Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors)

by Adrianne Ambrose

  “A lot of kids are dying.”

  The cop nodded. “Teenage suicide has become very popular lately. Believe me, I know.”

  “Come on, Xander.” I tugged at his shoulder. “I thought this might be a waste of time.”

  He got to his feet, and we both headed for the door. As we were about to leave, Xander paused. “It’s not just the vampire, you know.” Sergeant Maddox was attempting to look busy with paperwork until we left. “There’s underage drinking. There’s drugs. There’s teenagers having sex.” The cop didn’t move his head, but his eyes shifted in our direction. Xander went on, “After you get under the bridge, the west side of the bridge, there’s these steps that lead down to the old main entrance. Kids hang out all the time. There’s a bunch of old couches and pillows down there and stuff. Some weird guy with a ponytail sells booze to anyone who will pay him to get it. I think he’s homeless or something.”

  The sergeant looked slightly more interested. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll look into it.”

  Next we hit the hardware store. There were plenty of wooden dowels for sale, and there was even the option to have them cut to size, but after that, we really had no way of sharpening them into stakes, so we decided Xander’s butchered chair was probably good enough. After all, there was only the one vampire, possibly two.

  I wanted to drop by the toy store to pick up some squirt guns, but Xander had some sports bottles in the car. If you squeeze them hard, those things can spray water pretty good. Plus, they’re easier to fill.

  After that, we drove toward the bridge. It was the first time we were using the church’s parking lot during daylight hours. I tried to justify it with the fact that we were going inside, but we were actually there to steal from the church, so that didn’t ease my conscience any.

  There wasn’t anyone around when we slipped inside, so we hurried over to the big dish thingy that holds the holy water and submerged our bottles.

  “Are you going to be fighting vampires this afternoon?” a voice behind us asked.

  I spun around, dropping my bottle into the holy water. There was a priest standing there, wearing the collar and everything. He had a bemused smile on his face. “Um… Sorry, Father,” I said. “We were just…” I seriously couldn’t think of a good excuse for stealing the holy water.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “I was a kid once too, you know. I’ve seen The Lost Boys.”

  “We were going to make a donation,” Xander offered. “We’re sorry.”

  “That’s fine,” the priest said. “Don’t worry about the water. I can make more.”

  “Thanks.” Xander finished filling up his bottle.

  “Do you really think you know where one is?” the priest asked. “A vampire, I mean.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Xander gave half a shrug as he screwed the cap on his bottle. I was just topping off mine, and we were almost ready to go.

  “Under the bridge?”

  We both stopped and stared at him. “How did you know?” I asked.

  “We’re practically neighbors,” he told us, gesturing in the direction of the bridge. “I’ve had my suspicions.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Xander frowned.

  It was the priest’s turn to shrug. “I thought about it, but I didn’t know for a fact. And even if I did know, I wasn’t sure who to tell. Besides, who would believe me? I can just see the headline, ‘Cleveland Priest Claims Vampires Living Under Bridge.’ That wouldn’t cause too much of a scandal.”

  “Well, if we suddenly disappear or turn up as having committed suicide, would you please tell someone? I mean, the cops or something?” Xander added, “We already tried talking to them, and they just blew us off.”

  “I will.” The priest nodded. “I promise.” After a pause, he added, “Wait, I have some things for you.” Walking over to the closest pew, he fished out a Bible and handed it to me. He reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out some rosary beads with a large crucifix dangling off the end, and handed them to Xander. “I don’t know if the vampire legends are true, but better to have these just in case.”

  “Thank you, Father,” we both said.

  “Oh, and one more thing.” He waved his hand in the air, making the sign of the cross and murmuring a blessing in Latin. When he was finished, he smiled. “I don’t know if that’ll help, but I figure it couldn’t hurt.”

  From the church, we headed toward the bridge. Up until that point, it had felt like we were little kids again playing make-believe or that we were in a school play or something. But walking down the path to the bridge made everything suddenly feel very, very real. My pace slowed as my stomach began to clench. Was there really anything we could do to save Rini? After all, she kept running back to Vincent every time our backs were turned. Also, was staking a vampire murder? Maybe not in the eyes of the church, but what would the police think of us ramming a pointy piece of wood through another human being? Even if that human’s heart had stopped beating a couple of centuries ago.

  Xander was ahead of me, walking determinedly toward the bridge’s entrance. “Hey,” I called to him in a low voice. “Why are we doing this again?”

  “To save Rini,” Xander growled. “Damn it!” he added as we had reached the entrance. It was secured by a metal door. “I should have known this would happen.” Xander kicked the door in frustration. “Come on. I have a crowbar in my car.”

  He pushed past me in his rush to get the crowbar. “Listen, Xander.” I dogged his heels. “I care about Rini. I mean, I care about her as much as you do. But I’m not sure potentially getting ourselves killed in there is such a good idea. Maybe we need to, you know, rethink this.” I had to increase my speed to keep pace with him. “Okay, so the cop thing didn’t work out. That doesn’t mean we don’t have other options. Maybe you could whip out your dad’s credit card and we could hire some kind of commando security force or something. That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

  “You don’t understand, Sherbie. If something happened to Rini, I could never forgive myself.”

  “I know. I don’t think I’d ever get over it either. It would be awful.” My wrists started to itch just thinking about it. “But let’s try to figure out a plan that makes more sense.”

  Xander came to an abrupt halt. He stopped so fast that I nearly ran into the back of him. He whipped around to stare at me. “Do you love Rini?”

  “What?” I squinted at his face, but he was perfectly serious. “Um… sure. I guess. I mean, if I think about it, you and Rini and Grandma are probably the people I’m closest to in the whole world.”

  “But are you in love with her?”

  “What?”

  Xander took a step forward and lowered his voice. “Are you in love with Rini?”

  “No. What are you talking about?” I let out an awkward half laugh at the thought of it. “I mean, she’s Rini.”

  “Are you in love with her?” he asked again. He was being weirdly intense about it.

  “No,” I repeated. “Of course not. Are you?”

  “Yes,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “What?”

  “Yes, I’m in love with her.”

  Chapter 28

  I’m not sure which I found more shocking: the fact that vampires actually existed or that my two best friends were in love. Actually, to be more accurate, that Xander was in love with Rini. He wasn’t all that clear if she was in love with him.

  At first, I called bullshit and was kind of annoyed because we were about to go stake a vampire, and it really wasn’t the appropriate time to be joking around. But he let me know pretty clearly that he was completely serious. “You always think you know my type or who the ideal girl is for me, but you never even came close. It’s Rini. She’s my ideal.”

  I suppressed the urge to say, “You’re kidding,” and settled for, “Since when?”

  Xander sighed. “I’m not even sure when it started. I do know when Gerald, that Smiths-loving poser, came sniffing ar
ound last summer, I just about wanted to kill him. That’s when I had to admit it to myself.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering what your deal was. You weren’t very nice to him, and he just wasn’t that bad.” In truth, Xander had behaved like a total ass, and I had thought the guy was pretty all right.

  “He was a tool,” Xander grumbled.

  “If you like her, then why aren’t you and Rini together? She’s had a mad crush on you for years. Why not just tell her how you feel?”

  “I have. And we would be.” Xander sighed, his posture sagging a little. “But you know…”

  “No,” I told him. “I don’t know.”

  “She’s all weird about it because she says I’m better looking than she is, which is totally bullshit. And besides, she doesn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

  There was something about the hand gesture Xander made when he said “our friendship” that confused me. It almost felt like he was indicating me, so I asked, “She’s worried if you date it’ll ruin your friendship?”

  Xander looked me straight in the eye. “No, she’s worried it would ruin our friendship with you.”

  “Whah…?” was the only thing I could make come out of my mouth.

  “Yeah. She doesn’t want you to feel, I don’t know, left out or something. That’s why I’m always giving girls your phone number and stuff.”

  Nothing Xander was saying made any sense. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, how I always try to slip girls your number or email address. Like with Lana.”

  That’s when I knew he was BSing me. “Come on, Xander. That’s Rini.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s me.”

  “What? Why?”

  Xander gave me a look of someone long suffering. “Don’t you get anything? If you have a girlfriend, then we can double date. You won’t feel left out, and maybe Rini would agree to be my girlfriend.”

  “Wow.” I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. “I really am the most oblivious person on the planet.”

  “Yeah.” Xander wasn’t going to argue with me. “Sometimes you’re not too bright.” He opened the trunk of his car and pulled out the crowbar. “It’s getting late. We’d better get this over with, or it’ll be dark out.” He slammed the trunk. Rummaging in his satchel, he pulled out two stakes and handed one to me. “Here. You might need this.” I gulped and tried not to think how unpleasant it would be to use the pointy stick to pierce someone’s flesh.

  Gripping a stake in one hand and the crowbar in the other, Xander said, “Let’s go make Cleveland a vampire-free city.”

  Getting the metal door open was much easier than we’d anticipated. The door itself was solid and would have been too difficult to penetrate, but the cement wall surrounding the door was quite crumbly. Xander just hacked at it with the crowbar until he’d carved a notch around the lock and we could jerk the door open. “Do you think he sleeps in a coffin?” I asked as we tiptoed inside. The bare light bulbs overhead were still illuminated even though it was daytime. I guess that was a good thing because neither one of us had thought to bring a flashlight.

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t see one when I was looking for Rini. I did see a big bed, and the windows have all been sealed up pretty good down there. I bet he just sleeps in the bed.”

  As we were sneaking down the long hallway with the dirty white tiles, I tried to visualize what we were about to do. “How do you think this is going down? We’re just going to run in there, stake him, and leave?”

  “I guess.” Xander kept his voice low. “There isn’t exactly an etiquette book for these things.”

  “What about Aerony?”

  Xander glanced back at me. “What about her?”

  “Do we stake her or not?”

  Xander frowned. “I’m not sure. Is she a vampire?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the litmus test for vampires besides seeing her suck on somebody’s neck?”

  “Burning in the sun?” Xander raised his eyebrows.

  I shuddered. “Let’s try to figure out something else.”

  We both quieted down as we were about to enter the main area under the bridge where we had attended that first party after the Young Lords. I had the priest’s Bible in one hand and one of Xander’s homemade stakes in the other. The door that accessed the bridge, which was usually propped open, was closed. Fortunately, it wasn’t locked, and Xander pushed it open causing an eardrum-piercing squeak. I winced at the sharp noise and at the thought that if somehow our hacking through the metal door had gone unnoticed, this noise would definitely alert Vincent to our arrival.

  Absolutely no one was around. Under the bridge was devoid of people or any trace of decorations, plastic cups, or confetti that would have hinted about the parties that had recently taken place there. “Maybe he left,” I said in a hopeful whisper.

  “Can’t happen,” was Xander’s reply.

  “Why?”

  “Because if he left, then he took Rini with him.”

  That didn’t exactly preclude Vincent from fleeing the city. He could have easily taken several of the Chosen along as snack bags, but I wasn’t going to mention it to Xander. He was being enough of a spaz already. “Should we check out his rooms?” I said, peeping over the railing at the staircase.

  Xander had a tight grip on his stake. “Definitely.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, pulling back. “Grandma would be super pissed if I got myself killed.”

  “You’re not going to get killed,” Xander assured me. “We’re just going to run in there, stake the vampire, and get out. Got it? Run in, stake him, get out.”

  I knew it was time to man up. “Okay,” I said, adjusting my grip on my own stake. “Let’s do this.”

  There was a steady mechanical droning coming from the vampire’s lair. It echoed off the walls and ceiling as we headed down the staircase and through the passageway. “What is that?” I wondered aloud. Xander just shrugged.

  It was immediately obvious that Vincent hadn’t made a break for it. Or if he had, he’d left most of his possessions behind. The chairs were still there scattered around the room, along with the large tables covered with their ornate tablecloths. The food and platters and stemware had all been cleared away. Besides that, the room was the same. The droning was from a vacuum cleaner, and there was a man in a white apron bent over as he was absorbed in the task of cleaning under one of the tables. While he vacuumed, he was humming with the openness of someone who is unaware he is being observed. “Bum, ba-bum, ba-bum ba-bum ba-bum.” I thought I recognized the strains of Beethoven. Maybe Mozart—I get those two confused. The cleaner must have sensed we were there because he straightened up in surprise. It was the vampire himself with the shirt sleeves of one of his frilly blouses rolled to the elbows.

  “Oh, my darlings,” Vincent said, quickly shutting off the vacuum cleaner. “You surprised me. I was not expecting you.” He removed his apron, obviously a little embarrassed that we had found him in a state of domestic industriousness. “Everyone else has gone out,” he explained. “You find me quite alone.”

  “Where are they?” Xander asked in a loud voice, his words echoing off the walls of the empty room.

  “They went to that amusement park. Cedar Point, I think it’s called. There is a new rollercoaster that they all very much desired to try.” He examined his shoe buckles. “I could not go, but I did not want them to miss the entertainment.”

  Xander shot me a sideways glance. “I didn’t know Cedar Point had a vampire groupie day.”

  Normally I would have fired back with a snarky comment of my own about how donating a pint of blood got you half off admission, but there was something about the slightly forlorn expression on Vincent’s face that caused me to check my remark.

  “Can I offer you some type of refreshment?” the vampire asked. “I know you do not prefer champagne, but there is bottled water and apple juice.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Xander told him. �
�We’re not exactly here on a social call.”

  “Please excuse my appearance.” The vampire unrolled his sleeves and buttoned a few buttons on his embroidered silk vest. “I was just cleaning up a little, and I really wasn’t expecting company.” He appeared as debonair as he always did, so I wasn’t sure why he was apologizing. Vincent smiled at us. “I am so glad to see you, my darlings. Why have you done me this honor?”

  “Because of this!” Xander brandished the cross that the priest had given him.

  I hadn’t anticipated that we were sticking to the plan and going immediately on the offensive. It seemed rude attacking someone after interrupting him in his apron. But I had to back Xander, so I immediately thrust my Bible into the air and shouted, “And this!”

  “Arrrrgh!” the vampire shrieked, throwing his arms in the air to shield his face.

  Chapter 29

  After a few seconds, Vincent lowered his hands and started to chuckle. “I am sorry, my darlings. I’m afraid these lovely symbols are no threat to me. But I didn’t want you to feel disappointed.” He took a few steps toward us. “If it’s any consolation, during my lifetime, I was a Jew.”

  “Stay back!” Xander yelled, releasing the contents of his squirt bottle directly into Short Vincent’s face.

  “What are you doing?” the vampire sputtered, trying to wipe the holy water from his vest. “This is silk, you idiot. It has to be dry cleaned.”

  “I’m sorry,” Xander mumbled.

  “Do you know how hard it is to find a twenty-four hour drycleaner in this town?”

  “Sorry,” Xander repeated.

  “Um, he’s Jewish, Xander. None of this stuff is going to work.” I tossed the Bible on the nearest table, and the vampire promptly picked it up.

  “What about garlic?” Xander looked hopeful.

  “Sorry, my darlings, that is also not true,” the vampire told us, which was just as well because I’d left my bag of garlic in the car.

  “Do you mind if I borrow this?” Vincent asked, thumbing through the holy book. “I haven’t read the old testament in so long. I find some of the passages are quite beautiful.”