Borne in the Blood Read online

  Bernie often said the finish line was in sight, as though raising Jolie was a marathon that was almost run. She was practically sprinting toward the end. With victory nearly at hand, she wasn’t about to let Jolie screw up her scholarship or turn into vamp-trash. She had definite expectations about Jolie’s future, for sure. The girl was supposed to keep her job at the Burger Bonanza, make straight As, keep her clothes on, and stay the hell away from downtown and whatever was going on there.

  And those tiny, tight straps over Jolie’s velvety, bare shoulder skin would make Bernie huff and puff and blow the whole bar down. Tesa wondered for a second if she was going to have to witness another mother-daughter spat before her shift even really got started.

  She definitely didn’t want to get in the middle. Bernie had only just begun to accept her, and Jolie was a few years younger. An underage girl was not really friendship material for a 20-something bartender, so she knew which side she was on: Bernie’s for sure. Tesa bit her lip and refilled the glass.

  Jolie raised her eyebrows and jerked her chin at Tesa's hand as she accepted the beverage.

  “You finally got your badge!” she sing-songed.

  Jolie held up her own wrist and rotated her hand halfway back and forth, showing off the gold mesh bracelet she was wearing over hers. She almost always wore something shiny, something complicated and attention-grabbing. “You want me to hook you up with some jewelry? Maybe some quilted wristbands or something? Everybody's wearing them now.”

  Tesa pulled her hand back sheepishly. She automatically rubbed her finger across the sky blue chip embedded in her wrist. It still stung around the edges where the skin hadn't quite healed, but she resisted the strong urge to scratch.

  The health department official who had installed the badge in her flesh had given her a pamphlet warning her about the dangers of fussing or picking at it. It couldn’t be uninstalled, couldn’t be reset if the color changed from blue to red, and couldn’t even be concealed if any official demanded that she showed it.

  According to the pamphlet, she was now permanently in “The Register.” It had benefits, which were not enumerated. It also had “responsibilities and penalties” that were documented at length. She had scanned the horror-filled pages then dropped it in the trash as she left the county health office, shaking her head in disgust.

  Apparently there were many safeguards in place to ensure she didn't tamper with it or remove it. Some of them sounded more awful than others, and she winced, remembering the gory, high-def pictures of seeping infections and inflamed wounds. The text suggested (but did not specify) that the badge contained anti-alteration toxins that were activated under certain conditions. Removal was one condition. Installation without authorization was another.

  Somehow the combination of dry, bureaucratic descriptions with medical diagrams and words like “lust” and “vampire” was just unnerving to Tesa. The “Responsibilities” section seemed normal with its numbered list including things like “watch for discoloration” and “swab with hydrogen peroxide to keep the LED bright” and lists of hotline numbers.

  But the “Penalities” section went on and on, with diagrams, italics, and even the occasional exclamation point. Even the punctuation seemed vulgar. There were illustrations in the DO NOT USE list, circled with a bar through them. Among the things Register members were not supposed to deploy on their badges: screwdrivers, knives, and hacksaws.

  In particular, the photo of the grimacing felon who had been caught trying to remove it (either to sell it or to gain access to one of the sketchier blood clubs) stood out in her mind. In his mugshot, he raised his amputated arm stump defiantly. Ironically, his expression was almost victorious.

  She was supposed to keep the pamphlet with her passport and certification. There were even coupons for discounts on attractive vinyl cases and frames so you could display the credentials next to, say, pictures of your family.

  “A bracelet is totally legal,” Jolie continued. “They even say so, you know, in the ‘Lifestyle Suggestions’ part of the manual. You saw that?”

  Tesa remembered the images of grinning young people waving at the camera with their arms up. Bright blue badges, some festooned with surface beading or decorative wraps.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Tesa nodded. “I’m just not a jewelry person I guess.”

  Jolie wrinkled her nose and sniffed. She glanced down at her badge, which glowed brightly inside the framed pattern of her bracelet like a semi-precious stone, embedded in a riverbed. Her dark skin set it off dramatically, practically shouting to the world I’m healthy. I’m clean. See me!

  “I think it would look nice on you,” Jolie insisted. “Everyone is a jewelry person if they try hard enough, you know.”

  “No, I think it's okay the way it is,” Tesa insisted cautiously. “Does it itch for long? Like, when is it going to feel, you know… normal?”

  Jolie shrugged one shoulder and dipped her head to suck down more Coke from the straw.

  “Normal?” she repeated. “I guess it doesn't take too long. Long as you're healthy, and they wouldn't have given you the badge if you weren't healthy, right? Probably just a week or so. Maybe less.”

  Tesa chewed the inside of her cheek. A week of trying not to scratch? Hoping she didn’t dunk it in the glass-cleaning water and give herself one of those weeping infections? She shuddered, trying not to think about it.

  “Well, I guess a week will be okay.”

  Jolie tapped her purple-black nails on the bar top excitedly. “You know if you rub some, like, petroleum jelly? Or like a body oil with a little glitter in it? That will totally play it up for you. You’ve got the new version. Almost nobody has those. You’ll be treated like royalty! See?”

  Jolie plucked her bracelet aside, revealing her full badge and forearm. The model was some years old. It had been updated as required by law, but she’d probably had it since the very first moment her overly protective mother knew it was available. The edges of her skin were raised with mauve, tight-looking keloid scars around the silvery blue rectangle. It looked thicker than the one Tesa had just gotten, more military-issue.

  Backing up, Tesa slid open the cover for the ice reservoir. She wasn't quite sure what to say about that. Playing it up meant attracting more attention than she meant to.

  It wasn’t the first time she had heard the idea of displaying the badge with pride, like a trendy club insignia. The badges were getting harder to get, and the wearers were getting pickier about who they chose to commingle with. A Clean Blood Badge meant the wearer was free of HIV, the whole hepatitis alphabet, prions, Marburg 2... the works. The glowing color gave up-to-the-minute verification. In the last few years it even tested for genetic markers of some of the nastier cancers and autoimmune diseases, even though those were presumably not a public health concern since they were not communicable.

  Being in the Register meant acceptance, job opportunities, and a bit of social status. Having the latest version would let everyone know at a glance that Tesa was extremely clean, since it was presumably testing for things the wider public didn’t even know about yet. The last two releases had been approved by Special Senate Committee and the documentation was heavily redacted. Rumors abounded.

  She knew it could make her popular. It could make her life a lot easier, if she felt like the kind of person who waved her arm over head for everybody to see.

  And of course, it was actually a decent way to make a living, if you liked vampires. That wasn’t the original intent — the Marburg 2 virus had just basically scared the crap out of everybody who lived in a populated area. The badge was supposed to let people know they could walk down the street in the daylight again. They could be among people without risking contracting a deadly airborne virus that made your teeth bleed and lungs turn to pudding, as long as everybody within twenty feet had a visibly blue badge.

  That initially sent the vampires deeper underground, which might have been the plan. It was strongly implied that once the st
rategy was fully implemented, anyone without a badge was an outlaw, diseased, or likely a vampire. Outlaws and the infected retreated to the sorts of places where they wouldn’t be ostracized or worse.

  But once the Revised Clean Blood Bill passed Congress with almost as much funding as the military, vampires realized this was actually a good time to come out of the shadows and start advertising for unpolluted, state-certified meals.

  Actual advertising , like on TV and Instagram and everything. Congress tried to outlaw that several times under the Subspecies Treaty to no avail.

  Registry members were often hired as high-profile spokespeople for vampires. Sometimes they were employed as a kind of entourage to surround a vamp, arms up, showing off their badges in a protective formation. Some were kept as pets. (Or snacks.)

  Tesa didn’t want to go down that route. So far, this back road bar and friendly townsfolk had been enough for her to get by, thank you very much. Getting the badge was enough of a concession (an invasion, she thought). Grant had insisted and since that was all he asked for, she complied. It took months of paperwork and tracking down lost IDs and getting on Public Assistance for healthcare. It was humiliating and confusing, and it seemed like that was sort of the point.

  She wasn’t willing to do more. This was a humble but stable life, and it was fine. Scraping by was getting by, and getting by should be enough for anyone, she thought. She certainly wasn’t willing to drift into the nightmare scenario of being eaten alive by an actual vampire. She couldn’t imagine being that desperate.

  She twisted her arm around her back, hiding her wrist out of sight.

  “Yeah… I'm just gonna leave it until it heals, I think. I don’t want to mess anything up.”

  “Come on, girl!” Jolie said, her eyes sparkling. “You just got it! You should be letting your badge out loose into the world. And, you know, you would be… Well, verrrry popular?”

  Tesa narrowed her eyes, wondering what she should say. Bernie spent a whole lot of time talking about Jolie. She was always bragging about how she was near the top of her class, how she had such a future ahead of her. Bernie could see that future, crystal clear.

  But Jolie had a bit too much enthusiasm about the topic of blood-leasing for somebody was supposed to be all business. The way Jolie was talking, it sounded like she was doing some things that Bernie definitely wouldn't approve of.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Tesa said cautiously.

  “You could be set for life,” Jolie insisted, lowering her voice to a whisper. Her eyes were wide as she nodded emphatically. “Seriously, girl… some of these vamps are loaded… Like, rock star loaded…. Like…”

  Tesa held up a hand. “Jolie, you have to stop.”

  “No, they say it’s okay! They say it’s like a drug! Like they just—”

  “ Stop! ” Tesa barked, shaking her hand for emphasis.

  She averted her eyes as the images in her brain turned gory. Things eating things. Blood. Screaming. Darkness. She could practically imagine the smell. It made her want to vomit.

  “Well,” Jolie huffed, pressing her lips together. She took a breath as if to start talking again, then stopped.

  Tesa could feel her withdrawing as though Jolie understood that this was dangerous territory to be discussing with somebody she didn't know very well. And that was fine with Tesa. She certainly didn't want to have more information about Jolie than she needed. She didn't want to have to be working with Bernie all night and trying to keep a secret from her, after all.

  “So, you were looking for your mother?” Tesa started again.

  Jolie glanced around the room absentmindedly. She chewed on the end of the straw, her purple-glossed lips reflecting tiny images of the lamps behind the bar.

  “Uh huh.”

  “You can wait until she gets here,” Tesa offered awkwardly. “I mean, she should already be here, but… Well, I don't know. You can do whatever you want, I guess.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Jolie said mostly to herself as she plunged a hand into her large bag and fished around, finally drawing out a cell phone that she dropped on the bar. Just before she closed the handbag Tesa saw the unmistakable outline of a rather large pack of folded condom wrappers.

  Looking away quickly, she picked a bottle of vodka off of the rail for no apparent reason and walked back into the kitchen. She saw Jolie glance at her out of the corner of her eye but figured if they didn't talk about it, it wasn't happening.

  Truth be told, Bernie made her a little nervous. She was Tesa’s boss, and she was outspoken and prone to yelling. She had that Big Mother energy that stopped bar fights in their tracks and made minor liars tell the truth. Keeping information about her daughter a secret was not something Bernie was going to be particularly forgiving about, Tesa knew.

  Lingering in the kitchen for as long as possible, Tesa took her time filling up the five gallon bucket with ice from the giant icemaker. She sort of enjoyed the avalanche-style crunching noise that the ice made as it tumbled out of the chute. Overly dramatic, maybe. But still, totally satisfying.

  When Tesa emerged from the kitchen, Jolie was still sitting at the bar, her lips twisted to one side, her brow furrowed as she stared into the glowing blue screen of her cell phone.

  “Still not here, huh?”

  Jolie's eyes snapped up toward Tesa, sort of surprised as though she had forgotten she was there. She shook her head quickly as Tesa dumped the huge bucket of ice into the reservoir.

  “Yeah, I don't know. I was really hoping to catch her before she started her shift… She told me she would give me forty bucks so I can go out with my, uh, friends tonight… Just until I get paid next Friday.”

  “Oh, okay,” Tesa mused, suddenly relieved.

  If Jolie needed money, then she wasn’t doing the worst of what she could be doing: namely, selling her veins to some Eurotrash city vamp who smelled like Drakkar Noir or Axe or whatever. Somehow she found that comforting.

  Tesa turned around and punched some buttons on the register, catching the cash drawer as it slid open. She plucked two twenties from the stack and turned around and put them on the bar.

  “Here you go,” she said, still not removing her fingers from the bills.

  Jolie's eyes widened. “You can do that? Just like that?”

  Tesa shrugged one shoulder. She kept her fingers on the bills as Jolie's hand slowly slid toward them.

  “Yeah, I'm sure Bernie will pay it right back when she gets here. But there's a condition.”

  “A condition?” Jolie's eyebrows went up.

  “Yeah, and a serious one. You gotta promise me that you're not going to do anything with this money that your mom would not approve of, okay?”

  Jolie rolled her eyes and nodded like a sullen teenager.

  “Okay, I totally promise. Geez.”

  Tesa kept her fingertips on the dollar bills as Jolie started to pull them away.

  “I'm really serious,” she cautioned. “You can't be hanging out with… Well, anybody you shouldn't be.”

  Tesa released bills and Jolie plucked them up quickly, stuffing them into her handbag.

  “Oh, I totally won't,” Jolie nodded.

  “Because your mom will lose her shit.”

  Jolie grinned and wrinkled her nose. “Oh, you don't even know.”

  “Well I know enough,” Tesa smiled.

  Jolie slid back off the barstool, and Tesa could see the skintight jeans and two inches of belly flesh exposed under her flowing, flowery top. Yeah, Bernie definitely would not like this outfit.

  “Well, tell her to call me, okay? If you hear from her?”

  Tesa looked at the clock on the wall. Bernie was already an hour and a half late. “Yeah… You know what? If she calls you first, tell her to call me , okay? I really thought she'd be here by now.”

  “Yeah, sure, okay,” Jolie mumbled as she headed toward the door. Tesa wasn't entirely sure that she even knew what she was saying. Her thoughts were obviously somewhere el
se already.

  As she turned back toward the kitchen, Tesa saw the flashing red LED on the side of the antique, cordless bar telephone. She picked up the receiver and punched in the voicemail access code after a brief pause where she tried to drag it out of her memory. After pressing seven for voicemail and three to hear the new messages, Bernie's creaky, smoke-crinkled voice came through the line.

  “Hey, Tess, it's Bernie. I think you're ready for a solo shift, don't you? Well, shit, I know I am ready for a night off. I'm thinking I’ll just hang with my girls tonight. Maybe movies… Or maybe one of them vamp clubs, ha ha, just kidding! Don't tell Jolie I said that. Okay, see you tomorrow. Bye!”

  Tesa groaned and dropped her head back to stare at the ceiling as she hung up the receiver.

  No, she didn't actually feel ready to be doing a solo shift, but what could go really wrong? She didn't know all the regulars and all their drinks, but usually people were pretty nice about that if she screwed something up. A free beer worked wonders to soothe people's hurt feelings. And she'd handled her share of bar fights and gross, drunk guys.

  I’ll be fine, she told herself. Besides, at least I’ll be able to change the music on this horrible jukebox. And she won't mind me giving Grant a free beer or two.

  With a shrug, she trudged over to the front door and pulled the power cord on the open sign. It lit up in garish neon letters, filling the tiny window. Turning around on her heel, she strode back to the jukebox and punched in a couple of the buttons at random. The mechanical arm whirred as it slid along the track and plucked a black vinyl disk from the rack.

  Smirking to herself while the arm dropped the record onto the turntable and the first scratchy notes began to spiral out of the dusty speakers, she turned around automatically when she heard the bell on the front door. A couple of regulars came in, deep in the middle of a conversation, and perched themselves on stools at the end of the bar.

  Tesa went back and poured them a couple of draft beers. A few more came in the front door and headed right for the pool table, and she dropped some bottles in a bucket with ice and brought it to the rail.