Chapter Twenty-two – Jack
Chapter Twenty-two
Jack
I woke up on a cement floor, stiff and cold, as a group of terrified tourists screamed past—I thought at first by my reanimation, but then realized they were being herded by shuffling actors. I waited until the wave passed and then stood up.
Someone had taken Tamo’s jacket—I guess it didn’t match the room’s décor—but I was otherwise unmolested.
I still had his wallet in my back pocket.
I didn’t dare use the cards but there was a few hundred bucks inside.
I wandered back the way I’d come in, past the locker room for the actors, and busted locks open until I found clothes that would fit.
I was changing into someone else’s jeans when a woman walked in.
“Hey—who’re you?”
“A new guy.” I could tell my answer didn’t pass muster, as she inhaled to scream.
“Don’t,” I commanded her, and her jaw slammed shut. But a second later she looked ready to scream again. So whatever Rosalie did, I could do too—just not as well, or for as long.
“You didn’t see me. I’m gone.” I said, with more authority. She blinked as though blinded and took a step back. I didn’t wait around.
I made it outside. I still stunk but at least my clothes weren’t dropping scabs.
I couldn’t risk another night at the zombie shelter after that woman’d seen me, I’d have to find another place to lay low by dawn.
I caught a cab, paid him to wait while I went through a drug store and got enough trial sizes to make it through a decent shower, then had him take me to one of the fleabag motels on the outside of town to book a night.
“Skin condition,” I told the man behind the counter, as he looked at me. I knew I was still stained with patches of dried blood—I’d seen myself in the mirror of the sunglass stand at the drug store.
“ID?” he asked.
I patted my pockets. My wallet was another thing Rosalie’d claimed.
“I need to see ID,” he said more sternly.
“No you don’t.” I said firmly. The man seemed stunned for a moment, but then processed my cash and gave me a key.
I went through all the scant linen in the bathroom, scrubbing the past four days off of me—Rosalie, blood, gore, Thea, all of it swirling down the drain.
Then I lay down on top the sheets. I wasn’t tired—but come daylight, I would be.
Where in here was safe? Could I really count on housekeeping to not open the door?
The curtains here were thick—all curtains in Vegas were—but were they completely impenetrable to daylight? I wouldn’t know until it was too late.
I only had a few hundred bucks left. I was sure after that I could jack people for more using my voice trick—Rosalie’s whammy—but I’d already spent enough of my life scrounging to know I didn’t want to live like that. To be forced to continue to seemed unfair.
And on top of all my concerns for safety…I was hungry.
Not very. Just a curious tickling inside my stomach—like the fluttering of a butterfly. I was peckish. Not starving, but, I could eat something.
Unfortunately I knew exactly what that ‘something’ was.
Rosalie’s strip club must be the vampire equivalent of owning a shrimp trawler—she could get a fresh haul every night. How on earth would I manage alone without her resources? Especially when I didn’t know what I was doing yet?
Rolling over, I saw a bedbug methodically advancing toward me. I sat up, disgusted—then realized we were almost cousins. How was I any different from it?
I—I was still human. Or enough of me was—and a human could make a plan.
I caught another cab and had it take me to the strip.
A lot of the malls attached to casinos had late hours, all the better to shake your winnings out of you.
I bought newer, nicer clothing, socks, shoes, and changed into them in a bathroom, coming out a different man.
I had visions of going onto casino floors and mesmerizing dealers there into giving me all their money—but there was a reason Rosalie’d used me to keep herself safe.
People had eyes and casinos had cameras.
When you could live forever, it was probably always better to lay low.
I needed to stay by myself—or go somewhere that was such a blur that no one would notice me.
I knew from my tattoo work that the time to practice was not when I was hungry, sad, or had any other pressures happening—it was when I was relaxed and ready, confident but still curious.
If what Rosalie had told me was right—the best time to practice was now.
I walked down the strip after that, like I had somewhere to go.
Every time I passed another solo person who looked like they could afford it, I came up like I was asking them for directions—and then also asked them with my whammy for a twenty.
It proved two things—I was handsome enough to seem harmless and my whammy worked easily in a stress free situation.
I gathered a wad of cash quickly, wishing I’d had the foresight to buy a wallet back at the mall, but at least I could afford a nice hotel room now, one where strangers wouldn’t try to break down your door and rob you during the day.
Part of me wanted to revel in my newfound powers.
There was a street magician not that far from me, talking to a crowd of people who had their cameras out, doing tricks on a table with cups.
When he looked up—for their cameras, not them—he was beaming.
I found myself irrationally jealous of him for getting to show off, for not having to take everything seriously—but if he screwed up a trick, no one died.
If I screwed up and got too hungry…the weight of everything I’d done at the warehouse, and the way Thea’d been scared of me, came pressing back.
I turned at the next intersection and started looking for somewhere to drink, not knowing if I wanted beer or blood.
It was 2 AM and there was still a line to get into a club. I stood in it, amused by the way that standing in a line somehow proved I was still part of humanity. When it was my turn to get in, no one noticed me telling the bouncer I didn’t need ID with my whammy and after that I went inside.
The music was loud and the lights were flashy.
I pressed my way through to the bar and ordered a beer.
It was Saturday now and a new crop of tourists were in town, intent on draining Vegas of everything she had to offer, while I contemplated draining them.
A cluster of girls moved out onto the dance floor as the song changed and I took their spot, leaning my back against the bar and looking out.
There was so much life here. Between the bass’s artificial heartbeat and the way that people dancing moved, limbs swirling as they soaked with sweat—I could feel it calling.
Darker things inside of me woke up and stretched, watching the world outside through my eyes.
Each time a girl got too far from her group, each time a man stumbled away alone to pee—something in me kept track of them, waiting patiently for a chance to be released.
“Not a dancer?” asked the man beside me, taking up a station at the bar with his new drink. He was my height, Latino, a little thinner than I was, with piercing brown eyes. His clothing was impeccable, the lines of everything crisp, and he smelled like almonds.
“Hmm?” I said, turning toward him reluctantly. He was too aware, when we were surrounded by so much easier prey. The realization of that—of me thinking like that—made me redouble my concentration on him, shoving the other part of me aside.
“Not a dancer?” he repeated, leaning in.
“Not tonight,” I said. I could dance, but I could barely trust myself now, there was no way I belonged on the dancefloor. “You?” I asked, trying to stay focused on him.
“Nah. Crowd’s too….” he said, letting his voice drift.
“Young?” I guessed, because all of them looked twelve to me, even though I was only twenty-three. I felt like the events of the past four days had aged me.
He laughed. “Straight.”
My eyebrows raised, then I took another look out on the floor, where drunken men and women were grinding on one another. “Yeah,” I agreed, and took a sip of my beer. “Aren’t there other clubs for that though?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Then why are you here?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Sometimes I like shitty straight music,” he said, with a grin. “And sometimes at the end of the night, people change their minds.” The look he gave me then was best described as mischievously challenging.
I knew what he was thinking. And I was thinking that as long as I was talking to him, the other-me that I was scared of stayed away.
“That’s a thing?” I asked, accepting his flirt for what it was and trying to return it.
He smiled, took a swig of his beer, and leaned back on the bar. “Oh yeah. You’d be surprised.”
I took a swig of my own beer and asked: “Are you turning them gay, or just getting them to excavate their previously unknown gay side?”
“Depends,” he said.
“On what?” I asked, turning myself more his way. His eyes flickered over the subtle change in my positioning, then narrowed on mine before answering.
“On them.”
I’d looked at men before, but convinced myself it was as an artist, wanting to know more about their bodies, the way they moved.
Had that always been true? Maybe he was right.
I liked being with women—but at the thought of being with a man—really being with one—things stirred inside me, thoughts that a lifetime lived in Texas had never given a chance to get out.
Temptation pulled hard and I frightened myself. “Well, that’s really interesting,” I said quickly, like it wasn’t interesting at all.