Prologue
CALL me Vlad until I can think of something more righteous. And cut me some slack, okay? I was just Turned like a biscuit ago, and I haven’t had a lot of time for things like pondering the ultimate nom de noir. If that makes me sound gay, it’s probably because my mother made me learn French, or more probably because I am gay. If you’re a hater, then you can just fuck off forever. Right now would be a good time.
So I’m a little touchy about the whole homo thing, but you tell me. Why the hell can’t people just mind their own damned business? What I do in bed is no one’s affair but mine and my lover’s. If I had a lover anyway. Looking for one is what got me into this sitch.
Before you ask, I can’t go by my birth name, which is Cyrus Lloyd Gae. Seriously. I’m not making it up. You can call and ask my mom, who’s a very weird white woman from a very weird family in deepest, reddest Florida. When she was eighteen, she married a Korean tourist—with one of the least common surnames in a country where they only have like five to share among the entire population—who was dying to live anywhere else. The divorce was final before I was delivered. Dad went to work as a chef at Disney World and paid child support, but passive-aggressively resisted ever seeing me or Mom. Maybe his rejection is what made me gay. Who knows? It is what it is, and I’m cool with it. Anyone who isn’t can.... Shit! Almost started another rant.
I don’t want you to think I do nothing but bitch all the time. Even though you’re an imaginary audience listening to the talk radio show of my life, my death, and my undeath. No, wait; that’s not right. You weren’t there for my death—my death at the hands of a jackhole that doesn’t deserve the name “vampire.” There was nothing darkly romantic about it, believe me.
All right, so I did swoon, but that was from shock and blood loss. Here, let me tell you how it went down.
Basically, this super-hot guy picked me up at Don Tay’s Inferno, owned by gay ex-Miami Dolphins fullback Donovar Tay. Super-hot guy goes with me into the alley out back—the default hookup spot for the club—but instead of the mutual hand job I’m looking forward to, he slams me against the wall and tears my throat open. After he drinks his fill, he does kiss me, but it was a definite afterthought, bet on it. I taste blood in my mouth as he drops me behind a dumpster. I’m so weak I can’t move. Then the world starts pulsing with my heartbeat, blinking in and out, slower and slower. Everything grows a misty halo that gets brighter and bigger until there’s nothing but white. And then nothing at all.
But then I wake up. My head is still wedged between metal and brick, and the vile reek of dumpster-water is up my nose. My neck has the mother of all kinks in it and hurts like blue hell no matter which way I turn it.
Then I remembered… I remembered my date du heure attacking me, and I knew why I felt so strange. There’s no other explanation. Super-hot guy was a real vampire, and I’m now a creature of the night, as I’d often fantasized. I just wish it had been a little more like my fantasies, you know?
In my daydream of a vampire lover, he wears a long coat with a big fur collar over a dark suit tailored just for his tall, lean-muscled body. He sweeps into the club, puts his arm around me, and steers me away from my flabbergasted friends—who are paralyzed by envy for several minutes before they even think about trying to get a phone picture, and failing that, Tweet everyone they know, so I’m a Facebook legend inside an hour.
We slide into his limo that has windows tinted as dark as a Goth’s outlook on life. He leans over me, putting his gorgeous face right up in mine, taking a long smell of me. After telling me that my scent is intoxicating, he kisses me, whether I want to be kissed or not. I want, of course, and offer my neck to him. Touched by my gift, he bites me, and I get off like six times while he sucks my blood. Then he takes me away to be his hellish studmuffin, and we travel around the world in a glamorous jet wearing really cool clothes and being really snarky to mortals who don’t know their place before stealing their boyfriends for a hot suck and fuck. Need I point out that the word suck is a double entendre here? Didn’t think so.
So, you can easily see the disparity between my fantasy and the reality. It totally pissed me off. It still does. I mean, would it have killed him to use a little finesse? Or at least leave me somewhere that didn’t have the aforementioned puke-inducing dumpster-water stench? What the eff? Am I a piece of squirty-gum to be spit out when the flavor’s gone? Oh, hell no.
If it’s the last thing I do—and I assume I have plenty of time now—I’m going to find this butt-munch and thank him in my own unique way.
Chapter One
I HAVEN’T talked to you since I declared vendetta last night, so here’s what happened between then and now, plus ou moins.
I go back into the Inferno and look around, but I don’t see Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dickless, who I know only as Troy. I see several guys in black leather jackets, but none of them are as hot as the guy I went into the alley with. None of them have red hair so dark it looks maroon. Maybe he dyes it, but I have a pretty good eye for that kind of thing, and it looked natural to me. This is really starting to sound like the beginning of a Harlequin romance. You know the kind where the heroine is poor but honest and deceptively beautiful. Her job has unexpectedly taken her to an exotic land where she meets the hero, a square-shouldered, dedicated-doctor type with wavy auburn hair and slate-colored eyes like storm clouds over the ocean. Really lame, right? But Troy’s eyes really are slate-colored—kind of like blueberries, inky blue with a foggy surface. I’ve never seen anyone who looks like him in the Inferno before—probably because the Inferno is where the geekier Goths hang. The coke-whore staff isn’t exactly strict when it comes to proper ID, so you get a lot of underage kids in there vogueing for each other, taking about a zillion pix with their candy-flake Droids and sending them to dweebs who are even bigger losers for not getting in the door.
I skirt a school of Lolitas and Lolitos near the unisex bathrooms, witchy marionette girls and sulking naughty schoolboys. They give me the once-over through the sneeze guards of their bangs, and I see something that rocks me, yes, me, the most blasé guy on my shift at Metro Media. The little cynics are impressed, which hasn’t happened in like ever. Figuring I’m misreading their Kabuki faces, I go into the bathrooms and look around.
When I come out, I hear something I haven’t heard since like high school, before I crawled from the sucking primordial ooze of public education. Just to clarify, I was home-schooled until I was fifteen and begged my mom to let me go to public school. Another fantasy that ended badly, but I digress….
“SyFy,” yells some chick who sounds like she just inhaled an entire party balloon of helium.
The underage clotheshorses are bounced aside by a pair of boobs that would make the Goodyear blimp weep with envy at their size, buoyancy, and excellent torpedo shape. I recognize these land leviathans, though they were somewhat smaller the last time I saw them. What are the odds? The one time I don’t want to be recognized and it’s turning into a class reunion up in here. Such is what passes for my luck.
“Vinnie!” I greet the owner of the large-breed sweater puppies.
Her name’s Lavinia Testardo. Yeah, I know. Sucky name for a kid to be stuck with. She got teased a lot at recess, but she’s a counter-puncher and schoolyard bullies tire quickly. When the prey doesn’t dissolve into mucus and salt water right away, they tend to lose interest—not always, but usually. Me and Vinnie hung out almost exclusively my senior year, skipping class, swiping makeup from Walgreens drug store, and having face parties. She was not only cool with my gayness, she thought it rocked balls. Which I guess it does. Literally.
“Where you been, SyFy?” Vinnie says as she looks me up and down. “Whoa! You are so rockin’ that look. Have you been living in a basement? That’s a beyond awesome moon-tan.”
Huh? Understand, I’ve always wanted to be as pale as new-fallen snow on a gravestone, but due to my Asian genes, I have skin as smooth as honey and roughly the same color. I want to run back into the bathroom and look in the mirror, but then I remember. I’m a vampire. No reflection. Shit!
“Uh, thanks,” I respond a bit lamely because of my sudden, crushingly disappointing revelation. “I love your Rainbow Brite vibe.”
Vinnie preens a little, fluffing her brassy ringlets and flipping a hip so I get a glimpse of the petticoats under her short blue-velvet dress. “When I found these rainbow socks at the thrift store, I was inspired. They have toes,” she says, as though informing me she’s won the lottery.
I nod. “Cool,” I say. I’ve fallen into a pit of lameness, and I can’t get up. What’s next? A comment on the nice weather we’re having?
“You look amazing,” Vinnie says, getting my attention back. “You’re as white as your shirt.” Her eyes go down to my tuxedo shirt. “Is that blood?”
“Not real blood. It’s a sort of a, you know, fashion statement kind of thing.”
“Bullshit.” Vinnie hustles me back into the hall where the light’s brighter. “That’s blood,” she says triumphantly. “Real blood starts to turn brown once it’s not in your veins anymore.”
“And you’re an expert because…?”
“I’m a nurse, or I’m going to be when I graduate.”
“I thought you were a theater major or some such.”
“Keeping tabs on me?” Vinnie flirts automatically even though she knows I’m gay. I’ve been out since I was nine—yes, nine. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I made my superhero action figures do.
“My mom heard from someone else’s mom that you were in Liquordale at a performing arts school.” Liquordale is Fort Lauderdale, but I’m too cool to call it that. Every year at Spring Break, college students from all over America converge there to consume all local supplies of beer, stack the empties in humongous pyramids, and fall off the balconies of their beachfront hotels. They go home sunburned and hungover, bitching about how they didn’t get any.
“Oh yeah, no,” Vinnie says. “I was at the Ringling School of Art and Design for a while, but then I met this totally hot guy from Canada on Spring Break and went home with him. I had to break up with him, though. Despite his hotness, Canada remains lukewarm on the Testardo scale of fun and games.”
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Vinnie’s company. She’s never anything but herself and has a boundless, incongruously innocent curiosity about almost everything. It seems she hasn’t changed a stitch. Except for those dirigibles on her chest.
“I see the girls are all grown up,” I say suavely.
“I had ’em done when I was dancing my way through school,” she says in the common euphemism for “I had surgery to make my boobs bigger because I take off my clothes in a sleazy bar for tips from drunken letches.”
“I didn’t know you were actually on the stage.” My suaveness amazes even me.
“Aren’t you sweet?” Vinnie gives me what can only be described as a calculating look. Her big blue eyes go all squinty until she looks like a big cat with Grand Canyon-scale cleavage.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I back up a step even though I’m technically one of the undead, and she should be the one cringing in dread. “I won’t sleep with you. I’m still gay.”
Vinnie chuckles. “Is it that obvious I still want your smokin’ hot, yaoi-prince self? Relax, studpuppy. I’m not going to try jumping your bones. I can appreciate your perfection without fucking you.”
I have to say, I really like the sound of that. I’m wondering if we could get together and hang out sometime. Then I remember that I have vengeance to wreak.
“Great to see you,” I say. “But I really gotta fly.”
“Got a hottie waiting for you?”
“Something like that.”
“Far be it from me to cockblock, but could I have just two more teensy minutes?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“So if you’re going to go sincere with this cosplay, I’m wondering if you already have someone to run errands for you and whatnot… during the daytime, I mean.”
I hadn’t thought about that. All of the stories I’ve ever devoured about vampires agree that they sleep during the day and go out at night. So, I’ll need a place to hole up, with someone to make sure I’m not bothered. I make one of my patented snap decisions.
“Okay, you might as well know. I’m a real vampire, and no, I don’t have anyone to help out. Do you know someone who would—?”
“Me!” she interrupts. “Me, me, me. I know everything there is to know about vampires. You can stay at my place until you get yours fixed up right. Gimme your phone and I’ll put my number in. Just call me whenever, and you’ll have a safe place to crash.”
“Cool.” I hand her my phone. “By the way, what do I look like?”
“You look like sweet, romance-yaoi perfection. Your hair is thick and jet-black and spiky. Your skin is like fucking marble and your eyes are pools of midnight. You totally rock the frock coat and boots thing. Plus you’re exquisitely slender and supple, if you must know.” She gives me another long look. “If Matrix Keanu Reeves fucked Sleepy Hollow Johnny Depp and they had a baby, it would grow up to be you. If that was possible, I mean.”
Ironic, isn’t it? I finally perfect my “look” and I can’t see myself.
But anyway, that’s how I come to be sleeping in a cabinet under the stairs in Vinnie’s loft apartment. I don’t know how she can afford this place. It’s enormous—the entire top floor of an old cigar factory. The wood floors still smell like aged tobacco. At least to me they do. Vinnie says she can’t smell it, but then again, she doesn’t have a vampire’s heightened senses. Did that sound stuck-up? Am I developing the cool superiority of a top-of-the-food-chain predator? Or am I just being a dick? Help me out here. This is all new to me. And I don’t mean to diss Vinnie. I’m grateful she’s letting me stay here. Damn, I did sound like a dick.
So this loft is pure awesome sauce. There’s just something about a big, open space partitioned off with textured rice-paper screens. I like that all the furnishings are made of natural materials in colors that remind you of the beach: sand, cool blues, and cream. It’s the sort of simple design that costs buckets of money to achieve. And it’s exactly the sort of décor I wouldn’t expect from Vinnie Testardo.
I’m not making any taste judgments, just saying that I would’ve expected something more in keeping with her cosplay-loving spirit. Something more like the contents of a Broadway musical actress’s trunk dumped over Barbie’s dream house. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just more what I expected. Not these clean lines and groupings of unvarnished wooden furniture like pieces of modern art. It’s the definition of unfussy.
The place where I sleep is an enclosed triangular space under a freestanding flight of stairs on wheels. I can’t imagine the mind that invented the rolling staircase with storage, but it works. It’s totally lightproof, and after Vinnie lines it with cushions and a velvet cape, it’s pretty comfortable. And once I close my eyes, it wouldn’t matter if I was lying on broken glass. I sleep the sleep of the dead: deep, dark, and dreamless, like drowning for hours.
When I surface at sundown—I check, it’s officially sundown—I find a note from Vinnie that informs me she won’t be back until seven-ish and to make myself at home. P.S. Please don’t suck my cat.
Cat?
Wow, I’m really hungry. The stuff in the fridge verifies that normal food is not what I crave. I need blood. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Now, where is that cat?
The cat is either in another dimension—which I believe to be highly possible—or is just very, very good at hide-and-seek. Looks like I miss out on the chance to see if I’d actually suck cat blood. It’s six thirty now, so I’m going to sit down in this chair the color of a shore bird’s egg to wait for my… what’s the word for someone in Vinnie’s position? In relation to me, I mean. Besides friend, what’s the word for a vampire’s personal assistant? You’d think someone with a measured IQ of 158 could come up with the right word, but no.
I can’t come up with a plan to find the jerk that Turned me either. I don’t have a name other than Troy—like there aren’t 27 million Troys in the South—if that was even his real name. I don’t know a single thing about Troy except what he looks like, which I’ve already lovingly described for you. But I will say again that he’s smokin’ hot. Way beyond soap-opera-actor handsome and far into Prada-runway-model territory. He had no trouble convincing me to leave the club for somewhere more private. Yeah, I guess I’m kind of a slut, but I’m twenty-one and male, so I’ll ask you again to cut me a little slack, s’il vous plaît.
Hold the power brooding—I sense Vinnie. How weird is that? I can actually feel what she’s doing like I’m the one doing it. I guess my vamp powers are starting to kick in. Vinnie’s getting on the funky freight elevator that doesn’t have doors. I can smell her scent now: the last fumes of Uninhibited perfume mixed with lady sweat—in Florida, everyone sweats. But beyond that even, I can feel her excitement through the weariness of a full day of work. I can feel the beating of her heart, the blood flowing in her veins. The blood. My brilliant mind makes a connection, and I run to the elevator with the same enthusiasm I used to show for the arrival of the pizza-delivery guy.
Whoa. Back it up, Bubba Vamp. Vinnie’s a friend. She’s sheltering me. She thinks I’m the hottest thing on two legs—with the possible exception of Count Greyce, the beautiful, tortured, vampire hero of her favorite anime series… but he isn’t real, so I win.
I hear the chunky clunk of the elevator stopping and Vinnie’s footsteps on the cypress plank floor of the foyer area. And yes, I know how gay I sound when I say things like “foy-ay,” but that’s what it’s called, and as I might have mentioned, my gayness has been confirmed beyond a doubt and many times. But who cares? It’s dinnertime.
I’m having a really hard time fighting the urge to run to the warm pink and suck until I’m full. Shit. My mom’s dogs have more self-control.
“Vlad?” Vinnie calls out. It’s so cool of her to call me that.
“I’m right here,” I say as I appear beside her. I don’t literally disappear and reappear, but I move so fast that she can’t see me.
“Wow!” Vinnie blinks eyelids shadowed in satiny taupe. She’s wearing full-on Snow White drag: puffy little sleeves, hair ribbon, enamel-red lips, and all. The black wig makes her look like a completely different person… a completely different person with identical 48 double Dees. I swear I’m afraid I’ll fall into her cleavage and like it so much that I’ll curl up and never move again. It’s not a sex thing. Sheesh, gutter-brain.
“Where you been?”
“Who’s your best friend?” Vinnie counters archly.
“Not a good time for a pop quiz,” I say.
“Oh, poor baby, you’re really hungry, aren’t you?”
“Well, I had instructions not to suck the cat, and I couldn’t go out. My only shirt looks like a crime scene.”
“Right, so… who’s your best friend?” she coos again.
“I’m guessing you are. Tell me why.”
“Ooh, I love a pouty bishie.” Vinnie checks her makeup in the agate-framed mirror hanging from fishing line in front of one of the rice-paper screens. “I have dinner—or is it breakfast?—all lined up for you.”
“I like what I’m hearing. Tell me more.”
“Give me two shakes to change, and I’ll take you there.”
I go to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and practice looking out over the city in a sinister manner. Vinnie is back way before I expect her. She’s the queen of quick change.
Her Snow White wig is still in place, but the red hair ribbon is gone, as are the yellow skirt and the red and blue puffy-sleeved top. Now she’s wearing Japanese schoolgirl Goth with a pair of full-bore, ass-kicking Doc Martens boots. In her hand is a poet shirt, all billowy, with a hundred tiny laces. Unfortunately, it’s black. I don’t do all black. That’s for posers. Unless you’re a genuine ninja, of course.
“I don’t do all black,” I say.
“Understood.” She eyes me. “How do you feel about bare chest?”
“It’s kind of show-offy, you know?” Truthfully, I’m not in that great of shape. I’m slim, and I have fairly broad shoulders and long legs, but I’m not exactly Harry Hardbody, you know? I don’t go around shirtless, but I have to take this one off eventually.
Holy shiz! Imagine my surprise! Apparently vampirism has gifted me with a set of nicely defined muscles. I’m not Bruce Lee, but I look damned good. I guess that sounds a little conceited, but I don’t feel like it’s my body I’m complimenting, you know?
“Wow, this is the body I’ve always wanted.”
“No kidding,” Vinnie says. “I say flaunt it. Otherwise, the only other thing I have that you could wear would be the T-shirt I sleep in when my baby sister stays over.”
“I forgot about her. What was her name again?”
“You’re bad. Her name’s Petronia, and you know she’s always had a mad crush on you.”
“Do all the women in your family have such fabulous taste?”
“Pretty much. Come on—let’s get you fed.” Vinnie grabs a transparent vinyl umbrella on the way to the elevator. “Just in case,” she says, and her eyes twinkle. I’m not making it up; they actually twinkle like a shower of blue glitter.
I toss my crusty shirt over the driftwood hat rack and button my knee-length frock coat as I get into the freight lift with Vinnie. She removes her black lace choker and fastens it around my neck. I wish I could see what it looks like. So far Undeath is nothing like I thought it would be. For some reason, the basic conflict between my love of dressing-room mirrors and the fact that vampires have no reflections never occurred to me when I was mortal.
“Isn’t this the coolest?” Vinnie chirps. “I’m procuring victims for my vampire lord.”
When she puts it that way, it does sound kind of cool. “Where are we going?”
“Don’t laugh, but it’s a coffee house where role-players hang.”
“RP Gamers? Really?”
“Their hardware is the shit.” She shrugs.
“Geeks,” I say, and I ought to know. I used to be their king… and then I got a job.
“Well, if you’re picky?” Vinnie looks at me likes she expects an answer.
“How come you’re going all Mama Hen on me?”
“I’d like a baby, but I’m not ready to be pregnant yet, so I’m gonna practice on you. Now, do you really want me to waste time describing your dinner to you?”
“No. I’m sure if you picked him out, he’s all that.”
“Damn right he is. I met him at a manga con during Guavaween. He was dressed in this retro Sonic getup with his hair in royal blue spikes that totally matched the collar of my Sailor Moon dress. And we were both wearing red knee-high socks over our high-tops to simulate superhero boots.”
“Destiny,” I say.
“You’d think, but he loves the cock.” Vinnie sighs. “I’m beginning to think it’s true that all the really hot men are gay.” She pauses. “Shit, I forgot about the cat.”
“Are you sure you have one?”
“It’s really my sister Frankie’s cat, but her husband is allergic. I don’t think it likes me.”
“Maybe if you didn’t refer to the cat as ‘it’?”
“Fine. He doesn’t like me. Probably because I had him fixed. He was spraying everything in sight, including my shoes.”
“I can understand why he’d hold a grudge, but you did what you had to do.”
“Well, yeah. Anyway, I left food out and he has a litter box, so I reckon he’ll be okay.”
“Does he have a name?”
“D’Artagnan. I call him Dart. It seems to fit,” Vinnie says as she leads the way into the parking garage.
Vinnie doesn’t have a car. What she has is a motorcycle that she keeps chained up in the two-story parking structure. Before you get visions of a badass chopper, let me describe the fail that is the Honda Gold Wing. This abomination has such bourgeois accoutrements as an airbag and seats that are not only miniature easy chairs, but they’re heated. And that’s not all—the handgrips are heated. I can almost understand the need for a radio—music rules—and a GPS, but really, Butch, heated handgrips? Just doesn’t square somehow with the primal struggle of man against the elements that a motorcycle should symbolize.
I said all these things to Vinnie during the ride to her place last night—the helmets have intercoms, I shit you not. She said her uncle left it to her in his will and it was good on gas. Her tone said “don’t diss my ride.”
So I don’t bitch as I climb on behind her, leaving the helmet where it is. It crushes my hair, and since I’m immortal now, I figure I don’t really need a helmet anymore.
Vinnie drives us to a place near the waterfront that’s sandwiched between a seafood restaurant and a closed tattoo parlor. Predictably, it’s called Starbase.
Inside, the place is half geek boutique and half coffee shop with free Wi-Fi. Young men and women in utilitarian clothing sit in circles facing one another, eyes on their laptop screens, buds in their ears, soy lattes or Red Bulls close at hand, swinging swords and casting spells in dark castles and magical forests, absorbed in the roles they’re playing in a world built of collective imagination. Ah, the memories. I feel tired just looking at them.
“This way.” Vinnie takes my arm, proud to be seen with me.
I like how that feels, and I do my best to look haughty as we walk past the baristas at the counter. They actually pause in their sacred ritual of preparing the divine bean nectar to watch me go by. I like how that feels even more. I swagger a little.
“His name is Logon.” Vinnie’s voice breaks my spell of self-satisfaction.
“Logan?” The only Logan I know is Wolverine, and hairy men are not my kink. I’m more partial to honey than bears.
“It’s pronounced Logan, but it’s spelled ell, oh, gee, oh, en. Log on,” says a guy with a scratchy tenor voice.
“Clever,” I say, because I know which side of a nerd the butter goes on.
From the shadows of a booth between the counter and the wall of the restrooms rises a towering figure cloaked in…. I wish. Logon stands up and is revealed as a gipster, which is a name I made up for the geek/hipster hybrid—heek sounds too ridiculous even for me.
Logon’s hair is very blond and very long and is, of course, parted in the middle and pulled away from his face into a ponytail, thereby negating the entire process of growing long, flowing tresses. His bittersweet-chocolate eyes are framed by plain black glasses. His pants are black and narrow, and his putty-colored T-shirt is emblazoned with flowing letters that look like Tolkien’s Elvish. I take the time to decipher the message, which is actually in English. If you can read this, I found your ring. Clever, and of course, it’s an in-joke.
“Well, I have to hand it to you, Vinnie, he sure looks like a vampire.” Logon’s husky, whispery voice isn’t too hard on the ears, but he just rubbed me the wrong way.
“I don’t like it when people talk about me like I’m not here,” I say sinisterly—wow, talk about awkward adverbs; just try saying sinisterly a couple of times.
“Logon, meet Vlad,” Vinnie says.
I’m so not sure about this, but I do what Troy should have done for me. I woo the gipster. I really need a drink.
“Nice to meet you, Logon,” I say. “Love your Ringer shirt.”
“I got it at Dragon*Con,” he answers to establish his credentials as a serious otaku.
“Atlanta’s a zoo, sensory overload,” I say to let him know that I get it. Having a frame of reference is so important.
Vinnie’s rummaging in her Hello Kitty backpack. “Hang on,” she says. “I know I have a tape measure in here somewhere. As soon as I find it, you two whip out your fanboy dicks.”
My eyes meet Logon’s in a mutual roll. So, rapport established. Vinnie’s right; this could be fun, even if it isn’t the embodiment of my dark fantasies.
“So Vinnie claimed she knew a real vampire,” Logon says. “You sure look like the real deal. Excellent fangs, by the way, but they could be implants.”
I have fangs? I shoot Vinnie a reproachful look for not telling me as I feel the tips of my pointed canines with my tongue. I have fangs! This is beyond awesome. I have to try them out.
“I need your blood,” I tell Logon.
“That’s… pretty convincing,” Logon says.
“Look, I don’t want to get all date-rapey, but I need your blood now.”
Logon does that little looking to the left and right thing like he’s about to tell a non-PC joke. “Yeah, okay. Should we go somewhere more private or something?”
It hits me that I probably don’t want my maiden suck to be in front of an audience, but the vague, nonlocalized, grinding hunger pain is now a terrible, freezing emptiness. Even my bones hurt.
I slide into the booth and sit next to Logon. Referencing my favorite vampire movies, I reach out to pull him closer. I’m thrilled when he flinches. I give him a little shake of my head and the infinitely sad look of the misunderstood outcast. He stays put when I take the elastic band off his ponytail and let his hair fall around his face. It’s a rather nice face if you’re into the whole pale and delicate, Nordic-Anglo thing, and so what if he was a Ringer? I may not worship Professor Tolkien and his epic piece of literature that legitimized an entire subculture, but I’d do that Elf from the movies in a heartbeat. In fact, Logon kind of reminds me of the golden-haired, lithe-limbed badass out of Mirkwood. It’s kind of a turn-on.
I lean toward Logon, and he tilts his head, baring his jugular, making it easy for me. I sense Vinnie is about to open her umbrella like she’s expecting a large amount of spray as she moves to block the view from the rest of the place. My lips touch the soft skin of Logon’s neck, and he shivers. Like the tines of a dessert fork into cheesecake, my fangs sink into his flesh. I don’t think about it; it just happens. Blood wells up, and I wipe it away with my tongue. I swallow and oh my goolies! This taste, it’s… it’s…. I have to have more. Now!
