Suck It Up and Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

I can wait. Right now, the price for a ride downtown is super simple.”
    Morning gave her a dubious look. “Which is?”
    “You gotta hear my newest blood-obligate trivia.” Zoë was a collector of everything there was to know about critters that survived on blood alone.
Blood obligate
was the scientific term for “sanguivore.” Zoë was more than a vampire nut, she was a vampire wonk.
    Morning climbed into the pedicab’s rickshaw seat. “Okay, that’s better than having to watch your latest blood-obligate impression and guessing what creature you are.”
    “Go ahead, make fun.” Zoë stood on her pedals and got the pedicab moving. “But when I put my bloodsucker impressions on YouTube and they go viral, I’m gonna be as famous as you.”
    “Right,” Morning scoffed, “then you’ll have to always wear a hat and sunglasses and shave your head.”
    “Are you kidding? I’d do fame the way you’re supposed to do fame. I’d flaunt it!”
    As Zoë caught the green wave of lights going down Lexington Avenue, Morning steered the conversation. “Okay, I’m ready to pay my fare. What’s your new blood trivia?”
    She turned and shot him an excited look, like she was about to reveal the secret of time travel. “Remember when I was telling you how most bloodsuckers sink more than fangs? That they also inject their victims with a painkilling anesthetic so the victim doesn’t feel the bite, and an anticoagulant that prevents the blood from clotting?”
    Morning gave her a behind-the-back eye roll. “Who could forget?”
    “Well, I just read about another chemical that bloodsuckers inject into their victims. A vasodilator.”
    “A vaso-what?”
    “Dilator. It means ‘to widen.’ A vasodilator blows open a victim’s veins so they go from sippy cup to super Slurpee. Is that cool, or what?”
    “Yeah, you’ve just given me a new line next time you ask me to turn you.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t do vasodilation.”
    Zoë laughed. “Yeah, well, check this vasodilation out.” She pedaled hard to make another green light.
    As the pedicab gained speed Morning watched Zoë’s boyish butt piston up and down. He realized that the day Zoë finally grew some hips and boobs, her Fanpire Tour business would have to change modes of transportation; she’d get too many customers more interested in Zoë’s sights than vampire sights.

7

Rachel Capilarus
    With Zoë pedaling hard, they covered twenty blocks before a red light made her hit the brakes. They stopped next to a sprawling studio complex. The studio’s huge billboard bragged HOME OF AMERICA’S #1 SHOW: THE SHADOW , and displayed a picture of the show’s beautiful host, Rachel Capilarus. Her model-thin arms were thrown wide, and her billion-dollar smile seemed to shout, “C’mon, world! Hug me like a shadow!”
    Zoë checked out the billboard and turned back to Morning. “Every guy in the world must look at her and totally vasodilate, right?” As Morning chuckled, Zoë’s face set in her least used expression: serious. “Do you ever think you picked the wrong girl?”
    She was referring to Rachel Capilarus, the vampire who had graduated in the same class as Morning from Leaguer Academy, the school where vampires learned to overcome their dark desires and mothball their bloodlusting ways.True, he’d once had a big crush on Rachel, but now the only thing he liked about her was that she was eclipsing his pin spot of fame with the floodlight of her hit TV show.
    He answered Zoë, knowing whatever he said would get back to Portia. “No regrets; I picked the right girl.” He wasn’t lying. He looked up at the towering picture of Rachel and answered her come-to-me gesture with a frown. Yeah, she was still eye candy, but the wrapper had changed.
    Back at the Academy, Rachel had been a stunning warrior princess with raven-black hair who even the most hunky prince was intimidated by. After American Out Day she had done an extreme makeover. She changed her