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Spontaneous Vampiric Combustion
Shadow
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Viper didn’t know that I’d met with Bloome. That had been solely my decision and I planned to keep that secret to myself. The fact that she had left here sort of freaked out had upset me. I was glad she agreed to meet me at that café. Watching people eat usually grossed me out but for some reason, I found it cute when she did it. And when her plump, pink lips wrapped around that straw, it was all I could do to keep my straining cock in my pants. One day I would watch that beautiful mouth wrapped around me as she milked every last drop from me.
I wonder if she swallows?
“Shadow!”
I looked up from my phone, where I’d been watching cameras mounted around the Quarter, to see Viper heading toward me. We had all just woken up from sleeping all day, and yes, I was drinking coffee because it had become a weird human habit I didn’t care to break.
Vane sat at the table with me and eyed my steaming mug. “That’s pretty bad,” he said, pointing at it.
Confused, I picked up the cup. The outside read UNT in black letters. In small letters underneath, it read University of North Texas. I glanced at him. “What?”
“Look at the handle. It’s like a C.”
I set the mug down. Sure enough, the handle was painted black and formed a C, which conveniently sat right in front of the UNT. I smiled. “Clever.”
“Terrible,” he said, biting back a smile. “Whose cup is that?”
“Fuck if I know.” I took a drink from my cunt mug and decided it was my new favorite. If I had to guess, it was probably Jewel’s because that was the type of humor she had, but she wasn’t getting it back. I’d drink blood or coffee out if it every day now.
“Any news from Bloome?” he asked, getting straight to the point.
I shook my head. “Nope. She just said she’d get back to me. To us. Whatever. I’m sure she’ll come through.”
He nodded. “Good. The sooner we can wrap this up and give those vamps a proper burial, the better. MyAnna’s gone nuts with wedding planning and it’s all I hear about.”
He looked overwhelmed, that V between his eyes deepening.
“Don’t stress—broads love that shit. Let her do the planning. Just as long as the wedding’s at night, we’re golden.”
He chuckled. “Oh, she knows. Got herself a wedding planner and everything. Came to me yesterday bitching about how the wedding planner advised her against a night wedding for several reasons, and how she’d had to make up reasons for it.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t ‘bitching’,” I replied.
He grinned. “No, she really wasn’t. I love her so damn much I wouldn’t care if she was. I just want her to plan this thing out and tell me when and where to show.”
“I hear ya. I wouldn’t want any part of that shit, either. Aren’t you getting married in the Cobalt Room?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s the plan. We make it official, all the humans leave, then we have the turning ceremony. That, I’m going to need help with, as she’s left that to me. So that’s why I’m coming to you.”
“What do I know about a turning ceremony? I got turned to save my life after a damn wolf bit me. I wouldn’t have chosen this shit.” I pointed between us.
“Same here... I had no choice, either. As you know. Fucking bitch vampire.”
“Fucking asshole wolf.”
We both chuckled. Then I thought of something. I snapped my fingers and pointed at him. “Hey, Face was turned by choice. Ask him. I bet they had some fancy-schmancy LA-style turning party when he became a vamp.”
Vane’s face lit up. “You’re absolutely right.”
I stared at my friend, whose stress seemed to have come down a few notches since he walked into the breakroom. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, man,” he replied.
“Does MyAnna understand what it’s like to be this? Are you sure she wants to become a vampire? I get she’s doing it to be with you forever, but does she truly understand how much it sucks?” I asked gingerly, hoping I didn’t piss him off.
He nodded. “I’ve explained the suckiness to her. I’ve told her horrible stories. I’ve explained to her that she will never go to the beach or anywhere else during the day. That she’ll never get to eat that sushi and pizza she loves so much. She says she doesn’t care. She wants to remain young forever and that her growing old while I don’t isn’t even a talking point. I told her I’d love her for the next sixty or seventy years and take care of her, even when she’s old, wrinkled, and gray. She said no way... it’s not going to happen. Trust me, brother, I’ve tried so hard to talk her out of it. She won’t hear me.”
I thought about Bloome and had a feeling she wouldn’t be the same way as MyAnna. The way she talked about vampires and how they seemed to disgust her told me she would never agree to be turned. I couldn’t do it, anyway. Kovah would kill her.
“Well, you can’t say you didn’t try,” I told him as I stood up. I washed the mug in the sink and turned around, wiping my hands on a towel when I was done. “By the way, when is the wedding-slash-turning ceremony?”
“Next month,” he replied. “It’s on a Saturday but I can’t remember which one.”
From what little I knew about women, I knew enough to know that he’d better memorize that date. I remember Saundra planning our wedding and she’d been pretty nuts about choosing a date and making sure I remembered.
“Well, you better find out and put it in that device of yours before you find yourself in the doghouse.” I pointed at his phone.
“I’m gonna be in the doghouse just for asking her the wedding date again,” he muttered.
I patted him on the shoulder with a chuckle before exiting the breakroom. “Text it to me so I don’t have to share the doghouse with you if I forget to show.”
Which was a joke since I spent every night in the Cobalt Room anyway. We all did.
We parked our bikes across the from the famous cathedral and walked on foot into the Quarter. We’d received a tip on the anonymous text tip line that two vampires had been killed by a “woman using magic to make them explode.” When I’d read it, my whole body shuddered in revulsion. The tipster had said they witnessed it behind a bar on Dauphine Street, which was eerily close to Zombies, just a few businesses down.
Viper, Phoenix, Face, and I approached the back alley carefully. None of us wanted to be spontaneously combusted by a witch. After a human threw trash into one of the many dumpsters and went back inside the establishment, we waited to see if anyone would come out.
“Hey, fun fact. My very first feed as a vamp was on a cat doing that exact same thing. He was out dumping trash and I pounced on him. I had no idea what I was doing. I was so damn hungry.”
“Ew,” Face said. “The smell of trash and filth wasn’t repulsive to you?”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t smell trash. All I smelled was human. He was delicious, by the way.”
Viper cocked an eyebrow at me. “You never told me that.”
“Irrelevant to my story, but it kinda came back to me just now.”
Phoenix chuckled. “I ate a witch for my first meal.”
“Yeah, here’s my shocked face,” I deadpanned, pointing to my expressionless face.
Viper and Face laughed.
“Let’s go,” Phoenix said, pointing at the alley.
We searched around the dumpsters until we located two piles of ash and clothing.
“Fuck. Same MO. Bitch killed them. Just didn’t burn them.”
“How is she doing it?” Viper muttered, picking up a red T-shirt reading Alabama Roll Tide. He held it up. “Look, no stab wounds, singe marks, or bullet holes. She has to be doing something supernatural to them.”
“Tipster said she ‘exploded’ them. How? Without fire?” Face commented.
I stared at the shirt and said, “I don’t know. I’ll contact Bloome immediately.”
I texted her: Two more dead vamps in the Quarter. Ash and clothes, fully intact. Same MO, it seems.
I pocketed my phone and looked around. The anonymous texter hadn’t said when this had occurred, but we could only assume the murders had taken place sometime tonight.
“Let’s question the staff,” Viper said, pointing to the back door of the bar.
We went around to the front and walked inside. Young people drank and danced under flashing green and purple strobe lights. If I could get a headache, I was sure I’d have a pounding one after leaving this establishment.
“Hi,” Face said, throwing a charming smile at the female bartender. “Have you been here all night, beautiful?”
She looked at him skeptically. I had to laugh. The lady was probably in her forties and didn’t look like she took a whole lot of shit from anyone. “Yeah, I’m the owner. Why?”
“I’m looking for two guys. Both wore jeans. One had on a red Alabama shirt, the other wore a blue pullover sweatshirt. Ring any bells?”
We assumed the vamps were men by their clothing, but the pullover and jeans had been iffy. Could have been a woman, but in all my years, female vamps dressed more... provocatively, especially when they were going into bars to attract men to feed from.
“No, not that I can recall,” the bartender replied. “But I see so many people in here, I don’t pay attention to what they’re wearing. Only what they’re drinkin’. Why do you ask?”
“Do you have cameras in here?” Face asked rhetorically, since there were cameras mounted in every corner of the bar.
She wiped down the bar top and said, “Yeah, but they are shoddy, at best.”
“Think I can take a look?”
She whipped the towel over her shoulder and folded her arms across her chest. She eyed Face’s cut, then looked at the three of us. “What do you want with those people? They piss off your gang or something?”
Face cleared his throat and put on his most charming smile. “Ma’am, we’re not a gang. We’re a club. We track down missing people, and we would very much like to find these two. Any information you could give us would be kindly appreciated.” I watched as he slid a hundred dollar bill her way.
She looked around before snatching it up and shoving it between her tits into the very low-cut shirt she wore. “C’mon.”
We followed her into the back room where she pointed at a computer. “All the camera shit is on there. The icon is blue, I don’t know what it’s called. There’s no password on the computer. Have at it.”
With that, she walked back into the front of the bar and left us alone. I stood watch with Phoenix to make sure nobody came back here.
After a few keystrokes, Face was scrolling through hundreds of videos. He found the ones dated for today and began clicking on each one.
“Fast forward to tonight,” Viper said.
Face wanted to roll his eyes, I could tell, but refrained. He froze it on two men wearing the matching clothing. Their eyes shone white in the camera’s lens, like most vampires’.
“There,” Viper said. “Zoom in.”
Face clicked some buttons and we saw their faces close up. Viper looked at us. “Anyone recognize them?”
I shook my head. “Nope, but it’s not like I’ve lived here that long.”
“Me either,” Phoenix replied.
“Play the video,” Viper commanded.
Face clicked the play icon and we watched as the two male vampires ordered drinks and sat in a corner table, conversing with each other. Not too much later, a female with a hood over her head, wearing all dark clothing, approached the table. There was no sound, but whatever she said had them abandoning their drinks and following her out back. It must have a been a good line, because the two fist-bumped each other behind her back as if they were in for a major score.
The trio disappeared from the camera’s view.
“Any cameras in the back alley?” Viper asked, sounding excited.
Face scrolled quickly through the rest of the feeds but none of them had an outside view. “Doesn’t seem like it, boss.”
“Hey, go back to the woman. Freeze it and see if you can print it or email it to me,” I said, an idea forming in my head.
“No printer,” Face muttered as he took a screenshot from the computer and logged into his email account, sending it to me and himself. Then, he logged out and completely reset the computer back to its original settings.
It would be a bitch and a half for whoever used that computer the next time they logged on.