1 packet per week??? = ~2 oz per day? Or 8 oz twice a week?
Less with more animal blood??
Regular, consistent dose instead of waiting—helps manage sensory overload, distraction by peoples’ pulses. Needs more experimenting.
Maybe I can do 1 oz per day? Worried about running out, stealing more. This isn’t sustainable.Shit.
FourThree pint bags left
The address, it turned out, was for a trendy-looking café in Boston, about an hour on the university shuttle into the city and then twenty minutes on the T away. It was, if nothing else, comforting that it was public. He couldn’t be murdered in public, right? But he was the genius going to meet a group of unknown people who might or might not be watching him, far away from anyone who knew what was going on, so maybe he should be getting a second opinion.
Brennan had had an ongoing mental play-by-play of every terrible outcome that could come about. Popular ideas were vampire hunters poised with stakes and flaming pitchforks, or comically Dracula-like vampire clans come to kidnap him in their quest to desecrate humanity. And Sunny, that had to be a code name, right?
A tentative part of him wondered if, just maybe, he might meet a potential ally. A lead. A friend. Because while he was adapting, living off of stolen blood wasn’t sustainable.
This was how his days were going:
Each morning he microwaved a shot glass’s worth of frozen blood and took it like medicine, and so far, it was effective in keeping his thirstin check. Notably, the buzz of caffeine quieted the thirst, too, so he’d embraced his inner New Englander and started toting around a large iced coffee from Dunkin. And while he didn’t burn in the sunlight, he squinted in the light like never before and wore sunglasses far more often than he used to. He went to classes and tried to keep his mind and senses from wandering while he tried to absorb a fraction of the material.
He fended off calls from his mom. She continued to offer her worries and concerns in between rattling on about her own job and life, and she continued to tell him to use the credit card, as if her giving him money now made up for being a broke workaholic throughout his childhood. She reminded him, as she had all summer, that he could take a semester off “if things got a bit much.”
Well, Mom,he didn’t say,everything has officially gotten a bit much.
He readTwilight.
It was… exactly what he expected. Not great in terms of literary value or cheap thrills, nothing illuminating in terms of vampire research, but informative about the vampire craze he’d missed out on as a kid.
He went to the library, an escape from a constantly garlic-scented apartment. He went at night, when the quiet let him focus. He’d ended up deep down a rabbit hole of local secret societies, trying to figure out who might know about him. Mostly it seemed like conspiracies, but, hey, no stone unturned.
Cole had run into him in the stacks again, and Brennan gave his review ofTwilightthus far.
“They don’t talk a lot,” Brennan said, “they just kind of”—he waved a hand in the distance between them—“angst at each other. It’s not really romantic.”
“Right!” Cole said, lighting up. “He’s kind of creepy. Like, first relationships suck but. Talk about ignoring red flags.”
Mostly, though, Brennan waited.
The meeting approached. Saturday, eleven in the morning. It didn’t seem like a good place to launch a vampire-hunting ambush. But still, Brennan needed to be prepared for anything.
BRENNAN’S JOURNAL
Weaknesses
Garlic—yes, obviously, established.
Silver—burns like a motherfucker. Also, seems like the only way to break skin.
Side note, I bleed, somehow. It’s gross, black, thick, and oozy and doesn’t look like blood. Vampire blood?? Research later.
Wooden stake—would probably kill anyone? But might be part of making vamps “stay” dead? Not something I’m equipped to experiment with right now.
Fire—Fire hurts. In related news, water is wet.
Holy water—TBD, ordered some on the internet.
Rushing water / rivers—nothing, at least, not the little creek in the woods nearby. Maybe bigger bodies of water are bad?
Maybe I should go to the meeting equipped with a bowl of Tony’s marinara. It would do the job, worst-case scenario.
