Blood of the Dead, page 14
“Y’all are fucking weird,” he said, when he’d recovered. “And while as a gay man, I can appreciate alternative lifestyles, this,” he said, looking around, “this is a choice.”
Paco ran his hands through his hair, and I saw Zach clock the gesture. “And me just ordering you around—”
“Jack has a coffin on his bed,” Zach cut in. “He’s a magician or some shit, I don’t know, Vegas is a weird place. Or maybe you all drugged me real fast and somehow got me high—I had groceries delivered earlier today, and I know you can put acid on a lot of things. Though if you dosed me, I’m going to be pissed.”
Paco looked to me, and I shrugged. “Go for broke?” I suggested, and Paco turned back to him.
I could feel it in the room when he decided to change.
He wasn’t as smooth as Jack was at it because it wasn’t a part of him yet, so there was a stutter in the surrounding pressure, but it was nothing someone who wasn’t vampire adjacent 24/7 would notice.
“Little human,” Paco told Zach, looming over him, with half a foot and fifty pounds of muscle on him, easily. “Look at my fangs.”
And Zach did as he was told because he couldn’t disobey.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
“God’s presence in all of this is currently debatable,” I said, swinging back through the living room, to put my back against the door. “So please don’t run away?”
“Are you threatening me?” Zach looked between us. “Am I going to die?”
“Only with a good time, and no,” I said, shoving my sandwich in my mouth.
“Shouldn’t you already be lighting candles?” Paco asked, then added, “Renfield?”
I squinted at him. “I should’ve dragged you out into the sun earlier today, when I had the chance.” But I did as I was told, and then sequestered myself away in Jack’s bedroom, and started pacing, hoping neither one of them would trip on anything and set the place on fire.
I’d explained the entire ceremony in exquisite detail to Paco, plus left him a physical written To Do list. I knew he was smart and invested in getting it right—I just didn’t know how Zach would handle things.
If he wanted to leave, Paco would have to let him. This particular ceremony wasn’t the kind of thing you could just brute force—and it would take hours once it started, probably bumping up against dawn. So when I hadn’t heard anything “active” from the living room in half an hour, and my curiosity was killing me, I sat down on the ground and rudely plastered my ear to the thin particle board door.
“It was one thing getting a blowjob from you when I didn’t know you were a vampire . . . but now? Totally not on this evening’s bingo card.”
Paco made a rough sound, then laughed. “I swear to God, it’s on this piece of paper here.”
“Somehow not making me feel better, but okay.” Zach sounded amused rather than frightened though, at least.
“We’re both kind of in the same boat, you know. You’re good looking and all, but I’m also not real thrilled to be down here.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t like to suck—that’s how you introduced yourself to me, if you remember,” Zach said, with a slight tease.
“I do remember,” Paco said after a pause, in a tone of voice that could do bad things to a person, before he switched gears. “What I mean is I don’t usually sleep with strangers. I mean, I used to, before I had sure things in my life—but I’m fucking rusty.”
“I’ll say,” Zach quipped. “But—I’m not really a stranger here, am I?”
Bless that man. I quietly fist pumped.
“No.” Then there was a long stretch of silence wherein I realized Paco was thinking too hard. “Do you really love Jack?” he asked Zach, which had not been in any of the voluminous instructions I had left him. It was all I could do not to bang on the door.
“Yeah,” Zach said, after a pause of his own. “I know that sounds crazy.”
“More or less so than me being down here, hoping to put your dick in my mouth for his sake?”
I heard Zach laugh again. “Probably just equivalently. But—you can start now.”
I bit my lips and waited with bated breath. “You’re here because you want to be?” Paco asked, because it was part of the ceremony.
“Yeah,” Zach breathed—and I finally felt comfortable leaning back.
Despite having stretched out beside Jack’s coffin on his bed, I didn’t get any sleep that night—and not because I wasn’t tired.
No, it was because any time I wound down, I’d hear something in the other room. After their first two rounds or so, the ice’d been broken, and I’d made it clear to Paco that the gemstone pendulum would work better the more they fucked, advice which he seemed to’ve taken to heart.
So any time I was about to drift off, I’d hear Zach’s fevered shouting, or some action taken in the other room would give Jack’s furniture an ominous shove. They once took a break to take showers—and then started in again, in there, which sucked because it echoed and was just on the other side of the wall from my headboard. Then there was one climax after which I assumed Zach would tap out entirely—but then I heard Paco say something, Zach laugh, and it was back on. Even Sugar was complaining, although that could’ve been because she was trapped in the same room I was.
Fifteen minutes before dawn, I decided to let us both out. “Are there any survivors?” I asked, walking into the hall with a hand over my eyes.
“Luna,” Paco said, like he was happy to see me, and I dared peeking.
Most of the candles were out, there was melted wax everywhere, and two very good-looking naked men were somewhat tangled on the floor.
My eyes clinically skimmed over Zach’s back. “He bit you?”
“Just three times. Like was on your list,” Zach said, reaching over to pick up a crumpled piece of paper.
“Yeah, I don’t think I want to touch that anymore,” I said, going into the kitchen, and returning with a plastic bottle before dropping to my heels. “You’re going to want to eat some meat today,” I said, tossing some of the vitamins Jack had bought me at him. “And take twice as many as the label says of these.”
“I could actually recommend some supplements—” Paco started.
“Of course you could,” I said, cutting him off. He snorted, and rocked his head back. He had a thin sheen of sweat and his hair was disheveled, but his color was better than it’d been when he’d first gotten up. His eyes were brighter, too.
“When will we know?” Zach asked me.
“It’ll take two days,” I said, standing up.
Paco let go of Zach, and he also made to stand, starting to root for his clothing among the piles of melted wax. After he’d pulled on his jeans, he turned and asked, “When you go to get him, can I come with you?”
It was easy to see where Paco’d bitten him now. There was a mark at his throat, over his heart, and I knew where the third one was, because I’d put it on the list.
Some people got to be slowly introduced to the idea of vampirism over time—whereas others got pushed in the deep end, like Zach here.
But somehow it hadn’t drowned him.
I nodded strongly. “Yeah. We’ll take you.”
Paco was quiet until Zach left, when he gave the younger man a nod and a wave.
I wandered around the room, putting out the last of the candles as Paco watched me. “I’ll clean all this up,” I told him. “You need to get to bed.”
“And this’ll work?”
I picked the gemstone up from where I’d looped it over Jack’s flatscreen TV, where who knew the depravities it’d personally seen. I could feel the spark of magic inside of it though. “It’s started—it just takes time.”
The look he gave me said what we both were thinking: time Jack likely didn’t have.
“And you’re sure there’s no way to speed it up?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately.”
“Will he make it?” Paco asked.
I thought back to when Rosalie had me help her torture a fellow vampire once. She’d kept the man caged in the bowels of Vermillion, and had me walk in front of his cage repeatedly. Over the course of a month I watched him turn into a desiccated corpse. After a few days he’d been scary, following me on his side of the cage, like a tiger pacing back and forth, snarling, and I knew if he were able to reach me, I’d be dead.
Jack was . . . three nights out now, and minus however much blood he’d lost in the crash or the subsequent vampire fights?
I shrugged my shoulders and lied. “He’s tough.”
Paco finally stood, grabbing his own clothes to hold over himself, maintaining a modicum of propriety. Even though I’d already seen him in action before—with Zach no less!—it was kind of nice to get our relationship back on a professional footing.
“Yeah he is,” he said, before looking around. “Thanks for all this . . . Renfield.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“I’m too big for you to carry,” he said, his lips lifting up.
The silly fool was high on sex and hope, and I didn’t want to take that away from him. “I know how levers work—don’t tempt me,” I said, pointing towards the bedroom and the coffin. “Get to bed.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack
Jack.
Jack.
I died and woke up like I always did—in the dark, alone, and hungry.
I wasn’t as hungry as I’d ever been before, but I was getting damn close. And while I never really dreamed much while I was dead, I knew if I had, it’d have been of blood. Vats of it. Pools big enough to swim in.
The thought darkly amused me for a moment, before I also imagined seeing Samantha’s bobbing corpse in the blood beside me.
“I’m awake, Sam.”
Figured it was better to announce that, than it was to let her hear me moving and get frightened.
“Hooray,” she said, in an entirely non-jovial tone.
“I was thinking about our conundrum before I died, though.” I started sitting up. I’d realized we were both on hard-packed dirt after I lay down. If she started scratching a little furrow in the ground near the gate on her side, and I started over here where the water was, and etched a decent enough slope, maybe I could get a little canal of water over to her—
“I’m not giving you blood,” she snapped.
“Different conundrum,” I said, as she struck up a light that illuminated her frown.
Her expression didn’t matter though. She was still beautiful.
And also?
Delicious looking.
I made sure to keep that off my face though, and hit my hunger with a metaphorical shoe.
“My people will be looking for me, you know.”
I nodded. “Yeah. They seem pretty tenacious.”
Whereas mine likely weren’t. If Luna had survived—a big if, considering—she was probably already hitting up a new vampire. I’d finally shaken Zach free, and as for Paco—who the fuck knew. There was a good chance he’d told the Uber driver to take him home, once he’d seen me get inside the truck.
All and all, that’d be better for him.
More in line with what he deserved.
Better for him go on and live a normal life—for a vampire—without me.
“But what I was thinking was that I’ve got my keys in my pocket still,” I said, pulling them out. “I can pop off one, toss it to you, and then I can use the others to start working on making a gully here,” I said, scratching the ground a little by way of illustration.
Sam just stared at me blankly. “What does that even matter, Jack?”
“You need water. You said it yourself.”
“I’m going to die by vampire far before I die by dehydration.”
I sighed and rocked back. “You sound awfully sure about that.”
“How long have you ever made it between feeds before?”
“Two weeks,” I said.
The light she held in her hand tinged red. “Liar.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and shrugged. “But what about you being pure and stuff? Doesn’t that earn you points with anyone?”
She rolled her eyes at me like she was a teenager. “Bad things still happen to good people, Jack. Or have you been blind your whole life?”
“Definitely not. But—why be good, then? I mean, committing your whole life to it, and what not, if bad shit can still happen?”
“Because goodness doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has to be challenged, to count.”
“Oh,” I said grandly, putting a hand to my chest, and going on to talk as pretentiously as possible. “So I exist to be your personal trial and tribulation. I get it now. Thanks for putting everything in context for me. Good thing I don’t have any free will of my own.”
Sam made a face at that, and I practically read her mind.
“Go on, say it. I’ve heard you before, plus we’re so deep in the ground God probably can’t hear.”
“Fuck you,” she said, and then snickered.
“You say ‘fuck you,’ but at this point in my life, I just hear my middle name,” I said, and she outright laughed. “Jack Fuck You Stone is what they ought to call me,” I went on. “We get outta here and I’ll have them change the sign on Dark Ink.”
She laughed some more, and then held herself lightly. After sleeping on the ground, her entire white suit was now scuffed with dirt. “Stop trying to lull me into a false sense of security, vampire.” She tried to make it sound like a curse, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.
“Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just trying to save myself,” I said with a shrug. “I mean, can’t you just use your powers to force choke me or something over here? Darth Vader style?”
“Since when did vampires actually need to breathe?”
“Ah. Good point.”
We were both quiet for a long while then, with only sound of the water trickling behind me.
“Jack, honestly, the most I could do to you right now is lift those keys up, and maybe gouge out one of your eyes—but you could kill me before I got to the other one. I could break all your bones—but you’d still survive it, most likely, and it’d only make you hungrier.” She collected herself into a small ball, her chin to her knees, her arms wrapped around her shins.
I’d been forced to go to a lot of church in my youth—my parents had erroneously thought it’d make me a better person—so I’d heard all the Old Testament stuff before.
None of that had prepared me to be in a parable of sorts now with her though: her playing Job, and me, some kind of demon.
“Look, the thing is—either we work together on this probably stupid idea I had, or we just sit here until I die again and you breathe a sigh of relief.” I started working one of the keys off of my key ring, to throw it through the cage to her, where it bounced off of her sleeve. “How would you rather pass the time?”
She looked down at the piece of metal and then up at me. “As long as we agree that this idea is entirely stupid.”
“Stupid as the day is long.”
She sighed, and then she picked the key up.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Luna
The next night, Paco got up before I did, so I switched rooms, because finishing sleeping on a bed seemed better than on the couch, and there was nothing else for us to do but rest and wait anyhow.
And when I did bother to get up, Jack’s living room was almost spotless, far beyond the perfunctory job I’d done before going to bed, and I found Paco gently steaming wax up from the carpet with an iron.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, because I was fairly sure Jack didn’t own one.
“Amazon Prime,” Paco said, looking up. He was wearing new clothes now. He’d probably had those delivered, too. “Unlike Jack, I have a bank account.”
“This is the real reason Jack never invited you over,” I said, coming over to watch him in awe. “He knew you would clean.”
Paco snorted. “Probably.”
He was much more independent than Rosalie had been, and three times as functional as Jack.
If things with Jack didn’t work out . . . would he really need me?
He eyed me. “What’re you thinking?”
“Wondering how long your job will last. Considering,” I said, waving my hand up and down him, indicating his vampiric nature.
“I’m mostly self-employed.” He shrugged. “And I recently finished a rather important contract at the Fleur di Lis. I’ve still got connections, I’ll be fine.”
“And the rest of your life?” I said, crossing my arms, feeling slightly disappointed with his general competency.
“I broke up with my other boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.” He turned the iron off. “It was either that or explain everything. I felt like an asshole, but I know it’s better that he tells all our friends I’m having a mid-life crisis, as humiliating as that may be.”
And then the doorbell rang. I went to open it, with the slight hope that it was someone for me, like a hot-yet-dangerous fallen angel, only to discover a delivery guy outside holding two bags of hamburgers. I took them from him and turned around.
“You still enjoy eating?” I asked Paco. Rosalie never did, and it didn’t really matter. All the women in the circles she ran in were painfully thin, so whenever she was out in public no one judged her for eating like a bird.
“No,” he said, taking them from me, and then into the kitchen to unwrap what were indeed hamburgers and put them on plates like a grown-up. “For you. And for Zach.”
“Zach?” I said, my voice rising.
“Yeah. I’m not an idiot. I got his number last night.” Paco arranged the other burger and fries neatly on a plate and grinned when the doorbell rang again.
I wasn’t sure just how much of a third wheel I’d be, but it turned out that I shouldn’t have worried, mostly because Zach was too nice for that to happen, and there was a sports-ball event of some kind on TV. I would’ve complained at being forced to watch it, but they seemed perfectly happy, and since I knew how rare that was I didn’t want to mess it up.
