“Jules? What’s wrong?” I asked. Her face was frightened as she yanked on my hand, trying to tow me back into the dark.
“Run, Beau, you have to run!” she whispered, terrified.
“This way, Beau!” It was McKayla’s voice I heard now, calling from the thick of the trees, but I couldn’t see her.
“Why?” I asked, still pulling against Jules’s grasp. Finding the sun was really important to the dream me. It was all I could focus on.
And then Jules dropped my hand—she let out a strange yelp and, suddenly shaking, she fell twitching to the ground. I watched in horror, unable to move.
“Jules!” I yelled, but she was gone. In her place was a big, red-brown wolf with black eyes. The wolf faced away from me, pointing toward the shore, the hair on the back of her shoulders bristling, low growls issuing from between her exposed fangs.
“Beau, run!” McKayla cried out again from behind me. But I didn’t turn. I was watching a light, coming toward me from the beach.
And then Edythe stepped out from the trees.
She wore a black dress. It hung all the way to the ground but exposed her arms to the shoulders and had a deep-cut V for a neckline. Her skin was faintly glowing, and her eyes were flat black. She held up one hand and beckoned me to come to her. Her nails were filed into sharp points and painted a red so dark they were almost as black as her dress. Her lips were the same color.
The wolf between us growled.
I took a step forward, toward Edythe. She smiled then, and between her dark lips her teeth were sharp, pointed, like her fingernails.
“Trust me,” she purred.
I took another step.
The wolf launched herself across the space between me and the vampire, fangs aiming for the jugular.
“No!” I shouted, wrenching upright out of my bed.
My sudden movement caused the headphones to pull the CD player off the bedside table, and it clattered to the wooden floor.
My light was still on, and I was sitting fully dressed on the bed, with my shoes on. I glanced, disoriented, at the clock on my dresser. It was five-thirty in the morning.
I groaned, fell back, and rolled over onto my face, kicking off my boots. I was too uncomfortable to get anywhere near sleep, though. I rolled back over and unbuttoned my jeans, yanking them off awkwardly as I tried to stay horizontal. I pulled the pillow back over my eyes.
It was all no use, though. My subconscious had decided to wallow in the word I’d been trying so hard to avoid. I was going to have to deal with it now.
First things first, I thought to myself, glad to put it off as long as possible. I grabbed my bathroom stuff.
Showering didn’t take very long. I couldn’t tell if Charlie was still asleep, or if he’d left already. I went to the window, and the cruiser was gone. Early-morning fishing again.
I dressed slowly in yesterday’s jeans and an old sweatshirt, and then made my bed—which was just stalling.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. I went to my desk and switched on my old computer.
I hated using the Internet here. My modem belonged in a museum, and my free service really proved that you got what you paid for. Just dialing up took so long that I decided to grab a bowl of cereal while I waited.
I ate slowly, so the last bites were too soggy to finish. I washed the bowl and spoon, then put them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs. I went to pick up my CD player first, then wound up the headphones’ cord, and put them away in the desk drawer. I turned the same CD on, but turned it down till it was just background noise.
With a sigh, I turned to my computer, already feeling stupid before I could even finish typing the word.
Vampire.
I felt even more stupid looking at it.
The results were difficult to sift through. Most of it was entertainment—movies, TV shows, role-playing games, metal bands.… There were goth clothes and makeup, Halloween costumes, and convention schedules.
Eventually I found a promising site—Vampires A–Z—and waited impatiently for it to load. The final page was simple and academic-looking, black text on a white background. Two quotes greeted me on the home page:
Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both.—Rev. Montague Summers
If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?—Rousseau
The rest of the site was an alphabetized listing of all the different myths of vampires found throughout the world. The first I clicked on, the Danag, was a Filipino vampire supposedly responsible for planting taro on the islands long ago. The myth continued that the Danag worked with humans for many years, but the partnership ended one day when a woman cut her finger and a Danag sucked her wound, enjoying the taste so much that it drained her body completely of blood.
I read carefully through the descriptions, looking for anything that sounded familiar, let alone plausible. It seemed that most vampire myths focused on beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like excuses created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give guys an excuse for infidelity. Many of the stories were about bodiless spirits and warnings against improper burials. There wasn’t much that sounded like the movies I remembered, and just a couple, like the Hebrew Estrie and the Polish Upier, who were even that interested in drinking blood.