"Sure, sure," Phil said in a voice filled with equal measures of sarcasm and contempt. "So what were you doing? Drugs?"
James had learned something from his first encounter with Poppy in the hospital. Show and tell should be done in that order. This time he didn't say anything; he just grabbed Phil by the hair and jerked his head back.
There was only a single light behind the store, but it was enough to give Phil a good view of the bared fangs looming over him.
And it was more than enough for James, with his night vision, to see Phillip's green eyes dilate as he stared.
Phillip yelled, then went limp.
Not with fear, James knew. He wasn't a coward. With the shock of disbelief turning to belief.
Phillip swore. "You're a ..."
"Right." James let him go.
Phil almost lost his balance. He grabbed at the Dumpster for support. "I don't believe it."
"Yes, you do," James said. He hadn't retracted his fangs, and he knew that his eyes were shining silver. Phil had to believe it with James standing right in front of him.
Phil apparently had the same idea. He was staring at James as if he wanted to look away, but couldn't. The color had drained out of his face, and he kept swallowing as if he were going to be sick.
"God," he said finally. "I knew there was something wrong with you. Weird wrong. I could never figure out why you gave me the creeps. So this is it."
I disgust him, James realized. It's not just hatred anymore. He thinks I'm less than human.
It didn't augur well for the rest of James's plan.
"Now do you understand how I can help Poppy?"
Phil shook his head slowly. He was leaning against the wall, one hand still on the Dumpster.
James felt impatience rise in his chest. "Poppy has a disease.
Vampires don't get diseases. Do you need a road map?"
Phillip's expression said he did.
"If," James said through his teeth, "I exchange enough blood with Poppy to turn her into a vampire, she won't have cancer anymore. Every cell in her body will change and she'll end up a perfect specimen: flawless, disease-free. She'll have powers that humans don't even dream of. And, incidentally, she'll be immortal."
There was a long, long silence as James watched this sink in with Phillip. Phil's thoughts were too jumbled and kaleidoscopic for James to make anything of them, but Phil's eyes got wider and his face more ashen.
At last Phil said, "You can't do that to her."
It was the way he said it. Not as if he were protesting an idea because it was too radical, too new. Not the knee-jerk overreaction that Poppy had had.
He said it with absolute conviction and utmost horror. As if James were threatening to steal Poppy's soul.
"It's the only way to save her life," James said.
Phil shook his head slowly again, eyes huge and trancelike.
"No. No. She wouldn't want it. Not at that cost."
"What cost?" James was more than impatient now, he was defensive and exasperated. If he'd realized that this was going to turn into a philosophical debate, he would have picked somewhere less public. As it was, he had to keep all his senses on the alert for possible intruders.
Phil let go of the Dumpster and stood on his own two feet.
There was fear mixed with the horror in his eyes, but he faced James squarely.
"It's just-there are some things that humans think are more important than just staying alive," he said. "You'll find that out."
I don't believe this, James thought. He sounds like a junior space captain talking to the alien invaders in a B movie. You won't find Earth people quite the easy mark you imagine.
Aloud, he said, "Are you nuts? Look, Phil, I was born in San Francisco. I'm not some bug-eyed monster from Alpha Centauri. I eat Wheaties for breakfast."
"And what do you eat for a midnight snack?" Phil asked, his green eyes somber and almost childlike.
"Or are the fangs just for decoration?"
Walked right into that one, James's brain told him. He looked away. "Okay. Touché. There are some differences. I never said I was a human. But I'm not some kind of-"
"If you're not a monster, then I don't know what is."
Don't kill him, James counseled himself frantically. You have to convince him. "Phil, we're not like what you see at the movies. We're not all-powerful. We can't dematerialize through walls or travel through time, and we don't need to kill to feed. We're not evil, at least not all of us. We're not damned."
"You're unnatural," Phillip said softly, and James could feel that he meant it from his heart. "You're wrong. You shouldn't exist."
"Because we're higher up on the food chain than you?"
"Because people weren't meant to ... feed ... on other people."
James didn't say that his people didn't think of Phillip's people as people. He said, "We only do what we have to do to survive. And Poppy's already agreed."
Phillip froze. "No. She wouldn't want to become like you."
"She wants to stay a!ive---or at least, she did, before she got mad at me. Now she's just irrational because she hasn't got enough of my blood in her to finish changing her. Thanks to you." He paused, then said deliberately, "Have you ever seen a three-weekold corpse, Phil? Because that's what she's going to become if I don't get to her."
Phil's face twisted. He whirled around and slammed a fist into the metal side of the Dumpster. "Don't you think I know that?
I've been living with that since Monday night."
James stood still, heart pounding. Feeling the anguish Phil was giving off and the pain of Phil's injured hand. It was several seconds before he was able to say calmly, "And you think that's better than what I can give her?"
"It's lousy. It stinks. But, yes, it's better than turning into something that hunts people. That uses people. That's why all the girlfriends, isn't it?"
Once again, James couldn't answer right away. Phil's problem, he was realizing, was that Phil was far too smart for his own good. He thought too much. "Yeah. That's why all the girlfriends," he said at last, tiredly. Trying not to see this from Phil's point of view.
"Just tell me one thing, Rasmussen." Phillip straightened and looked him dead in the eye. "Did you"-he stopped and swallowed-"feed on Poppybefore she got sick?"