Sweet Tooth, Page 2

there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  Now, the information in Bram Stoker’s book has proven so dangerous for my kind because he actually did his research, compiling his account from original sources. Modern authors, apparently beholden to romance more than to fact, have depicted us as brooding, beautiful sissies. As much as I despise that rubbish, it is true that once turned, a person becomes more physically attractive. They used to call my father “Franklinstein” (which ought to have been “Franklinstein’s monster,” since Victor Frankenstein was by all accounts a handsome man; but the general populace and classic literature have been like, say, myself and garlic even since my own youth.) Thanks to dear Edgar’s fortune, he did successfully marry a trophy wife - my mother, from whom I inherited a few favorable genes - but still the nickname passed to me. Nowadays, I suppose I would be recognizable as the man I was before, but my features have been optimized, perfected somehow. Predatory advantage, I suppose.

  The nurse doesn’t fall for it. Thickset woman, cropped hair, rather coarse features - either she’s erected some severe emotional walls, or she’s that sort for whom masculine charms hold no attraction. She scowls harder, makes a move for a phone. Bollocks. Only one thing to do about it, unfortunately, before she starts people scurrying. (Besides, what’s Halloween without a bit of indulgence?) In less than I second I close the space between us, take us twenty feet across the hall and over the nurses’ desk, and have her pinned against the wall in a corner.

  Have you read Dracula? Stoker’s original epistolary tome? The answer, most likely, is no, but even if you haven’t, I’d wager you think you can guess how he was destroyed. (I say “destroyed” rather than “died,” which is not something the undead can do. I’m a proponent of precise use of language.) Take a few guesses. Wrong on all of them: not a stake, not holy water, not a cross or running water, although they all work against my kind, plus other things I’m not going to divulge here. In reality, he was stabbed in the heart with a Bowie knife and beheaded with a kukri, the weapon of the Gurkha. My point: one or two mortal humans can cause terminal damage to my physical form by myriad mundane means. Villagers and pitchforks, security guards and handguns. An occurrence of that sort would be quite unacceptable to me, especially on a holiday.

  I lift the nurse with one hand, her feet off the ground, back against the wall, one shoe fallen off.

  “How much do you weigh?” I ask.

  “Two...two hundred,” she chokes out. She’s either lying or self-deluded. Two hundred pounds is just over ninety kilograms, and she’s between one-twenty and one-twenty-five. Chances are good that she’s a diabetic as well; obesity is an enormous risk factor for type two diabetes. (By the way, weight loss is often curative for the disease. There’s your free medical advice.)

  The classic (perhaps clichéd) next move for me would to go for the neck. This woman’s carotid arteries are cocooned by fat, and accessing them would be neither easy nor clean. With one hand still around her throat, I use my other to wrench her wrist toward my face. She’s trying to scream, but the sounds are muffled by the soft tissue being pushed back and up into her mouth. She’s almost assuredly a snorer, likely with obstructive sleep apnea, and her pounding pulse, easily palpable beneath her neck pannus, tells me she has hypertension. The physical exam is becoming a lost art.

  Medically speaking, the saliva I produce is fascinating. Beyond its anticoagulant properties, it also possesses amnestic and narcotic actions and promotes rapid wound healing. I actually have a sizable financial stake (no pun intended) in a small laboratory doing research in pharmaceutical application, using myself as a materials source. The same thing is being done elsewhere with derivatives of dart frog poison, so don’t act shocked.

  I sink my teeth into her wrist above her tendon, puncturing her radial artery. Blood immediately fills my mouth, flowing as fast as I’m able to swallow. The rush of it dizzies me, but Halloween is no time for moderation. Her carotid artery hammers harder against my strangling grip. She’s terrified.

  From a sustenance standpoint, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stored blood. The greatest coup we ever pulled off on western human culture was the acceptance and prevalence of “free blood drives.” The same people who sell their plasma give whole blood away. This is amazing to me, and appreciated.

  Stored blood, though, is a bit like water to us: it does sustain adequately, but it’s rather boring (and it’s venous: stale, as I’ve mentioned before). Now, I’ve never been much of a drinker in either of my existences - in fact, in a rare instance of my current personal and professional lives melding, I run a support group for those who want to give up live feedings, who are tired of the reckless endangering of those around them. Indeed, the thirst for blood is much like alcoholism. To further the analogy: the blood of a person in the heat of passion is to us like wine, full of endorphins and hormones (mostly testosterone, even the ladies) that cause a euphoric sort of drunkenness, for lack of a better word. On the other hand, a state of fear - a “fight or flight” sympathetic stimulation, adrenaline pumping - gives blood an entirely different profile, more like hard liquor. I’m taking shots now.

  Yes, this officially counts as a “relapse.”

  The pulse at the nurse’s neck quivers and stops. She pales and stills. She’s not drained entirely; I can’t drink that much volume. Her heart has given out, a casualty of poor conditioning. This is not part of my plan. I intended only to feed enough to cause her to wake up in the morning in a stuporous and amnestic state. I see a defibrillator on a resuscitation cart at its place at the nurses’ station. I ignore it. What would I do - call a code and start compressions? Heroic resuscitative measures would no doubt be useless, especially performed by myself only, and even if successful, am I really going to call for an attending internist to admit her to the intensive care unit?

  I have no choice but to take the single course of action still available to me. I carry her body to my trash bin around the corner and dump her over the lip, then change into the janitor’s clothes. If my own heart still beat, it would be racing. I’m generally risk-averse, and I’m taking a huge one now. I take the elevator to the basement and wind through halls to Memorial Franklin’s medical waste incinerator. I meet nobody; in my present state of mind, it’s a fortunate thing.

  Like everything in this hospital, the incinerator is hardly state-of-the-art, but it heats high enough to turn bone to ash. The iron monstrosity fills the far half of the spacious concrete room. The walls of it had apparently been painted at least three times, three different colors, all peeling so badly that it’s impossible to tell which was first. The heavy metal door, blackened around the edges, is barely large enough to accommodate the corpulent nurse’s corpse, but it does. I shut the door and start the incinerator.

  The smell of burning flesh is pleasant to me. Not appetizing, although there was a time, before I was changed, when I would have found it so if I hadn’t known what it was - like a barbecue. Imagine the scent of pipe tobacco, or your favorite candle. That’s more akin to my enjoyment. The scent lasted only a moment; this device was not built for slow-roasting.

  I consider that this night has not gone exactly to plan, but if I hurry, my trick-or-treating might still be successful. The morning brings daylight, but the hospital comes alive before the sun rises. The incinerator calms its roar, the nurse turned to ash. I put on scrubs and toss the janitor’s uniform and the rest of the waste from the bin into the furnace for a second round. I swiftly steal back up to the sixth floor, taking the stairs. With the efficiency of a seasoned phlebotomist (which, in a way, I suppose I am) I take blood from the remaining patients. My pack filled with syringes, and feeling more like a monster than I usually do, I open the waiting room window and crawl down the outer hospital wall. I make my escape.

  At the oldest graveyard in the city lies a mausoleum, another testament to Edgar Franklin’s desire to leave a legacy. All is dark; dawn is still hours away. I step inside, into a sculpted space where three stone coffins lie, on
e to a side.

  “Good haul tonight,” I say to my parents’ graves, amusing myself. I take a capped syringe of the diabetics’ glucose-saturated blood and squirt it into my mouth.

  Just like candy. I do so love Halloween.

  The next night, I’m back at work. I cover eight hours of night shift at the asylum as the attending psychiatrist. I go by Dr. Pierce there - not my real name, of course. I’m a bit of an American Presidential history buff, and, considering the natural state of my canines, “pierce” is rather fitting, I think. It isn’t difficult for me to create new identities for myself, even a physician’s credentials. One of my thralls is an unethical lawyer (but I repeat myself), and since I actually own the asylum’s building and grounds through a shell foundation, I have no problem hiring myself. The asylum is a renovated manse that used to be a home. Since the home was mine - my father’s - the threshold, by now nearly obliterated by time and other use, isn’t a problem. I say hello to the nurses and orderlies coming on shift and review our list of patients. Psychiatry is easy for me, as it ought to be, as long as I’ve been practicing. The names of the diagnoses change, of