Paranormal Bromance

by Carrie Vaughn

  SO. I HAD this strange tickling sensation in my gut that Ginny was everything I’d ever wanted in a woman. The trouble was, these days, all I wanted was blood. I didn’t want to get laid anymore. I wanted to feed.

  I was turned in 1996, when I was twenty-five, during a rampage that the local vampires still don’t like to talk about.

  It takes more than just biting someone to make them a vampire. There’s a whole process. I got knocked on the back of the head as I was walking back to my downtown apartment after a midnight movie. Woke up three nights later in a closet in a parking garage, along with Jack and Aaron, who’d also been attacked and turned. It was the “lair” of a rogue vampire with delusions of grandeur attempting to start his own personal vampire army. I couldn’t help but think that if he’d succeeded in his plan, how very disappointed he would have been in the three of us.

  The local Family of vampires caught the rogue and punished him—left him outside in sunlight, which was just exactly harsh enough, I thought. But they were left with us. The Family, run at the time by an okay guy named Arturo, offered to help us adapt to our new nocturnal lives. We could have stayed with him and others of his Family in his underground compound, worked for him, and he’d have looked after us and made sure we were fed. That sounded too much like moving back home, so the three of us found a basement apartment and decided to fend for ourselves. Arturo laid out the rules—no killing our food supply, no attempts to set up a rival vampire Family—and wished us well. That was years ago now, and we’ve been doing okay. Since then, a new guy had taken over from Arturo, Rick, and if anything Rick was even more laid back.

  We didn’t much notice the local vampire politics. Seemed safer that way.

  The truth of the matter is, Gen X-ers make terrible vampires. To be a good vampire—what most vampires think of as a good vampire—you have to be interested in power. You have to take the long view. Plan ahead, have a little ambition. Think about your place in the world and how to manipulate it. You have to want to manipulate it.

  Me, I’m pretty happy playing another round of whatever my current game obsession is. I think about living forever and figure I can get really good at Xbox. It’s not that I don’t care about the big picture. I just don’t see why I should. You ask yourself, does the work equal the reward? And I have to tell you, the powerful vampires all look pretty stressed out for guys who are basically immortal.

  I reviewed video games for living, writing for blogs and online magazines. I had a reputation, made decent money, and I didn’t have to leave the house. Which was important. I didn’t know how vampires made a living before the Internet. Maybe that was why the old ones always looked stressed out, like dragons guarding their horde.

  I got home from the club and, thinking of Ginny and what it might possibly be like to invite someone here—not that I would, but maybe someday—and noticed what a dump we lived in. We didn’t do it on purpose. The apartment was actually pretty nice—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious living room with a comfy sofa and ridiculously big TV, and an okay kitchen. We never used the kitchen. We were a three-bachelor party pad. And nobody remembered to clean up after themselves.

  A mountain of debris had somehow piled up after Jack and I left. Most of it was cardboard boxes and wads of packing paper.

  “Aaron?” I called. “Aaron, you alive in there? So to speak?”

  “I’m fine. Paying my rent here, stop nagging.”

  I wasn’t nagging. I started to tell him, then realized that would make me a nag. “You think maybe you could take some of these boxes out to the recycle bin?”

  Noises bumped from his room, like someone tripping over something or dropping books.

  He called back, “Sam, if the place isn’t on fire, I can’t talk.”

  “Okay, that’s fine. If you don’t want to take these out to recycling, can I do it?”

  At that, he pounded out of his room and looked at me like I’d just offered to bleach all his clothes. He was a scrawny guy, not just white but pasty, with a mop of brown hair and an eternally startled expression. “No, I need them. For shipping.”

  “All of them?” There must have been thirty cardboard boxes parked in the living room, piled around the front door, some of them collapsed, some of them not. Some of them were torn, stained, and disintegrating, obviously unusable. A stack of incoming boxes was piled next to Aaron’s room. I took the initiative and started at least nesting some of the boxes together, to clear space.

  “I don’t know yet what sizes I need. I might need them all. I have five auctions finishing up right now—so yes, I need them.” That was why Aaron spent all his time in his room and why he always looked like a mole that’s been dragged out of his hole. He made his living flipping collectibles on eBay. I wouldn’t have believed there was an art to it until I saw him at work. He made a shockingly good living at it.

  The empty boxes were only part of the mess. We kept the lights dim, but once you noticed the spider webs in the corners of the ceiling, the dust on the top edge of the TV, and the dirt that had been tracked into the carpet, you couldn’t unsee it.

  I said, “Do you think maybe we could hire someone to come in once a week, just to keep the place habitable?”

  He looked shocked. “You really want some stranger coming in here? Every week? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

  “Every other week? Once a month?”

  He was already shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not that messy, is it?” He picked up a box, put it back down again, and somehow managed to make the space look more chaotic. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Hitting on chicks who grew up reading Twilight.”

  “I can’t believe that works.” Shaking his head, he returned to his room, leaving a trail of toppled cardboard boxes in his wake.

  I slumped into the sofa and started up the console, because I still had five hours until dawn. Ginny wasn’t online, because she was sane and mortal and had probably gone to bed like a normal person.

  A couple of hours later, the front door swung open, crunching through boxes in the way. Jack didn’t even notice as he stormed in.

  “That was an epic night,” he announced. “Aren’t you glad I dragged you along?”

  I kind of was. “Yeah. Ginny was cool.” Ginny was perfect.

  “Wait, which one was she? Was she the one who followed you outside?”

  Nice of him to notice. “Yes, and she recognized my T-shirt.”

  He came around to the front of the sofa and I spread my arms to display my shirt. He shook his head, baffled.

  “So where’d all these boxes come from?”

  “We were just talking about that,” I said. “What do you think about getting a cleaning lady to come in maybe a couple of times a month to, you know, make the place look not so much like a back room at UPS?”

  He thought for maybe half a second. “No. Waste of money. We can keep the place up ourselves.”

  I gazed ceilingward, because obviously we couldn’t. That was the point. But I knew when I was beat. Time to retreat and regroup at a later date. Maybe when they both woke up with spiderwebs draped over their faces.

  I was cranky because I was hungry. Jack had obviously grabbed a bite at the club, but I hadn’t. “You guys hungry? Aaron, you want to call out for pizza?” I shouted to the bedroom.

  The door opened and he wandered out, nodding. “I could use some food.”

  “Sure, why not?” Jack said.

  We had a favorite 24-hour pizza delivery place on speed dial. Actually, we had every 24-hour food delivery place in Denver on speed dial.

  Twenty minutes later, the pizza arrived. Aaron zoomed out of his room like a hound on the scent. Jack and I studied the door.

  “Ready?” I asked them. They were. I opened the door and offered a great big smile to the delivery guy. Kid. Eighteen, tops. Skinny, white, acne. Not a looker. But his skin was flush, and his heart beat strong. “Hi! Why don’t you come in for just a second while I
get the money.”

  “Um, yeah, sure?”

  Jack divested him of the pizza and set it out of the way while Aaron slipped the carrier from his hands and set it on the floor so it wouldn’t fall. The kid was nervous, his heart started pounding, but I was right there in front of him, looking into his eyes. His gaze locked onto mine.

  “It’s just fine,” I said. “No need to worry. It’ll only take a minute, and you won’t remember a thing. You okay? Nod if you’re okay.”

  He nodded slowly, clearly baffled. Aaron and Jack each had an arm and were rolling up the sleeves of his windbreaker.

  “Maybe you’d be better off if you went to sleep,” I said calmly, putting power into the gaze, letting my influence pour into him. “Nice, calm, relaxed.”

  He swayed, his body going semi-boneless. Jack and Aaron propped him against the now-closed door and raised his wrists to their mouths.

  “Perfect,” I murmured, feeling the fangs at the edges of my lips, identifying the pulsing vein at his neck. I tipped the kid’s chin up and bit. Hot, fresh blood surged against my tongue. Bliss.

  I only had a few swallows. Three, four. Not really a meal, but enough to keep me going. That was what this was about. I drew away because I had to, because we could only live like this if we didn’t leave dead bodies lying around like cardboard boxes. I licked the wound so that it would heal. It wouldn’t even leave a mark.

  The others did the same at his wrists. They might have taken a few more sips than they really should have. It was always hard to stop, but they knew the drill and pulled away before anybody needed to call 911.

  We set the kid on the floor while I knelt beside him, slapping his cheek lightly.

  “Hey, kid, you okay? You must have fainted. You had a little bit of a fall there.”

  Blinking dazedly, he woke up, looked around at us staring down at him with nothing but concern.

  “You okay?” I asked again.

  “Yeah… uh, I don’t know what happened… must have fainted…”

  “That’s it exactly, you must have fainted.” He blinked into my gaze, and understanding slowly filled him. “You want us to call a ambulance?” I sounded truly worried.

  “No, no that’s okay. I’m fine.” He propped himself against the door and struggled to his feet. “Just a little woozy.”

  “Hey, get him some water—”

  Aaron was already there with a bottle. That was the routine.

  “You going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine… I just… I’m really sorry about that.”

  I gave him a kind smile. “Not at all. Just as long as you’re okay. Here’s your money.”

  He took the cash and water, wandered out. Aaron and I watched to make sure he made it back to his car okay. We saved the pizza for a homeless shelter a couple of blocks down the street.

  The delivery guy drank half the water bottle before reaching his car. He’d never remember what really happened to him. We gave him a really big tip. We always did.

  EATING AS A vampire wasn’t even really like eating. It was… energizing. More like getting a good night’s sleep. Or falling in love.

  An hour before dawn, there was no point in starting another game, and Aaron hadn’t gone back to his room, which left us all crashed out on the sofa, digesting.

  Jack said, “So I was leaving the club tonight…”

  “With Jenn?”

  “Just walking her home. Honest.”

  “Right. And?”

  “Something kind of weird happened.”

  That meant weirder than being turned into a vampire in a rogue vampire rampage and then going to clubs to hit on girls by acting like the hero of a vampire romance. Even Jack had some idea of the actual weirdness of it all. I raised an eyebrow, indicating he should continue.

  In reply, he handed me a plain business card. Aaron read over my shoulder.

  Clarissa Carter

  Freelance Journalist

  “This for real? What’d she want?”

  “She said she’s doing a story on vampires. What being a vampire has been like since the NIH announcement, what’s changed, what hasn’t, is it harder, easier, whatever.”

  “She was at the club and spotted your routine?”

  “That’s what she said. She also said she’s been having trouble finding non-celebrity vampires willing to talk.”

  In the few years since the NIH came out and said that yes, vampires exist, a handful of vampire celebrities had been identified. And at least one werewolf—named Kitty, if you could believe that. She apparently lived here in Denver, but I’d never met her.

  “Wait a minute,” Aaron said, disappearing into his room in a flash of vampiric speed—he didn’t even seem to notice he was moving that fast. It was the recent blood. He returned a second—literally a second—later with his laptop. “Let’s see if she’s for real…”

  We scrunched together on the sofa while he opened a browser window and did a search. I was almost surprised when a good number of hits came up. Clarissa Carter appeared to have a blog and had written articles for a number of online outlets, some of which I’d even heard of. Her resume listed print credits as well.

  “No pictures, looks like,” I said. “Which isn’t totally weird but it’d be nice to verify. I have some magazine contacts we could ask if we want to know more.”

  “No, this is good,” Jack said. “She asked for a meeting tomorrow night. You want to come?”

  “Backup?”

  “Yeah. You up for it?”

  “This isn’t another good vampire/bad vampire routine, is it?”

  “No, this is going to be in a brightly lit public place, all in the open,” he said.

  Aaron backed away. “I’m out. I’m not good meeting people.”

  Jack said, “You just need practice. You should come out to the club—”

  “Do I look like a bad vampire to you?” Aaron exclaimed.

  Neither of us said anything, because Aaron didn’t much look like a vampire at all.

  “Okay, Aaron doesn’t have to come. But you’ll come, Sam, right?”

  “Are you worried? Are you actually worried?” I said.

  “Some reporter stakes out the club—”

  “No pun intended, I’m sure.”

  “—for the specific purpose of talking to me? Does that sound right to you?”

  “So she’s up to something. You think Rick needs to know about this?”

  “No. But I’m going to go talk to her. I’d appreciate it if you could come watch my back.”

  I thought a second. What I really wanted to do was log on as soon as it was dark and find Ginny. But Jack seemed genuinely worried, and I was getting curious myself. “Let’s check it out.”

  “I’ll call Rick if you’re not back by dawn,” Aaron said, marching back to his room.

  Then I started getting woozy, which meant the sun was coming up. If I went outside, the sky would be turning gray. I hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. It was like thinking about a hometown I couldn’t go back to. No use in dwelling on fond memories; they’d just depress me.

  The diner where Jack set up the meeting was, indeed, brightly lit and public. When you were a vampire you learned where all the 24-hour restaurants were. Not because you needed to eat, but because sometimes you needed a place to hang out. A place to meet people at three in the morning. It didn’t matter if you were a vampire, you held on to some of the trappings of your old life. Whatever trappings you could in the middle of the night. My deep dark secret was that I hadn’t been much of a night person before.

  Carter was already there. I may not have known what she looked like, but she was the only one there with her smart phone on the table, a notepad and pen waiting, and a casual business look that totally didn’t fit with the atmosphere, which had more of a homeless hipster college stoner vibe. She waved when we walked in, because two twenty-something pallid-faced guys dressed in black walk into a place after dark, of course they must b
e vampires.

  We joined her at the booth she’d chosen, halfway down the row and with a good view of the front and back entrances.

  She stood to greet us. “Hi, I’m Clarissa Carter, thanks so much for agreeing to meet with me. Good to see you again, Jack.”

  We sat and regarded her across the table.

  “This is my friend, Sam,” he said, and I waved. I tried to catch her gaze, just to size her up rather than pull a whammy on her. Just to see if I could, if I needed to. She managed to not meet my gaze. She looked at my collar, at my hand when she shook it, at her notebook, at her phone when she moved it out of the way. She was very careful not to look right at either of us, which seemed kind of weird for a reporter who was supposed to be engaging with her interview subjects.

  It meant that she knew vampires. She’d worked with vampires before and knew not to look in their eyes. Interesting.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked.

  “No,” Jack said. “We don’t eat.”

  “And I guess things haven’t gone far enough that they’re putting blood on the menu yet, right?” She had a very sunny smile.

  We just looked at her. I didn’t think blood would ever show up on any menus. It was one of those “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” items.

  She was human, mortal. Her heartbeat was healthy. She’d make a good meal. She was wearing maybe too much perfume, something spicy. I could avoid taking it in by just not breathing. I didn’t need to breathe anymore, unless I wanted to say something.

  “Thank you for talking with me. I’m hoping we can have a couple of meetings like this, so we can really get to know each other. I want to do a thorough profile, since you aren’t what most people think of when they think of vampires. Not exactly Dracula types.”

  That sunny smile was starting to look condescending. I looked at Jack; he mouthed the word “shlub” at me.

  “To be totally honest,” I said, “I haven’t really been around long enough for me to even think of myself as a vampire. I mean, I could still go to my twenty year high school reunion and people would think I just took good care of myself.”