'You’re always asking about Jay,' said Doug. 'And that day behind the gym when he walked up to us…it almost seemed like you were afraid.'
'I was afraid. I am afraid. For Jay, for us, about everything being different,' Victor mumbled. 'Aren’t you afraid?'
'Why are you so pale?' asked Doug.
'Being a wolf…it makes you burn through blood kind of fast.'
'Then why do it?'
'I just…feel like I’m in my right skin when I’m a wolf. I’m not real good at being people lately. I’ve been… scary, I guess. I scared my
Maybe he felt exposed then. He stretched to cover his crotch, his arms stiff as a clock’s. Six-thirty, Naked Standard Time.
'Does it work,' he asked, 'killing the vampire that made you? Does it make you human?'
'Oh, so now you want to do it?'
'I just want to know if it works.'
Doug frowned as a new possibility occurred to him. 'Asa says it does. So…do you remember everything you do when you’re a wolf? Afterward?'
Victor bit at his thumbnail. 'You can’t really trust that Asa,' he said. 'Who knows what he’s up to — you know?'
'Do you remember your time as a wolf?' Doug asked again. 'Are you in control? Or do you just go on autopilot, like when you’re driving?'
'I don’t know. I gotta go.'
Victor became a wolf again and disappeared into the darkness.
Doug couldn’t follow. He wasn’t that fast on foot, or as a bat, and he didn’t know how to turn into a wolf. He considered trying, thinking wolfish thoughts, confident that getting stuck halfway this time wouldn’t be as big a problem as it had been that night at the farm. Why, he might even turn into some sort of man-wolf. That didn’t sound so bad.
Then, in a moment of honesty, he imagined what sort of animal might really fall halfway between a wolf and himself, and the image that came to mind was purebred American hairless terrier.
Chewbacca had been an American hairless. Small, spotty skinned, a face like a butcher-shop window. Doug allowed himself to think of Chewbacca then, pictured the dog’s final moments: probably so happy to be meeting another vampire; confused to find he was, in a moment, small game in his own house.
Doug felt the chill suddenly. Something noxious rattled up in him, and he crumpled into a pile of leaves and sobbed. Thinking about a dog he’d never liked, he cried like he hadn’t cried in years — retching, convulsive tears. A dog. A boy and his dog. Jay and Chewbacca, like Batman and Robin, like Han Solo and…Chewbacca. Jay, his friend, nearly dead in an indifferent room in a building behind him. He cried until his tears ran red and he had to staunch the flow with his palms.
Even if he hadn’t had a pretty good idea where Victor lived, Doug could have followed him home. He was arguably the only vampire wolf who’d trespassed through the seminary grounds in a while, probably the only one who had crossed Lancaster Avenue that evening. Certainly the only one who’d threaded the Taco Exchange drive- thru so recently that the paper-hatted attendant was still pressing his clotted, dumb-struck face against the cashier’s window.
Victor lived on a narrow street lined with the sort of smallish, vertical houses that were all stairs and U- turns. Doug stood panting at the bottom of Victor’s driveway, the tree branch in his hand. He’d lost an opportunity, sure, and that was stupid of him. He’d let Victor talk his way out of a staking. It wouldn’t happen again. Victor had obviously acted while in wolf form, and he couldn’t remember the details anymore. Each time doubt reached in with its wet fingers, Doug banished it with thoughts of Jay. Jay in the hospital room. The largely theoretical tableau of Jay bloody and helpless in his own living room, kitchen, or backyard.
He crept up the driveway, tasting the air. The concrete under his feet was cracked into puzzle pieces and stained with faded, continental shapes. Grass grew optimistically through the cracks.
He couldn’t really expect to be able to sneak up on another vampire, Doug realized. He would just have to stay on guard. He ignored the front door — nobody ever entered through their own front door — and stepped up a small, steep flight of stairs to the side door. But, no — the trail cooled here. Where was Victor?
The driveway ended at an open carport. It was a good place to hide, a good place to wait for someone who was following you.
'I’m coming, Victor,' he said in a soft voice that he trusted would be heard by wolf ears. 'I don’t care. Get the drop on me if you want, I know how low on blood you are.'
The carport was crowded with the detritus of modern life — paint cans and mulch and cracked flowerpots formed a car-shaped bunker around a dull gray Accord. It sort of
Doug folded the note again and put it in his pocket and thought for a long time.
That was okay. He knew a couple places he could try on the way.
33
Vant
THEY SAT in Cat’s room, not doing their homework. Sejal was not doing her Pre-Cal and Cat was not writing an essay about the Louisiana Purchase.
'Honest, I don’t think she’s told anyone,' Cat said. 'I heard it from Abby. You were all downstairs at the same time — maybe she overheard you?'
'I did not exactly ask Ophelia to keep it secret anyway,' Sejal said. 'I was only nervous. I couldn’t stop talking.'
'So you really think Doug’s a vampire?
'I don’t know. Tell everyone I was only joking, yes? Tell them…Lord, tell them it is just a saying in India, and that I was misunderstood.'
'That’s good,' said Cat. 'That’ll work.'
There was a lull. Cat made as if to read a page in her textbook, the same page she’d been reading and rereading all night. Sejal pushed some numbers around, and looked askance at a plastic shopping bag that was just visible inside her backpack.
'But do you see why I might think it?' asked Sejal.
'I don’t know…
'I thought you believed in the vampires.'
'I…kind of believe in them when they’re on TV, but we’re talking about Doug.'
'Okay, fine.'
'I mean, I know he’s changed this year, but—'
'I was probably just hopped up on Niravam. Is that right? ‘Hopped up’?'
'It’s awesome, if you’re trying to sound like my dad.'
