She puts her arms around the girls’ shoulders.
– Tom.
– Uh-huh.
I point at Pigtails and PJs, who have put their heads together behind Poncho’s and are once again whispering.
– And them? Tom?
– Oh yeah. Tom. We’re all Tom’s in here. ’Cept you.
– Yeah. Except me. Guess I must just be the lucky one.
The door opens and The Count comes back in. Pigtails bounces off the couch and runs to him.
– Score! Score! Score!
Figure a score for me, too. Figure I get to see firsthand what the shit is and then I can go fill Terry in and that will make this about the easiest job I ever had.
The Count returns to the couch, Pigtails riding on his back. He shrugs her off and she plops onto the cushions. He’s carrying a large, padded manila envelope. He opens it with a little flourish and produces a pint IV bag of blood.
Shit. No score. Just a late snack.
He sits. Poncho takes an IV needle and hose from beneath one of the napkins on the coffee tray and hands them to him. He carefully inserts the needle into the valve. A drop wells up and leaks out at the opening. And I smell it. Even in this loft, stinking of the three of them, I smell it.
– Don’t drink that.
The Count looks up.
– What?
– Don’t drink it. It’ll kill you. It’s infected. Can’t you smell it?
He tilts his head to the side.
– Drink it? We’re not going to drink it.
Poncho pulls a napkin from the tray, revealing four paper-wrapped syringes beneath.
The Count picks one of them up.
– Don’t worry, there’s enough to go around. If you’re still curious about the new shit, I mean.
The Vyrus will kill you. It will eat you alive from the inside out. There is nothing you can do; sooner or later, it will get you. But no matter how desperate you may be, you will never latch onto another infected. I’ve had infected blood in my mouth; it was acid. And while the Vyrus can’t survive outside the human body, blood taken from a Vampyre will make you sick as hell, and then kill you. The Vyrus may be dead in there, but some remnant of it will remain, some husk that will twist your insides and make you wish you were dying.
But this is different, altogether something else.
– The Vyrus can’t survive outside a living body.
The Count stays focused on what he’s doing, inserting the needle of one of the sterile syringes into the IV valve on the hose.
– If you say so.
– The Vyrus dies outside a human host.
Poncho and Pigtails are sitting on either side of PJs, who is reclining on the remaining beanbag. She has her sleeve rolled up and Poncho is swabbing her arm as Pigtails holds a piece of rubber surgical tubing at the ready.
The Count draws the corrupted blood from the hose into the syringe.
– So?
– The Vyrus is alive in that.
He pulls the syringe free, holds it upright and gently taps an air bubble to the top.
– That’s kind of the point.
He presses slightly on the plunger and blood squirts out of the needle and dribbles down its length. He takes a cotton ball from the coffee tray and wipes the dribble away.
The dribble emits a thick stink of Vyrus. PJs moans in response, her eyes fixed on the needle as The Count kneels between her spread legs.
– OK, baby?
She nods, breath short.
He puts the tip of his index finger to the tip of her upturned nose.
– Here we go.
Pigtails ties off PJs’ arm with the tubing and slaps a vein to the surface. It’s a nice dark vein, thick and purple under her pale skin. He braces the vein with his thumb and slides the needle in.
A bead of PJs’ own blood rises to the surface of her skin. She squeals softly from the back of her throat. The Count presses the plunger, forcing the poison into her vein. Poncho holds PJs’ head between her hands. The syringe empty, the Count draws it free, places a cotton ball over the hole in PJs’ arm, and releases the tubing. Instantly, PJs jerks. Pigtails leans over her and grabs hold of both her arms. The Count places the used syringe back on the coffee tray and wraps his fingers around her legs just below the knees. PJs shivers, her mouth goes wide, the sound in her throat grows louder. She starts to tremor and the three of them hold her limbs and head firmly as she shakes. The sound rises in pitch, peaks, stops, her eyes roll back in her head and her muscles go limp. The Count and Pigtails release her and Poncho strokes her cheek and kisses her brow.
Pigtails claps.
– Now me!
– How does it work?
– Really, really well.
– Not what I meant.
– I know.
The girls have all had theirs, Pigtails shaking only the slightest bit and Poncho not at all. The three of them are sprawled on the thick, white synthetic fur rug next to the couch. An occasional moan comes from their lips, a muscle twitching here or there, as they stare blindly at the ceiling.
The Count goes from one to the other, checking their pulses. Satisfied, he looks at me.
– What do you know about blood?
– It tastes good.
He starts stripping the paper from the last syringe.
– What do you know about the Vyrus?
– It tastes bad.
He rolls up his sleeve.
– Yeah, that’s what I hear. OK, so I’m pre-med, yeah? But that doesn’t really mean shit. All it means is that pops is a doctor and he and moms want me to be a doctor and I scored well on my SATs and went to the right prep school and got into Columbia and declared myself a biology major and I’m taking the classes I’m supposed to. But that doesn’t mean I’m very good at it or anything.
– I’ll take your word for it.
– You should, bro, you should. So, I got what you said. I heard the same thing, the Vyrus can’t survive outside a body.
He picks up the IV bag, still more than half full.
– But here it is.
He holds the bag close to his nose, an expression on his face like a man smelling a piece of really stinky cheese.
– And it’s alive in there.
– How?
– Don’t know. But it doesn’t last.
He fits the needle to the valve.
