Peeps

Morgan and Angela were seducing these men, I realized, just as Morgan had seduced me; they were spreading the strain.

Did they know what they were doing?

The cat licked my nose. I suppressed a curse and tried to give the creature a shove down the stairs. It just rubbed its head against my fingers, demanding to be scratched.

Giving up, I began to stroke its scalp, sniffing its dander. Just like the cat beneath Lace’s building, it had no particular smell. But I watched its eyes, until they glimmered in the light from below. Bloodred.

I lay there, unable to move, still nervously petting the peep cat as Angela and Morgan flirted and joked and drank, readying the unknowing men to be infected. Or eaten? Were they pretty enough? The cat purred beneath my fingers, unconcerned.

How many more peep cats were out there? And how had this all happened here in Brooklyn, right under the nose of the Night Watch?

After an interminable time, the peep cat stretched and padded the rest of the way downstairs. I started to think about slinking back up to the servants’ kitchen and escaping. But as the cat crossed the floor toward Morgan, my heart rose into my throat.

It jumped into her lap, and she began to stroke its head.

No, I mouthed silently.

A troubled look crossed Morgan’s face. She fell silent, bringing her hand up and sniffing it. A look of recognition crossed her face.

She peered at the stairs, and I saw her eyes find me through the banister.

“Cal?” she called. “Is that you?”

We carriers never forget a scent.

I scrambled to get upright, dizzy from the blood gathered in my head.

“Cal from Texas?” Morgan had crossed to the bottom of the stairs, her drink still in her hand.

“There’s someone up there?” one of the men asked, rising to his feet.

As I stumbled backward up the stairs, Angela Dreyfus joined Morgan at the bottom. My knockout injector only carried one load, and these women weren’t wild-eyed peeps; they were not only as strong and fast as me, they were as smart.

“Wait a second, Cal,” Morgan said. She put one foot on the bottom step.

I turned and bolted up the stairs, racing through the kitchen and the bedroom. Footsteps followed, floorboards creaking indignantly, the old house exploding with the sounds of a chase.

Bursting out onto the balcony I leaped up and grabbed the edge of the next roof, pulling myself over and snatching up my boots. Still in my socks, I took the one-story drop that followed, sending a stu

Springing to my feet, I jumped across the eight-foot alleyway and scrambled up onto the roof of the brownstone. I paused for a moment, looking back at Ryder House.

Morgan stood on the balcony, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Cal,” she called, her voice not too loud—perfectly pitched for my peep hearing. “You don’t know what’s going on.”

“Damn right I don’t!” I said.

“Wait there.” She slipped off her high-heeled shoes.

A door slammed somewhere below me, and I took a step back toward the front edge of the brownstone, glancing over my shoulder. A flicker of movement on the street caught my eye. Angela Dreyfus was moving through the shadows, a squad of small, black forms slinking along beside her.

They had me surrounded.

“Crap,” I said, and ran. I leaped to the next building and raced across it, meeting a dead end: an alley fifteen feet across. If I didn’t make the jump, I’d be sliding down a windowless brick wall to the asphalt, four stories below.

A fire escape snaked down the back of the building, where a high fence surrounded a small yard. I pounded down the metal stairs, taking each flight with two quick jumps, my thudding footsteps making the whole fire escape ring. Once on the ground I scrambled across the grass and over the fence into another yard.

I kept moving, jumping fences, stumbling over stored bicycles and tarp-covered barbecue sets. At the opposite corner from Ryder House, a narrow alley full of garbage bags led out to the street—only a ten-foot-high iron fence and a spiral of razor wire between me and freedom.

I tossed my jacket over the wire, then climbed the wet plastic bags, sending rats scurrying in all directions. The mountain of garbage swaying beneath me, I jumped, rolling over the fence, feeling the razor wire compress like giant springs through the jacket.

Then the street rushed up to meet me like an asphalt fist.

Bruised and gasping for breath, I rolled over, listening for the sounds of Morgan following me. There was nothing except the footsteps of the still-scattering rats. I sca

A single cat was watching me, however, peering out from underneath a parked car. Its eyes flashed red.

Scrambling to my feet, I tried to pull my jacket off the razor wire, but it stayed caught. Abandoning it, I started limping hurriedly in the opposite direction from Ryder House, the wind cutting through my T-shirt, my right elbow bleeding from the fall.

One block later, a cab stopped for my raised hand and I jumped in, shivering like a wet dog.

An epidemic was loose in Brooklyn.

My apartment was dark. I flipped the light switch but nothing happened.

I stood there shivering for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the gloom.

“Hello?” I called.

In the glow of the DVD-player clock, I saw a human form sitting at the kitchen table. The smell of jasmine was in the air.

“Lace? Why are the lights—?”

Something zoomed through the air at me.

My hands shot up and caught the missile, plastic and soft. I looked at it, dumbfounded—my spatula, generally used for flipping pancakes.

“Um, Lace? What are you doing?”

“You can see in the dark,” she said.

“I… oh.”

She hissed out a breath. “You dumb-ass. Did you think I’d forgotten about when you swung me across to Freddie’s balcony?”

“Well—”

“Or that I didn’t notice when you sniffed that thing on my wall? Or that you eat nothing but meat?” “I had some bread tonight.”

“Or that I wouldn’t bother to follow you for half a block, and watch you climb up a fucking building?”

Her voice cracked at the last word, and I smelled her anger in the room. Even Cornelius had been quieted by its force.

“We had a deal, Cal. You weren’t supposed to lie to me.”

“I didn’t lie,” I said firmly.

“That is such crap!” she shouted. “You’re a carrier, and you didn’t even tell me there was such a thing until tonight!”

“But—”

“And what did you say to me? ‘A friend of mine slept with Morgan.’ I can’t believe I didn’t see through that. A friend, my ass. You got it from her, didn’t you?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I did. But I never lied to you. I just didn’t bring it up.”

“Listen, Cal, there are certain things you’re supposed to mention without being asked. Being infected with vampirism is one.”

“No, Lace,” I said. “It’s one of those things I have to hide every day of my life. From everyone.”

She was silent for a moment, and we sat in the darkness, glaring at each other.

“When were you going to tell me?” she finally asked.

“Never,” I said. “Don’t you get it? Having this disease means never telling anyone.”

“But what if…” she started, then shook her head slowly, her voice dropping to a whisper. “What if you want to sleep with someone, Cal? You’d have to tell them.”

“I can’t sleep with anyone,” I said.

“Jesus, Cal, even people with HIV have sex. They just wear a condom.”

My heart was pounding as I repeated the bleak dogma of Peeps 101. “The parasite’s spores are viable even in saliva, and they’re small enough to penetrate latex. Any kind of sex is dangerous, Lace.”