay? And I don't drink blood, I don't go around biting people in the neck, I can give a wicked hickey without killing the guy I gave it to, and I can't control your mind or turn into a bat. I also don't sleep in a coffin, I happen to love garlic, and I can enter someone's house without being invited. Anything else? Are you smarter than a second-grader? Come on, Toby! We handled all this stuff months ago!"

He took a slow, deep breath, nodding. "I know, kid. Sorry. But I gotta tell you - your eyes really freak me out sometimes, especially like now, when you're kind of upset about something."

"Why?"

"Because they glow, sweetie. You, er, can see your own reflection, yes?"

"Yes, you nit. I'm not dead."

"And you never noticed how your eyes get, like, I don't know, back-lit when you're emotional?"

She shook her head, wondering vaguely if he was just pulling her chain. "No. But maybe that's because looking at my reflection is normally not the first thing I think to do when I'm upset. I mean...I'm not like, 'You've upset me terribly, you horrible person! Now I have to go look at myself!' Know what I mean?"

"Good point. But still."

"If I find out you're making that eye thing up, I will bite you in the neck. Or, no...ew! Never mind. But I might throw something at you."

Toby chuckled. "All right - truce. And I'm not making it up. So what would you rather be doing? Really."

"Well, I have a Master's Degree - "

"What? Why isn't that on your resume or application?"

"Because I didn't think you'd hire me; you know - the whole 'overqualified' thing?"

"Probably right."

"Anyhow, I have a Master's in Genetic Science. I figured if I could work in that field, I might one day find a cure for what people like me have." She gave