“The police have been to the house,” he said. “They described to me what happened at the party and how only three kids, in all probability you and two others, managed to get away. Since you haven’t come home or tried to contact us, I’m assuming that you’ve been infected.” There was a long pause. When her father resumed speaking, his voice was unsteady. “Thank you for staying away, Tana. It’s the responsible thing to do, and I hope that no matter what happens, you leave us—especially Pearl—with our memory of you the way it was. We love you, sweetheart, and we’ll miss you, but please don’t come back here. Don’t ever come back.”
For a moment, she was tempted to call home anyway, to tell them that she was okay while she still could, to say something cruel to her father to get him back for leaving a message like that, to at least text Pearl.
You leave us with our memory of you the way it was.
Tana deleted the messages and put her phone away.
She’d decided. She was going to Coldtown.
She cleaned off her boots in the sink and laced them onto her feet, wishing she didn’t have to. She’d have liked to never touch them again, but she didn’t have the money for new shoes. The boots were a little damp, but she thought they’d dry soon.
With the dollar and change she had left, she bought a slice of pizza and ate it, sitting on a plastic chair in the food court. It tasted like sawdust and cardboard. Across the way at a nearby table, some boys in baggy jeans were shoving one another in a good-natured way.
“We should do what other countries do and blow those corpses sky high,” said one of them, leering at two girls with purple pigtails and black lipstick who were passing the table. “Bomb all the Coldtowns.”
One of the girls turned around and flipped dual middle fingers at him. “Hey, idiot, you want to fight the vampires? Move to Europe. Too bad about the skyrocketing infection rate there.”
“Maybe I will. I’ll have my own show—Slade Slays—and kill every vampire there is. How about that?”
“How about it’s called Slade Dies,” called the girl. “That show I’d watch.”
All the other boys at the table started laughing.
Tana got up and threw away her grease-smeared paper plate. Then she walked over to where Winter and Midnight were sitting by the outlets. Midnight had her head bent over her laptop, earbud cords hanging down around her neck. Winter looked up at Tana and blinked a couple of times, pulling off his bulkier headphones, his blue hair flattened where he’d mussed it. She noticed for the first time the T-shirt he was wearing underneath a black jacket—it had the words COLDER THAN YOU across the front in small white letters.
She snorted.
“Wow,” he said. “You look much better.”
“Thanks.” She made a face. “You still want that ride? I’d understand if you didn’t.”
Winter touched Midnight’s arm, making her look up. “We better talk about it. I think maybe—”
“We want the ride,” Midnight said firmly, in a tone that dared her brother to contradict her.
He didn’t.
CHAPTER 12
Call no man happy till he is dead.
—Aeschylus
Vampires were always more beautiful than the living.
Their skin was without blemish, marble smooth, and pore-less. The older they got, the more their unnatural red eyes grew bright as poppies and their hair became as lustrous as silk. It was as if whatever demon possessed them, whatever force kept their corpses from the grave, had refined them in the blaze of its power, burning away their humanity to reveal something finer. Caspar Morales had stolen the fire from Prometheus, and his children were spreading it.
They looked absurdly gorgeous, glowing from the television like fallen angels. Even from the beginning, that was a problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.
After the infections started burgeoning and the first walls around the infected areas were built—the crude ones that kept only some things inside—news cameras couldn’t get enough coverage. Reporters were always climbing around the rubble, filming, putting their lives in danger.
And it wasn’t just television and newspapers. Flickr and Tumblr and Instagram were full of pictures of teeth and blood. In the beginning, an amateur videographer uploaded footage of long-limbed vampire girls feeding on a shock-faced middle-aged man. It got hundreds of thousands of hits in a matter of hours. Gossip columns ran long pieces on vampires who acquired an almost celebrity status, their string of kills only seeming to increase interest.
Vampires were fairy tales and magic. They were the wolf in the forest who ran ahead to grandmother’s house, the video game big boss who could be hunted without guilt, the monster who tempted you into his bed, the powerful eternal beast one might become. The beautiful dead, la belle mort. And if, after gorging themselves in an orgy of death, they became less lovely, if they became bloated and purple and horrible, then they hid it well.
Everyone was afraid to die and vampires never would. It was tempting to wish to be one, even if not everyone had the courage to try.
But everyone wanted to see one, if from afar.