Kiss Kiss Fang Fang: A Sucky Vampire Romantic Comedy

by Penelope Bloom

  “That’s enough,” Lucian said, pulling the woman away from me. I was left hunched forward, mouth open and blood dripping from my chin. I ran my index finger up against one of the drops and sucked it dry, then felt incredibly dirty and gross when I thought about what I’d just done.

  “Ugh.” I stepped back, wishing I had something to wipe myself clean with.

  Lucian searched my eyes. “How do you feel?”

  I ran the back of my hand across my chin. “Good. Weird, but good?” I was still not used to talking with elongated teeth poking my lips and made a mental note that I would need to practice that at some point.

  “You’ll grow used to it. If we can’t find a way to undo this,” he added quickly.

  He took out a cloth and cleaned my chin delicately, then used it to clean up the wound on the woman’s neck from my bite. Next, he gave instructions to the dazed woman on how she could find her way back home safely.

  When she was gone, Lucian focused on me again, concern clouding his expression. “You will probably crave human food next. Do you feel hungry?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “We’ll go back to my house and call delivery. It will be safer there.”

  I started walking beside him, mind racing with all the questions I wasn’t allowed answers to before now. There were so many more things I probably should’ve wanted to know about the danger we were in, but I found myself asking the least important question first. “Werewolves,” I said. “Are they real?”

  Lucian sighed. “Yes. And I’ve never met one who isn’t a complete asshole.”

  40

  Lucian

  The vague yellow glow of streetlights filtered through the hazy windows of my home in Savannah. Cara sat on the couch with a box of pizza in her lap and a nervous look on her face while she ate ravenously.

  “You’re sure it’s normal to be this hungry?”

  I nodded. “Your body is changing. It needs fuel.”

  Vlad poured himself some bourbon, took a mouthful, then spit it on the floor with a grimace. He was wearing a pink bathrobe today that he mostly had tied around his sizable waist. His bare belly and chest along with glimpses of his legs were still unfortunately included in the outfit. “I still remember when I first got turned.” Vlad leaned against the wall, folding his arms. “Feels like it was only a thousand years ago.”

  “You told me you forgot all about it,” I said.

  “Yes, well, you’re a fucker and I like to lie to you. This one,” he said, pointing to Cara. “I like her. She has some spunk. So I’ll tell her the story. Anyway, I was a young beautiful prostitute in my city. Royalty from across the world came to have just one night with me. I was gorgeous, elegant, absolutely deadly with my tongue—”

  I shook my head. “We stop aging after we’re turned. You don’t need to describe the way you look as if it was any different.”

  “Underneath this padded exterior lies the body of a lithe panther,” he said. “And that was when I met her. Ana Black. The original vampire. Hundreds of years old even then. Smoking hot. Absolute pair of tits that—”

  “Vlad,” I said, cutting him off. “That would make her older than Dominic.”

  “And?”

  “And the rumor has always been that he’s the oldest of us.”

  “Rumors are shit. Rumors say I never met a pussy I didn’t like. That rumor is absurdly false. There was once a pussy in the canals of—” Vlad interrupted himself, frowning as he used his hands to try to gauge the size of this supposed pussy.

  I ignored him, turning to look at Cara, who was watching with interest. “How do you kill a vampire, exactly?” she asked.

  Vlad stopped talking, then pursed his lips. “Not so hard, really. A little sunlight. Or you could always cut off their head and bury it in sacred ground. Personally, I never understood the point of going to all that trouble. I say you just tie them up and let the sun come. Much less messy and you don’t even need to find a shovel.”

  Cara set down the pizza she’d been about to bite as if she was having second thoughts. “So that’s what we need to do to Bennigan? Expose him to sunlight?”

  Vlad rubbed his hands together excitedly, then gave me a wide-eyed look. “See? This is why I like her. The girl is vicious.”

  “He’s not going to stop until we’re dead, right?” Cara asked. “It sounds like it’s us or him.”

  “That’s probably true,” I agreed. “But he has dozens of allies under his spell. We couldn’t hope to outnumber him and hold him in place until the sun came. Our best chance would be to find where he rests and surprise him.”

  “How do you find that out?”

  “A vampire’s resting place is his most carefully guarded secret,” Vlad said, taking another sip of bourbon and spitting it. “Good luck.”

  Cara frowned. “But I found your coffin really easy. Shouldn’t it be better hidden if it’s such a big secret?”

  “You found what Vlad let you find,” he said. “Besides, I sleep with one tooth sharpened. Let my enemies come. They’ll be the ones regretting it.”

  “They will regret the smells you omit while you sleep,” I muttered.

  “Hey!” Vlad said, throwing his hands up. “That was one time. And I swear, that human had gotten into something foul before I fed on him.” He clutched his stomach at the memory. “The world should thank me for what I did to him the next day.”

  Cara narrowed her eyes. “What did you do to him the next day?”

  “Just some light poking,” Vlad said easily. “Well, it started light. But the little bastard spit on me. And you know my rule about humans who spit on me during torture.”

  “He’s just kidding,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” Vlad insisted. “It’s a hard and fast rule. ‘You spit, you get lit,’ as the kids say.”

  “You get them drunk?” Cara asked.

  “Lit doesn’t mean engulfed in flames? Whoops. Vlad has been using that wrong.” He looked deep in thought, then his eyes went a little wide and haunted. For the sake of unknowing humans he’d crossed paths with, I hoped no college kids had ever told Vlad they wanted to get “lit.”

  Seraphina and Alaric thankfully arrived, saving us from more of Vlad’s grisly details. Seraphina was wearing a sleek, black, no frills dress and a pissed off expression. Alaric had on some fluffy sleeved nonsense with a high cream-colored collar and a stupid, confused look on his face.

  “I see you survived,” I said.

  Alaric saluted. “I’ll be pissing out a few new holes tonight, but yes. I do appear to still be here.”

  “We’re all thrilled about that,” Seraphina said dryly.

  “Thanks for your help, Seraph,” Alaric said, slapping her back. “Really appreciated you coming to our aid in the life or death situation a few hours ago. That was fantastic.”

  “I had things to do,” she said.

  “We can point fingers later, but here’s our situation.” I spent a few minutes filling them in on Cara’s status as a new vampire, what I suspected about Dominic’s involvement in the evil organization of vampires formerly and ridiculously known as Shadow Force that were trying to overthrow humanity for their own benefit.

  When I was finished, Alaric let out a long whistle of appreciation. “Shadow Force?” he said, laughing. “They really went with that as a name? Was their leader a twelve-year-old boy who spends his days playing video games and threatening to sleep with the mothers of his enemies?”

  Vlad clapped his hands and let out a victorious sound. “I know! But I told Jewel to tell them that Vlad said their name was shit stupid.” He winked. “They changed it.”

  I sighed. “This is the least important detail of everything I just said.”

  “The name is stupid,” Seraphina agreed. “But what are we going to do about them?”

  “This Ana White person,” Cara said around a mouthful of pizza, which she’d apparently found her appetite for again. “Do you still have a way to get in touch with her, Vlad?”<
br />
  He looked suddenly smug. “She still keeps me on deck for the occasional booty call. Yes.”

  I was skeptical, but then remembered his idea of “smoking hot” was Jewel and her body like an old warship.

  “So,” Cara said. “What if you call her? Tell her she doesn’t actually need to do anything. We just need her to say she supports The Order, or whatever? It sounds like all you guys—we—care about is how old and powerful people are, right? It’s not really about actually winning the fight? So if they think this ultra-old, ancient lady is backing us, they’ll have to hold off on making a move. Right?”

  I nodded slowly. “It could work. Assuming she agrees.”

  “Vlad can be very persuasive.” He emphasized his point by planting his fists on his hips and starting to gyrate his round body in circles like some kind of warm up.

  “Then get to persuading,” Seraphina said.

  “It will take some time. You four try not to get yourselves killed while Vlad works.”

  Cara stuck up a greasy thumb and nodded, polishing off the last of the pizza crust with her free hand. She noticed me looking, then did an exaggerated wink in my direction.

  I smiled to myself. Resisting the woman had been foolish. I’d started falling for her from the first moment, and every day had only drawn me deeper into the depths.

  41

  Cara

  It had been two days since Vlad disappeared into God knew where to find this Ana woman. I still hadn’t become used to the daily need to bite a stranger’s neck and drink their blood. But, disturbingly, I’d come to look forward to it for the burst of energy and delicious taste of it. I’d also been troubled to find that I almost couldn’t resist crossing my arms over my chest and lying on my back when I went to sleep.

  I’d already felt my cravings for human food dwindling as well, which was bittersweet.

  Lucian insisted we needed to lay low as much as we possibly could while we waited for Vlad. That meant his usual house was deemed too conspicuous and we had to move to a house in another part of the city for the time being. I was making him watch Twilight on a small, ancient box of a TV when I started to get restless. “I have to do something about my old life,” I said. It was a conversation we already had the previous day, but I wasn’t satisfied with the conclusion. He wanted me to wait until we settled things, and I didn’t want to risk dying and never getting a chance to tell my parents or roommates where I was.

  I was sitting with my head on his shoulder. Lucian had finally lightened up a little on his dress code, but not much. He at least set the jacket of his suit to the side and had the sleeves of his button down rolled up as we sat on the couch. He hardly ever took off his dress shoes, which was something I decided I would work on with him if we survived long enough.

  Lucian still hadn’t answered, and I decided I wasn’t going to let him off that easy.

  “I could just text them. Make up some kind of story so they know I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  Lucian shook his head. “You’ve got to let that life go. For now. Once we are sure it’s safe, you can go back to Anya’s and see about finding a way to reverse this, if it’s possible. But there are rules. Traditions.”

  “The guys will worry. They probably already sent out search parties.”

  “What about your parents? You’re not going to try to convince me to let you tell them?”

  I hesitated. “They chose to remove themselves from my life a long time before any of this happened. Maybe I’ll tell them eventually, but my only priority right now is my roommates.”

  Lucian clenched his jaw. “I suppose the majority of vampires already want us dead. It’s not as if they can threaten to make us even more dead.”

  I sat up straight, clenching my hands together. “Does this mean we can go talk to them and tell them I’m okay?”

  He sighed. “Yes. But I’m coming with you to supervise.”

  “Fine. No problem.”

  “We’ll need to think of a convincing story.”

  “I’m sure we can come up with something.”

  42

  Cara

  It hadn’t been that long since all this began, but I already felt strange standing outside my apartment. I guessed it was now “my old apartment”, which meant the guys were going to need to find a fifth roommate to cover my portion of the rent. I’d also need to get my things out of the room at some point. But I decided to worry about that later. Right now, I just wanted to leave them with some sort of closure so they didn’t worry I was dead.

  Parker was the only one in the kitchen when we came in. He came toward me and gave me an awkward, lanky hug while Lucian stood by stiffly.

  “Jesus,” he said. “We thought something happened.” He stepped back, looking me up and down, then let out a relieved sigh. He pulled out his phone and fired off a quick text. “The guys should be here soon. We were going out looking for you in shifts.”

  “Sorry,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

  Parker got busy making coffee for me like a worried mother while me and Lucian took spots at the breakfast table.

  It was only a few minutes before Zack burst through the door, repeated the relieved hug and look-over like Parker had done. Mooney and Niles came next, almost mirroring the exact same procedure.

  I realized how much I missed all of them, and how bad I felt for making them worry.

  Once I had warm coffee in front of me—coffee I was pretty sure would turn my vampire stomach if I dared to drink it—they all sat around the table.

  Zack folded his hands, leaning forward. “We haven’t said a thing to Niles and Parker, but I think they deserve to know the truth.”

  Niles and Parker both looked accusingly at Zack and Mooney.

  I sighed, then ditched the far-fetched story I’d planned to tell about a surprise cruise we’d decided to go on at the last minute. I spent the next few minutes explaining everything I could about what had happened so far to the guys, stopping every couple seconds when Parker asked clarifying questions.

  When I was done, all four guys were staring at us in disbelief.

  Zack was the first to speak. “So you’re a vampire now, but other vampires want you dead?”

  “Basically.”

  “How can we help?” Niles asked.

  “Yeah,” Mooney said. “I was the state champ in wrestling back in high school. I bet I could handle a vampire or two.”

  Parker nodded. “I could help you find their lair.”

  Zack got up, then went to the kitchen. “I’m super hungry right now, but yeah. Hell yeah,” he said over his shoulder as he rummaged through the fridge. “Just tell us what to do and we’ll be your personal ass kickers.”

  I smiled. I’d expected them to be mad or act weirded out. I should’ve known better. Just a few hours ago, I’d felt like this whole thing was bittersweet.

  I was getting Lucian, but I was losing everything else.

  Now it didn’t feel that way at all.

  43

  Lucian

  Despite my arguments, Cara insisted on letting her roommates become involved in the planning process, which we began in earnest at my temporary and hopefully hidden home in Savannah. It was hardly more than an empty space with a bedroom, and it felt even more cramped with Cara, myself, all four of Cara’s roommates, Vlad, Alaric, and Seraphina crowded in the room.

  The honest truth was that I wished I could just take Cara and leave it all behind. I suspected we could find some semblance of safety if we were willing to go far enough. But I also didn’t want to see a world where The Pact was a memory. I knew there were terribly cruel vampires who would do horrible things if unleashed.

  Vlad belched loudly, then covered his mouth. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “Did you get to Ana Black?” I asked.

  Vlad held the fingers on one of his hands in a circle and then crudely inserted his stubby finger in and out of the circle a few times. “Got in ‘er. Out ‘er. Then back in. Qu
ite enjoyable.”

  Seraphina let out a disgusted noise. “Do we really need him?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately,” I said. “Did you get her to agree to help us?”

  “She wasn’t too keen on the whole thing with the pact. But, lucky for you, old Vlad knows she hates Dominic. Once she learned he was still toolin’ around, she agreed on the spot. Except, well, she said she couldn’t be bothered to actually show up. We can pretend she’s backing us without her removing our heads in our sleep, but it’ll just be words.”

  “Will that be enough?” Cara asked me. She was standing close with her hands wrapped around my arm. She liked to stand like that, hugging some part of me she could reach.

  I put my arm around her, pulling her a little closer. “If we make a wave. It might be. But I think we need to take Bennigan out of the picture.”

  “You mean find where he sleeps, right?” Parker asked.

  Vlad sniffed the air. “Who brought the virgin?”

  Parker’s cheeks went red. “I know a lot about vampires. Okay? I’ve read all sorts of stuff online. But that’s true, right? You find where they sleep and that’s where they’re vulnerable.”

  “And all you have to do to kill a tiger with your bare hands is punch through its chest and rip out its still-beating heart,” Alaric said. “Knowing is one thing. Doing is another.”

  “Vampires still have to use money, right? Like you pay someone for your properties, I assume?” Parker asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “People sell information on the dark web. If one of you has the money to spare, I could probably buy a list of his expenditures for the last several years. It’d be pretty hard to hide where he’s got property, at the very least. If we were lucky, maybe one would be a place he sleeps.”