Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

It wasn’t a dead smell, not yet.

Ken, still balanced on the seawall, bent forward. “Am I on your list now?”

“Do you want me to call Sonia? The kids?” Claudia said. She knew what his answer would be.

“That wouldn’t do any good. She’d only come get me.”

Claudia squinted at him. “You don’t want her to?”

“No. No, I don’t. I don’t want her to see me again. It’s too hard for her.”

His voice was strained, and Claudia realized he was in great pain. “Are you. all right?” He tilted his head and looked at her properly. “You’ve always been kind.”

“My mum was kind. I guess it rubbed off.”

“Never lose that,” Ken said. “I wish I’d been kinder to everyone. Friends and strangers.”

Claudia didn’t say “It’s never too late,” because she could hear that it was.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said, vampire direct. She knew this answer as well, but he needed to say it. It was part of the process.

“Sick. Very sick. Pain ahead and long-drawn-out suffering for my kids. No kid should see a parent suffer. You shouldn’t have to see it.”

“What about the hospital? Can’t they help?”

“With the pain. But what’s the point? I want to pass quietly, peacefully, in control. Why can’t I have that?”

Claudia watched him for a while, then gazed out to sea. “Have you said good-bye to everyone? Tied it all up? Dying with a loose end is no good.”

He looked surprised. “Thanks. For listening, not trying to convince me.” His voice was tight, so full of pain Claudia could almost feel it. “I’ve tied it all up. I say good-bye, I love you, every day just in case. I’ve left special gifts for the grandchildren and messages for the great-grandchildren. I’ve apologized to people. It’s sorted. But I just can’t. ” He stopped, bent over, clutching his ears. “I’m too gutless to do what I need to do.”

Claudia felt her teeth tingle. “I can help,” she whispered. She snarled gently, then said it louder. “I can help.”

He turned, saw her teeth.

“The list? This is what you use the list for?”

She nodded. “I’ll be gentle,” she said, and she bent forward and drank deeply from the beautiful, pulsing vein in his neck. Drank till she was done, till he was; then she sat him on the ground, propped against the wall, and called an ambulance. She didn’t want him robbed, or his body stolen or damaged. His wife and kids needed to know quickly, to see him while he still looked close to life.

She watched from across the street until the ambulance arrived; then she walked home, feeling satisfied in her stomach and in the heart all the others assured her she didn’t have.

They both smiled at each other, the way that best friends do.

Their smiles revealed different things. Gina’s teeth were gray and almost translucent. They looked soft and loose. Amy’s teeth gleamed bright and white even in the dimly lit room. And of course there were the canines. Long and pointy. Hollow at the tip, perfectly made for the sucking of blood.

“Would you?” Gina asked.

“Would you?” Amy asked back.

The first time Amy and Gina met was two years prior. At night school.

Amy had gone there to feed. Gina was there to get her equivalency diploma.

Amy thought she could get her feed on easily in the tunnel that linked the parking garage to the campus. Gina was the perfect prey. She was walking, oblivious to everything around her. She was listening to music much too loudly on her iPod, the sound turned up all the way spilling over and echoing thinly in the tunnel. And she was singing along. Off-key.

Even the loud clicking of Amy’s go-go boots didn’t make Gina notice that there was someone else in the tunnel with her.

Best kind of kill, Amy thought. Easy and there’s no taste of fear in the blood. That’s the sweetest.

But as Amy began to change her gait from skulking to running to go in for the kill, she gagged.

At first she chalked it up to the terrible human smells in the tunnel: the stale air, the body odor, the cigarettes, and the pee. But as she moved in, it was clear that it was the girl who stank. The rank rot smell was coming from her. Amy realized that something was wrong with the girl.

Gina turned around.

Amy doubled over and gagged again.

That was how they met.

“Hi,” Gina said, pulling out one of the earbuds and letting it dangle. The music spilled out a little louder into the tunnel now. Amy recognized the song. It was old, one that Amy used to like.

“It totally smells down here, right?” Gina continued.

Amy nodded. Her teeth were extended, so she kept her face hidden, placed her hand on the tunnel wall to steady herself as she tried to calm her frenzy and coax her teeth back down.

“I almost threw up last week,” Gina overshared.

Amy nodded again. It was difficult to be understood when her mouth changed. Usually she didn’t have to talk — she just ate.

“You going to be okay? I’ve got water in my bag if you need some.”

“I just need a minute,” Amy said as clearly as she could manage. “I’ll be fine.”

And she would. This had happened before, a stunted kill. It happened. Not all easy marks turned out to be easy. That was part of the thrill of being a hunter.

Composed, expression set back to normal, Amy stood up and turned to face Gina.

Amy noticed that Gina was very small and very thin and very pale. Even paler than her. Even paler than any vampire she’d ever known. Gina’s skin was more ivory than bone. Her veins so blue that they showed uncomfortably bright through her skin. Her hair was reddish once, but it was so lifeless and dead that it lacked any prettiness to it.

Amy knew one thing for sure. This girl was a dead girl. Not actually dead. But dead soon.

“You taking a class here?” Amy asked. It was the most normal thing she could think to ask of the girl who was supposed to be her dinner.

Gina nodded.

“I’m getting my high school diploma,” Gina said.

Gina extended her slender hand. Amy took it. The hand was as cold as hers. It made her shudder. She’d never felt a human with no warmth.

“I’m Gina,” the girl said. “And I love your boots. Even though I’m not so into the seventies.”

Gina was wearing a royal blue velvet dress with a high neck and many tiny little buttons. It was vintage 1910. It had a lace collar. She wore white patterned thick tights and vintage boots.

“I’m Amy,” Amy said.

Now that Gina had given Amy her true name, she would never feed on her. Amy had long ago decided that she couldn’t feed on anyone she humanized. She could only feed on someone she thought of as an animal. They were just human meat. If they were human, like she was once before, if they had a name, she couldn’t feed. Gina was no longer meat; she was now Gina, a human.

Amy was surprised to discover that they had been walking together, side by side, and that now they had arrived at the campus.

Amy knew that tonight she was not going to eat.

So she went with Gina to class.

That’s how come Amy finally finished high school. It was because of her chance meeting with Gina.

Amy as a human died and was reborn as undead in 1976. She didn’t want to, it just happened, in an alley in New York City. It was Independence Day and she was watching the tall boats come up the Hudson River. That night she was tripping on acid with her friends down by the Battery. She left the group alone to go find a bathroom. When she saw the vampire coming toward her, she laughed. She thought it was just a part of the trip. A great hallucination. He was cute, and she welcomed him coming close to her. He started kissing her neck. It tickled at first. Until he bit. Bit hard. Amy was still laughing when the blood was being drained out of her. Even though it hurt like hell. Even though there were explosions in the sky. Even though she was tripping like mad.