The lawman is turning his hat around and around in his hands. His fingers look like they want to wad it into a ball. “Not so much. I never thought it was something we’d have to worry about it.”
Mooney laughs again. “Surprise!” When neither of them says anything, Mooney shakes her head in disgust. “Then I guess I’ll have to fill you in. Being a vampire is not contagious, okay? It’s —”
“But it’s a virus, right? So …”
“That’s different,” Mooney explains with exaggerated patience. “The virus they’re talking about doesn’t give anyone a disease. Sometimes it activates really old DNA in a person’s body. For most people nothing happens. For a very, very few — like me, I suppose — something inside them changes and makes them into what their ancestors were thousands of years ago.”
Delgado snorts. “You expect me to believe that? Where’s the proof?”
Mooney just looks at him. “I can show you more proof that it’s true than you can show me that it’s not.”
Before he can retort, she steps even closer to him and opens her mouth wide. The motion feels absurdly good. The way her jaw pulls downward and her lips stretch is almost erotic, and the sensation of her new and improved teeth moving, actually sliding forward toward the man standing in front of her, is unlike anything she’s ever experienced. It fills her with anticipation and a faraway … tingling in her stomach that it takes a second to identify it as hunger. With a start, Mooney realizes she can’t recall the last time she ate.
Suddenly she can smell Chief Delgado. His scent is not unpleasant — faded Old Spice and light perspiration, a hint of vanilla fabric softener on his well-worn uniform. He has a dog and when he kissed his wife goodbye this morning, she rested her head on his shoulder and hugged him — her hair left the odor of shampoo and her hands imprinted the back of his uniform with the smell of what they had for breakfast … chorizo, beans, and fry bread. The whole package is an intriguing combination and the memory of what the boy’s blood tasted like rises strong in her mind. Without warning her mouth fills with saliva and she barely stops herself from drooling. Her tongue flicks over the sharp, tapered tips of her teeth — her fangs.
“Jesus!” He stumbles backward but it’s only a couple of steps before he bumps into the wall and has nowhere else to go.
Those few feet are enough to let her clear her head and Mooney closes her mouth and smiles. “Don’t worry,” she tells him. “I’m not going to bite you, too. I promise.” Mother Gaso stands frozen in the kitchen area, her face as impassive as it always is except for her eyes. Those are brighter than Mooney has ever seen them. Fear will do that to a person.
Delgado pulls himself up in a valiant attempt to regain his composure, to put himself back in control. Mooney realizes that it is useless. As sure as the sun rises above the mountains to the east, he will never again be in control of her. No one will. “So what now?”
Mooney raises one eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
Her hearing has improved and she can actually hear him when he swallows. “What are you going to do now? I mean, you can’t stay here. So …” He trails off.
Mooney frowns. She knows what is coming but she is oddly unafraid. “Why not?”
“If you’re a — you know. If you’ve got that disease, it’s not a good idea, right? You should go somewhere and get treatment.” He’s floundering and he knows it. Mother Gaso still hasn’t moved but Mooney can feel the tension building. More than likely it’s because she agrees with Delgado, not because she intends to defend her foster child. Never that.
“I don’t have a disease,” Mooney says. She speaks very slowly, as though she is trying to make a confused child understand something. “I’ve changed, that’s all. And there’s nowhere for me to go. Even if there were, it’s not going to happen. Yeah, I graduated high school last May, but I’m only seventeen, remember?” She glances at Mother Gaso but not for support, just to make sure the old woman is clear on what she’s saying. “I have three classes at Tohono O’odham Community College that start next month. I’m very much looking forward to them.” She had stopped smiling at his question, but now Mooney lets her smile return, full and bright … and toothy. She makes sure that Mother Gaso also sees it.
“I have a great future ahead of me, Chief Delgado. And this town is where I belong.”
— 6 —
The first time she vomits is right before geology class.
It is a day of firsts — her first day of college, her first class, the first time in her life she has ever thrown up. That she has become a victim of the changes brought about by the vampire virus is ironic because she has never been ill, not ever. People say that all the time, but the truth is that it’s usually bullshit and their childhoods were filled with the same number of annoying head colds and infected scrapes as other kid down the street. Not so with Mooney — no colds, no infections … not so much as a single fever or headache. Which is, of course, why she is so completely shocked by the roiling that starts in her belly and slides up her throat so quickly that she nearly doesn’t make it to the women’s room right around the corner from the classroom.
She crouches over the toilet and spits, trying to cleanse her mouth. “What the fuck?” she asks aloud, then she vomits again. It becomes a vicious circle — she vomits and the smell and sight of the inside of the toilet and her own mess makes her gag and vomit again. She does it over and over, until there is nothing left in her stomach but the feel of her abdominal muscles spasming and a thin line of bile-laced saliva going from her mouth to the less-than-white porcelain. “Gross,” she tries to say but the only thing she can manage now is a whisper. She has expelled more than she would have thought possible, and judging by the chunks of chicken and white beans mixed in with smashed donut bits, she has lost all of her meager breakfast and most of what little she ate for dinner last night.
The college is tiny and the buildings aren’t much more than trailers; she has locked herself into one of two stalls in the women’s room. When she first bolts into it, someone else is in the other one. Now Mooney can hear the woman washing her hands and messing around at the sink. She’s making a big show of pretending to put on her makeup, but in this runt-sized town, Mooney knows that the other is simply stalling because she desperately wants to know the identity of the Vomiting Woman — Mooney actually sees these two words as capitalized in her mind — who’s in the closed stall. The minutes tick away and finally, finally, the unseen student leaves rather than be late for whatever class is on her schedule. Only then does Mooney manage to stand upright, unlock the door, then stumble to the sink.
What she sees in the mirror stuns her.
She expects her face to be pale and tired-looking, the stereotypical image of illness learned from countless hours of having the television in Mother Gaso’s trailer on as background music to a life of stagnancy. Instead, her face is an image of vibrancy — her black eyes are clear and shining and her dusky skin glows above lips that are glossy and burgundy-colored, as though they are covered in sleek lipstick. She squares her shoulders and lets go of the basin’s edge, then realizes that she feels as good as she looks, both of which are damned good now that she’s rid her system of everything she’s eaten over the last eighteen hours. And she is absolutely ravenous.
Ignoring her hunger, she goes to class. She’s late but it’s the first day and everything is disorganized, even in a class of only eight students, so the teacher doesn’t notice; if the woman in the bathroom is in here, it’s doubtful she’ll connect the violently ill person in the bathroom with the robust-looking Mooney. She has only two classes in the morning but it feels like forever until she has a long enough break to head for the Papago Café and grab four beef tacos. A year ago these had been her favorite, now she can barely tolerate the spices and the cheese; she forces herself to eat them anyway and hopes they won’t come back up in the middle of her small business management class this afternoon. If she can make it through that, she is done with classes for the day.
And thus begins the pattern of her life for the next three weeks, until she realizes she is pregnant.
— 7 —
When Mother Gaso is not home, Mooney strips off her clothes and examines her naked form in the bathroom mirror.
Ten weeks.
It isn’t an estimation. She remembers all too well the day in the desert, the exact day, that the three Mexican men left her, beaten and bleeding, in the desert. They probably thought she would die of exposure and thirst — they had taken her water, of course — and she would have, had the Border Patrol not found her. She had listened to the doctor and to the psychologist he had insisted she subsequently see, and had decided on her own that she wanted exactly the opposite of everything they directed her to do. Her only experience with sex had been violence, pain, and force. All Mooney wanted to do was forget.
Apparently that will not be possible.
Ten weeks.
She is three weeks into the first sixteen-week semester of her associate’s degree program, and the rape is two and a half months behind her.
Mooney looks like she is four months along.
It’s odd, to say the least. From a straight-on view she still has a very attractive waistline. With her hip-length hair and unlined face, she looks like any other teenager. But from the side, there it is — the baby bump, starting about three inches below her sternum and rounding nicely into the V of her legs. At this stage, most women barely show, and others have to push their stomach out intentionally if they want it to be noticed.
She tilts her head and leans closer to the mirror, then pulls her hair over one shoulder and inspects it. Her belly isn’t the only thing that’s off. Her hair has changed color or … something. Now it has a peculiar sort of design to it, as though it’s been lightened by the sun but in a pattern that, if you look carefully enough, is quite symmetrical, with recurring patches of brown that are both light and dark. She frowns and looks closer, but that only muddles things, makes it seem as though she is looking at a bunch of weirdly stretched rectangles. She rubs at her eyes and steps back from the mirror as far as she can — not much in the closet-sized bathroom — then sees a hand mirror in the basket on the back of the toilet. When she holds it up, turns, and positions it so that she can see the back of her head, she discovers yet another of the unique surprises that just keep coming her way.