Gypsy Blood by Steve Vernon Read Free Book Online Page A

eyelids, softly, just once. She shrugged. She had a nice shrug. Her shoulders were smooth and elegant. He wanted to kiss those too.
    What was he doing? This wasn’t his idea.
    Whose idea was it, then, if it wasn’t yours? You killed a gaijo. You killed a man over a woman. Do you think you’re unique? Deal with it boy, and move on.
    Carnival swatted at a greedy moonlighting blow fly.
    “I don’t know. There was this voice. This hiss in my ears.”
    Maybe your brains are leaking.
    “Shut up, Poppa.”
    Do you know how crazy you sound? Talking about voices hissing in your ears? Standing over a dead body and arguing with a vampire?
    “SHUT UP, POPPA!”
    Listen to him. You think he would never better. Even a crazy man knows better than to argue with the dead.
    Maya looked at him. “Are you done arguing with the air? Or your Poppa? Grab hold of yourself. We’ve got a body to move.”
    She was right. Poppa was right. No one had forced Carnival to kill. Maya bent and took the dead man by his shoulders. Carnival looked up in astonishment.
    “I thought you weren’t going to help.”
    “Now I am. Let’s throw him in a dumpster. There’s a quiet one just around the corner.”
    “I thought they were all quiet.”
    She didn’t answer. He started dragging again. Maya walked softly behind.
    “I thought you were going to help?”
    “I changed my mind.”
    Ha. Listen to her. A woman changes her mind like a wind changing direction. There is no reason, there is no rhyme.
    “Tell your Poppa to shut up. Being dead isn’t an excuse for sexism.”
    Carnival looked at her. He still couldn’t get used to someone else hearing what his Poppa was saying.
    “Shut up, Poppa,” Carnival said.
    Poppa made a rude whip sound. The sound tickled. Carnival kept dragging. It was hard work, getting harder. The night was cold but he’d worked up a sweat that made for a slippery grip.
    “I’ve got a bad back, you know,” he warned her.
    It was true. He’d thrown his back out loading Poppa’s truck when he was seventeen. He never found it since. The truth was he had never bothered looking.
    “It looks like a good one to me,” she said. “Wide and strong. Do you work out?”
    Carnival puffed up his chest like a pom-pom struck quarterback.
    Look at the rooster strut. Don’t you know she’s conning you?
    Carnival knew. He just didn’t care. Compliments were hard to find.
    “It’s just a little further,” she said.
    Little, like maybe a hundred miles. She is leading you by your seed sacks up a Calvary of your own creation.
    Carnival kept dragging. It seemed funny how the body didn’t seem to be cool. It was just as warm as ever, like it was ready to sit up.
    “This thing isn’t going to come back, is it? I don’t want any back-from-the-dead john coming after my blood.”
    “Don’t worry. He isn’t coming back.”
    She sounded certain but Carnival wasn’t sure.
    “I thought when you bit someone it made him a vampire.”
    And garlic will kill them. Why don’t you burp on her and see?
    “You watch too many movies,” Maya said. “Vampirism isn’t a virus. You don’t catch it like the cold.”
    "So how do you get it?"
    "Heredity. You get it through your blood. Through your roots."
    That was news to Carnival. He wasn’t certain how much truth lay hidden beneath her words. You don’t grow to be three centuries old without telling a lie or two. He kept dragging. The body stayed warm. Maya kept walking, as if dragging a body through a darkened street wasn’t anything resembling unusual. Anger took over. It happened fast when his back pained him.
    “Look, damn it,” he said, with a stomp of his foot.
    Oh look, he’s going to dance.
    Carnival ignored Poppa. His anger was for Maya.
      “I killed this guy for you. I cut his throat.”
    Keep dancing. A little tantrum polka is good for the circulation. It will warm you up.
    “I killed for you,” he repeated.
    Maya stared at Carnival like he was talking Swahili.
    “Doesn’t