After handing Abby off to the ER nurses Doug had been unable to answer, for various reasons, the following questions about her:
What kind of insurance she had
Whether she had a middle name
How her last name was spelled
If she was allergic to any medications
How, exactly, she’d come to have only three liters of blood in her body
Abby’s parents had been called. He’d have to face them soon. No one had actually asked him to stay, but leaving now would feel like fleeing a crime scene. He got up and sat down, got up again, walked to the hospital gift shop and stared at Mylar balloons and fist-sized teddy bears, then returned to the waiting room to find all the seats taken.
A lot of people had come to the ER in sweatpants. A thin, well-groomed woman in a tailored skirt and hose shivered in her seat while the sweatpants crowd seemed to look askance at her and wonder: Did she change clothes before coming? Did she freshen up? Doug wondered if his own clothes communicated the right amount of human concern and went to the restroom to check.
It wasn’t getting any easier, looking in mirrors. Most days he could focus below the neck, examine his clothes, all but ignore his hair now that it never seemed to get mussed up anymore. Tonight was no different, except that it was completely different. Putting aside for a moment that he was actually trying to muss himself up a bit, he also sensed the insistent stare of a pair of eyes in the mirror.
His eyes, nominally. They were set in his face, or in a kind of counterfeit of his face. There was something wrong with the expression. Something wrong with the eyes.
They looked old, inevitable. Like they’d always been here in this hospital, waiting for Doug to arrive. He didn’t like their air of blunt satisfaction. He wanted to give them something to look surprised about.
Exiting the bathroom he took this hospital scene in again and wondered, suddenly, if Abby was going to die. The white floors, white walls, cold white light that robbed everything of shadow and substance, the flimsy gowns and white coats and pajamas — were they trying to make it all look like some cheap heaven? Were they trying to prepare you for what came next?
"Doug?"
Jay’s sister, Pamela, was down the hall, looking a little fragile, unsteady. Doug tried to recall — Was she friends with Abby?
"Hey, Pamela."
"How did you find out?"
Doug didn’t know how to answer this question, didn’t understand it, really, but then Pamela was just hugging him so he hugged back.
"Have you seen my mom?" asked Pamela.
"No."
"Okay. I’ll take you up. They moved him upstairs."
Him? Jay?
"God, what the fuck? Who would do this?" said Pamela, suddenly a fury, as she let Doug go and turned back to the elevators. "Do you have any idea who would do this to a person? A person like Jay? Anyone at school?"
"No. Look," said Doug, "I don’t really know much. I just heard he was here because…because Abby my girlfriend is here, too. What happened to him?"
The elevator opened, and Pamela tucked herself into a cold corner of it. Another woman got in with them (a young and Indian-looking doctor, Doug noted), so Pamela whispered, "He’s lost a lot of blood. He was unconscious. Someone or…something bit his neck. Actually bit his neck. And Chewbacca’s dead."
Doug would have liked a chance to explain a few of those details to the doctor, but the opinions of strangers didn’t seem like the right thing to be concerned about right now, and besides — the woman just exited on the third floor like she hadn’t been listening.
All the fire had gone out of Pamela and she hugged her shoulders. "There was blood everywhere at home. You could smell…and now Dad’s being all stupid and telling the police all about how Jay dyed his hair black and started dressing better," she said, and with a target for her anger she rallied a little. "He told them to talk to Cat. He thinks they’re doing drugs. Jay and Cat, I mean. Not the police."
The elevator doors opened, and the hallway they stepped out into was indistinguishable from the one they’d left: white walls, white ceiling, polished white floor. The same odd sensation of floating.
Through the third door Jay lay asleep in a bed with his arm strapped to the side. A clear tube connected the inside of his elbow to a plastic bag on a metal stand, a plastic bag that looked like those Doug had once stolen from the Red Cross, though the liquid inside this one was colorless.
Jay’s dad rose from his bedside chair and crossed the room to meet Doug. "There he is. There he is. How are you, Doug?" He seemed to consider and then quickly reconsider hugging Doug, and instead gave him a firm, vigorous handshake, like he was trying to sell Doug a shiny new optimism. "It’s so good of you to come. Thank you." He looked over at Pamela. "You didn’t find your mother?"
"I’ll try her cell again."
Pamela left the room, and Doug and Mr. Rouse stood at the foot of the bed, watching Jay. He didn’t look like he was sleeping. Doug could see the place on Jay’s neck where the blood had been taken. Even through a patch of gauze he could see it was big, obvious, surrounded by a scribble of broken blood vessels just beneath the skin. It didn’t look anything like the evidence Doug left (or didn’t leave) on Abby. This was like graffiti. This was sending a message.
"How…" Mr. Rouse began, "how did you know to come, Doug? Did Pamela call you?"
"No, actually…I was already here for this girl I know. Abby. She…passed out while driving."
"Abby…Abby. I’ve met her, haven’t I? She dresses just like that Cat!"
That wasn’t really true. Cat dressed more punk, Abby more romantic, but they both wore a lot of black. Dark makeup. That was probably enough for Mr. Rouse. Doug knew it didn’t take much for some parents to see Satanists and death worshippers. His mom had once described his cousin Kristi as "pretty goth" for wearing plum-colored lipstick. Which matched her plum-colored polo shirt and the embroidery on her cutoffs. Mrs. Lee insisted she only wore it for "shock value."
Doug looked at Jay. He looked at the boy who was ostensibly his best friend and willed himself to have a feeling. Any feeling, but it should be fierce, and raw. Nothing came. There was nothing in him anymore that was fierce or raw except his lust. And even as he thought this, he knew it wasn’t true. Increasingly, his vampirism wasn’t a lust, it was an itch. An itch that needed a lot of scratching, sure, but…just an itch. A constant irritation; a rash; a chicken pox on his soul.
"You kids are falling in with a dangerous group of people, Doug. You have to see that. Before it’s too late. It was almost too late for my boy." His voice cracked, and he pressed a red fist against his mouth while Pamela reentered the room. "There are some bad, bad kids at that school."
That was true. There were some very bad kids at that school. Monsters. Pamela had wanted to know if any one of them might have done this to Jay, and the answer was of course.
Of course.
DOUG COULD SCARCELY believe his luck. No sooner had he vowed to hunt Victor down and destroy him, than a pale wolf charged at him through the trees.
He’d left the Rouses abruptly, left the hospital before meeting Abby’s parents, and it did feel like fleeing a crime scene. He walked swiftly through the first doors he could find marked EXIT, corkscrewed down the ramps of a parking garage, and emerged into the night air.
He had no car here. He’d have to walk home. Or fly home as a bat? No, he liked this shirt.
He was picking his way through the shared woods between the hospital and the seminary when the wolf appeared, upwind, and it smelled like Victor. It slowed and made a wide circle before him and bared its teeth, but stopped short of growling. Doug wondered how best to fight a wolf. He’d have to snap Victor’s neck, he decided. Maybe sacrifice his own arm. He was walking through trees — why hadn’t he picked up a stick?
But there was no attack. Wolf Victor reared back on his hind legs and in that instant Doug realized he was turning human again. Despite himself, Doug looked away. It seemed like a private moment. There came a squeak, the sound of a million discrete hairs pulling back into the skin.
Doug was seeing altogether too much of naked Victor.
He would try to get Victor circling again, he thought, try to get close enough to a tree to snap off a branch, then drive it into Victor’s chest. There was a sternum in the middle of the chest, wasn’t there? And ribs. He’d break the ribs.
"Who were you talking to at school?" Victor snarled, his chest heaving. "Who was that?"
It wasn’t the question Doug was expecting. "Who was who? I talk to a lot of peo—"
"Today! In the parking lot, just as the sun went down."