Vampires Don't Sparkle!

by Mia Archer

  “I know,” I said.

  “Like I was supposed to have a quip and everything about how I might be a cheerleader, but I could still kick some ass, and then they laugh and I start kicking ass and they realize too late how much trouble they’re in!”

  I rolled my eyes. “You do realize you’re spending entirely too much time watching old Buffy reruns if that’s your idea of how vampire hunting goes, right?”

  “Whatever,” Stacy said. “That show was awesome.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  She slapped my shoulder. “What’s with that tone?”

  “What’s with that tone is you know exactly why you’re watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it’s not for the cool plot or anything.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “You know you’re watching it for that too.”

  “At least I’m willing to admit that I’m watching the cool show because ‘90s Sarah Michelle Gellar was yummy.”

  “Have you seen some of her latest stuff?” Stacy asked. “Today Sarah Michelle Gellar is yummy too!”

  “Not gonna argue with you on that score,” I said. “And y’know Eliza…”

  I trailed off. We’d been walking through the halls for the duration of this back and forth about which nineties stars we found to be super cute, but there was something out in the parking lot that made me forget all about this fun conversation.

  “What the fuck are they doing out here?” Stacy asked, grabbing one of the stakes out of her bandolier and then pulling up one of her squirt guns for good measure.

  I glanced down at that squirt gun, and then up to her. She looked just a little ridiculous carrying around one of those pressurized kids guns that could shoot water like thirty feet if they were good and pumped up. It might be effective for shooting water long distances, but the thing was also bright pink which took away from the intimidation factor just a little bit.

  “What the hell do you have in those squirt guns anyway?” I asked.

  “Holy water, duh,” she said. “I had the padre down at the local Catholic church bless some of them for me. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have some kind of ranged weapon against these fuckers.”

  I blinked a couple of times as I stared at the squirt gun in her hands. The idea that she’d even thought of it was ridiculous, but then again…

  “You totally stole that idea from The Lost Boys, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “What’s it to you?”

  “We really need to have a serious conversation sometime about where you’re picking up your vampire slaying techniques.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “If it works then it works. Now let’s go give those vampire fuckers a piece of our mind!”

  She was already stalking across the parking lot before I could do much of anything to stop her. Not that I thought I’d be able to do much of anything to stop her to begin with, but whatever. My girlfriend was kind of an unstoppable force when it came to fighting the forces of evil threatening this high school, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hot watching her stalking across the parking lot towards those vampires in her tight tanktop and short shorts and a bandolier of stakes and bright pink holy water filled squirt guns at her side.

  Ridiculous? Totally. Hot? Definitely. So I floated after her, because I figured she’d need some backup if it turned out that holy water and those stakes weren’t up to the task of taking out these vampire assholes.

  Those vampire assholes were gathered around a bright pink Cadillac that looked like something straight out of the prop department for that old Stephen King movie about that car that came to life and started trying to kill people for some reason. Which made sense considering they came from another time, literally. One of them was probably the original owner of that thing from back in the day when a high school kid could work summers and afford to buy their own car.

  On the flip side, those cars had also been terrible death traps. My dad had told me all about some of the scenes he’d come across where everyone in an accident had bit the big one because they were in cars that were designed like tanks, which meant the squishy teenagers inside the things were the things that crumpled rather than the crumple zones in the car like in modern design.

  It’d never occurred to me until recently that part of the reason why he told me those stories was because of an accident he’d been involved in once upon a time with some of his friends who still hung around the high school in ghost form. The three spectral stooges were floating above us having a look at the vampires in their car.

  “Pretty sweet car if you’re into the vintage look,” Arnold said.

  “And that vampire chick is pretty hot too,” Jake said.

  “It’s also pretty hot how your girlfriend looks like she’s going to kill all of them,” Luke said. “That whole vampire killer thing she has going for her is really neat.”

  “Yeah, it is pretty neat, isn’t it?” I said, getting lost in the moment.

  Oh yeah, there was definitely something dreamy about watching my girl stalking across the parking lot towards a group of vampires who seemed to be chatting up a guy I sort of recognized. I thought he was dating a girl on the swim team or something, though something told me that girl wouldn’t be all that happy about her boyfriend being out here in the parking lot and not in the pool cheering her on if that was the case.

  The vampires noticed Stacy just before she got close enough that she could do something about them. I cursed and then floated after her.

  They didn’t seem all that concerned seeing Stacy coming for them. If anything a couple of the vampire dudes in their old letter jackets looked intrigued seeing a pretty girl stalking towards them, and that was good for a touch of jealousy from yours truly thank you very much.

  Then they saw me floating along behind her. Seeing an insanely hot cheerleader coming at them doing her best Sarah Michelle Gellar impression wasn’t enough to get them to get the hell out of Dodge, mostly because I was pretty sure most of them had been turned into vampires decades before Sarah Michelle Gellar killing vampires was a pop culture thing, but seeing a reaper coming up behind that sexy cheerleader with her scythe out ready to give them the business apparently was terrifying enough to set them scrambling.

  That Veronica bitch shoved the guy who’d been chatting her up to the side. He stumbled back and barely managed to catch himself before eating some asphalt. Then he turned and blinked a couple of times. Like he was trying to figure out if he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing as Stacy and I moved across the parking lot towards him.

  “They’re going to get away!” Stacy shouted, breaking into a run.

  “Man, your girlfriend is crazy,” Arnold said.

  “Seriously crazy,” Luke said. “She’s really charging all those draculas like that?”

  “She is crazy,” I said. “And she needs help.”

  I wasn’t thinking about what those vampires might do to her so much as I was thinking about what a ton of good old fashioned American made steel and chrome from back in the day when seat belts had been optional would do to Stacy if they managed to slam into her with that thing.

  “Stacy!” I shouted. “You need to be careful!”

  I knew it was pointless to shout something like that at her even as the words left my mouth. After all, she was going to get those vampires if it killed her. I was just really worried that it was actually going to kill her.

  Only they peeled out of the parking lot before she could do a damn thing. Leaving behind the smell of burnt rubber, and a very pissed off Stacy standing there twirling a stake in her hand and looking very dangerous.

  Like I was glad I was pretty sure I couldn’t technically die as I saw her twirling that thing, because I had a pretty good idea that she was itching to use it on someone.

  “Tough break,” Arnold said, floating up next to her.

  “Tough break my ass,” Stacy said. “We could’ve got’em.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You can
run pretty fast, but you’re not going to be able to outrun a car.”

  “Whatever,” she said, sighing. “We need to get after them. I’m parked on the other end of the lot, but we might be able to…”

  Her thoughts of engaging in a hot pursuit with a bunch of vampires driving a car that looked like it’d gone out of style at around the same time Kennedy was meeting his fate from the grassy knoll came to a halt as I heard the distinct sound of a scream coming from the school.

  I floated for a moment, unsure of what to do. On the one hand we could chase after those fucking vampires and figure out where the hell they were hiding. There was a chance we might be able to catch them, or at the very least figure out what abandoned old warehouse they were hiding in.

  But there was someone screaming, and something told me this time it wasn’t a bunch of people doing Shakespeare in the Park or anything like that.

  “Damn it,” Stacy growled.

  Then I felt it. A feeling I’d known a couple of times growing up, but it was always something that was really uncomfortable and not at all welcome. It was the feeling that someone was either about to die, or they’d recently passed.

  Only this time the feeling was a little different. This time I also had the feeling that I needed to go to whoever was recently deceased. That there was something pulling me towards them. Like the fact that I was now the reaper on duty for this town.

  Damn it.

  “Come on!” Stacy said, turning to me and looking at me like she wasn’t sure what the hell the holdup was. “There might be someone in trouble in there!”

  The screams were getting louder. Like we’re talking there were a lot of people who were freaking the fuck out in there.

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s get in there and see what the fuck is going on.”

  “Wait a second,” Stacy said. “You’re not trying to stop me from going in there?”

  “There’s no point,” I said. “The vampires just escaped in their ancient boat from the fifties, and I already know that whoever is in there is good and dead. There’s nothing to worry about if you’re not the person who got killed while we were fucking around in the band hallway.”

  “Oh,” Stacy said, looking from the screaming in the school to the spot where those vampires had been hanging out. “Oh shit.”

  18

  Dead Girl

  “I mean maybe it’s not all that bad,” Stacy said. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe the girl died without a bunch of vampires being involved? Swimming is like a seriously dangerous sport where you’re moving through a bunch of water and stuff. It’s not safe like cheerleading.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Because a sport where you’re regularly tossed twenty feet in the air by a bunch of high school kids who’ve been practicing that move for all of a few hours before they try it is really safer than something humans have been doing since befor they were humans.”

  “Well you don’t have to be a jerk about it,” Stacy said. “I’m just saying it’s a swim meet and people drown in pools. It’s possible it’s not even our fault whoever it is died!”

  And there we had it. She was starting to discover the flip side of this job. The part where you second guessed everything you did, and wondered if you were maybe somehow to blame for the bad stuff that happened because you didn’t get on the scene fast enough.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  A crowd streamed out of the pool entrance. That made it a little more difficult to get through the place at first.

  “Excuse me,” Stacy said. “Could you people please get the fuck out of our way? We’re kind of in the middle of something important here and…”

  “Hold on a second Stacy,” I said. “I’ve got this.”

  I was feeling the pull harder than ever now. There was definitely someone expired on the other side of those doors, and the pull was getting stronger and stronger.

  I held my hand out. The robes had disappeared, but I figured it was time to break them out again. A moment later flowing black robes surrounded me, and I held out a scythe.

  A couple of parents who looked seriously freaked out as they herded their still half-naked son out in his Speedos, he looked like a freshman who hadn’t been on the team last year, took one look at me standing there with robes flowing in a wind that clearly didn’t exist and decided they were going to go around me. Then all the people coming through that entrance behind them also made the same decision.

  A lot of people came to that same conclusion as they stepped out of the pool and saw me standing there in my robes. I even heard a couple of people mention something about homecoming.

  At least that mess was worth something, even though I was pretty sure this was going to start even more rumors I could’ve done without.

  “That’s useful,” Stacy said.

  “Yeah, and everyone is going to be talking about the freak girl in the black robes for the next few months,” I said. “Just when they stopped going on about that crap, too. I’m never going to hear the end of this.”

  “Yeah, but you should look on the bright side,” Stacy said.

  “What bright side could there possibly be to something like that?” I asked. “Everyone in school thinks I’m a weirdo. I know I’m not supposed to care about that sort of thing, but…”

  “But you’re already dating the hottest girl in school and I think it’s totally hot that you have the whole reaper thing going for you,” Stacy said as we stepped into the humidity of the pool. I took a deep breath. Damn I missed this.

  “So who else are you trying to impress?” Stacy finished.

  “Huh,” I said. “I guess when you put it that way you have a good point.”

  We moved down the length of the pool, but the more I looked around the more I realized there weren’t any telltale signs of someone who’d recently expired. It was something I’d learned to pick up on considering how many recently expired people I’d run into over the years.

  I was used to it, and I didn’t see the usual crowds of people screaming. Then I looked up to the storage area where I’d found Stacy waiting for the vampires earlier.

  “You have to be fucking kidding me,” I growled.

  “What’s wrong?” Stacy asked.

  “Look up there,” I said.

  “What are you…” Stacy looked up, and she realized the same thing. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Yup,” I said. “They doubled around and hit the spot we were staking out when we were busy chasing some screaming in the drama hall.”

  “Motherfucker,” Stacy growled. “I was up there in that fucking hot room for an hour and a half waiting for them to come along! Then we went after that scream and…”

  “And nothing,” I said, feeling sad and pissed and a lot of other things. “We have to get up there and do something about this. You remember what happened the last time someone got bit by a vampire.”

  “Yeah,” Stacy said. “Let’s get up there.”

  I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her against me. It felt good having Stacy pressing against me, though it also made me feel just a little guilty. If I hadn’t been canoodling with her down in the drama hall then there was a good chance the poor soul who bit it up there would’ve still been alive.

  There were gasps from the few people up there when we floated over the railing. I guess someone floating through the humid air wasn’t the kind of thing they usually saw at a swim meet. Though again I heard some people talking to each other about homecoming. Those turned and got the hell out of the pool when they realized shit might be going down that was similar to what the rumors said went down at the homecoming game.

  “I’m never going to get used to people freaking out like that,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t get used to it,” Stacy said. “You should totally own it. I keep telling you what you’re doing here is fucking awesome, and I figure someday you’re going to believe me.”

  “Whatever,” I said, blushing even as I
said a little nod of thanks to any higher power who might be listening that the hottest girl in school was also totally into the supernatural.

  Though there were times when I wondered if she would’ve been as into me if it weren’t for the whole supernatural thing. Then again she had talked about having a thing for me for a long time before she discovered the whole supernatural thing. Either way there wasn’t time to scratch that thought right now.

  “What the hell is she doing here?” someone screeched from the stairs.

  I looked over to see a woman standing there with tears streaming down her face. I frowned. From the way she was reacting that was clearly the mother, or someone who was close to the person who bit the big one. Some parents at the top steps were trying to keep her away, but that wasn’t stopping her from trying to get through.

  I tried to ignore the woman, but it was still difficult to block out the screams of a woman who’d just discovered her son or daughter might not be coming home.

  Parents parted around me as I walked over and looked down at the victim.

  “Danielle,” Stacy said. “I had math class with her.”

  “I know her,” I said, sighing.

  “You did?”

  “She managed the swim team, though I have no idea what she’d be doing up here when there was a meet going on down below.”

  I pressed my lips together. Thought about the vampires roaming the halls. Some of the vampire dudes would’ve been considered hot if you were into the gentlemen, and I had a pretty good idea of what they’d done to lure poor Danielle up here.

  “They promised her a little bit of fun and so she did what any girl who’s fallen for a guy does. She snuck away because sneaking around makes it fun,” I said.

  I leaned down over her and pulled her head up. Sure enough there were two red spots there where someone had drained her.

  More commotion from the stairs pulled my attention away. I looked up and saw a couple of cops and EMTs making their way through the crowd. When the cops got a good look at me they nodded.

  “Nothing much to be done here,” I muttered to the EMT dude who knelt beside Danielle. I didn’t want to be so loud that the mother freaking out on the stairs would hear.