The Vegan Vamp

by S. E. Babin

  Why was I suddenly on uneven ground? Feeling off, I followed behind the two aggravated women until we came to our seat. I saw Maron wait in front of her chair patiently, as if she were waiting on a servant to come and drag it out for her.

  I knew my manners, but remember Anonotheories? Yeah. There wasn't going to be anything chivalrous happening for ol' Maron tonight.

  Her bright green eyes flashed when I took my own seat. An awkward pause ensued as she waited for me to notice my mistake and fix it.

  I noticed alright, but I didn't bother to get up. I needed to eat, burp, and run.

  I had a podcast to listen to.

  An annoyed growl escaped the red headed she-devil, and I couldn't help the small smile threatening to form itself on my face. I squashed it down and kept my face neutral as I picked up the menu to study it. The hostess settled Maron's napkin on her lap but she ignored me like I had the plague. When she took our drink order, Maron ordered red wine, but when she took mine, everything I wanted they had suddenly run out of stock.

  "White wine?"

  "Which one?" the hostess drawled.

  I pointed to one on the menu. "Oh sorry," she said, not sounding even a little bit sorry. "We just ran out."

  This happened four damned times before I snapped the wine list shut and growled at her to just give me water and if she was out of that we were calling the health inspector. She gave me a blank smile though her eyes flashed with smugness. "Of course, sir." She removed the wine list and left our table.

  Maron was studying me intently and it was making me nervous.

  "See something you like?" I said and leveled another grin at her.

  A thunderous expression flitted onto her face immediately. "No," she said shortly.

  I blinked at her. "No?" I echoed.

  "Nope," she repeated and turned her attention to the menu.

  I wanted to get up and leave right then, but I didn't like losing. "Why not?" I asked.

  She set her menu down and met my gaze. "You were late. By more than twenty minutes. No call or text. So that's pretty disrespectful. Then you show up with no apology. Plus I saw you staring at me for at least five minutes across the room and any idiot could tell you were debating whether or not you wanted to come over. Am I not pretty enough for you?" Maron growled. "Let me guess. You like blondes and preferably ones who let you get away with a lot of shit?"

  I gaped at her.

  She nodded. "Ah. Pegged you. Nice. Well," she said as her attention turned back to her menu, "as you can see I am most definitely not blonde and neither am I vapid." She shrugged. "Cool blooded, as I am a vamp and it’s biology, but certainly not cool-tempered, especially when it comes to jerk werewolves who think they're better than me."

  At that moment, our waitress came over with our drinks. It was a different woman but the way she looked at me told me she'd already been briefed by the hostess. She greeted Maron with a warm smile and set her drinks down carefully, but when it came to me, she set a four ounce glass of water down in front of me so hard, half of it sloshed over the side and into my salad plate.

  "Gosh," she said. "So clumsy." And with that, she walked away.

  Was I in a restaurant full of crazy, hormonal women or was this some sort of fight club where I was about to get my ass kicked and thrown out the back? This place was seriously hostile. I glanced around the dining area and it was full of happy couples laughing.

  I looked back at Maron only to see two high spots of color on her cheeks.

  This chick was super pissed at me. Guilt made the spot between my shoulder blades itch. I glanced at my watch only to see I had less than a half hour before the podcast started. I couldn't be nice and make it home in time, so plan piss off my date was still on. I hadn't expected to be quite so successful at it, though.

  I attempted to raise a white flag. Tense was one thing. Hostility was something else, entirely. "I don't think I'm better than you," I said quietly.

  "Oh really?" she snapped. "Then why are you being such an ass?"

  "This is just the way I am," I answered. It was partially truthful, though I did know how to be a gentleman and I also knew how to show up on time.

  "It's a miracle you're still single," Maron said, her tone as dry as drought season.

  "Quite," I agreed, even though I knew she was being sarcastic. I snapped my menu back open. "So what's good here?"

  "I'm not the one to ask," she said. "I don't eat meat."

  I slowly lowered my menu and stared at her. "Excuse me?"

  She sighed. "Let me guess. You didn't even read the packet Portia gave you, either?"

  I shook my head. "Didn't seem important."

  If steam could have come out of someone's ears, Maron would have been a locomotive. A thin film of red crossed over her eyes and my testicles shrank a little as I remembered my parents cautioning me to never piss off a vampire.

  Especially a redheaded one. Their souls were already in question and then for her to be a vamp, too?

  "It. Didn't. Seem. Important?" she said, enunciating her words one at a time making it sound like she was chopping verbal vegetables. "You're looking for a wife and you didn't think reading the information about them was important?"

  Abort! Abort!

  I tried for cool and casual. "I'm one of those see where it goes kind of guys, ya know?" I most definitely wasn't one of those kind of guys, but I wasn't sure what to say to calm the rabid beast down.

  "Ah," she said, "I see." But I could tell she didn't. Not even a little.

  "Good," I said because that was the only thing I felt I could say.

  "Listen, Sterling." She said my name like it was a dirty, vile thing, and I almost winced. "There are a lot of important things listed in that file. A lot of things about me. What I'm looking for. What I see for my future. And now since you didn't bother to read it, you don't know any of it. So what that means is you've left the burden of this date to me. Because I know things about you. Because I read what Portia gave to me. And if I'm being perfectly honest, I didn't find one thing on there particularly appealing, but we aren't defined by what's on paper are we?" She reached up to squeeze the space between her brows as if I were a vexing problem she was having to deal with.

  I shook my head. "Definitely not."

  "But you see, I think you've proven me wrong tonight. I see you as one dimensional as a sheet of paper fallen to the floor. You've shown no depth, no concern, no real feeling other than for yourself."

  I was starting to get pissed off. "Oh yeah? You saw that all in the five minutes since we've been here, did ya?"

  "Twenty minutes," she corrected. "Twenty excruciating minutes since you walked in the door and we've had to share a table."

  The waitress showed back up right as she was opening her mouth again, probably to berate me some more.

  "Oh thank the gods," I whispered too loudly, and proceeded to rattle off my order. I regretted it right away because I knew it was going to take longer than thirty minutes to get my meal. But I was rattled, damn it, and this redheaded she-devil was pissing me off.

  Maron ordered, too, and I couldn't help stare at her in horror. A salad, a side of roasted asparagus, and another side order of truffle mac and cheese.

  Vamps didn't have to eat, but when they did, nine times out of ten they chose something a lot more bloody.

  "For the love of all things I cherish, please don't tell me you're really a vegetarian." A werewolf and a vamp could date, but they couldn't procreate. It was against the rules, but if I thought strategically about it, she could allow me to scrape more time together before my parents really screamed about children. But dating a vamp who didn't drink blood? And on top of that holy what the hell heap, for her to shun meat?

  The world was too much tonight.

  "It was in the dossier," she said mildly as she sipped her wine.

  "That you're what? A vegan vamp?" I cried. This was outrageous.

  "Usually vegan," she clarified, like I gave a crap. "But cheese is de
licious, so I eat on both spectrums."

  I waved my water glass at her. "I don't even care. You never drink blood?"

  She shrugged. "Never had to."

  I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it. I couldn't stop staring at Maron. "So what happened?" I finally asked, curious in spite of myself.

  "The quickening never happened."

  "So you've never had bloodlust? What are you, like a late bloomer or something?"

  Maron rolled her eyes at that. "I'm 25." Then she looked down at her boobs. "From everything I can tell, I went through the puberty process." Then she looked at me. "Did you?"

  I blustered. "What? Yes!"

  A smile hit the edge of her mouth, showing off an adorable little dimple. Just one. I blinked several times, trying to make the charm of it go away.

  "You're unlikable," I pronounced.

  A snort came from her. "Me? The king of unlikable people dares wave his wand around and cast aspersions at someone who only called you out on your crap?"

  "The king of unlikable people?"

  "Yes, I think it's a good title." She sipped her wine.

  "Why am I even still sitting here?" I thought out loud.

  "I truly have no idea. I expected you to leave a long time ago."

  "Maybe I should," I threatened, though I knew it was an empty one as soon as I said it. For some reason even though talking to Maron felt like repeatedly running into a brick wall, I was having fun. In spite of myself. Because she was terrible.

  Literally terrible.

  She gestured at the door with her wine glass. "Be my guest," she announced.

  "What about you? Why aren't you leaving?"

  "Because I love this restaurant, and I just ordered truffle mac and cheese."

  "Even though the company is terrible?"

  "Nothing gets in the way of me and mac and cheese," she said matter-of-fact. "So go or stay," she said. "It makes no difference to me."

  I put my napkin on top of the table, fully meaning to leave, but I couldn't. I had to prove her wrong.

  Damn it. Of all the times for my competitive nature to show up, it had to be now when I was sitting with the biggest shrew in Midnight Cove?

  "I'll stay," I said after a second.

  "Suit yourself," she said. "But try not to bore me."

  I snort laughed in spite of myself. "You are truly a horrible person."

  "Don't confuse horrible with honest, Sterling. I haven't done anything horrible since the second I saw you debating with yourself. And trust me when I say, you deserve it."

  I motioned for the waitress and for a moment there I thought she wasn't going to come. When she finally deigned to walk over, she rolled her eyes at me and crossed her arms over her chest as if serving me was literally the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

  "I'd like to apologize," I told the woman. "Might you ask the hostess over as well?"

  The woman blinked at me once but then nodded and rushed over to get the hostess. When both of them were standing in front of me and Maron was watching me like a hawk, I spoke.

  "I admit I was late and that was poorly done. I apologize for how I treated my date here in the beginning." I held my arms out to the side in supplication. "Do you think we can start over?"

  Both women looked to Maron, and I couldn't help but get crabby about that. "Miss Archer?" they asked.

  Maron narrowed her pretty eyes at me. Oh gods, I had to stop. Her eyes weren't pretty. They were horrible.

  And she was horrible.

  Everything about her was horrible.

  "Do you mean it?" she asked.

  I nodded.

  "Probationary period then, ladies. Act nice as long as he does. The second he reverts to his original ways, you have my express permission to dump his entrée in his lap."

  "If you dump my entrée in my lap, you might have a complaint."

  "Take that up with the owner," Maron said archly.

  The two women nodded, but as they were walking away, one of them quipped, "You're sitting with the owner, asshat."

  Maron gave me a sweet smile.

  Of course I was.

  "You own this place?"

  She shrugged. "Not completely. It belongs to the family, though in five more years it will be signed over to me."

  "Did you really want them to dump food on me?"

  "Is that a rhetorical question?"

  I shook my head and sat back to examine the shrew I was with. She was petite. I could tell that from across the room but sitting this close to her, it was even more pronounced. She was tiny, maybe 100 pounds soaking wet? Her hair was past her shoulders and thick enough for me to wonder how long it took her to tame it every morning. Her eyes were a sparkling green, though I'd noticed over the last little while that they darkened when she was angry. Her skin was the common pale alabaster of most vamps, but whereas other vamps never blushed, she seemed incapable of preventing it. I could tell her emotions right on her skin. Her lips were full and covered in a berry colored lipstick and her clothing appeared to be both elegant and well-thought out, with a practiced eye for color. She wore a slim fitted dress with a yellow belt and yellow pumps. Her jewelry was simple. A silver necklace with an arrow charm and two silver dots worn in her ears. She dressed like she spoke, no-nonsense, yet full of fire.

  I couldn't decide how I felt about it.

  On one hand, for a redhead, she was surprisingly attractive, and it had snuck up and clubbed me over the head sometime during the litany of insults she'd aimed at me. On the other, dating her could be like dating a judgmental school marm except for one with an uncanny ability to find your deepest flaw and poke at it like a tongue on a sore tooth. I couldn't decide whether that intrigued me or turned me off.

  A second date was out of the question. I couldn't resist doing anything crazy like actually liking this woman. I had a plan.

  And it definitely didn't involve a mouthy redhead.

  Seven

  Maron

  Sterling was kind of an asshole. Wait. Not kind of. He was definitely an asshole. He was the kind of asshole you dreamed about in high school of getting revenge on. And not a tiny revenge, more like a gymnasium full of people to witness it kind of revenge. I honestly had no idea what Portia had been thinking when she set me up with this tool. I was the kind of person who had a lot of patience. I rarely lost my temper, even when someone was being an idiot. Thus the reason I'd walked out on my last two dates with little incident. But this freaking guy? He was a kettle boiling over with arrogance.

  I could tell I flummoxed him. That was good. I didn't want him getting any ideas about a second date.

  There was no way in hell this guy was getting anywhere near my lady goodies. I wanted a nice man. A sweet man. Someone who opened doors and whispered poetry to me when I woke up from nightmares.

  Not this grade A asshat.

  We were staring at each other uncomfortably.

  "So what is it about blondes you like so much?" I asked him.

  Sterling sipped the wine the waitress had finally brought him. "For one thing, they're quiet."

  Heat crept up my cheeks.

  "Oh? Is that so you can keep talking about all of your manly virtues and fill the silence caused by her empty brain?"

  Something sparked in his eyes. Whether it was amusement or anger, I couldn't tell.

  "For the record, I have yet to bring up any of my manly virtues. Though, when I do, I'll make sure to have a blonde around so she can feel my pecs when I have a moment of self-doubt. It wouldn't do to have a red head around."

  "And why is that?" I asked him.

  "Everyone knows you're soulless."

  I felt rage pour into every cell of my being. I don't know why that comment always made me so mad, but it did. It was the one thing vamps always struggled with and to be redheaded on top of it? I wanted to smack this jerk right back into next week.

  Sterling

  Point Scored. Maron went scarlet in the face.

  Maron blinke
d at me. "Soulless?"

  I nodded, amused to have finally gotten a point in. "It's well known that red hair is rare, especially in this town and with paranormals in general. So it only goes to prove that you must be soulless."

  "Did you pick that up from Harvard or YouTube?" she asked, glaring at me over the top of her wine glass.

  "Neither. Book reading. Lots of book reading."

  Maron scoffed. "I can't imagine you ever reading anything. Otherwise you'd be a lot better of a dinner companion."

  Ouch. "I'll have you know I read every single night."

  "Mad Magazine doesn't count."

  A bark of laughter came from me. Her dimple peeked out again and my breath caught.

  "Neither does your uncle's porn stash," she continued.

  My laughs turned into guffaws and it took me a minute to get myself under control. "I'll have you know, I've always thought sharing porn was weird."

  "Good to know you aren't a complete savage," she said, "though I can only guess your porn stash must be formidable since your personality is so terrible."

  "Do your parents know you're this awful?" I questioned, though I still couldn't shake the amusement of her comments.

  She nodded solemnly. "They do, but I usually only bring it out on special occasions." She lifted her wineglass in a salute. "Or dates that never quite worked out the kinks."

  "So I guess no second date?" I wanted to scream at myself the second those words came out of my mouth. I didn't want another date. That was a horrendous idea. The only way I could control this woman was by tying her up and knocking her out with chloroform, and I liked my dates very much alive, thank you.

  "Not if hell froze over, suddenly sprung flowers on the ground, and Lucifer repented."

  "Well," I said. "That seems... final. And quite Christian, if we’re being honest here."

  "Oh it is," she said. "Quite final. Though I have to admit I find you intriguing, Mr. Luna. Your file said you were into some really bizarre stuff. You're a real conspiracy theorist, aren't you?"