Free Suck It Up and Die by Brian Meehl Page B

that’s delivering oxygen-rich blood to the wound—works faster and more efficiently than the vein side of the healing—the side that disposes of the used “garbage blood” that has been depleted and needs to be moved away from the wound to make room for the next delivery of fresh blood. Because the vein side is slower and less efficient, blood builds up in the wound and can stall the healing process. So all that garbage blood becomes a speed bump to healing, or, as Prasad called it, “a blood bump.”
    The shot cut to a patient recovering from a hand reattachment as Prasad explained that the black squirmy things on the patient’s wrist were leeches. They had been placed there by medical technicians to suck up the garbage blood, to remove the speed bump to healing.
    A grinning Prasad explained, “These aren’t plain old leeches you’d find in a pond. They’re laboratory-raised ‘medical devices’ approved by the FDA, and they’re very expensive, which really adds up when a scalp reattachment requires hundreds of these little suckers.”
    As the show cut to a shot of a woman with a hundred leeches attached to her head, Morning recoiled. Not only at the sight, but also at the thought of where this was going.
    Prasad announced he was going to save Skid thousands of dollars in medical bills. “But,” he claimed, “I’m not going to get all creepy, fang up, and suck on Skid’s head. I’m gonna do it the
Shadow
way.”
    The TV cut to a doctor placing a toaster-sized black leech on Skid’s head. As the leech’s front end pivoted on Skid’s reattached scalp and sucked up small buildups of blood with its mouthparts, Skid pointed at the leech and drawled. “Check out my new pet. I call ’im Prasad.”
    While the TV cut to the other shadow contestants and Rachel applauding Prasad’s solution, Penny came out of her home office on the way to the kitchen.
    “Mom,” Portia said, “did you know about this?”
    “Of course, and I’m ready for the fallout. My lawyers are preparing for the lawsuit that’s bound to come from the company that breeds medical leeches.” She feigned a freaked-out CEO. “ ‘You’re putting leeches out of work!’ ” Heading into the kitchen, she added, “They’ll probably send a couple of leech goons to suck my kneecaps.”
    Portia laughed as Morning used the remote to kill the TV. “Don’t you wanna see who gets staked?” she asked.
    “After Becky-Dell Wallace gets ahold of this,” he said with a scowl, “we all do.”
    In the Ca-Ne Saloon, the vampire sat with his untouched beer and glared at the TV. The shot panned across the
Shadow
contestants as a voice-over pondered who would get staked. The vampire wanted to stake every limp-fanged vampire who had ever turned Leaguer and abandoned the old ways.
    His building rage was interrupted by the bartender. “Whoa, that’s the first time a Leaguer’s tapped human blood. On TV, anyway. What do you think of that?”
    The vampire grumbled under the blast of a TV ad. “I’m ashamed of my race.”
    “What was that?”
    The vampire answered with a flip of his hand. On the way to silencing the TV with a thrall, his fingers caught the rim of his glass, knocking it over. The beer shot across the bar like a foamy wave crashing on a beach.
    The bartender’s eyes darted to the spill, missing the flick of fingers that killed the TV. More distracted by the spill than the sudden silence, the bartender mopped the wet bar with a towel. “Don’t worry. I always say, ‘If the first hits the bar, the second’s on the house.’ ”
    Besides being incensed by
The Shadow
, the vampire was equally perturbed by the betrayals his body kept throwing him. First, he looked like someone else. Second, he did idiotic things like air-quote and make puns, and now he spilled a beer! He had never spilled
anything
, not counting blood, of course. There was only one explanation for his catlike reflexes being dulled, his mannerisms being affected, and