You Suck: A Love Story

vampire. “I’m always pleasantly surprised when I am reminded of how lovely you are. Surprises are rare at my age.”
    “Must have surprised the fuck out of you to have that Honda toast you, then, huh?” She felt herself tightening down, the electric jangle channeling itself into an awareness, an edge. It wasn’t fear anymore, it was readiness.
    “An unpleasant one, yes. I assume your little servant is safe for now.”
    “Well, you know, she was winded for a few minutes from kicking your ass, but she is just a little girl.”
    The vampire laughed, and Jody couldn’t help but smile. She went to the windows at the front of the loft and opened them. “Smells like burned meat in here.”
    “She’ll have to go, you know,” said the vampire, still smiling.
    “No, she won’t,” Jody turned on her heel. Faced him.
    “Of course she will. All of them but you. I’m quite tired of being alone, little one. You can come away with me, just as we planned.”
    Jody was stunned at his density. “I was lying to you, Elijah. I never intended to go away with you. I was just pretending to find out how to be a vampire.”
    “What were you going to do the next night, then-if your pet hadn’t bronzed us, I mean?”
    “I thought I’d send you away.”
    “No you didn’t.”
    “I thought I’d let the Animals kill you, like they were going to anyway.”
    “No you didn’t.”
    “I don’t know.” The edge was slipping. “I don’t know.” Maybe she was going to go with him. She had felt so alone, so lost.
    “Ah, so here we are again. Let’s pretend like all this unpleasantness hasn’t happened, and it’s the next night, and here we are, just the two of us. The only ones of our kind. What will you do, Jody?”
    “But we aren’t the only ones of our kind.”
    “We are the only ones you need worry about. You do know that you are the first new vampire in a hundred years?”
    Jody tried not to show her surprise. “How lucky for me,” she said.
    “Oh, you’re not the only one I’ve turned. I’ve turned many. You’re the only one who could weather the change with her mind intact. The others had to be, well, decommissioned.”
    “You killed them?”
    “Yes. But not you. Help me clean up and then we’ll leave, together.”
    “Clean up?”
    “There are certain rules, love. Rules that I set down myself, and the first of them is make no more vampires. Yet you’ve let loose a storm of fledglings, and they all have to be cleaned up, including your boy pet.”
    “Make no more? What about me? You made me.”
    “I didn’t expect you to survive, love. I thought you would be an amusement, a break in monotony, an interlude, but you distinguished yourself.”
    “And now you want me to run off with you.”
    “We’ll live like royalty. I have resources you couldn’t imagine.”
    “You’re wearing stolen jeans, sugar daddy.”
    “Well, yes, I will have to make my way to one of my caches.”
    “I have an idea,” Jody said, and this was really the reason she had come here, by herself, knowing that he would be here. Or at least hoping. “How about I give you enough money to get you out of town and you do that, just like we promised Rivera and Cavuto? You leave me alone, you leave Tommy alone, you just leave.”
    Elijah stood now, tossed the towel on the chair, and moved to her so quickly that she could barely even see him move. “Art, music, literature,” said Elijah. “Desire, passion, power-the best of man and the best of beast. Together. You would say no to that?”
    He put his hand on her cheek and she let him.
    “Love?” Jody said, looking into his eyes-they reflected like drops of mercury in her night vision.
    “For fairy tales. We are the stuff from which nightmares are made. Make nightmares with me.”
    “Wow, nice offer. Can’t imagine why you haven’t had any takers for a hundred years.” Jody grabbed his wrist. If he wouldn’t leave, she could take him. She was a vampire, too.
    The vampire had been smiling, but his smile changed aspect, going from pleased to predatory. “So be it, then.”
    His hand was at her neck in an instant, she didn’t see him move or have a chance to react. Suddenly she couldn’t move her arms or legs, and there was an intense pain behind her ear and under her jaw. She screamed, releasing a sound she couldn’t imagine coming out of a human, more like something you’d hear from a tortured cat. He clamped his other hand over her mouth.
    “I didn’t teach you