Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,60
Diwata gazed at her, astonished.
“I almost didn’t recognize you. Did you comb your hair? And what are you wearing?”
The clothes she had gathered from her old room, her old life: short skirt, fishnets, pleather shit-kickers. “I remembered what you said. That I could do something about all this. I thought maybe I’d meet some people.”
Diwata was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “Since when do you listen to me?”
“Since now, I guess.”
“Okay. You look…” Diwata tipped her head, considering.
“What?”
“Young and desperate. You’ll make a lot of … friends. If that’s what you want.”
Jude didn’t answer, sipped at the bottle of water Diwata had handed her. She wondered why Diwata wasn’t drawn to her the way others were, but then, maybe she was, in a different way. Diwata had saved her. Jude had thought she was paying back the kindness by walking Diwata to the bus stop every night, but now that seemed silly. That was not what Diwata had asked her to do.
“Come with me?” Jude said. “I’m a little nervous.”
“I don’t believe you,” Diwata said. “You’re not scared of anything.” But Diwata motored ahead of Jude the way she always did, plowing a path through the throngs of guests, most already drunk and rowdy.
Diwata grumbled, “Any of these jackasses even looks at my animals the wrong way, there will be hell to pay.”
They reached the big tent in the middle of the main mall, where the birthday boy was holding court like some kind of king. He was middling tall, with stiff, graying hair and a ruddy face, a small, selfish little mouth like a lamprey’s. He had a bottle of beer in one hand, and he gestured broadly with it. All around, other ruddy-faced men laughed along with him, or toasted him, or slapped him on the back. “Happy birthday, BK! You’re the man!”
Diwata and Jude found some seats by the bar and waited. Across the room, Sanjay stood with a bunch of other party organizers. He waved at her, his big, wet eyes making him look even younger, like a fawn in a tangled forest. She hoped he wouldn’t be afraid of her, after.
“You never told me whose blood it was,” said Diwata.
“What?”
“When I found you with Olive and Nell. There was blood all over the place. Remember how long it took to clean?”
“Oh. That.” Jude had offered herself to the golden boy she loved and, in turn, he’d offered her to some magical beasts he loved more. She was meant to be the toy, but she’d become something else. Something with claws, something with teeth, blah blah blah. A different kind of beast. She’d taken the first bites, but she’d let Olive and Nell do the rest.
Diwata tapped the bar top. “I just want to know if he deserved it.”
“More than I did.”
There were other people who deserved it, so many others.
It wasn’t long before the birthday boy’s eyes found her, young and desperate and so, so thirsty in her fishnets and her skirt. He made his way over.
“Hello, ladies,” he said. “Are you having a good time?”
Diwata grunted, but Jude said, “I’m having the greatest day of my whole life.”
The man’s tight mouth stretched into a grin. “Can I get you anything? Beer? Water?”
For the first time, Jude relished her thirst, the power of it. She felt the itch between her shoulder blades, where the wings would burst from her back at the first bite.
Jude smoothed the skirt over her thighs. “Water would be lovely, thank you.”
BATS Or The Cutest Misunderstood Flying Rodents
Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker
It’s hard to imagine talking about vampires without mentioning nature’s most goth little rodent, the bat. But bats haven’t always been part of vampire lore. Yes, Count Dracula shape-shifts into a bat in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But he can also travel in moondust particles and shape-shift into a wolf, dog, and fog. So why doesn’t Dracula change into a bunny or a butterfly? It isn’t just that those creatures are super adorable and lacking in the “has fangs” department. One theory is that Spanish conquistadors brought stories of blood-drinking bats from the Americas when they returned to Europe, introducing a whole world of terror to their home continent. Blood-drinking bats are clearly only one step away from blood-drinking humans or monsters, right??? Unfortunately, in the real world vampire bats won’t give you immortality—just rabies. The same way witches have feline familiars, the connection between supernatural creatures and animals is so strong that they occasionally become them.