He froze. “Out? Where?”
“Just to walk around. I’ve never been to Asia before and I wanted to see it. In the day.”
“Absolutely not,” he said.
“I’ll wait until the sun is high so there won’t be any vampires around. I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe it’s not you I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean? Like if I get hungry and start treating Taipei like a buffet? You know, start grabbing legs like they’re drumsticks?” I mimed the action with both hands.
“That isn’t funny.”
“Come on, Lucas. I promise that I’ll be careful. I’ll be back before sunset. I just need to get out of the dark for a little while.”
He shook his head.
“Please. I need this,” I said. I needed a few hours to not feel scared. To be distracted. To be normal. To be myself. I needed to be out in the sun.
He read my face and his shoulders sagged. I knew he was giving in.
“I don’t think…”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
Chapter 24
The girl standing behind a pyramid of oranges grinned and blinked at me with her spiky false eyelashes. She greeted me with a nasally, high-pitched, elongated: “Ni hao!”
“Hi,” I said with a smile. I should have asked Lucas for some general phrases: Excuse me. Thank you. How are you?
I continued strolling through the market. The street was steeped in the smell of sweet juice. The on-coming crowd stared at me but I didn’t care; I was too busy marveling at the street life. Four people sat at a stall, wrapping minced meat into dough and then rolling the finished balls across a floured stainless steel table. At the next stall a man marinated steak in plastic vats. A car came down the street. Pedestrians, many carrying umbrellas for shade, meandered to the side, and the vehicle just fit in between the food stalls and the bodies. I had to turn my shoulder to avoid getting hit by the side mirrors.
I wished I had my camera; there was so much life to capture. I wanted to touch everything. I thumbed through a rack of scarves, stopping at a white pashmina with black swirls. I ran my hands over the fine wool. Oh my God, Tiffany would love this. The thought was followed by an ache in my chest. I could mail it to her from an anonymous admirer, but she might assume it was me, and that would cause my family such turmoil.
The shopkeeper, a man with exaggerated, thin facial features and spindly limbs, came out of his store. He pointed to the scarf and spoke to me. I smiled, shook my head, and retreated. As I tried to disappear into the crowd, he followed me with his eyes and kept trying to wave me back. Looking around I saw that I was the only one wearing black.
I had wanted to walk around as a distraction. A pause for my soul. But things kept reminding me of what I had lost. Suddenly, I felt empty and alone. I placed my hand over my abdomen and it gurgled in response. My mouth tasted sour and my stomach felt like it had begun to rot. I was so hungry, so thirsty.
All around me I saw people and food. I walked up to the nearest food stall, unsure of what I was looking at, and the elderly woman standing behind the steaming cart grinned a toothless grin, her face folding like an accordion.
Feet. Lucas said food would taste like feet. But how long had it been since he’d tried?
The woman pierced a single beige ball and presented the stick to me. When I hesitated she pushed it toward me, babbling and nodding. I felt like Snow White facing a poisoned apple. The glistening morsel, the size of a ping-pong ball, smelled fishy.
Just one bite. How bad could it be?
I took the stick and smiled.
“Thank you,” I said. The woman grinned, gesturing with her hands, miming the action of eating. I put it to my lips and took a nibble. The flesh was soft and the salty juice gushed over my teeth. It didn’t taste like feet. It tasted like fish. I put the whole ball into my mouth and smiled at the woman while chewing through its rubbery texture. Lucas didn’t know what he was talking about. I swallowed the mouthful. I thought of a girl who had walked by earlier holding a crepe filled with ice cream. I’m so having ice cream. Like right now.
I took three steps away from the stall and felt a stab of pain in my stomach. Gasping, I grabbed my abdomen. It was as if I had swallowed a capsule filled with acid and it had just burst. It tore at my insides. I stumbled down a street, leaned against a green fence, and retched.
I vomited so violently that tears came to my eyes. I spat onto the pavement and dabbed my mouth with the back of my wrist. Then I wiped the blood from the corner of my eyes. Oh God. Sniffing, I straightened up—the pain had subsided—and looked around. People were staring.
“Bad fish ball,” I said and wandered off.
***
I pushed against the slow-moving crush of pedestrians on the narrow sidewalk as the sky dimmed. The last time I lost track of time, I met a boy and he killed me. You’d think I would have learned my lesson.
People lounged on patio furniture on the sidewalk, eating steak and eggs sizzling on hotplates. The smells made me nauseous and my stomach groaned. Hunger was doing violence to my gut.
I passed a group of students skewering fish balls out of a paper bag and I scrunched my face. Their laughter rang in my ears, as did the chime of bells from a nearby stall selling doughnuts. A man behind a counter chopped up chicken parts; the rhythmic pounding of his cleaver rattled my brain. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was like a heartbeat. And then the sounds of human heartbeats bled into my consciousness. Squinting, I tried to block the noise attacking my ears. It sounded like a high school band practice with everyone banging on instruments and talking. I stared at the ground, focusing on the grit on the street, the cracks in the concrete, and the noise faded, as if I’d gone into another room and was slowly closing the door.
I needed to get back to Lucas.
Then I heard a scream. It had sailed over the market’s clamor, striking me like an arrow. I froze. I searched the faces of the crowd but no one reacted. The teenagers around me were giggling, and the butcher was grunting at a customer while dropping animal parts into a plastic bag.
I thought I had imagined it but there it was again. A girl’s voice, now a muffled whimper. Further down the street, over to the right. I followed it, shouldering past people into a tight, empty alley. The market din was just white noise now; all I heard was the girl’s crying. I stood on the pavement for a moment, focusing beyond where I could see down the curving street.
Men’s voices. The girl’s snivel. Her heels scraping on the concrete. As I walked farther, her quick breath and her pounding heartbeat grew louder.
At the alley’s dead end I saw her, struggling with two men. One pressed his body against her with his hand clamped over her mouth while the other held her wrists behind her back. Three others stood in the corner, watching, yelling, laughing. The stench of alcohol permeated the air.
The girl was my age, my size. She was wearing a caramel knit dress and white sandals. Throwing herself backward, she head-butted the guy behind her. He cried out, grabbing his nose. Meanwhile, his friend gripped her throat and slapped her across the face.
“Hey!” I yelled before I realized what I was doing.
They all whipped around to look at me.
Crap. I’m breaking my promise to Lucas.
Chapter 25
Their heartbeats quickened and then slowed after sizing me up.
A short, stocky man said something to me, his voice taunting and nasal. He looked at his friends, barked something at them, and they all snickered. He nodded toward me, called to me. One of his friends puckered his lips and waved me over.
I heard a voice in my head. Run.
The girl was looking at me. I could see the whites of her wide, terrified brown eyes and the streaks of mascara on her cheeks. I thought of Paolo and the church and Uther coming to my rescue. And I knew. I knew that I couldn’t leave her. I blinked and took a step forward.
The men were talking, laughing, whistling. The stocky one, who appe
ared to be the leader, gestured to the two men holding the girl. They dragged her back, farther away from me. The other two goons—one tubby and balding, the other slim with spiky hair—approached me.
“Let her go,” I said. My low, guttural voice startled me.
The leader chortled, slapping his knee. His friends copied him.
I pointed at the girl. “I said, ‘Let the girl go.’”
“Leddagirlgo,” one taunted.
One of the guys grabbed the girl by her hair and yanked her head back. She screamed, her eyes squeezing out tears.
My face burning, I walked toward them until I was within five feet of the chubby guy and his spiky-haired friend. The chubby one winked at me, his hands on his bloated belly. He then dragged his gaze down my body, lingering at my chest. Laughing, he turned to his friend and slurped spit from his big purple lips. My fingernails dug into my palms as I balled my hands into fists.
“Speak In-gu-lish?” he taunted. He made kissing noises.
“You want boyfriend?” the thin one asked. He grinned at me with his yellow, crooked teeth. His friend jabbed him with an elbow.
Disgusting.
The men pushed the sobbing girl against the side of a building, crushing her cheek against the brick.
“Stop it!” I shouted. I felt a brief burn in my gums and then the hardness of fangs against my lips.
Sneering, the two men ran at me. And I waited. They moved so slowly. I could measure their steps. I could hear each breath they took with their strides. Their human bodies were jiggly and clumsy as they charged the space between us. And I wanted them to reach me. I wanted to make them stop grinning.
The slim guy extended his arms to grab me. I leaned back, placed my foot against his chest and kicked him. I felt his ribs shatter under my soles, as if I had just stepped on thin ice. His eyes bulged and veins protruded in his neck and his temples. He curled around my sneaker as if molding himself to it and then he was airborne. With his arms and legs trailing behind as he flew across the street, his body resembled a badminton birdie. He smashed into a pile of garbage bins, which exploded every which way.
His friend didn’t even see what had happened. His fingers had curled around my forearm and he was growling, drooling like a dog. I slammed my arm into his round stomach and his mouth made an “oof” sound. One second he was beside me. The next, he was gone. It was like spiking a volleyball. He rocketed into the side of a building and collapsed onto the ground. His body had left a red splatter against the wall.
I couldn’t move. Nothing was moving. There was no sound. I thought time had stopped. What is happening? Am I dreaming? Is this a dream?
Then all of a sudden reality rushed back at me. My entire body was trembling from rage. Even my teeth tingled. The girl was blubbering. Her captors were stunned; they were barely holding her anymore. I stared at the bodies sprawled on the street and looked at my hands. I did not understand what had happened. I couldn’t think. Everything was moving so fast now. The leader yelled at his friends, snapping them out of their stupor. One guy picked up a stick, a wooden handle of a mop perhaps, and broke it over his knee. They ran at me, arms flailing, mouths flapping.
One man swung a piece of the stick at my head and I ducked. As he brought the other stick toward me, I caught it. I tried to wrench it out of his hands and I heard a pop. The man shrieked and dropped to his knees, clutching his dangling arm. I had dislocated his shoulder. The fourth man had been dancing around us. He lunged forward and took a shot at my face. I caught his soft fist in my palm. Without thinking, I squeezed it and the bones in all his fingers snapped, crackling like a crushed paper bag.
Gasping, I released his hand and he fell over, crying.
The leader had grabbed the girl and was holding her as a shield. Gripping her chin, he exposed her throat and pressed a switchblade against her pale flesh. He was screaming at me and I could hear their heartbeats hammering in their chests.
“Please,” I said. I showed him my palms. “Please, don’t hurt her. Just put the knife down.”
I took a step toward them. Yelling, he pushed the knife against her throat, puncturing the skin. A trickle of blood ran into her collar. The girl wept.
“Please, stop!” I cried.
Panting, his eyes darted from his broken friends and then back to me. He reeked of beer and sweat, as if he’d been marinating in it for hours. I could feel his desperation. He was cornered. I could tell he was going to do something stupid.
He reached across the girl, moving his blade toward her ear.
“No!” I cried.
My eyes fixed on his knife, I rushed toward them. He brought the knife down under her jaw and pressed the blade to her neck.
But then I was there, my hand on his hand. I had crossed the pavement in between two of his heartbeats. His eyes looked as if they would explode from his head. His lips pulled back as if to grin but he started to shriek. He was terrified of me. I yanked him away from her, and it was like swinging around a sock puppet. Holding him by his throat I pulled his petrified, purple face to mine. The points of my fangs poked my lower lip.
I shook him. I heard things crack. His pulse fluttered against my thumb and his eyes started to roll backward. A tear leaked out of his eye and dropped onto my arm.
It extinguished my fury. And I felt as limp as the man in my hands.
Crying out, I threw him on top of one of his writhing friends. I slapped my hands over my eyes. I wished that I could breathe as humans did. That I could pull in the chilled air and feel it calm my nerves, feel it regulate a frenzied heartbeat. That heartbeat would tell me when I was in control again, when things felt safe.
The girl had crawled behind a row of bicycles. I walked to her, hunching to appear small. She hugged her knees to her chest, her face buried, her body a tight, convulsing ball. I knelt beside her. I touched her shivering elbow and she jumped.
“I’m sorry. Are you okay?” I asked. “Shh. It’s okay. Don’t worry. You’re safe.”
The force of her heartbeat made the inside of my chest vibrate, and I rubbed her back. Images flashed before my eyes. The empty alley. The men coming out of nowhere. The leader’s crazy eyes and twisted smile.
“You must be terrified,” I whispered. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
She looked up at me, her eyes overflowing. Tears streamed down her face and under her chin, mixing with the blood on her neck. I stared at the red smears on her collar and inhaled the metallic smell. I could taste it, salty, pungent on my tongue. The flavor seemed to coat the back of my throat. It was intoxicating.
When I opened my mouth, it was as if I could taste her scent, even though I couldn’t breathe it in. The sounds of her deep breaths were hypnotic. I leaned toward her. Suddenly I longed to be closer to her, to taste the blood. If I could just hold her… I was so close that my nose was almost touching her cheek. I felt her pull away. I grabbed her arm, and my lips pulled up and away from my teeth. She shrieked.
I threw myself away from her. “Oh God,” I said.
She scrambled up and ran from me, her face twisted in terror. I watched her disappear out of the alley and I stood alone in the street, listening to the moans and the faint heartbeats coming from the broken bodies around me. I covered my mouth with my hand, feeling my hard, sharp teeth against my palms, and I looked to the sky to keep the tears from falling. I saw that it had become dark and the full moon now lit the city. I felt the stillness of my body. I felt neither cold or warm. I just felt deep, unspeakable anguish. And in that moment, for the first time, I felt unequivocally that I was no longer a human being. I was a monster.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a figure on a building top, several blocks away. As I turned to look, the figure stepped off the edge and disappeared.
Chapter 26
I tore down the street toward the apartment, knocking over a rack of clothing and shoving a young man into a display of sandals. In front of the building Kinman was loading our bags into the backseat of a ca
r and Lucas was standing by the driver’s side. When he saw my face, he ran to me.
Sobbing, I collapsed into his arms. I tried to talk but everything kept streaming out in a mess.
“I’m so sorry,” I blubbered. “I shouldn’t have gone out. I hurt people.”
He shook me to break the grip of panic. “Calm down. What happened?”
I told them about the five goons and the girl in the alley. I told them about trying to save her and beating up the men. “And then, oh God, I tried to eat her,” I said.
“What?” Lucas said.
“I tried to eat the girl.”
“Did you?” Kinman asked.
“Nooo,” I moaned, my face in my hands.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you go out,” Lucas said. He held me at arm’s length, his hands on my shoulders. I looked at him through my fingers. Concern screwed up his face. His eyes were cast down.
“I’m sorry, Lucas.”
He shook his head and stepped away from me. Free of his hold I staggered back. It stung. He must be so disappointed in me.
Kinman slung his huge arm over my shoulders.
“You know, Zee, maybe the humans deserved it,” he said.
“No,” I said, rubbing my wet face. “No one deserves that.”
“What else could you have done?”
“My parents taught me about diplomacy.”
“You don’t speak Mandarin or Taiwanese,” he said. “How were you going to negotiate?”
“I don’t know.” I leaned back against the car. I felt dizzy.
“It’s all right. It’s over now.”
He smiled at me and patted my back.
The figure on the rooftop.
I gasped. “Wait. There was someone on a rooftop. I couldn’t see his face. But he saw it all and then he jumped off the building.”
Vampire.
Lucas and Kinman looked at each other and quickly returned to packing.
“What can I do?”
They ignored me. Lucas strapped his swords to his back. Kinman put a cooler into the trunk and slammed it so hard that the car hopped. He tossed the keys to Lucas, who got into the driver’s side and started the engine. Kinman opened the passenger side door.