Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,27

she was a pretty hard-core masochist. She’d let me do shit like sewing her labia together, run needles through her nipples, and so forth. But I could never get her to lay a hand on me, like I was some sort of china doll and was going to shatter into a million pieces. I’m pretty sure that’s why we finally broke up. It got boring.”

There’s no denying that Selwyn would have made a goddamn wicked vamp. That one-quarter of her that came courtesy of ghouls getting their rocks off with human women (and, undoubtedly, vice versa), it had laid the foundations good and proper. If you’re reading this, hoping for a likable, sympathetic character—and I just know you’ve already given up on me—well, you’re not likely to do any better with Selwyn. I mean, not unless you’re willing and able to rise to the occasion and overlook the ugly fucking truth of her inherited appetites. We can talk nature versus nurture until we’re blue in the face, but I don’t care how she was raised; in these matters, blood will out, and you can bet your bottom dollar on that.

But no, I didn’t turn her. I’ve never turned anyone. That’s one of the very few gold stars you’ll find stuck up next to my name.

“She once had me sew her lips shut for two days,” says Selwyn, my mean girl disguised as a mild-mannered geek. “I’m good with stitches, if I do say so myself. Oh, what happened to her, you ask?”

“I didn’t ask,” I said, my eyes still shut.

“Yeah, but you wondered.”

“I didn’t wonder, either.”

“Well, too bad. She killed herself about six months ago. Drank a bottle of . . . Shit, I don’t recall what it was, but it killed her dead.”

“Usually, that’s the way people get killed.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said and punched me in the left shoulder, and I opened my eyes. The room was spinning, the way it does when you make the mistake of getting spectacularly shit faced, then lying on your back. Only, I wasn’t shit faced.

Selwyn gently bit my left biceps; her teeth were as dull as pencil erasers. She was quiet a moment, then whispered, “Quinn, you okay? You look sorta ill.”

I blinked my eyes, then rubbed them. The dizziness refused to pass. I gripped the edge of the mattress, with my right hand, you know. I felt, all at once, the need to hold on to something solid, anything at all. A wave of nausea swept over me. My arms and legs had begun to tingle.

“That’s sorta the way I feel,” I told her.

The vertigo, the nausea, it was joined then by tunnel vision. First thought, had Selwyn poisoned me somehow? Had she actually poisoned that ex-girlfriend whose lips and pussy she’d sewn shut? She hadn’t. Poisoned me. I don’t know about the ex-girlfriend. Still that was the first thing popped into my head.

My head had begun to pound. My chest hurt.

Vampires do not have heart attacks.

I sat up and went to get out of bed. When I tried to stand, my legs folded under me and I hit the floor. I was dimly surprised. I was beginning to have trouble thinking clearly.

“Jesus, Quinn,” Selwyn said, alarmed. I heard the box springs creak.

I tried to stand again. No dice. So I crawled to the bathroom. By the time I got the toilet seat up, I was completely blind, and the headache was a jackhammer. I puked a stomachful of Selwyn into the dirty porcelain bowl. The smell of blood made me puke again. And again.

“Fuck, Quinn. What’s happening?” She sounded scared. Her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere very far away. Like Hoboken.

I managed to croak, “Drugs?”

“Drugs?”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Drugs. Have you taken anything tonight?” I managed. Not that it should have mattered.

Fire bloomed in my rib cage, and that, right there, is when I knew, without a doubt, what was happening.

“I . . .” she started, and I realized she was kneeling and had her arms around me.

I shat myself. The smell made me vomit again, though there wasn’t anything left to puke up. Note: Vampires also don’t shit. Hell, after a few decades, our assholes and lower intestines just shrivel up and disappear (same with our genitals). I heard Selwyn scrambling away from me across the tiled floor.

“I just . . .”

“You just what, bitch?” I growled. No, I snarled.

“Wolfsbane,” she whispered, horrified.

Okay, so my newfound blood doll wished she was a vamp, but she wasn’t