Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (35 page)

“Nikki one, Reginald one hundred!” she hooted. “I’m hot on your tail, baby!”
 

Reginald smirked, tipped his king, and sat up. “Well done, Nik.”
 

“You owe me first bite.”
 

Reginald tipped his head to the side, exposing his neck as a tease, then cocked it back to neutral and smiled.
 

Nikki batted her eyelashes. “Should I put cinnamon buns on the sides of my head?”
 

“That would be so hot,” he said, smiling. Then the smile melted away. “Seriously. Do you have any cinnamon buns? Don’t put them on your hair, though. That would be gross. On a plate is fine.”
 

“I don’t want a cinnamon bun. I’ve lost my taste for everything but coffee. I want your blood, and then I want to go out and feed for real. I’ll catch you a nice young man.”
 

“The buns are both for me,” said Reginald. Then, because it was an obvious move, he reached out and grabbed
her
buns as she stood from her chair. Then he got up, and he followed her.
 

Inside of Reginald’s head, Balestro’s gift pulsed like a second heart.
 

FAT VAMPIRE 3: ALL YOU CAN EAT

S
TRIPPERS

REGINALD WAS GETTING TIRED OF bumping into strippers.
 

“Hey,” he said to one of them the fourth time he ran into her next to the island in his kitchen, “you’re going to have to stop getting between me and my refrigerator.” And then he flashed his fangs at her.
 

“Are you a vampire?” said the girl.
 

“Yes.”
 

“My manager is a vampire,” she said.
 

The stripper’s manager was across the room, wedged between the ottoman and the wall. His name was Vito and he had a giant feather in his hat. He was as much a vampire as Reginald was a swimsuit model. And Reginald, who would be three hundred and fifty pounds of bloodsucker until the end of his nearly-immortal life, was no swimsuit model.
 

Nikki raised her arm from across the room. “Hey, Raven Exotica,” she said. “Come on over here, dear.”
 

Raven Exotica, whose real name Reginald suspected might not actually be Raven Exotica, walked over to Nikki. Nikki guided the girl down to the floor, bent over her neck, and sank her fangs into her. Blood welled under Nikki’s lips. A small red drop snaked its way into the hollow at the base of her neck.
 

“Don’t kill her,” said Reginald. “Just keep her out of my way. I had a tone there for a second, but don’t go interpreting that as me desiring murder.”
 

Reginald had learned a lot about being a vampire in the eleven months he’d been one, and one handy tip was that it was almost always a bad idea to drain humans until they were dead. You sucked out a bit more blood than the Red Cross would, you sealed the wound with a drop of your own blood, you glamoured them into forgetting you, and you sent them on their way. Doing it that way was much cleaner than murder, and usually invited no comeuppance from the authorities.
 

These days, the “sip and ship” method of feeding was the norm. There were still vampires who killed, of course, but most of them were sociopaths who would have snapped (or did snap) back when they were human. It was perfectly legal by vampire law to kill humans, but it was increasingly frowned upon. Once, Nikki had compared killing humans to smoking. It was still acceptable, but less and less in vogue as the years went on.
 

Sipping and shipping also sat well with Reginald’s conscience. Less than a year ago, Reginald had been human. Just a few months ago, Nikki had been human. They’d been upstanding people back then, and the fact that they now needed human blood to survive hadn’t changed the fact that neither enjoyed spilling it unnecessarily.
 

“I’m not going to
kill
her,” said Nikki, rolling her eyes. Before being turned, Nikki was the kind of person who caught spiders in her house and released them outside rather than stepping on them.
 

Reginald walked over to where Nikki was slumped with Raven Exotica. “I know you wouldn’t do it intentionally, but…” he began. He indicated the girl, who had collapsed into a limp rag as Nikki drank from her. “Just look at her color. She’s as empty as a spent juice box.” He pointed to the brunette in hot pants who had fallen under the dining room table. “That one is the fullest if you’re still hungry. But the real question is, how the hell
can
you still be hungry?”
 

“I’m just
ravenous
,” said Nikki. She pulled her fangs out of Raven Exotica, licked them clean, then reluctantly drew a drop of blood from her finger to heal the wounds on the girl’s neck. “Food and sex. Sex and food. It’s all I can think about. Maurice said this would pass.”
 

But it
hadn’t
passed, despite what Maurice had said. Nikki was young as a vampire, but she was well past infancy — a time that often engendered extreme thirst, both literal and sexual — and hence should have found it easier to be sated. But that hadn’t happened. She still fed constantly, often going on three- or four-human binges, draining them well below Reginald’s comfort level despite her compassionate nature.
 

Reginald thought he might have an idea what the problem was. He suspected that her thirst might be mental rather than physical. It was a topic that Reginald, who was currently heating taquitos despite the fact that he knew they’d pass through his vampire system almost unaltered, knew a thing or two about.
 

Reginald sometimes wondered if his weakness and slowness (he was only as strong and fast as a moderately fit human) had anything to do with the way he ate. He only took in enough blood to keep him alive, and constantly ate human food that tasted good but did nothing for him. Several times, to answer this question, he’d gone on a vampire diet. He wanted to ingest only healthy blood for two weeks to see if it made a difference, but he never made it through both weeks. He always ended up ordering Chinese food before the third day drew to a close.

For what it was worth, Maurice told him that changing his diet wouldn’t make a difference. Reginald was stuck with the body he’d had as a human, and the only thing that would make him stronger or faster was time. A
lot
of time. Maurice couldn’t say how much time was “a lot,” but Maurice’s perception was warped anyway. He’d been alive for more than two thousand years and thought of decades like most people thought of weeks.
 

Nikki crawled over to the girl under the dining room table. “
Chaaaaaastity
,” she cooed. The girl looked over, then passed out. Reginald was going to need to watch her. Nikki was stronger than she knew, faster than she knew, and thirstier than her level of restraint seemed to realize.
 

Nikki did all of the hunting in the house. Because she was in a relationship with Reginald, she could only feed on women unless she wanted to appear unfaithful, so she did — often in groups. But whenever Reginald would allow it, Nikki would bring home a man for him. Reginald always acted as if he were a child being given medicine when it was time for him to feed. He said that blood was warm and gross. And what’s more, he said he didn’t like putting his lips on men’s necks.
 

“I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.” He told her. “In fact, if you can believe it, I almost
never
put my mouth on a man’s neck when I was human.”
 

Nikki, who’d always been a health nut, was undeterred. Rather than trying to force vampire habits on Reginald, she tried to work around them.
 

Once, for Reginald’s birthday, she took a nursing class to learn how to start a needle in a donor’s arm to collect blood. She bought the necessary supplies and then brought a man home, glamoured him, sat him in a chair, and began to collect his blood into Reginald’s favorite coffee mug. It hadn’t gone well. Nikki was terrible at glamouring, and her spell broke just after she’d started the needle but before she’d attached tubing to it. The terrified man had run around Reginald’s living room, spraying the walls, floor, and couch with gore before Nikki drove him into a corner and knocked him unconscious with a chair.
 

When Reginald came home, Nikki, her hair askew and her clothing torn, had presented Reginald with a chilled cup and a smile. She’d stirred cocoa and Stevia into the donor’s blood and had added a stick of cinnamon as a stirrer. She’d even topped
 
the cup with whipped cream. But Reginald, who’d just returned from a particularly frustrating errand, saw only his blood-covered living room and began complaining that his favorite coffee cup had now been befouled with blood. Nikki threw the cup through Reginald’s television and stalked out, shouting behind her that Reginald could do his own goddamn hunting from here on out.
 

Reginald later apologized, but Nikki hadn’t tried to play nurse again. Instead, she occasionally brought home two or three women and one or zero men, and it was up to Reginald to do his part to get his dinner. She didn’t care if he didn’t want to eat, she told him. If that’s how he wanted to be, he could just starve.
 

The final stripper returned from the bathroom, where Reginald later learned she’d gone in order to bleed all over his towels. Her name was Precious and she was just as drained as Raven Exotica. Reginald realized that he’d have to get them out of here very soon. He’d have to take them away before Nikki’s hunger overcame her moral imperative to not accidentally kill people.
 

Then something dawned on him.
 

“Nikki, how did you get these people here?” he asked

“I writhed around one of the poles at the strip joint and told them I wanted to party. Who could resist this?” She ran a hand down her front, giggling as the hand reached her breasts.
 

“You didn’t glamour them?”
 

“You remember what happened with the guy with the needle in his arm. I’ve pretty much given up glamouring. I rely on my
innate
glamour.”
 

Reginald put his hands on his hips. “Well, guess what?” he said. “I didn’t glamour them either.”

Nikki looked at the four humans, her mouth opening. Across the room, Vito, the strippers’ manager, succumbed to the ottoman and fell against the wall, where his face left a red smear.
 

“Wait…” she began.

“That’s right. You’re not looking at glamour-stupid people here. You’re looking at serious, garden-variety anemia,” said Reginald.
 

The stripper under the table tried to stand, rapped her head on the table’s underside, and collapsed. On the floor behind the ottoman, Vito said, “Did I leave the iron on?”

“Oh,” said Nikki.

“Not good, my darling,” said Reginald.
 

“Oh.”
 

“If they’d gotten away…”
 

“I know, I know.”
 

But it was hard to be mad at her, because she was so clearly just being what she was: A vampire’s vampire, from head to toe. It was ironic that they’d been a part of that whole episode a few months back — wherein vampires were accused of “losing the game against humans” — because Nikki, with her compulsive blood lust, was poised to win that particular game all by herself. Too bad doing so would put her on the wrong side.
 

Reginald rounded up the humans, sat them up against the wall, and met their eyes one by one. He told them an acceptable story about what had happened to them tonight, changed them into Salvation Army clothes that were in the storage closet for just such blood-soaked nights, and gave each a cookie.
 

“Like blood donors,” said Nikki, watching the humans gum the cookies.
 

“Better than nothing.”
 

“I’m sorry,” she said.
 

“It’s okay. I doubt they were ever any danger to us. Glamouring them was like glamouring a sponge. It was like using a sledgehammer to tune a piano.”
 

“I don’t understand that metaphor,” said Nikki.
 

“I know.”
 

“Maybe I should go see a vampire doctor about my problem.”
 

“Nah, it’s cool,” said Reginald. “A lot of healthy people don’t understand my metaphors.”
 

They stared at the humans.
 

“We have to get them out of here. But if we carry them through the streets…” Reginald began.

“Garage,” said Nikki.
 

Nikki carried the humans in a giant tottering pile by herself, seemingly as penance. It was like carrying too much laundry. Raven Exotica kept falling off the top of the pile, and Nikki kept stooping to grab her and toss her back up.
 

Once in the garage, Nikki arranged the four people in Reginald’s car like she was playing dolls. Reginald noticed that she’d placed Precious’s hand on Vito’s crotch and decided that it was probably subconscious. Recently, in the grips of her neverending vampire hunger and horniness, she’d been buying porn without realizing she was doing it. She kept handing
Hustler
magazines to Reginald and saying, “I got you the new copy of
Wired
.”
 

“I’ll take them,” she said. “I’ll drop them off at the bowling alley.”
 

“Nice. Lots of strippers hanging out behind the bowling alley?”
 

She gestured vaguely at the car. “Three of them anyway, plus their pimp.”
 

“Manager.”
 

“Sure. Manager.”
 

She climbed into the car, opened the garage door to the dark night, and rolled down the window.
 

“Want me to come with you?” said Reginald, leaning down.
 

“Actually, no. I need the time. What happened tonight… it bothers me.”