Chapter 18
Eighteen
Peter Updike didn’t look like a bloodfiend.
Then again, neither did Tai. Then again, what did a bloodfiend look like?
A vampire. Normal. Undetectable until the thirst came for him, commandeered his brain and his body, turned his eyes black, brought down his fangs, shredded his throat.
He’d wondered for years if his steel-colored irises were an indicator, but no, Peter’s eyes were peridot-green, almost neon.
All these connections, answers, new questions flooded him in the first two seconds of meeting Peter, shaking the man’s hand, joining him on a park bench across from the waterfall where Tai swam with Claire barely a month ago. He’d picked the meeting place.
At first he thought he needed to be here purely for privacy from random vampires that would drift in and out of a restaurant or coffee shop.
Here, they’d smell approaching hikers in plenty of time to stop talking and, if the hikers were vampires, allow them to pass.
If they were human, the waterfall ensured they wouldn’t overhear regardless of how close they came.
But there were a few establishments in town that utilized soundproofing for their booths, so that couldn’t be the only reason his brain insisted on meeting at the waterfall.
Then he realized he needed the space too—the lack of walls and the peace of nature.
Tai glanced at Peter again before gazing out on the crashing water, the rocky cliffs on either side and the churning pool at the bottom.
Peter’s hair was sandy blond, overgrown around his ears.
His build was typically lean. Other than a subtle cleft in his chin, the man didn’t have a single standout feature—at least not to Tai’s eyes.
Humans would of course find Peter attractive as they found all vampires, part of the apex nature.
“Thanks for talking to me,” he said.
“Glad to,” Peter said. “Where would you like to start?”
“I’m…not sure.” He wasn’t freezing up this time. The surroundings, the connection of sitting beside Peter in person, able to meet his eyes—Tai could talk now. But doubt was sinking in, demanding an explanation what he thought he was doing here, how talking could possibly help him.
“Then may I ask some questions? Just to help me gauge where you are with all this.”
He shrugged and maintained his smooth expression, survival instincts buzzing at his core. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Who do you go to now, when it gets bad? Do you have one of us in your life—friend or family?”
“One of us—another bloodfiend? No.”
Peter turned toward him, waited for eye contact before he said, “Not even long distance?”
Tai shook his head.
“Then who do you talk to?”
“I have a couple friends who know what I am, and they’ve accepted me anyway. But I don’t—I’d never—I deal with this myself. I have for years, Peter. I’m under control.”
Peter set a hand on Tai’s shoulder and kept it there. “Good to know. That tells me a lot.”
Tai gave a mirthless laugh. “Oh yeah? Such as what?”
“Are you thirty yet?”
“Thirty-two.”
“And what happened in your teens, when the condition first presented?”
Tai squeezed his eyes shut against the flood of memory that threatened to drown him right then and there, hitting harder than the crash of the waterfall in front of them. His voice came calmly, naturally despite the flood. “I was told to work on myself. On control. So I did.”
“Were you given any tools to help with control?”
Did threats count? Probably not. “Peter, listen, we can talk about the…condition. Claire thinks I need some help. Maybe you can give me…I don’t know, tips or something. I’ll take them. But I’m not going to talk about my father.”
“Fair enough.” Peter squeezed his shoulder once, then released it. Acknowledging the boundary. Good. “Walk me through how it is for you.”
“You mean daily?”
“Sure.”
“I slake daily like every other vampire.”
“How often?”
Was this old guy for real? Tai stared him down, spoke slowly, firmly. “I slake every twenty-four hours. Like every other vampire.”
“Hmm. Okay. Tell me about the incident where Claire found out. She said it was about a month ago, but she didn’t go into detail. Wanted to leave that up to you.”
He could talk about this. Despite the skepticism that clung to him, he had committed to being here, to saying hard things.
“Claire and I came upon a car accident, and we helped free some injured humans from their vehicles. It was a lot of exertion, blood in the air, and afterward I… I don’t know what to call it, if there’s a term for what happens to us. ”
“Well, there’s technical jargon like hematorexic episode, but I don’t find that helpful.” Peter’s mouth twitched with the hint of a smile.
“No,” Tai said.
“Colloquially, we bloodfiends prefer to call it an attack.”
Yes. He’d used this word for it too. The thirst attacked his throat. The prey drive attacked his thoughts. The genetics coded into his essence attacked him, made him into something he didn’t want to be. Tai nodded.
“By the time we got to Slake It Off, I was…bad.”
“Did you try to escape the car?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Then what do you mean by bad?”
Was Peter trying to provoke him? He didn’t seem to be. Tai latched a hand onto the back of his neck and wrestled for words. “I mean I had an attack. A bloodfiend attack. I wanted to hunt them. Humans.”
“What happened to you physically?”
“You should already know.” Tai jabbed a finger at him. “If you’re a bloodfiend, it happens to you too.”
Peter nodded, still frustratingly serene. “It does happen to me. But you might experience it differently than I do. I just need to know where you’re at, Tai.”
“Okay.” Both hands latched onto his neck, and he bent forward to plant his elbows on his knees. He didn’t know why he needed this posture, as if his body were too heavy to stay upright. “Physically I…uh… Cold. Ice cold. Needles all over my skin, especially my scalp, neck, shoulders, arms. And…and.”
The hand settled on his shoulder again. “Throat closing?”
Tai nodded without straightening up. He couldn’t now.
“Okay. Good job. Let’s give you a minute.”
He hated that Peter was right, but he did need a minute. He slowly sat up, took a deep breath, the air clean and damp with the spray of the falls. At last he looked at Peter, held his gaze this time.
“So do our experiences match or not?”
“The cold, yes. Tightening in my throat, yes. The feeling of needles across your skin, that’s an indication to me of certain things we can talk about.”
“Don’t be vague. Just tell me,” Tai said.
“I think you’re missing some tools, Tai. Ways to process, cope, whatever you want to call it. I’m sorry you’ve reached thirty-two years of age without more help, but you’re still just a kid, relatively speaking.”
Without more help. Was Peter saying it didn’t have to be this hard? “What tools?”
“Do you know why this happens to us?”
Tai loosened one hand from his neck and pushed it up the back of his head into his hair before lowering it to his side. The other hand stayed clamped on his neck, though he wasn’t sure why. “Of course I know. It’s a genetic disorder.”
“Right, but what are the traits of the disorder?”
Tai was lost again. He shook his head, let out a human-sounding sigh that managed to relax his shoulders a little. “The trait is bloodfiend attacks.”
“No,” Peter said.
“…No?”
“The genetic disorder causes atypical physiological traits, and those traits cause the attacks. For example, your body metabolizes blood faster. Did you know that?”
Tai stopped breathing. His heart seemed to stop too. A faint roaring began in his ears as he stared at Peter, as he tried to understand. Physiological traits. Concrete, specific functions of his body. He ought to know this, but he didn’t.
Peter nodded, not needing Tai’s answer. “Do you get thirsty in less than twenty-four hours?”
Tai still couldn’t move or speak, could only stare at Peter.
“Personally I slake every twenty-two hours, but I’ve known bloodfiends who can only go nineteen or twenty. The first tip I’ll give you is this: listen to your thirst. Slake when you first get that parched feeling.”
Tai shook his head. That couldn’t be right. “I don’t let the thirst control me. I control it.”
“Yeah, that’s a stupid principle invented by someone who didn’t have our condition.
The best way to control hematorexia is to slake as needed.
Second, when you do feel an attack coming on, helping your body regulate temperature is important.
We don’t regulate as well as typical vampires, and an attack makes it a heck of a lot worse, causes a rapid temperature crash, like a reverse fever.
Have you ever taken your temperature when it happens? ”
“No.”
“It usually drops two or three degrees lower than our normal sixty-eight. But this can vary too, and if it drops more than that, you’ll feel worse. There’s research that says the prey drive heightens the colder we get. Sort of a survival signal—go feed on warmth to get warm.”
“I—I didn’t know,” Tai said. “I’ve tried to research where the gene comes from, how it’s inherited, but I never looked into the physical experience. I figured I didn’t need details on how it felt; I already knew that part.”
“I can see your logic there.” Peter nodded almost to himself, as if picturing how Tai’s thoughts had played out. “You went after the cause instead of treating the symptoms, and I get it. But this stuff is important too, maybe more so.”
“How do you deal with it? The…reverse fever?”
“Oh, nothing complicated. Keep multiple blankets in your car, at your workplace, and of course at home. When you have an attack, you need to bundle up as soon as possible. Add blankets until it starts to help. Ignoring the chill is the worst thing you can do, Tai. If it gets a grip on you, it prolongs and intensifies the attack.”