BITES & BLOOD Or Why Do Vampires Suck?
Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker
Let’s face it: Vampires are the mosquitos of the supernatural world. They lurk in dark places and move with unnatural stealth, and when you least expect it, they bite. Blood-sucking mythical creatures show up in stories from around the world, from the ancient Babylonian goddess Lamashtu, who consumed the blood and flesh of children, to Indian tales of shapeshifting rakshasas and half-bat, half-human vetala. So why do vampires drink blood? Simply put, blood is life. It is essential to the living … and to the dead. There’s a reason it’s called a “blood pact.” In the mundane world and the magical one, blood is everything. In Rebecca’s story, Lukas has to take part in an extreme blood ritual in order to become one of the Blood River Boys. The process involves choice but also violent sacrifice. In order to become a vampire, Lukas has to take something that doesn’t belong to him.
What would you sacrifice in order to live forever?
SENIOR YEAR SUCKS
Julie Murphy
Sweetwater, Texas, is best known for its energy-saving windmills along the I-20 corridor between Fort Worth and Odessa and for the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, which is an entire event dedicated to measuring, weighing, milking, decapitating, and skinning snakes. We even have a Miss Snake Charmer Pageant, where each contestant does all the normal pageant things as well as decapitates a snake. Aunt Gemma says the roundup is unnecessarily brutal, but Mama says brutality is the only way to survive a place like Sweetwater. Our little town is more than meets the eye.
Besides rattlesnakes, the thing we should be most well-known for is the thing you’ll never know us for, and there’s one simple reason: the women of my family are really freaking great at our jobs. We’re basically like the people who save the world when the world doesn’t even know it’s in need of saving. Nuclear warfare. Assassinations. Hostile aliens from space. Someone out there is working in a fortified basement to save the world while the rest of us live in blissful ignorance, tapping away on our cellular devices.
The thing my family is so good at extinguishing that the great people of Sweetwater don’t even know they exist? Immortals. Leeches. Children of the night. Vampires.
Every year at the roundup, we get a handful of protestors shouting about animal abuse and rattlesnake extinction. That’s kind of a bummer if you think about it. Rattlesnakes are little beasties, sure, but it’s not like they’re crawling our streets by night, hunting for human prey, like some vampires I’ve met. Vampire extinction, however? Well, just like the title of Mama’s favorite song says, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” One vamp at a time.
My name is Jolene Crandall, and I’m the newest vampire slayer in Sweetwater, Texas. At the age of thirteen, I swore to protect this crusty little town with my life. Unless vampires miraculously go extinct. I might have given the rest of my life to the cause, but nothing in my pledge said I couldn’t join the cheerleading team. Watch out, Buffy.
“Ready? Okay!” I shout into my megaphone. “Hey! Hey! Mustangs! Spirit! Spirit! Spirit! Let’s hear it!”
Maybe it makes me a cliché, but there are few things I love more than cheering my ass off on a crisp November night beneath a starry Texas sky in some random town where this night, this moment is the most important thing to happen all week. The short, flippy skirts, crunching leaves beneath our feet, and nonstop movement to fend off the chill. It’s a frenetic energy I wish I could bottle as a reminder on all the days when the only thing I want is to leave this place and this life. Mama always says to truly love something, you gotta hate it a little bit too.
Behind me, my team falls into formation, and I leave my megaphone with my pom-poms as I backpedal to take my spot at the base of the pyramid. “Hey! Hey!” I shout again, the crowd joining in and the band sounding off as well.
I stand in a lunge as Karily, a petite white girl, steps onto my thick, dimpled thighs, one cheerleader after the other hoisting her higher and higher.
I’m what some people call meaty or fat. My body isn’t trim and slender like most people would expect of a slayer. I’m a stout white girl with round hips and thighs and little to no chest to speak of. I get my ass from Daddy and he gets his ass from his mama. I’m the kind of limber that makes a great pyramid base, and my roundhouse kick packs some serious heat. Turns out vampire slayers don’t need to be fat or skinny or any particular thing at all as long as they kick ass.
My squad repeats the cheer over and over again until Karily pops up into a toe touch and lands in a cradle. “Goooooo Mustangs!” we shout.
“And it looks like that’s the game, y’all,” says the announcer over the loudspeakers. “Another win for the Bulldogs at home.”
The whole crowd packed into the visitors’ stands in front of us begins to groan.
Beside me, Peach lets out a guttural sigh. “How is it that hard?” she yells at the football team. “How? We’re out here literally attempting death-defying midair stunts and y’all’s one job is to run a ball across a field. That’s it!”
Peach is my best friend—a short Korean girl with bleached-blond hair and a razor-sharp attitude. Last year she went to the roundup dressed as a bloodied snake and shouted about animal cruelty to anyone who would listen until the sheriff shooed her off the grounds. She’s the only one who knows my family is different. Just not how. I loop my arm over her shoulder. “At least we’re still the superior species on campus.”
She laughs. “Uh, yeah. No contest!”
Landry crosses his arms over the Mustang logo emblazoned across his red-and-white cheerleading uniform. “Uh, yeah. I like to think of the Sweetwater football team as our sideshow. Everyone knows these pom-poms are the real crowd-pleaser.” He smacks each of his butt cheeks in case there is any question which pom-poms he’s referring to.
Wade Thomas, a barrel-chested white guy, turns around from the football team’s bench. “You know we can hear you, right?” he says.
“Good,” says Peach. “All y’all need is a little more real talk and a little less of people blowing sunshine up your asses.”
Wade flexes his bicep and winks. “You kiss your mother with that mouth, Peach?”
“Anyone but you,” she pipes back.
The score on the board reads VISITOR: 11 HOME: 48. The only thing more depressing than that is watching Aunt Gemma try to make dinner out of whatever random leftovers we’ve accumulated from whatever takeout we’ve had throughout the week.
“That was a close one, boys!” someone yells from the crowd.
I roll my eyes. A close one? Why is everyone so concerned with giving boys like Wade gold stars for doing the bare minimum? You wanna know what was a real close one? That drifter vamp who almost made Wade her dinner last week when he was pulling a solo shift at his dad’s gas station. Big, strong Wade, who’s been riding the bench for the last two weeks but still has an ego the size of a tractor? Well, he had no idea how close he came to being just another sack of blood.
It didn’t matter that I saved Wade, though, because I didn’t kill the drifter and then three days later Aunt Gemma found three truck drivers in a ditch on the outskirts of town with their throats ripped out.