Bloody Stubborn by Judy Colella (bill gates best books .TXT) 📕

How do I say this….oh, yeah.

Hahahahahaha!!!!

Score one for the newbie! I somehow managed, by way of some very human common sense, to throw the whole vampire culture into chaos. Nice. They’re now divided between those who want to keep things secretive and monstrous, and those who are willing to try the easier route – mine – of simply getting their supply from the hospital blood banks. Apparently, no one had ever done something like this before. Granted, even the ones willing to try my way admit there’s no substitute for the taste and warmth of freshly-sucked hemoglobin (ew!), but they agree it’s a lot less dangerous.

So now there’s this huge schism, kind of like the way religions started, don’t you think? Carnata hates what I’ve done, but for some reason she seems to like me

. Having said that, I suppose I should back-track a little.

After she snacked on me, I passed out for a while and woke up some time later on a sofa. Same room, same muttering vampires. Ryland was somehow okay, but he hadn’t looked good – at all – and I told him so. He happened to be reclining in a chair beside the sofa when I opened my eyes, and I’d stared at him for a while, surprised first of all that he was even “alive.” I put that word in quotes because technically, he’s already dead, but…maybe I should have said he was animated. I’m still not sure if what vampires have is actual life.

Anyhow, after getting over that unexpected discovery, I took a better look at him. He’d been pale to begin with, but now his skin looked like old paper, and dark purple shadows circled his eyes, eclipsing their usual glitter. If that’s the right way to say it. What I mean is that his eyes looked dull, rather like those of a dead fish. I almost giggled.

“Gee, Ryland,” I’d said, my voice amazing because it wasn’t at all hoarse or anything like that. “You look kinda…drained.” I believe I bit back a guffaw.

“If had the energy,” he had replied, not bothering to look directly at me, “I’d hurt you for that. Vampire puns are the worst…” His voice had faded on the last word and he’d put his head back against the chair’s cushion, his lids closing.

I had sat up. Around me, the other vampires had been doing various things, but all of it seemed related to me in one way or another – some were glaring at me, some very obviously ignoring me, still other sliding glances in my direction as they spoke in whispers to each other. It was very weird, I must say.

“I was right – you are quite tasty even as a vampire.” Carnata had glided over to the sofa, her pointy little teeth glittering in her death’s head smile.

“Why did you do that? Bite me, I mean.”

“To claim you as part of our clan.”

Yup. They have clans. Turns out they aren’t all exactly friendly with each other, either (that sounds really odd if you say it out loud).

“And that’s important to you…why?”

“A clan member turned you. The protocol dictates that you also must be of our clan.”

This was getting almost Hollywood, I remember thinking. “Does your, er, clan have a name?”

“Of course, silly wormling. How else would we identify ourselves? We are the Ur.”

“The er….?”

Then she spelled it for me and told me I needed to take it seriously because they were the oldest clan on earth.

“As opposed to the clans from other planets?”

“You waste your sarcasm on me, wormling.”

Before I could ask her why she kept calling me that, one of the silently glaring-and-seething vampires had approached and demanded to know whether or not I was going to be punished. And before Carnata could reply, one of the whispering-in-a-small-knot-of-vampires vampire interrupted and declared that some of them felt my idea was smart.

That was when I slipped off and returned to the sofa – it was obvious by the abrupt onset of angry hissing (vampires do a lot of that when they’re pissed) that the discussion was about to go over the cliff and become a mega-huge argument. Turns out I was right. Again.

I don’t know how long it would have taken for everyone to calm down, but I remember Carnata standing there like a marble statue and letting the rest slug it out among themselves. Only when one of the hissing ones jumped a whisperer with the obvious intention of tearing his throat out, did she do that crazy dog-whistle thing again. I saw her open her mouth, lifting her face toward the ceiling, and immediately covered my ears.

I tried very, very hard not to laugh. I really did. However, a soft snort escaped into the ensuing silence, and I had to turn it into a cough quickly to avoid being pounced on. These guys are psycho – did I mention that?

I was still of the me-and-them mentality, not yet having accepted my situation fully enough to use “we.”

Three days after the Eleana-Screwed-Things-Up incident, the argument was still raging. I, however, was doing fine, having gone to the hospital that morning for my daily blood-fix. Bleh. If nothing else, it makes me feel as if I’ve not completely relinquished my humanity. At least there’s that.

The cat still hadn’t returned, and I resigned myself to her being gone for good. I mean, if the one who paid your salary suddenly turned into the tax-collector, wouldn’t you quit? Trixie was no fool (yeah, that’s her name, stop laughing).

After my “breakfast” I left the hospital with two more bags of the stuff – one for lunch and the other for supper, of course – and went home to…did I mention that I’d lost my job over this nonsense? Before I finally figured out how to get blood without committing murder, I had stayed home. Understandable, yes? Sure, I could easily have called in sick, but I’m really bad at lying, and I didn’t think it would go over too well if I called in dead. Besides, I was so freaked out, I was even unable to talk to my friends, much less my boss, so I became what employers call a no-call-no-show, which is grounds for dismissal.

Come to think of it, none of my friends ever bothered to call me to find out why I never came back to the club. Did they think I’d found some hot guy and…okay, I did, but not in that way. They must’ve assumed I’d gone off with someone and abandoned them. So now they were too ticked off at me to even call, was that it? I don’t know. I almost don’t care. It isn’t like I can see any of them again, at least not until I figure out how to fight off the nearly overwhelming urge to bite people.

See, that’s the worst part. Even though I’d solved the hunger problem, this new nature I had, this undead-ness, had its own ideas about how I should behave. In fact, I was in the middle of mulling that over when the doorbell rang. Sorry it took so long to get to that.

I didn’t answer right away, fearing it might be someone I knew. A moment later the bell was rung again, this time accompanied by loud knocking. I grabbed the sofa pillow and was about to pull it over my ears (did I mention that being a vampire gives you insanely sensitive hearing?) when Ryland started bellowing at me from the other side.

I so didn’t want to deal with him right then.

“Eleana, you must open this door!”

I obeyed. He looked quite agitated. “Don’t tell me I have to invite you in before you cross my thresh- ”

Apparently not. He pushed past me and went into the livingroom. “Look,” he began when I joined him, “you have to do something about this mess you caused.”

“No, Ryland. The mess you caused. If you hadn’t turned me into a blood-sucker, none of this would be happening.”

“Why won’t you play by the rules, Eleana?”

“Play? You guys are playing, are you?”

“You know exactly what I mean!” He had recovered completely by this time, and his eyes were doing that glittery thing again.

“What’s the names of the other clans?” I gave him a nice smile and sat on the loveseat.

“What are the names,” he murmured, correcting my English. I really didn’t like this guy. “There’s the Pharoah clan, the Ming clan, the Celt clan, and several others from various parts of the world and North America.”

When my parents were young, there was a British pop-rock band called the Manfred Mann. Seemed to me these clans were named after places or people where they were founded, and I told myself it was a good thing this pop-rock group hadn’t spawned a clan of vampires, too.

“Why are you laughing now?” he demanded angrily.

“Never mind – sorry.” I resumed my straight face. “Why does Carnata call me a wormling?”

“Oh, that.” He actually looked embarrassed for a second or two. “It’s a bad vampire joke, I’m afraid. See, when a person dies, he becomes…worm-food, colloquially speaking. So - ”

“I get it. That’s horrible!”

“It is.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“I told you, Eleana. You stirred up a proverbial hornet’s nest, and I don’t think anyone but you can fix it.”

“In other words, Carnata sent you here, and failure will mean getting your throat slit again, right?”

“Pretty much.”

I almost felt bad for him. But since at that point I was still feeling much worse for myself, I didn’t have enough empathy left to offer. “Sucks to be you, then,” I said without thinking.

A split second later, Ryland had me pinned to the wall, his fangs making speech difficult. “Stop the bad jokes, you little fool!”

“Let go of me.”

“I should rip your heart out!”

“Yeah, and that would go over great with Carnata since I’d be too dead to help.”

He let go and I slid down the wall but didn’t fall. Did I mention that I’m ridiculously strong now, too? I suppose that’s good. I smoothed the front of my shirt, shaking my head. “What’s up with her, by the way? Is she Skeletor’s daughter or something? Why does she look like that, and that reminds me – why don’t I have fangs like the rest of you?” Not that I wanted them.

“Who is Skeletor?”

“Seriously? Do you live under a large rock or something?” Unbelievable. “Come here.” I went to my laptop, opened it and signed on, then Googled Skeletor.

Ryland stared at the screen for several long seconds before doing the last thing I expected. He burst out laughing. He stumbled to the couch, collapsing onto it and holding his stomach, his laughter causing my own lips to twitch upward.

After a while, I started to get worried. “Uh, Ryland?”

He put up a hand and got himself under control, gulping and wiping his eyes. I don’t know why. Vampires can’t produce bodily fluids (which is the reason, incidentally, I didn’t actually wet my pants when I first saw Carnata – I couldn’t). But wipe his eyes he did. Habit, I suppose. “That was…too…oh, my.” He drew in a huge, shaky breath, exhaling it with a “whew” ending.

“Can you answer my questions now? I noticed there were others like her, as well.”

“Please sit, Eleana. This is going to take a while. When I’m done, however, I’ll need to go get some nourishment, and then we have to go back to Ur House.”

“Her house?”

“No, Ur House. Ur. Like the name of our clan.”

“Doesn’t that get confusing?”

“It does. Now be quiet while I explain things. Can you do that?”

I sat across from him, nodding, and sat back in