Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,30

Maxwell want? Will hadn’t read Stoker’s book, but he’d heard enough about it to know the boy had nothing to fear from illness. “What for?”

“My meals,” Maxwell replies simply. “I need to eat, girl.”

“My name is Will.” His voice is a growl—he spits his own name through his teeth. “And if you think you’ll be drinking my blood, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Your blood?” Maxwell shudders. “I prefer something cleaner. Finer. The asylums at Kirkbride’s, perhaps. The place is clean, and the blood is blue. And no one will believe any … complaints.”

“I don’t plan to work with the mad,” Will says, but Maxwell only smiles.

“Change your plans,” Maxwell says, so casually. “Or risk being locked up along with them for your confusion. And who knows? I’m told my kind can change form. Bats. Wolves. Mist. Surely the form of a man is not out of reach. Perhaps if you serve me well, you’ll have the body you really want.”

Perhaps. The word echoes in Will’s head as Maxwell reaches out once more, and Will cannot tell if it’s for help climbing out of the grave or to shake on a devil’s bargain. The young doctor has handled liquifying fats, putrefying organs, long hair that sheds in clumps from rotting skulls, but his entire being recoils at touching Maxwell’s hand. Damn the money—damn the suit—damn the front row in the lecture hall. “I have a man’s body,” he says. “And you can get yourself out of the damn hole.”

Will draws back his legs, but Maxwell’s hand darts out faster than a blink. Manicured nails sink into the flesh of Will’s ankle; his hip pops as the rich boy yanks him back down, halfway into the hole. Will kicks himself free, scrambling backward over the lip of the grave as a shower of dirt rattles on the lid of the hollow coffin.

“A man’s body? Maybe in your barrow.” Maxwell sinks his pale fingers into the soil, crawling out of the hole like a spider. Will stumbles backward, tripping over his shovel. Pain shoots up his back as his tailbone hits the grass. Maxwell crawls toward him, eyes flashing red in the moonlight. “You cut your hair and don your tattered trousers, but you can’t trick me. Under the dirt and the sweat, your blood smells just like a—”

The sentence ends in a wet burble as Will swings the blade of the shovel into the boy’s pale throat. Maxwell’s hands fly up to the wound as he falls backward into his own grave—those soft, unblemished hands, now stained by thick clots of blackened blood.

Nothing living bleeds that way.

Roaring, Will hacks at the neck with the shovel—once, twice, thrice—till at last the head is severed. Just like in Stoker’s book. As the corpse finally falls still, Will’s chest heaves. Has anyone heard the shouting? Or seen Will cut off a rich man’s head with a shovel? He considers running, but then the wind picks up. Ting a ling, ting a ling.

Will won’t run at the sound of a bell.

And this body will certainly be of interest at the university.

So despite the fear pricking his spine and the cramps twisting his stomach, Will climbs back into the grave to wrap the rope under the corpse’s shoulders. He hauls the body out of the hole and stuffs it into his sack, dragging it back to the wheelbarrow he’s left in the trees. He has to make a second trip for the head. As he lifts it by the hair, Will regards the alabaster cheeks—now even more statuesque in their stillness—and the white teeth, like the canines of a dog. What was it Stoker’s novel claimed? A single bite could spread the infection, transforming a living man into a vampire.

Will regards the teeth, considering such a transformation.

But as he stands there, he can feel his heart beating—that powerful organ, the seat of the soul at his center. The thing that tells him what and who he is.

A man. And a doctor. And he aims to save lives, not suck them dry.

So he bags the head and tosses it into the barrow. Breathing hard, he carts his prize to the university, stopping every so often to listen—to make sure that the sound of the bell is only in his head.

Ting a ling ding, ting a ling, ting a ling.

BURIAL TRADITIONS Or Why Didn’t People Triple-Check Dead Bodies Before Closing Up the Casket?

Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

There are so many old superstitions about how to ensure someone didn’t become a