Blood and Chocolate

Kelly stood up. "We're going to the bathroom." All the meat-girls followed her obediently; she was head bitch.

"Coming?" Bingo called over her shoulder.

Vivian shook her head. I piss when I please, she thought.

As Aiden bantered with his friends, Vivian teased herself with his closeness. He felt good, he smelled sexy, she didn't know why she'd worried so much before. If she bit him it would be a bite he'd enjoy. Her breast lightly touched his arm and her breath skipped faster. When would he kiss her? Would she like it? She had only kissed her own kind. Could it compare?

Right after the girls filed back from the bathroom a cheer went up from the crowd and Vivian automatically looked at the stage. Six figures in motley colors pranced out, grabbing instruments and mikes. The fuzzy loudspeakers cut off midphrase and in seconds the air was laced with live music.

The tunes were light, jangly, and airy, full of love and dreams, totally different from the thumping, grinding, wrenching music the Five played loud  -  music to rip out guts by, Vivian called it, though she couldn't deny that it usually gave her a fierce delight. But this music was good, too. There was a sweet yearning in it. She let the music take her, so she could be one with something for a while, instead of an outsider looking in.

The sun was warm on her back and she sucked the warmth up like life. Aiden's hand slid across her neck. She turned to him and met his eyes.

"What red lips you have," he said in her ear.

Did she dare say it? "All the better to kiss you with, my dear," she replied.

And then their lips met.

He was gentle. She hadn't expected that. Kisses to her were a tight clutch, teeth, and tongue. His torturing hands slid down her sides and lightly caressed her back. When he flicked her lip with his tongue, she parted her mouth to invite him in. Instead, he pulled away and sighed. She was intrigued.

His eyes were shy beneath his dark lashes, and his lips curved with delight and desire - desire he wouldn't force on her. Then the crowd was on its feet, moving to the swelling music she had forgotten about, and they had to rise and be part of the world.

She looked around her at the excited faces. They were different. He was different. She realized she didn't know their rules.

Bingo danced on her seat in a swirl of shirt, the gigglers danced in the aisle, and the crowd around bobbed and waved their arms. When Aiden pulled Vivian close to sway alongside him she met his embrace, but how close was she allowed? She didn't want to scare him away but she didn't like to wait. Maybe this was all wrong.

This is the last time, she thought. No more dates. I can't go through this agony.

The crowd was cheering and his fingers tipped her chin. His soft lips were on hers once more, his tongue more adventurous, but his hands still tame. It's a game, she thought, a game, of pretend we don't want sex so badly. Maybe he thought wanting wasn't polite.

His eyes were closed. He enjoyed her taste. His nostrils flared with the smell of her. That was good. But as her eyes began to close, too, she saw familiar figures on the hill above - the Five.

A busty girl was draped around Rafe's neck, his hand inserted halfway down the back of her shorts. Three other teased-hair dolls in jeans and skimpy tops completed their entourage. This wasn't their music  -  far from it; they were spying on her.

Vivian took a lesson from Pudgy Boy and made an unmistakable gesture in their direction, behind Aiden's back. Then her fingers curled in Aiden's hair. I will teach you to be less polite, she thought.

Chapter 6

6

That week Vivian couldn't tell if the singing in her blood was for Aiden or for the ripening Midsummer Moon. Each night she ran for joy, but It's not love, she argued to herself at breakfast as she traced Aiden's face in her mind. I'm only having fun.

She came to school early so she would have more time with him, and they stole kisses in the hallway between classes. She liked to watch the color rise on the cheeks of the young men who passed, and see the envy on the faces of the unkissed girls. I am someone now, she thought.

Aiden had a job after school in a video store so she couldn't hang out with him then, but he called her in the evenings, waking her from her pre-run nap, and it turned out they had a lot to talk about. He liked to play "what if." He'd say, "What if a mysterious illness wiped out everyone on Earth but us, what would we do?" and they'd make up all sorts of possibilities.

Vivian was reluctant to answer his questions about her family at first, but before long she revealed that her father had died in a fire, and that she was always fighting with her mother, although she didn't tell him what those fights were about. He never made fun of anything she cared about, and he was always interested in what she had to say. What a relief to have someone to listen to her, even if she could only talk about half her life.

Kelly stopped showing up in the quad at lunch, and she took the gigglers with her wherever it was she went. Smart choice, girl, Vivian thought. 'Cus one wrong move and I'll be on you. The thought crossed her mind that maybe now she understood why Esmé fought Astrid. She shrugged that off fast. Esmé had no right to fight for Gabriel; he was too young for her.

"There's an anti-prom party at Bingo's house Saturday," Aiden said one day. "Her parents are away. It'll be wild."

"I like wild," Vivian said, nuzzling his ear. Saturday maybe she'd make him hers for sure.

But on Thursday night when she flung up her bedroom window and looked at the sky, she realized that the moon would be full on Saturday. There was no way she could go to that party with Aiden. The hair prickled roughly on her arms. She climbed hastily onto the porch roof outside her window, leaped to the yard, and the change was upon her almost before she reached the cover of the riverbank weeds.

The nearer to full moon, the quicker the change, the less control; and the night Earth's sister loomed round and whole there was no choice - a loup-garou must change no matter what. Saturday, Vivian thought with dismay as she shuddered to all fours. But then the perfume of the night wiped away her thoughts.