One Bite, Twice Shy

One Bite, Twice Shy



“We’re going to die,” the teenager sobbed, huddled and quaking on the cement floor. She clutched at herself, a self-contained package of misery. A rough hand yanked her up, and dragged her from the room. She screamed in desperation, tried to reach for her fellow prisoners. Her supplications were drowned out by the hammering of eager, hungry feet, and the joyous cries of men about to be fed.

Sebastian found himself cowering against the opposite wall, staring at the two girls left behind in the opposite cell. His own cellmate had been chosen for lunch, a strapping wrestler, drugged into submission. Sebastian did not want to imagine how little time he had left.

The door at the end of the hallway closed, and he leaned through the bars to the girls. “Amanda! Susan!”

“Give it up, Bas,” cried his younger sister, Susan. “There’s no way out. No one can help us. Amanda’ll be a midnight snack and I’ll be breakfast tomorrow and you’ll be lunch. Then they’ll go out hunting for more of us. God, why did we have to be so stupid…”

“I never want to go to Denny’s again,” sniffled Amanda. “My mom always said their parking lot wasn’t safe…”

“Would you both stop driving that into the ground?” Sebastian felt the heat rising up his neck, knew it was his fault that they were there. He’d just wanted to treat his sister and his friend to dinner, get a chance to drive the new car…

“Oh, I’m sorry,” his twin said caustically. “Would you rather that we discussed the weather, or perhaps our health? Oh, that’s right- we’re all going to DIE. I give us twenty-four hours to live, tops.”

“Susan,” whimpered the other girl plaintively. Susan hugged her apologetically.

“Listen, there is a way out of here,” Sebastian began again.

“Oh, grow up.”

“No, there is!” He glanced at the far door and lowered his voice, leaning out to them as far as he could. “Didn’t you hear them talking last night? We’re in a warzone. There are other vampires out there- good vampires- who don’t kill people.” Amanda stared at him, with wide, wet eyes. Susan just looked disgusted. “They’re fighting them and they’re losing. If we could escape- if just ONE of us could escape- we could find them, and tell them where these guys are. Even if they do eat people, they may be so grateful that-“

“Sebastian, you’re being- I don’t think there’s even a word for how stupid that is. How old are you, twelve? There aren’t ‘good’ vampires and ‘bad’ vampires,” Susan reproached him. “You sound like a bad comic book.”

“When we were twelve,” he told her, “You said that there weren’t any such thing as vampires. You said they weren’t real either.”

That shut her up. By mutual, silent agreement, they retreated to their corners to mourn. Over Amanda’s quiet weeping, Sebastian’s brain kept howling. I know there’s a way, there just must be a way, there are good vampires and bad vampires, the good ones don’t kill…

Booming noises buzzed through the cement walls and floor. Sebastian’s eyes shot straight to the ceiling, where shouts and stampeding feet were mixed with gunshots.

He found himself meeting Susan’s eyes across the bare hall between their cells. “We really are in a warzone,” she murmured.

Without warning, the wall beside the door exploded, shattering the corner of Sebastian’s prison. A fanged head stuck through the smoking hole and hissed at them; just as quickly it was gone.

Susan recovered first. “Bas! You said it- the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”

“What?” Sebastian shook his head dumbly, still shocked by the sudden explosion.

“Go! Find them! Get them to help us!” His twin’s desperate eyes filled his vision. “How often do opportunities like this happen? Providence is giving you an escape! A way to save us! Go!”

“Please, Sebastian!” chimed Amanda, clutching at the bars. “Please!”

“Please!”

It took but a moment for their meaning to penetrate, and he was tearing at the poorly laid cement. The room beyond was emptying, their captors chased to the story above. Sebastian kicked the hole wide, and with a last look back, climbed through. The vampires’ dining room was a shambles, tables and chairs overturned, candles mashed into the floor.

The stairs were the only exit, and he took them, two at a time. There, the real battle began.

  It was organized chaos, and everyone wore fangs. People battled one another with guns, with knives, with broken chair legs. It wasn’t the smooth, choreographed fighting of movie scenes, but the bloody, stumbling battle of creatures fighting for their lives. In horrified fascination, he watched a man’s fangs grow to three-inch, hollow needles, before plunging into the thrusting arm of his opponent. Sebastian’s mind fogged.

He was seven years old again, due for his second Hepatitis B injection. He was sweating, and for the first time he could smell his own sweat. The first shot, several weeks ago, and frightened him, and it had hurt. This time, he was petrified. It was worse. Because now he knew what to expect.

“The flu season’s looking really bad this year,” chatted the nurse and she signed him in. “We could give him that shot as well.”

“That would be wonderful,” smiled his mother.

‘Wonderful,’ she echoed in his mind, as a huge chunk of the fighter’s arm came away in the other vampire’s teeth.

He was running before he could consider the consequences. The surprise of his attack allowed him to shove past the woman in front of the exit, her snarl the only reprise. His mission floated back to him: Find the good ones! Find them, find them!

It was night, and raining, in fat, chilly drops, that soaked his hair and his spine. The icy beads brought clarity, slowed his adrenaline and his blood to a place where he could think again.

Across the empty parking lot stood two trucks, their drivers leaning against their sides in wait. Sebastian chose his moment, and went for them.




The ride to the insurgent’s base seemed endless. Sebastian’s fingers were raw, dug against the metal of the truck. He was wedged between the cab and the caboose/horse(?????) , hanging on for dear life. Comparably, he mused, in not so many words, he was far better off now than he had been in the cell, where death was a certainty.

It was merely drizzling as they pulled into the half-empty parking garage, and Sebastian wondered if it was the lack of rest that told him the sky was beginning to lighten on the horizon. It didn’t matter, because the garage closed over them like a second night, and the rival army began pouring from the trucks.

In the frenzy of sweat and blood, no one had noticed the copper sting of Sebastian on the night air. But there was no battle here to cover his scent, or the faint squeaks of his sneakers slipping on the cab’s wall.

A woman separated from the group, and Sebastian lost sight of her. Within moments, his ankle had been seized and he was yanked unceremoniously from the truck. The blond’s angry face filled his vision, her teeth extending until they reminded him of the needles of his childhood. “You aren’t one of them,” she hissed.

“He smells human-“

“…where did he come from?”

“Anyone recognize it?”

Sebastian trembled on the pavement, staring into the woman’s feral eyes. “Parlay!” he shouted, bringing them all up short. He couldn’t remember what the word meant, or where he had heard it-

One of the men began to chortle. “He thinks we’re pirates… like that movie…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scorned the blond.

“You remember- the one last summer- with that heartthrob-“

“It doesn’t matter where he got it,” snapped another. “What does it mean?”

“I want to bargain!” Sebastian yelled over them, bringing their attention back to him. His shirt was soaked with rain and sweat, alternately hot and cold, and he feared the warmth would soon spread to his pants, but he licked his lips and continued. “I want to speak to someone- your leader- I want to bargain! I know the other vampires- and what they’re doing! I know who they are!”

The vampires- the good vampires- looked at one another, debating. At last the blond woman hauled him to his feet. “Walk. Don’t dawdle.”



He was passed from hand to hand, taken through the garage to the underground work facility. Union posters and fluorescent lights repeated endlessly through the analogous hallways. Turn this way, walk that way. Stop and be thrust before some glowering discerner of his worth. Repeat his case, plead for an opportunity. Wait, and then be taken down another way. Sebastian’s senses grew duller; he became a robot, his body functioning while his mind went on autopilot. When was the last time he had slept? When had he last slept well? Damn theses and lattes…

This time, the door opened on a far neater office. A woman sat there, middle-aged and faintly graying. Sebastian came to enough to stare at her, unable to resolve her against the theory that vampires never aged. Maybe she wasn’t a vampire? He had seen others…

His handler, a man this time, appraised her of the situation. Morgan sat at her desk and listened, nodding as she was told his name and age- he had a vague memory of telling them- his purpose, and his supposed value to them. He would give them inside information of their enemy- but for what price?

Morgan watched his drooping face, and wondered how a human so young could survive a tangle with the ‘bad’ vampires. He didn’t look like the kind who sought them out, in quest of eternal beauty or power, and freedom from misery. Sardonically, she told herself that he had already learned that rewards were not a part of a vampire’s life.

As the other finished, she waved him away and allowed Sebastian to gratefully sink into a chair. She moved around the desk to sit on it, facing him. They regarded one another for a moment, as she waited for him to wake up.

“They tell me you have something we want to hear,” her voice was rich and low. The Mrs. Robinson of vampires, sexy in her age- like wine.

Sebastian nodded clumsily, his neck stiff. “I do…” Somehow… He had planned to tell them where the other lair was- but they already knew that…

“And what do you want in return?” The bored question surprised him, until he remembered his twin’s anxious eyes. “My sister,” he blurted. “They still have her captive- Susan and Amanda- you have to help me save them. They’re going to eat them- drain them-“

Morgan raised a hand and he halted, his bloodshot eyes trained on her every action. She watched him steadily, and then continued, “You’ve been misinformed. We do not help humans.”

“But you don’t kill us, either,” he insisted. “You must be willing to help us- you’re the good ones!” He surprised a laugh from her, and she threw her head back. “Please! You’re so much kinder than they are- you don’t kill the way they do-“

It was all she had ever heard from humans throughout the generations of her existence. Always, always, always the same!

Something in Morgan snapped.

“Do you think we’re immune?” she raged. “We get sick, too, you unthinking child. AIDs, bacteria, viruses, infections, cancer! We suffer from them all, and we get them through you. Filthy people, who have taken millennia to learn to wash yourselves. My daughter nearly died a year ago giving birth to my grandson, because she bit a man who had recently contracted chickenpox from his preschooler! The world is not safe for us, anymore, either! You think it’s so terrible that you cannot sleep around the way you once did. Sex is nothing! We cannot eat! Our food source is infecting itself out of existence! Again!”

Sebastian’s head spun, overwhelmed by the information that rent asunder every vampire myth ever perpetuated through television and books. “You can have children?” he asked stupidly, imagining rows of basinets filled with red-eyed, sharp-toothed babies. Were vampire babies born with fangs?

Her sharp smack to the side of his head brought him back, toward her glaring green eyes. She leaned in towards him, and though her hands held the rank smell of dried blood, her hair carried a cloud of jasmine and juniper. “Listen to me, young man. We are not your friends. We do not avoid killing out of some pretty respect for human life. Your kind are merely tainted, like the cows and chickens you slaughter at the first signs of illness. Were it that we had such a luxury, we would rid the planet of every, unnecessary body on this planet. You are draining the planet and we haven’t the resources to support you.”

“But- then why don’t you kill us?” he asked, confused. “Why do you depend on the blood banks? Why are you fighting with the other vampires?”

Morgan stared at him, amazed at his unceasing thick headedness. So this was why the planet was in such a state. As though to a very small child, she took his face between her hands, and spook slowly and clearly. “Choose a random person off the street, boy. Can you guarantee that he doesn’t have herpes, or HIV? The odds get worse and worse with each day. It isn’t safe for us to pluck you like fruit from the trees. So, we use the banks. They scan the blood, they check for diseases. It’s how we protect ourselves.” Her expression changed to a moue of distaste. “We war amongst ourselves because there are those who refuse to accept the severity of our current situation. They have united with those who would cull and pen you, and raise you like the livestock you are.” She laughed bitterly, “As though anyone has the time or the money or the desire to be a farmer. You raise yourselves quite well on your own.” Her fingers squeezed the soft layer of fat coating his cheek. “Now, Seril-“

“Sebastian,” he managed to mumble.

“Sebastian,” Morgan’s lips curled into a distressing smile. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” He found himself moving, his feet shuffling against his will. The panic that had remained dormant throughout their conversation began to stir. They were heading for the kitchen, tiled and gleaming. He saw a white lab coat drift past the doorway: he began to sweat.

“Dr. Roper, we’ll need to run the usual tests on his sample. It would be such a pity for so much youthful blood to go to waste…”

“My pleasure, Morgan.”

An empty syringe, and a rubber tourniquet filled his vision.

Sebastian screamed.