The Vegan Vamp

by S. E. Babin

  Portia laughed out loud. "I'm really sorry, Maron. I've never met someone quite so resistant to love."

  "He likes freedom," I said. "He doesn't want to be tied down to anyone."

  "His parents are forcing his hand."

  "Do you think it's because I'm a vampire? And not even a whole one?"

  Portia's eyes flashed at that. "Not a whole vampire? I beg to differ. There’s nothing wrong with you. Everyone is different. You’re just brave enough to embrace your differences. If I had to guess, I would say it's part of it, honestly. His parents want an heir and right now, you can't give him that."

  "Why would you set me up with a werewolf?" It was the million dollar question I'd been wanting to ask her for awhile.

  She rubbed a hand over her mouth. "It seems irresponsible, doesn't it?"

  "Very much so," I said right before I poured myself some more wine.

  "This law is not just a Midnight Cove rule. It's a supernatural rule." Her gaze shuttered for a moment. "There are people who have broken the rules, though. Soulmates."

  My fingers tightened around my glass. "Where are they now?"

  Portia gave me a sad smile. "Hiding."

  I threw my hands up. "How exactly does that help me?"

  "It doesn't. What I will say is there are people behind the scenes who are working to change that. The problem is..." she hesitated like she didn't want to tell me more.

  "Is?" I prompted.

  "The offspring of a wolf and a vampire is strong. One of the strongest supernaturals on record. It terrifies the people in charge."

  "Concerned about a coup?" I said and laughed at my joke.

  Portia didn't. "Yes," she admitted. "Among other things. Vamps and wolves might be able to be together but having children together represents a whole host of problems no one is ready for yet." She toyed with the rim of her glass. "Though I know a woman. Or of her, actually, who had a hybrid child. She had good friends in high places, though, and with the help of some powerful folks, she and her baby are safe."

  Dread settled in my stomach. "Where's her mate?"

  "Dead, I'm afraid." Upon seeing my face she shook her head. "No. Not because of that. Though that could have been the outcome had they found out before they could be sequestered in a safe place. He died during the war. She's a wonderful person, and I hope she's able to come back here soon."

  "When you say soon, what exactly does that mean?"

  She shut her eyes for a moment and sighed. "As you already know, time doesn't run the same for supernaturals as it does for mortals. Soon could mean anything from years to centuries."

  "So, we're screwed is what you're saying? Maybe Sterling had the right idea," I mumbled.

  "No, he didn't. Listen, Maron, there's still hope. I have a feeling something is going to happen soon. Sometimes all it takes is an inciting incident to make someone come around."

  I stilled. "That doesn't sound good."

  Portia stood and patted my hand. "Why don't you go out tonight? On my dime. I want you to meet some ladies. I think you'll get along swimmingly. They're going to fill you in on some things. Not about Sterling." She pointed upwards. "That storm up there? They know about it." Portia frowned. "Well, as much as any one of us knows about it. All of us are trying to stop it." She rattled off an address of a local pub. "Be there at 7. They're expecting you." With that cryptic message, she let herself out.

  What if I didn't want to go out?

  That damned woman didn't really answer anything about Sterling and our mixed species problem other than that people were trying to fix it. In the human world, that meant it was on someone's desk buried underneath twelve pounds of other paperwork. In the immortal world, it was probably in the trash somewhere, possibly set on fire.

  Seventeen

  Portia had sent me to a hole in the wall I’d never heard of. I stood in front of the old rickety building wondering if it was going to collapse on top of my head once I stepped inside. That wouldn’t kill me, but it would piss me off. Me angry was never good for anyone.

  There was an old neon sign dangling over the side of the door that flashed Girls, Girls, Girls. I frowned at it. If I walked in and saw naked supernaturals, I was turning right back around and going home to soak in my tub. Then I was going to send Portia a strongly worded letter.

  With a lot of cuss words.

  The first thing to hit me when I walked in the place was the light. Or lack thereof. The place was so dimly lit I could barely make out anything except for the bar and the pool table. This was definite beer goggles territory. Carefully stepping through, I made my way over to the bar and ordered an IPA from the tall, burly guy behind the counter. He grunted in acknowledgment and sent a bottle sliding across to me. I slapped a five down, saluted him with the bottle, and turned to see if I could see anyone I knew. My eyes took a moment to adjust.

  To my left, three women were waving at me. One had black hair and a decidedly exotic look to her. The other was blonde and wore glasses. I recognized her. Helen was infamous in this town. The other had dark hair and was waving a glass tumbler at me.

  I headed over to their table. Helen was the first to stand up and greet me. “Portia told us all about you. I’m Helen.” She held her hand out and I shook it. She pointed at the brunette. “That right there is Grace. Don’t let her touch you unless you want to know all sorts of terrible things that will happen in your future. And this is Katie. She grants wishes. Sometimes.” Helen rolled her eyes. “Though I still don’t have my Lamborghini. She’s super stingy with them.”

  “Whatever, Helen. You still haven’t brought Twinkles back to me, so I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation,” Katie said.

  “I do not bring back people’s pets. It’s weird and creepy, and haven’t you ever read Pet Sematary? Because you should. Then you’d never ask me again.”

  Katie wiggled her fingers. “Twinkles returns. Then you get your Lamborghini.”

  Grace interjected with a sheepish smile. “Sorry. We’ve been here for awhile.” She waved a hand down at the table. “As you can see.” Shot glasses littered the table.

  “Hi,” I said and stood there stupidly.

  Katie pulled out a chair. “Sit. Please. We have lots to talk about.”

  Helen leaned forward. Her bright eyes were glazed with tequila. Or whiskey. Or whatever these ladies had been drinking. “That storm,” she said and pointed up at the ceiling. “That’s something. Am I right?”

  I eyed her warily. This felt like the beginnings of a bachelorette party gone wrong rather than a meeting. “You’re right,” I said after a moment.

  “Helen is a lightweight,” Grace said. “I’m the only sober one here.” She patted her rounded tummy. “I’m due in a few months. Everything hurts. But back to the storm. I knew it was coming, though I did see it slightly different than what’s actually happening here. We brought you here tonight because we need your help.”

  That wasn’t part of the deal. I felt bamboozled. “Okay?”

  She smiled apologetically at me. “Portia mentioned you’ve been hanging around some of those men from the Noncomformist club?”

  Sterling. This had to be about him. “Not really. I had a single date with Sterling. But he’s a tool.”

  Katie snorted. “They’re all tools at first,” she said.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Helen said as she poured herself another shot.

  “Anywaaaaay,” Grace said, trying to get them back on track. “They have plans to do something monumentally stupid tomorrow night.”

  “I’m not sure what this has to do with me,” I said honestly.

  “Well, they’d planned to do it beforehand, but it took a long time for it to stop raining.”

  “You’ve been watching them?” I asked. I’m not sure why I was surprised. If Portia was involved in this whole thing, I bet she’d been watching Sterling for awhile now.

  Katie snorted as she poured herself another. “Almost nothing happens around here without P
ortia getting wind of it. Apparently these guys are trying to send a drone up in to the storm center.”

  My eyebrows rose. “A drone? Do they want to lose it?”

  Helen shook her head. “There not just going to lose it. They’re going to piss it off.”

  “It?” I echoed. “The storm is sentient?”

  “Oh yeah,” Grace said. “Sentient and getting angrier by the second. Dark forces are coming in, Maron. It’s disturbing how casual people are about this entire thing. I’ve been nervous about this since I saw it in a dream.”

  “The clairvoyant,” I said, more to myself than her.

  She did a little head bob. “At your service.”

  “What else did you see?” I asked her.

  “Nothing good,” she said cryptically. “We aren’t prepared for what’s coming, I’ll tell you that. Portia is trying to learn all she can, but right now we don’t know much.”

  “We need you to talk to Sterling about his experiment. They can’t send anything up there. It’s too risky.”

  “Why me?” I stared at all three of the women. They were all breathtaking in their own way, but Grace practically glowed. Pregnancy suited her.

  “Because he loves you,” Katie said. Her tone sounded like she was also saying “duh” at the end of it.

  I held my hands up. “I can assure you, ladies, he definitely does not.”

  Helen snorted. “And why is that?”

  I glared at her. “Because he’s marrying someone else.”

  Silence fell around the table until Grace let out a snicker of disbelief.

  Hurtful tears sprang to my eyes. She held out her hands to me but she couldn’t stop laughing. Soon, she was joined by Katie and Helen who were doubled over cracking up.

  “What the hell?” I whispered to myself.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Katie said as she struggled to breathe. “Maron, you don’t honestly think he doesn’t love you just because he’s marrying someone else?”

  “Uh, isn’t that exactly what it means?”

  Helen shook her head and wiped her eyes. “No. Not at all. The men in this town are dumb. All of them. It’s up to us to show them exactly how dumb but pretend like they figured it out all on their own.”

  “Hell yeah, sister,” Katie said, bobbing her head enthusiastically.

  “He’s marrying someone else,” I repeated desperately.

  “Are you soulmates?” Grace asked.

  I sighed. “Against my better judgment, yes.”

  “Then you need to convince him otherwise,” Helen said.

  I sighed. “I’ve already tried.”

  “Try harder,” said Katie.

  “I practically threw myself on him!” I glared at the jinn.

  She shook her head. “Then do the opposite. Ignore him. Make him want you so bad, he’s consumed with it.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered. “What about the storm? What do you want me to do?”

  “Talk to Sterling,” Helen said. “You’re probably the only one he’ll listen to.”

  “I doubt it,” I murmured. I took a long pull of my beer.

  “We have until tomorrow,” Helen said. “If they send the drone up there, Portia thinks things are going to go to hell in a hand basket.”

  “Like poking a bear?”

  “Exactly,” Katie said. “We need to leave it alone until we figure out exactly what it is.”

  “Then we poke it,” Helen added.

  “A lot,” Grace said.

  “I’ll try,” I told them.

  The women gave each other a conspiratorial look. While I sat there wondering what had just happened, Helen pushed a clean glass over to me and poured in a clear liquid. “Now that it’s settled, let’s drink.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I don’t drink a lot. I -”

  Helen snorted. “Do you have a lot of friends?”

  One. I had one friend. Who hadn’t called me in weeks. I’d examine that in more detail later. “No,” I admitted.

  “So you never get invited out to engage in social hilarity?”

  I wasn’t sure what ‘social hilarity’ was, but no one was inviting me to engage in it. “Um. No.”

  “Then drink.”

  I drank.

  Eighteen

  Tequila was not your friend. Oh, it pretended to be. Especially when it was whispering in your ear about all the wonderful things you were going to do together. It encouraged you to dance like no one was watching. At the time you didn’t care, so you happily obliged only to find out that not only were they watching, they were recording it for posterity. But it wasn’t just you the tequila was whispering to. It was telling the people you were with all kinds of things, too.

  How much tequila to get a vamp rip roaring drunk? In the past, I would have said an infinite amount, but when you had one of the Comey sisters running the bar, you ended up with magical booze.

  Bad, wonderful, horrible, delicious, metabolism blasting booze.

  This was how the four of us wound up on Sterling Luna’s doorstep at two a.m. on a Friday evening. What comes next is the retelling from a fuzzy memory, two brunettes, and a pregnant woman who was probably not going to hang out with any of us for a very long while.

  “Is it here?” whispered Helen.

  Katie waved her phone around like she was at a rave. “Here. Yes! Here. Right here.” She jabbed the air. “That door.”

  I swayed on my feet. “Thisssh one?” I slurred.

  “That one,” Grace said and sighed. “This is a terrible idea, guys. Let’s just get back in the car.”

  “Shut your beautiful face, Grace,” Helen said and fluffed the clairvoyant’s hair. “You really are sexy,” she said. “No wonder Lucas knocked you up so fast.”

  Katie broke into giggles. Grace rolled her eyes but chuckled. “You’re right. I’m straight fire.”

  “Get it girl,” Katie said right before she pointed to me. “You. Knock on that door. Caveman that man of yours and do horrible, unspeakable things to his body.”

  “Noooo,” I said, though I did actually want to do that. I looked down at my hands. “I didn’t bring a club.”

  “I think you can just trip him and pull him out of the house by his hair,” Helen said.

  “His hair is kind of short,” I added.

  “Caveman isn’t a thing,” Katie said. “It’s a state of mind.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Does this mean I still have to trip him?”

  “For the love of the gods,” Grace hissed. “Are we really doing this? Are we twelve right now?”

  “Noooo,” Helen said. “We are women. Hear us roar!” The noise that came out of her mouth was like a strangled cat.

  The door flung open and a dark-haired man with a wild five o’clock shadow stood there glaring at us. “What in the hell is going on right now?”

  He peered at us before his gaze settled on me. I’d frozen like a deer in headlights, my heart pounding so hard it was starting to make my chest ache.

  “Maron?”

  Helen shoved me forward so hard I slammed into Sterling’s chest.

  “Ooof,” he said but caught me.

  In his big strong manly arms. I kept feeling his bicep. “So nice,” I whispered to myself.

  “Maron.”

  I tilted my head up to him. “Hmmmm?”

  A smile quirked the edge of his mouth. “Are you -”

  “Drunk?” Grace supplied. “Oh yes. Fantastically so. I am so sorry, Mr. Luna. I can get them out of here. Let me just -”

  “SHUT IT!” Katie yelled at the top of her lungs. “This is a case for the people’s court, Mr. Luna.”

  Grace huffed out a breath and rolled her eyes. “Heaven help us.”

  “Heaven isn’t here,” Helen said. “Please leave a message.”

  “People’s Court!” Katie yelled. “Did you Mr. Luna promise Maron something and then take it away from her?”

  I was still staring up at my handsome werewolf.

  “Err, no?” he
said.

  “Don’t lie to us!” Katie yelled. “Is she or is she not your soulmate?”

  “Buuuuurrrrrrnnn,” Helen said. She jabbed a finger in the air. “Try to get out of that one, Mister Luna!”

  “How in the world did you manage to get Maron drunk?” he wondered aloud.

  “The Comey sisters. Specifically Sherry. She opened up an experimental place.” Grace shrugged. “It works.”

  “I’m not drunk,” I insisted.

  “You’re still feeling up my bicep,” Sterling said.

  “It’s a wonderful bicep,” I responded.

  “Go big or go home,” Helen said. “There’s a lot more to explore on that hunky guy, Maron. Let your fingers do the walking.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I murmured.

  Sterling let out a strangled laugh as my fingers went on an exploratory trail over Sterling’s body.

  “Answer the question!” Katie yelled.

  Grace rubbed her forehead. “Katie, I think -”

  “Don’t care! Mr. Luna, I will hold you in contempt of court if you don’t answer the question!”

  Grace burst out laughing.

  My fingers had just wandered down past Sterling’s lower back when he grabbed them and pulled them back up to his chest. “Ah, let’s stay g-rated right now, Maron.”

  I pouted. “Why?”

  “Because he’s engaged,” Helen said.

  I stood up straighter. “Oh. Yeah. Bummer.” I sighed.

  Sterling tightened his arms around me. “Do you need rides home?”

  “I can take them,” Grace insisted.

  “This has to be like trying to wrangle cats,” Sterling said. “Why don’t I call their husbands and you can go?”

  Helen shooed her away. “Go! Shoo. Go get baby some sleep. We can take care of ourselves.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can’t,” Grace retorted.

  “I know Hank,” Sterling said. “I’ll bring everyone inside and take care of it.”

  She looked torn.

  “Really. I’m sure. Go home and get some rest.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question!” Katie yelled.

  “For the love of -” Grace started. She turned. “They’re all yours. Good luck.”