Paranormal Bromance Read online

  “I—I guess I don’t really have a job. I’m with a Family. I work for the Family, it’s just easier that way. And the Master—well, he puts a lot of store by appearances. He likes the seductive look. But it’s really not me, and just because I’m a vampire doesn’t mean I should have to act like someone else’s idea of one.”

  This sounded like someone I’d get along with. It almost made me want to hang out with more vampires. Maybe I’d like more of them that I thought.

  “That’s a tough one,” Kitty said. “On the one hand, if you’re working for a Master, you might think of it as a uniform. On the other hand, since it sounds like this is pretty offensive and difficult for you, you might ask if you can please do something else. Try to get across that you’d be much happier in a different role. Not being your Master I can’t speculate on what’s really going on or what that might be.”

  “I just… the thought of doing this for all eternity just makes me kind of tired, you know?”

  “Which is exactly why you have to do something about it. Offer a compromise, work it out. Other than that… well, turns out vampires have to live just like the rest of us—one day at a time.”

  “Thanks for listening, Kitty.”

  “Thanks for calling. Moving on... I’ve got a call here from Sam in Denver. Sam, you’re up, what’s your problem?”

  What?

  “Oh… um… hi?”

  “Hello, Sam. You have a question for me?” She seemed amused. And why wouldn’t she, I must have sounded like I’d been pushed on stage naked.

  Well, I was here. Might as well take advantage. “Okay, I have a confession. I’ve never really listened to your show until tonight. I just know you by reputation, and I figured this whole thing was a sensationalist gimmick. But—”

  “There’s always a but,” she said cheerfully.

  “But… something happened. I met this girl. Woman. Person. She’s great. And I’m a vampire. A young one, I’ve only been a vampire for like fifteen years, but still. I’m confused. How…” I stumbled, either from a sudden bout of stage fright or because I just couldn’t articulate it. “I’m having trouble figuring out the logistics of it. She has to work during the day, I have to sleep during the day, there’s an overlap of maybe six hours, and that’s only in winter.” Even I thought I sounded whiney.

  “You know why I’m going to have way less sympathy for you than you’re expecting?” Her tone was sympathetic enough. She wasn’t being mean. But she wasn’t going to cut me slack. I was kind of hoping she’d cut me slack. “Because of all the mortal human couples who have to deal with swing shifts. Because of the nurses who work all night whose spouses never get to see them, for the night-shift cops who never get to go to the movies with their sweeties. Other people have been dealing with these problems for a long time. You’re not as special as you think you are.”

  “Oh, it’s not that I think I’m special. I just…” I sighed. The problem had gotten much bigger in my head in the last few minutes. “This isn’t the life I thought I was going to have. I thought I’d have everything figured out by now.”

  “Nobody ever has it all figured out. You actually seem to be trying to work this stuff out, which makes you an okay guy in my book. But I’ve said it before—don’t attribute to the supernatural what may just be ordinary bad luck.”

  “But what about the supernatural bad luck that got me into this in the first place? I’m just starting to really get a grip what this means, how a lot of this works, and you know what I’ve figured out? That the real tragedy of vampirism is realizing I’m going to be around long enough to see that, eventually, no one’s going to remember Nirvana. You know they’re playing “Lithium” on classic rock stations now?”

  She said, “Sam, that’s got nothing to do with vampirism. That’s just getting old.”

  Don’t attribute to the supernatural… “You’re right,” I said, sighing again. “You’re exactly right.”

  “As for advice, it’s pretty much the same, too. Be honest, set boundaries, and do the best you can.”

  “Thanks for listening, anyway.”

  “You know what you’re going to do next?”

  I didn’t. I had some ideas. But I had to think some more. “I think maybe I’ll call her up and ask her to a movie. A late show.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she said approvingly. “Good luck to you, Sam.”

  The line clicked off.

  AARON HAD TAKEN over the kitchen counter for some kind of expansive packing project—cardboard boxes, packing tape, rolls of bubble wrap, and things to be shipped. Dozens of things to be shipped, like he’d saved them all up for one big ship-fest.

  One of the things to be shipped caught my eye. Cardboard box with a nostalgia-inducing look to it. Realization hit like a kick in the gut, and I picked up the toy.

  “This is a Hoth Imperial Base,” I said, staring at the box in awe. When I was about ten, this was the coolest thing ever—that picture with the dinky little plastic action figures, the guns that never stayed in the plastic hands, the elbows that couldn’t move, that glorious Star Wars logo that would set any kid’s heart racing.

  “Pristine, in original packaging,” Aaron said, emerging from his room, roll of packing tape in hand.

  I said, “I had this when I was a kid. It had, like, an ice bridge you could blow up, and if you put the action figure on the thing just right you could launch it, like two feet.” The urge to open the box, pull the whole thing out and start putting it together was strong.

  “Don’t you dare think of it,” he said, grabbing the box out of my hands. Like he could read my mind.

  “Do you really make money selling this stuff?”

  “I make rent, don’t I?”

  “Well, more power to you,” I said, and wandered back to the game console. Ginny still hadn’t logged on. I was thinking of heading to Psalm 23 on the off chance her friends might be there and I could ask them what was up. Because that wasn’t creepy or stalkerish.

  My mind wasn’t on any of the games I tried, so I went to writing. Which didn’t much work either.

  Twenty minutes later, my console pinged—Ginny was logged on. But she wasn’t at her Xbox, she was texting. I dropped everything to IM her.

  —Hey! I missed you, what’s up?

  —I’m afraid I might have kicked the hornet’s nest.

  —What?

  —I found Clarissa Carter, she’s staying at the Brown Palace. But she’s not alone, she’s got a whole crew of people with her and I think they might be vampires.

  Oh, this was bad. —Are you sure?

  —I only saw them once it got dark.

  —Did you see Jack? Was Jack there?

  —I didn’t see him. I might be in trouble.

  Jack wasn’t there. Or no—she just hadn’t seen him. But Carter really was working with vampires, and looking for access to Rick and the Family. Had Jack given it to her? Or had she just gotten rid of him?

  I played video games because I was so shitty at this kind of thing in real life.

  —Where are you? I typed back.

  —Downtown. Have to take the light rail to my car.

  —I’ll come get you, wait!

  My phone rang. Caller ID said Jack. Which was weird, because he never called. In all the years we’d been living together, I couldn’t remember him ever calling.

  “Jack?” I said. I couldn’t decide if I was happy or angry. I had no idea what he’d been up to the last couple of days. I supposed I was happy he was still alive. Undead. Whatever. But was he still one of us? “Jack, what’s going on?”

  “We have a problem.”

  “Problem? What problem?”

  “They’re trying to kill me!”

  “Woah, who’s trying to kill you?”

  He took a breath—he was forgetting to breathe. “I wasn’t totally honest with you, Sam. Carter—she made me an offer. She said she could make me Master of Denver.”

  “You can’t challenge Rick, he’d
eat you alive! He could destroy you without even blinking. He’d snap his fingers and you’d be a puddle on the floor—”

  “I know that! That’s why Carter said she’d help—she’s got vampires working for her, some really badass guys—if I agreed to be her ally when it was all over.”

  “Oh, my God,” I could help but exclaim. “Were you really going to do it?”

  “No! Well. I don’t know. I’ve just been lost, I was looking for something, Carter saw it… I listened, for just a minute, you know?”

  Ginny. I went back to typing. —I’m on the phone with Jack, are you still okay?

  —I don’t know.

  “Jack,” I said. “It’s Ginny, she’s out there. She wanted to check them out, they might have found her—where are you?”

  “Heading home from the Brown Palace. Don’t worry, Sam, I’ll find her. We’ll figure something out, I guess.”

  That was not a good plan.

  I couldn’t type fast enough. —Jack’s out there, he’s coming to help, okay?

  —OK.

  Jack said, “I don’t know if I can do this. There’s five of them, and they have weapons, and they’re definitely following me—”

  “Jack. Think a minute. You’re a vampire. You have super speed and strength. You can hide in shadows. I know you can do it because I’ve seen you do it at clubs!”

  “But they’re vampires!”

  “Well, so are you!” That was as much pep talk as I could manage.

  “I think I found Ginny… I can smell her… hanging up now.”

  No, don’t get off the phone, how would I know everything was all right?

  I desperately wanted to text Ginny but I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to distract her. And I sure hoped this wasn’t some elaborate deception, either Jack or Ginny or both working for Carter, all of them trying to get rid of us on their way to getting rid of Rick—

  No. Everything was going to be fine.

  Aaron was at the kitchen counter, staring at me. He’d heard everything.

  “Aaron?” I said. “Do we have any weapons?”

  “Weapons? What do you mean, weapons?” Thin, geeky in every sense of the word, he was the same age as Jack and me but looked five years younger. He did not look like a bloodsucking creature of the night. Not that I did, either. And we were up against a vampire assault squad.

  “Jack’s in trouble, and he’s bringing it here. Do we have a chance?”

  “No,” he said. “No, we don’t. We’re lame. We spend all our time holed up in our cave. We’re baby vampires! What are we supposed to do in a real vampire fight?”

  “We’re smart people, surely we can come up with something!”

  “Oh yeah? You’re the gamer geek, haven’t you picked up any tactics in your million hours of playing?”

  That was a good question. I had to think about it. Hand on chin, I looked around. So you’re the shooter, this is Left 4 Dead and you’re cornered—what do you do?

  “Actually… we’re pretty defensible here. We block up the windows—” The half windows by the ceilings all had blackout curtains over them already. But they were accessible as escape routes in case of fire. “Just nail some bars or spikes or something—we don’t have to block them, just keep anyone from crawling through. That leaves the front door, which should be plenty defensible. But we need weapons. Stakes, I guess. Do we have stakes?”

  “Hold on a minute.” He disappeared back in his room. The sounds of cardboard boxes, of someone digging through a hoard of collectibles, drifted out.

  In the meantime, still thinking about weapons, I called Rick.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, with a tone that suggested he very well knew it wasn’t.

  “Um, I think we may have a little bit of a situation here. You know that reporter I mentioned, the one with a connection to Mercedes Cook? Well, she tried to recruit Jack, but Jack wouldn’t be recruited, and she’s got a squad of vampire henchmen after him. It’s looking like they’re on their way here.”

  “It’s looking like it, is it?” Rick asked. “You need help?”

  “I’m not so much asking for help as warning you. We think Carter’s really after you, and they tried to go through us, and, well. You know we’re not very good at the politics thing.”

  “But do you need help?”

  Aaron came out of his room just then with an armful of Nerf guns.

  “Um. Probably. I need to go,” I said and hung up. “Aaron?” I tried to keep my voice as calm as Rick’s. We were immortal, as cool as rocks. “What do you plan to do with those?”

  “I don’t know about you, but even with vampire strength I would suck in a hand-to-hand fight, right? So I want to keep my distance. I know these aren’t exactly machine guns, but maybe they’ll let us keep back.”

  “Or maybe the bad guys’ll die laughing,” I said. He glared.

  What we had was a broom closet. I had a vague memory of buying a broom and a mop when we first moved in, when I had assumed we’d have no trouble keeping the place clean. I might have used them at some point. They looked used. Well, they’d get used now. I broke the wooden handles over my knee—easier than I thought it would be, a surge of strength pouring through me, not feeling any pain at all in my leg.

  Now we had four short spears with jagged ends, perfect for staking.

  “Let’s make sure nobody uses these on us, right?” I said.

  “I don’t suppose we have any Kevlar vests around,” Aaron said. “Would Kevlar work on wooden stakes?”

  “No idea, but you might be on to something.”

  What would have worked great would be some pot lids or cookie sheets or something like that. But we were vampires, we didn’t cook. We didn’t have a single cooking implement in the whole kitchen.

  “We aren’t using this, right?” Aaron pointed at a cheap pressboard table in what would have been the dining nook if we ever actually ate dinner at a table. Right now, it was covered with action figures from the eighties.

  “I guess?”

  He carefully cleared away the action figures, setting them by the wall next to the lunchboxes. Then he tipped over the table and broke off the legs by stomping on them. That gave him four giant spiky pieces of wood that looked like they’d go straight through a vampire’s cold dead heart.

  On the other side of the table, the pile of vintage lunch boxes sat there.

  “You know,” I said. “The lids of those lunch boxes would make great chest protectors.”

  I swore I saw a flash of vampiric anger storm in his eyes. In another minute he’d strike me down with Force lightning or something. “No. I got those as a lot and I can triple my outlay if I market them right. We are not touching those.”

  “What’s more important, your profit or keeping us from getting stabbed?”

  “If we stab them first, we won’t have to worry about it!”

  “Well that sounds very nice in theory, doesn’t it—”

  A knock sounded at the door. We froze.

  “Is it them? The bad guys?” Aaron whispered.

  “Bad guys wouldn’t knock,” I said.

  “You don’t know that!”

  The knock turned into a pounding, and the handle rattled, someone trying to get in. More pounding, and Jack shouting, “Sam! Aaron! Geez, let us in!”

  “This is a trap,” Aaron said.

  I grabbed a broken broom handle and peered through the peephole in the door. And there was Jack, looking like he was trying to press himself bodily through the door. Alas, his vampire powers weren’t that strong. Ginny stood beside him, looking worriedly over her shoulder. A sense of relief turned my legs to jelly.

  Maybe Aaron was right and this was a trap. Ginny was working for Carter, or Jack was, or both of them were, and this was a ploy to get us to open the door and get rid of us. Thing was, a stake through the heart would kill anyone.

  I threw the bolt and swung open the door. Jack and Ginny spilled inside.

  “What the hell did yo
u lock the door for!” he yelled.

  “Because you said we’re about to get attacked by a bunch of vampires!”

  He slammed the door shut, threw the bolt again. “Yes. They’re right behind me.”

  I wanted to give Ginny a hug. Instead, I hooked my hands in my jeans pockets. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “I’m fine,” Jack said.

  “Not talking to you,” I answered.

  Ginny smiled. Her heart was beating fast; she smelled of sweat and nerves. But her smile was honest. “I’m fine.” She was wearing jeans and a Blue Sun T-shirt, her hair was in a ponytail, and she was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Sam, what are we going to do?” Jack was stalking around the living room looking like he wanted to break something.

  “Well, they can’t get in here unless you invite them, right?” Ginny said.

  “I’m not sure that works on a vampire house,” I said. “I think that’s a human thing.”

  “Well, I’m here,” she said.

  “But you don’t actually live—” I stopped. I had this sudden vision of being normal, having a human girlfriend, and moving into an apartment together, sharing normal stuff. Everything I didn’t get to do before this all happened. How the hell had I gotten into this? And I realized, if I hadn’t been turned into a vampire, if I’d lived my life normally, I’d be forty years old and Ginny would be too young for me. We’d never have met. This was so confusing.

  But I smiled, because who cared?

  “Wait,” Aaron said, blinking as if he’d just seen Ginny for the first time. “There’s a stranger in our apartment. We talked about this—”

  “Aaron, calm down,” I said. “Ginny, this is Aaron, our other roommate.”

  “Hi—”

  “Aaron, Ginny. There, now you’re not strangers.”

  She seemed as nonplussed as the rest of us, which was understandable.

  Jack pointed to the door. “Guys? Bad vampires, coming after us.”

  Ginny had been carrying a mason jar tucked under her arm. She set it on the counter, and Aaron poked at it. “What’s this?”

  “It’s holy water,” she said. “I stopped at a church—”