Teeth: Vampire Tales

Lenka clambered to her feet and staggered dizzily.

Rima steadied her, her grip cool and strong on Lenka’s arm. “Maybe you should build up those muscles more before you go up again.”

Lenka laughed, embarrassed. “You know it.”

The thing about working out is, you feel weaker before you start to feel stronger, especially if you’re coming back from a long time away and you’re impatient.

What made it harder was that suddenly, Lenka was very much in demand.

Rima and Evzen wanted to learn to navigate YouTube. Then Cio-Cio and Hector and Boris got interested, and after that someone or another was constantly dropping by the office to use her laptop and study new moves and new routines. Hector built a cube like the one in the video, and Rima and Cio-Cio started working on it. The Sokolovs obsessively practiced new tricks. Every time Lenka turned around, someone was pestering her with questions about American circuses, American slang, American taste, until she started to feel like a human search engine.

“Watch this sequence, Lenka. Is it now smoking?”

“There is a man who swallows a bar stool, Lenka. Is this cool for me to do, or lame?”

She was welcome at practices now, which was what she’d wanted, but somehow, their attention made her feel lonelier than being ignored. Lenka tried not to mind that they never asked her questions about herself. It wasn’t that she wanted to talk about her family or her illness. But it might have been nice if they’d wanted to know.

After Columbus, they went to Chicago. A week into the run, Lenka took herself out to dinner. She’d been feeling kind of punk lately — too much fast food, too much pushing herself to get stronger faster so she could work herself into Rima and Cio-Cio’s act on the cube rig. Possibly too much Madam Oksana and Company, although she was hardly ready to admit that, even to herself.

In any case, she needed to get out, and Madam Oksana had decided the circus was doing well enough to pay her. So Lenka borrowed a dress from Rima and took a taxi to a restaurant she’d found on the internet. It was Italian, her favorite kind of restaurant, not fancy, but nice enough for tablecloths and candles. She ordered insalata mista, garlic shrimp, and a glass of white wine, which the waiter brought without comment. The garlic shrimp reminded her of Papa, who always ordered it. As she ate, she thought about calling her parents. Not that she wanted to give up, of course, not when she was just starting to feel at home. But they must be worried, and she wanted to hear the voice of somebody who loved her, even if it was yelling at her.

It was nearly one in the morning when Lenka got back to the circus. She was exhausted, achy, and a lot more lightheaded than she should be on a single glass of wine. Heading for the office truck and her bed, she hoped a cat was waiting for her.

When she heard the groan, her first impulse was to ignore it. She knew the performers sometimes hooked up with townies and brought them back to their trailers, especially Boris and Evzen. It didn’t bother her — it was what circus people did. But it wasn’t anything she needed to know more about.

Another groan — unmistakably not that kind of groan. Someone was hurt. Someone was in trouble.

Lenka groaned herself, softly, and padded around the costume truck toward the back door.

Per municipal regulations, a security light illuminated the area immediately around the door, which was currently occupied by Hector, Carmen, Kazimir, Madam Oksana, and Boris, who was holding the body of a young woman in his arms.

Lenka shrank back into the shadow of the costume truck, cheeks tingling with shock. The woman groaned again, and her head rolled back in a horribly final way, revealing a wound in the angle of her jaw. It was bleeding sluggishly.

Hector said a word Lenka would have sworn he didn’t even know.

“Shut up, Hector,” Madam Oksana said dispassionately. “She is not yet dead — although she may be if Boris insists on stupid clowning.”

Boris bared his teeth and hissed at her, reminding Lenka strongly of a cat defending his kill.

Madam Oksana hissed back.

Boris laid the girl on the ground and watched unblinking as Madam Oksana knelt, turned the girl’s head to one side, then bent and delicately licked at the seeping wound.

After a long moment, Hector laid his hand on her shoulder. “You must stop now,” he said.

Madam Oksana straightened and licked her lips. Her face was as blank as a doll’s.

Lenka looked at the girl. She lay as she’d been arranged, arms sprawled, neck pathetically arched to display an unbloodied expanse of white, unbroken skin.

While Lenka was digesting this, Kazimir swung the girl up and over his shoulders like a dead deer. “I’ll get some water down her and sprinkle some gin around. She’s already drunk, right, Boris?” Boris yawned. “Right. With any luck, she won’t even remember where she’s been when she wakes up.”

Boris stretched sleepily. “Why risk it? Why not make sure she won’t wake up?”

Hector gave him a look that would strip paint. “You are a savage, Boris, and very young. It is good for you that you have fallen among civilized monsters, who know better than to make messes where we eat. Kazimir will take your little inamorata where she will be found soon and cared for. And you. you will be more careful in the future.”

Kazimir disappeared into the tent, the girl’s dark head bobbing at his shoulder. Everybody relaxed. Carmen said, “I’m starved,” and folded abruptly like a piece of fabric. A moment later, Lenka saw a bat drop from the edge of the tent, catch an updraft, and glide out of the light. And then, shamefully, she fainted.

Lenka opened her eyes to darkness and silence. She felt like death on a cracker — exactly the way she’d felt when her parents had insisted on taking her to the emergency room in Cleveland a year ago. There was something heavy lying on her chest.

She moaned and tried to sit up. She couldn’t move.

A cat meowed right below her chin.

“Yes,” said Madam Oksana. “I know. Get off, Rima. We want her restrained, not smothered.”

Rima. The aerialist. Her friend. The cat. The vampire.

Rima walked down Lenka’s body and flopped heavily onto her ankles.

“Lenka Kubatovna,” Madam Oksana said. “What will we do with you? We have no wish to kill you. You are useful to us.”

Lenka wriggled uncomfortably. “Can you turn on a light? Talking about this in the dark is creepy. I feel like I’m in a bad horror movie, you know? Circus of the Vampires. It’s just too unreal.”

“This is not a time for joking,” Madam Oksana said stiffly. But she turned on a lamp. Lenka saw she was in her bed in the office truck, with Madam Oksana’s seven cats huddled around her, pinning down her blanket. She should have been able to throw them off easily, but no matter how she strained, she couldn’t budge them. They stared up at her as only cats can stare, their round, unblinking eyes glowing red.

Lenka suppressed a hysterical giggle. “No? It would make a great movie. Girl with leukemia runs away to join a circus of vampires who turn into cats and bats.”

The biggest cat, a brown furball like a miniature bear, shook itself and became Hector, sitting sad-eyed by her hip. “Spiders,” he said. “We can also be spiders and mosquitoes, but it is unpleasant to be so small.”

This was too much for Lenka, who started to laugh helplessly and couldn’t stop until Madam Oksana slapped her, bruising Lenka’s jaw and knocking the laughter right out of her.

“I do not like hysterics,” Madam Oksana said. “It is very simple. You will stay with us. We will buy a big computer and you will conduct the business of the circus and book tours and make everything smooth with the chinovnik. You will share your blood with us.” Her scarlet mouth stretched in a feral smile. “It will be what you call totally smoking.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Lenka said. “I’d call it incredibly gross.”

The cats turned back into circus performers and perched on the furniture. Free at last, Lenka sat up and glared at them. “I’ve got leukemia, remember? That’s a disease of the blood, in case you didn’t know.”