Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors)

by Adrianne Ambrose

  “Help yourself.” I shrugged.

  Pleased, the vampire put the book to one side. “So, my darlings, you have come to kill me. Is that right?” He turned back toward us.

  “Kind of,” I admitted. “But we thought you’d be asleep in a coffin or something.”

  “No, no, no.” The vampire shook his head and clucked his tongue. “That was just a myth from many years ago. I tried it once on a bet. But I must tell you, it was very uncomfortable.”

  “Sunlight doesn’t kill you either?” Xander wanted to know. It was obvious the wheels in his head were spinning as he tried to formulate a new plan.

  “Not in the way you think, my darling.” The vampire didn’t appear concerned that we silly humans were obviously preparing our next assault. He was also way too amenable about answering our questions. I got the impression that he was a little bit forlorn at the moment and pleased to have the company. “It is unpleasant for me to stay up all day, much like it is unpleasant for you to stay up all night. Plus, you must see that it is better for us vampires at night when people aren’t at work or in high school.”

  “But can it kill you?” Xander persisted.

  The vampire gave him a patient smile. “Yes, the light of the sun has the power to kill me. But I would not burst into flames like in some low-budget horror movie. That is just ridiculous.”

  Xander narrowed his eyes. “How does it kill you?”

  Short Vincent walked over to where his brocade coat hung on the back of a chair. “Come,” he said, slipping it on. “Let us sit and talk like gentlemen. The days are so long during the summer. It makes me nostalgic for when I was a human and had my friends about me.” He pulled a chair away from a table and nodded toward it. “Sit. I will get the apple juice.”

  There was a commotion in the passageway, and we all turned to look. Aerony, a few dozen of the Chosen, and several beefy boys clamored into the room clutching cheap carnival prizes and bags of cotton candy. Laughing and chatting, they were all so attractive they could have been cast in the Goth version of Beverly Hills 90210. I could see Violet Maureen in the crowd, but after making initial eye contact, she studiously ignored me.

  “Ah, my darlings.” The vampire clapped his hands with delight. “You are home so soon. I was not expecting you until much later. How was the rollercoaster?”

  Aerony came forward to speak to Vincent as the Chosen chatted excitedly amongst themselves. “It was very exhilarating,” she said in her warm, honeyed voice.

  Vincent put a hand to her cheek. “Aerony, you look pale.” And he was right. The beautiful woman looked more like a beautiful woman with amoebic dysentery.

  “It was a very sunny day,” she told him.

  The vampire shook his head and made a tsk, tsking sound with his tongue. “You should not have stayed out so long. It has sickened you.”

  “I couldn’t resist,” she confided. “I know I will not be able to enjoy the sunshine for much longer.”

  While I was eavesdropping on the vampire’s conversation, Xander had plunged into the thick of the Chosen, looking for Rini. He must have found her because I heard him exclaim, “What are you doing here?”

  “I came with Rini,” said a defensive female voice.

  I caught a glimpse of Xander clutching Lana by the elbow. “Lana,” I blurted.

  Xander dragged her over to me. “Look who decided to join the Chosen.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  “We went to Cedar Point,” she said, tossing a stuffed polar bear she’d been clutching onto a chair.

  “Cut it out. You know what I mean.”

  She let out a long breath, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. “I just want to let him bite me once. Okay? I just want to know what it’s like to feel pretty.”

  I felt like I was losing my mind. “You are pretty,” I growled at her through clenched teeth.

  Lana looked away. “You obviously don’t think so.”

  I was about to explain to her in detail that she was definitely wrong about that, but Xander interrupted with, “Is Rini with you?”

  Nodding, Lana indicated a large chair that someone was crouching behind.

  Slamming the crowbar down, Xander shoved his stake back in his satchel. Hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, he stormed over to the chair. “Come out from there,” he commanded.

  Reluctantly, Rini appeared from behind the chair, looking rather sheepish. “We just went to Cedar Point.”

  “With vampires,” Xander fired back at her.

  “That’s not true,” Rini sulked. “Vincent couldn’t go.” She turned away from him and started heading toward me, but on second reflection, she was probably headed for Lana.

  Rini’s hair was glossy and thick; her figure had smoothed out into a compact hourglass; her sun-kissed complexion was radiant. It was obvious she had let the vampire bite her again. Xander chased after her, grabbed her by both shoulders, and turned her to face him. He gazed deep down into her eyes. “Rini,” he rasped, “why do you keep coming back here?”

  Immediately, she twisted her face away, not willing to meet his gaze. “I just want to be pretty, Xander.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t say I’m pretty.” She put her hands to his lips, cutting him off. “We both know it’s not true.”

  “It’s true to me.”

  “But not to the rest of the world.” He tried to speak, but Rini kept going. “Don’t you get it? Maybe if I looked a little better, it wouldn’t be so weird.”

  “What wouldn’t be weird?”

  Rini met his gaze, her eyes glistening. “Us being together.”

  That’s when he kissed her. And it wasn’t his usual Xander kiss where he was all smooth and ready for his close-up. He kissed her as if it was the only thing he could do to stop his heart from being torn out of his chest.

  When they finally pulled apart, Xander buried his face in Rini’s hair. “Can’t you see I love you? You could be the most beautiful woman in the world or the ugliest. It wouldn’t matter to me because it’s you, Rini. It’s you that I love.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I do. But you keep letting that vampire bite you. You’re letting him erase who you are. He’s erasing what I love.”

  A few tears slid down Rini’s cheeks. “I didn’t know it was like that.”

  “How could you not know?”

  Rini sniffed. “Gee, Xander, I don’t know. Maybe it was all those other girls you’re always dating.”

  “Well, I had to do something. You wouldn’t date me.”

  “I guess I never believed you really liked me.”

  Xander kissed the tears from her cheeks. “Do you believe me now?”

  “Yes.” Rini sighed, leaning into him as he wrapped his arms around her.

  “Um, guys?” I interrupted. “Could you maybe talk about this later? We’ve kind of got other things to deal with right now.” Like getting out of the vampire’s lair alive was the most pressing thing, but I didn’t want to say it out loud because it was obvious the vampire and soon-to-be vampire were listening.

  Aerony had watched the exchange between Xander and Rini with the keen interest of a cat watching its prey. She leaned toward Vincent. “What are the boys doing here?”

  “My darling, it is nothing. They just came to murder me.”

  “What?” Aerony seemed to think it was more than nothing. She swung around to confront me. “Why do you want to kill Vincent?”

  I couldn’t believe she was asking me, but under her gaze, I simultaneously felt really embarrassed that I’d even thought of such a thing. I tried to conceal the stake I was clutching by hiding it behind my leg. “Because he’s a vampire.”

  “What does that matter? He doesn’t hurt anyone.” She waved a hand toward the Chosen. “Everyone is here because they want to be here. They’ve signed contracts. They want the gift that nature denied them and only a vampire can give.”

  “What about
Lydia Sarducci?”

  Aerony’s perfect brows furrowed together. “Who?”

  “From the other night,” Vincent explained, for once being the aid to her memory. “I told these boys they could only take their one friend. They left the other girl behind and we…” He put his wrist to his lips in a nonchalant gesture to explain the rest.

  “Oh.” Aerony turned her giant lion’s eyes back to me. “She was a friend of yours?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “Well… our grandparents were… are friends.”

  “I am sorry.” Aerony touched my arm, and I felt myself tremble against my will. “She was such a nice girl. And getting so pretty. Who could have known that she was actually suicidal?”

  “Oh, cut the crap, already.” Xander came to stand next to me. “We know you killed her. Okay? Then you faked her suicide so no one would find out.”

  Aerony drew back, offended. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve read too many vampire novels.”

  “Ah, my darlings, please stop,” Vincent interrupted. He had seated himself on his throne. We all turned to look at him. “Yes, yes, there may have been a little too much feeding on Miss Sarducci. It was a shame, and I’m sorry. Accidents happen.”

  “Accidents happen,” I repeated. “Are you kidding me? I think there’s a much, much bigger chance of an accident happening while you’re sucking the blood out of someone’s neck.”

  “There is no reason to get so excited,” the vampire told me. “I didn’t mean to kill her. Not really.”

  “You’ve had over a dozen accidents in the last six months,” I accused him.

  Short Vincent shrugged. “Sometimes I get so hungry. And I must train Aerony. She is about to make her transformation, you know. But don’t worry, my darlings, there is always a bit of trouble when we are recruiting, but it won’t last forever. A lot depends on the die-off rate, but then you won’t hear from me for maybe another twenty years.”

  “You can’t keep doing this,” I told him. “You can’t keep killing people off, even if it is only every other decade.” The vampire was being so blasé about murder that it was really pissing me off.

  “Yes, I can see why it might upset you,” the vampire said, the corners of his mouth pulling down slightly in empathy. “But what can be done?”

  “You can stop.”

  “No, my darling, I cannot.”

  “I will stop you,” I told him. I know it was an incredibly stupid thing to say, but I was angry. “Mr. Sarducci is a friend of my grandmother’s. His whole family is devastated because you killed his granddaughter. And you don’t even have the balls to own your murders. You faked it, so her family has to suffer the added torture of thinking she killed herself. And that goes for every family of every person you’ve ever killed in your entire sick vampire life.”

  Vincent gave me a pitying look. “I’m sorry, darling, I know it seems cowardly, but it is necessary, or I could not enjoy my quiet life. You cannot stop me. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I will stop you!” I raged, clenching the stake in my fist. “Or I will make the police stop you.”

  The vampire sighed. “I see it’s come to this.”

  Vincent clapped his hands twice, and out of nowhere, the beefy boys grabbed Xander and me. I could have tried stabbing one of them with my stake, I guess, but they were so quick. For such big guys, they were pretty stealthy. Dragging us in front of the throne, they thrust us to our knees.

  “Get off me,” Xander snarled, but the beefy boys had our arms firmly behind our backs, twisting them so painfully that I dropped my weapon.

  The vampire folded his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles, looking at us with his fathomless eyes. “Darlings, you must understand that I cannot have people sneaking into my home at all hours of the day and trying to kill me.”

  “Fine. Just stop recruiting your food out of Cleveland, and we’ll leave you alone,” Xander offered.

  This made the vampire smile. “You are such a delight. It is rare that someone like yourself visits me.” Vincent reached out and put his hand under Xander’s chin making it so he couldn’t look away. The vampire laughed, and it sounded like a snake’s rattle. “Usually it is the plain ones that seek my attention.” His eyes flickered in Lana’s direction. “Or the pretty ones that have somehow been overlooked. Not ones like you. Not one that is so used to attention he doesn’t even realize he is receiving it.” Xander stopped trying to pull away from the vampire’s caress and looked deeply into his eyes. Vincent went on. “There is more to be gained from my favor than just beauty and confidence. My Chosen are my family. I am like a father to them, and Aerony is like a mother. To have so many brothers and sisters, to have such a large and loving family, one would never feel lonely again. Is that something you would like?”

  Xander looked weird. He had gone all glassy eyed and smiling. “Yes,” he said. “That’s something I’ve always wanted.”

  “Yes, I know.” The vampire stroked Xander’s hair. “Such a pretty face. You would make a wonderful addition to our family. Is this something that would make you happy?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Xander responded, “Yes, very happy. I want to be part of your family. Very much.”

  Short Vincent smiled. “Good. That is very good.” He addressed the beefy boys that restrained Xander. “Take him to my quarters, and have a contract ready.”

  “Xander! What are you doing?” I yelled, but he was completely oblivious to me.

  My words did bring me to the vampire’s attention. “Don’t worry. I have not forgotten about you.”

  The beefy boys helped Xander to his feet and were steering him toward one of the rooms behind the vampire’s throne. Xander gave the larger of the boys a beatific look. “May I wait for my friend?”

  Although they were behind him, Vincent must have heard because he raised his hand and said, “He may wait. I’m sure this will not take long.” Then the vampire gave his attention back to me. Leaning forward on his throne, he placed his hand on my chin like he’d done with Xander. “I find you very interesting.”

  The stake that I’d dropped was on the ground, very close to me. Even though the beefy boys were restraining me, I could have maybe jerked my arm free, grabbed it, and plunged the sharpened piece of wood into the vampire’s heart. But I found that I sincerely did not want to kill him. His noticing me and thinking I was special was wonderful. It felt like the best compliment I had ever received or could ever receive in my entire life. All I wanted to do was be worthy of his attention. Lydia was fully aware of what she was doing when she let Vincent drink from her. After all, the contract did say she might suffer from extreme loss of life. Having Vincent drink my blood would make me handsome and charismatic. I would be one of the Chosen. I would be rich and happy and loved. Everything about it sounded wonderful. It was too good to be true.

  And that’s when Grandma popped into my head.

  Damn her and her stupid convictions always interfering in my life. She wouldn’t want me to become one of the Chosen. But she didn’t know what it would mean to me. She didn’t understand how it would make my life better. She’d probably just focus on how sharing blood is unhygienic. She’d be too worried that Vincent would drink all of my blood and slash my wrists to conceal the murder.

  My face must have been an open book of everything I was thinking because Vincent was enraptured. “Look at him, my darlings. Look,” he said to the others in the room. “See how he struggles. He wants to be with us. He wants to be one of the Chosen, but there is something keeping him back. Look. I insist you must look.”

  Everyone leaned forward to get a better view. The beefy boys released Xander, and the three of them jockeyed to get in a better position to see me as they crowded behind Vincent’s chair looking over his shoulder. The Chosen gathered on either side of the vampire, craning their necks and squatting down on the floor. Aerony came to my side, crouched down, and gazed up into my face.

  “I have never seen a human so young hold out fo
r so long after I decided to enchant him.” Vincent leaned back in his throne. “This is delightful. My darling...” He smiled at me, his dark eyes glittering. “I am very much going to enjoy sucking away your soul.”

  That’s when the business end of a stake came bursting out of the vampire’s chest.

  Chapter 30

  Vincent screamed and clawed at the wooden spike. While everyone had been distracted trying to look at my face, Xander had pulled a stake from his satchel and rammed it through the back of the vampire’s chair. The Chosen started to shriek and wail as blood quickly drenched the vampire’s brocade vest.

  “No, no,” Short Vincent gasped. “No, my darlings, do not be upset. Do not cry. It is too late for me now.” His eyes lost some of their sparkle, and he started to sag around the spike that had him pinned to his throne. His gaze caught mine, and he said, “I knew I would die one day, but life feels too short.”

  The waxy look of Vincent’s skin began to fade. His complexion became more flushed and rosy even as the light was fading from his eyes. He looked younger, stronger, and even more vibrant as his blood seeped from his shirt and vest down to his silk knee breeches. After that, he appeared younger still, more like a teenager or someone in his early twenties. As blood began to trickle from the corner of his mouth, I realized that in death he was aging backwards. A few seconds after that, he morphed into a child, looking like a murdered young Mozart dressed in his father’s silks. His buckled shoes fell to the floor. The entire throne was dripping with blood. It was horrible to see the child Vincent looking at me with eyes so large and frightened.

  A new transformation began to grip the vampire. His skin began to wrinkle and wizen. The blood on his face dried and cracked in an instant. He opened his mouth, and I thought he was trying to say something. Even worse, I thought he was trying to say something to me. I can’t be sure, and I will never be sure of what he said, but if I had to make a guess, it would be, “You’re next.”

  Vincent crumpled in on himself like a deflating balloon. Soon he was nothing more than a shriveled pile of flesh and blood-soaked clothes.