She smiled. “I’ll accept that. But, for the record, I was eighteen.”
“Really? I would have guessed thirty-five.”
“Bastard,” she said, still smiling.
They passed a few more exits before Mark went back to his original point. “Other vampires don’t go to their graves on their birthdays, do they?”
“Other vampires don’t put dirt into their beds, either.”
“That’s not fair! Ramon swore that I’d lose vitality if I didn’t sleep in the earth of my homeland.”
“I wonder how long you’d have kept doing it if I hadn’t smelled it on your pillow.”
“No telling,” he said. “He bugs me about it every time he sees me, too.”
“He tells everybody he sees about it.”
“Damn it! How long will it take me to live that down? Die that down. Whatever.”
“Until he plays the same trick on somebody else.”
“Yeah, like he’s going to find a sap as big as me anytime soon,” he said glumly, looking out into the darkness of the countryside as they approached Allenville. “What counts as the dirt of my homeland anyway? Does it have to be from the town where I died or the town I was born in? Or buried in, for that matter? Or just the county? The state? The country?”
Stella flipped on her signal and turned off of the highway. “Well, the dirt in Allenville would have done the job nicely. I was born here, died here, and buried here.”
“On your birthday. That sucks!” He resisted any number of potential vampire/sucking jokes, having been threatened with being locked inside a tanning booth the last time he made one.
“Are you kidding?” Stella said. “It was the best birthday ever!”
“I see you celebrated birthdays differently in your youth.”
She flashed him a look. “Look around the town.”
“Just let me know when we get there.”
“We are there.”
Mark looked out the window. The interstate had been better lit than the street they were driving down, which had just enough light for him to see the WELCOME TO ALLENVILLE sign put up by the local Jaycees. The existence of a few scattered houses was betrayed only by the flickering blue glow of TV screens. “Not exactly a happening place, is it?”
“Not unless you’re into chicken farming. Have you ever smelled a chicken farm?”
“Wait! There’re lights ahead.” They crested a hill, but he saw nothing more exciting than a McDonald’s, a gas station, and a Wal-Mart. “Never mind.”
“At least there’s a Wal-Mart now,” Stella said. “If we’d had something like that here when I was growing up, I’d have been in hog heaven.”
Mark realized that her usual sophisticated tones had been growing more and more countrified during the drive but decided it would be impolite to mention it, and perhaps dangerous as well, considering the strength and speed of a vampire Stella’s age.
“You weren’t happy here?” he asked as they left the oasis of neon behind.
“Mama used to say I started walking early, just so I could get away from here that much sooner.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I wanted to, God I wanted to, but I had nowhere to go. No money, no schooling, nobody to stay with. I saved every penny I could, but I’d just about given up on ever getting a chance to leave when I met Vilmos. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was my ticket out of here.”
“Just not quite in the way you expected.”
“Not hardly,” she said. “Anyway, I thought I was seducing him, and afterward, I poured out my heart to him. He offered me the Choice, and I accepted it.”
“And you never looked back?”
“Not once.”
Of course that begged the question of why they were there that evening, but he resisted asking until they reached an area with knee-high weeds that Stella insisted was the parking lot for the graveyard she’d abandoned. That was when he stepped into something he wouldn’t have wanted to go near with his former sense of smell, let alone with the vampire upgrade.
“Why are we here again?” he groused
“Because it’s my birthday,” she said.
“That’s a lousy reason.”
“How about because I’m your sire and I say so?”
“Why are you my sire, anyway?”
“Because I bit you, bled you to the point of death, and gave you my blood. Or are you asking why I decided to bring you over?”
“No, I know you brought me over because you couldn’t resist my manly wiles. I mean, why are you my sire? Shouldn’t you be my dam?”
“Excuse me?”
“A sire is a male parent. A female is a dam. And damned if you’re not female.”
“Vampires always say sire,” she said doubtfully.
“That’s because vampire society is male chauvinist, and has been since Dracula developed a taste for Turks on a stick. Let’s strike a blow for feminism! From now on, you can be my dam. My dam of the damned!”
As quickly as only a vampire could, Stella grabbed him by the neck and kissed him soundly. “That,” she said, when she was done ravaging his mouth, “is why I brought you over.” Then she went back to leading the way.
Though Mark had no false modesty about his manly wiles, which included jet-black hair, green eyes, and a swimmer’s build, he knew part of the reason for the enthusiastic smooching was Stella’s nervousness. He recognized it even though the only other time he’d seen it was when he’d first woken up after his death, and she was there to welcome him to vampirehood.
She’d been so afraid he wasn’t going to like it, that he’d be angry at her. It had taken some effort to prove to her her that he considered the Choice to be better than a lifetime pass to Disney World, and one of his other manly wiles was showing the strain by the time she was convinced.
They reached the entrance, an open iron arch with the name “Spivey” overhead.
“Spivey was your name?” Like most vampires her age, Stella had changed her name more than once.
“No, Spivey was Mama’s maiden name. I’m a Boyd. Mama didn’t get along with Daddy’s people, so she had me and him buried here.” She hesitated.
“Are you sure you want to go in?”
“It would be right silly to come this far and not go in,” she said.
“It’s silly to go to monster truck rallies, too, but that never stopped me.”
She smiled briefly, then stepped through the arch. Mark followed closely in case she needed him and because her night vision was considerably better than his own.
“Stella Boyd,” he said experimentally. “Not bad.”
“Try again. My old name was Estelle,” she said, putting the emphasis on the first syllable. “But nobody calls me that now. Ever.”
“Message received.”
They kept on for a few minutes, Stella pausing now and then to read the words on tombstones that were nothing but black blocks to Mark. She finally stopped by a wide monument, with room for two names. “Here’s Mama and Daddy. I didn’t find out about her dying until a long time afterward, but I figured she’d be buried here, with Daddy and me.”
Mark moved close enough to make out the inscriptions. “Caleb Boyd. Beloved Husband and Father. Oveda Boyd. Beloved Wife and Mother.”
“Mine is over by that tree.”
“What tree?”
“Sorry, by that tree stump. It was a tree when I was here last. But there’s my stone.”
“I’m guessing your epitaph includes ‘beloved.’”
“I don’t know. It hadn’t been put in when I left—there was just a big fieldstone marking the place. I imagine Mama had to save up to pay for a tombstone.”
Stella walked over to the grave, then went as still as only a vampire can.
Mark, thinking she must be feeling like Scrooge had when confronted by the price of his sins, put an arm around her, but she didn’t respond. He looked down at the stone, then blinked.