Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (3 page)

The woman looked at Maurice. “I want him to come with us,” she said. Then, to Reginald: “What’s your name, big boy?”
 

“Reginald.”
 

“Nice to meet you, Reginald,” she purred. “I’m Moira.” She extended a hand. The gesture was feline. It almost felt as if she expected him to kiss it and he actually felt himself bending at the waist to obey, but then he caught Maurice’s eye and simply shook the beautiful hand. She lowered it slowly, her eyes never leaving his.
 

He was beginning to feel lightheaded, as if he were intoxicated.
 

“Moira,” said Maurice. “Knock it off.”
 

The woman looked away, at Maurice. Reginald felt his environment return like a splash of cold water. It was as if a spell had been broken.
 

“Is he yours?” she asked Maurice.
 

The question seemed to embarrass Maurice. “We’re just hanging out,” he said.
 

“Then maybe he’d like to be mine,” said the woman with the chestnut hair, running a finger along his shoulder.

Reginald felt his chest rise.
 

“Or mine,” said one of the men.
 

Reginald felt his chest fall.
 

There was a moment of silence, and then Maurice stepped between the group and Reginald. He did it with the air of an older brother breaking up some kind of idiocy being perpetrated by siblings, but it was strange because the others were all at least four or five years older than he was.
 

“Reginald, this is Moira, Penelope, Charles, and Isaac. We have a… a kind of working arrangement. They need a few minutes of my time.”
 

“He’s been
naughty
,” said the one Maurice had called Penelope, running a finger down Reginald’s neck.
 

Moira whispered in his ear. “He’s been
baaaaad
…”
 

Maurice shook his head, exasperated.
 

“Charles and Isaac need to spend a few minutes with me out back, trying to intimidate me and pretending they can tell me what to do,” said Maurice, his eyes on Charles. “But then they’ll run on home like good little errand boys and we can finish our game. Isn’t that right, kids?”
 

It was odd to hear so young of a man call the others “kids” and speak to them so disrespectfully. There was some odd subtext beneath what Maurice and the others were saying that Reginald didn’t understand. Maurice seemed to be speaking with a double-meaning on purpose, knowing that it would mean nothing to Reginald but unable to stop himself from doing it anyway. Reginald was reminded of himself asking God, out loud, for his money back when Walker had put the Whoopee Cushion on his seat.
 

But what was most interesting to Reginald was that Maurice, who was smaller and younger than the others, was clearly in charge of whatever was happening. Isaac and Charles
thought
that they were in charge, but they were wrong.
 

“Okay,” said Reginald. “Do what you need to do. I’ll stay here.”
 

“The women are staying here,” said Maurice.
 

“Okay,” said Reginald with enthusiasm.

“So you’d better come with us,” said Maurice.
 

“Oh. Okay.”

The men turned and Reginald started to follow them, but then Penelope put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around. He looked into her eyes and found himself becoming lightheaded. She smiled and stroked his cheek. Reginald found himself repeating a foreign thought that seemed to have been borrowed from the lips of Todd Walker:
I could nail her.

“Come on,” said Maurice, grabbing Reginald’s other shoulder. And so Reginald did, but before his eyes left Penelope, she mouthed the words,
We’ll miss you
.
 

They walked through the lobby of the bowling alley and down the back hallway, went through a door, and emerged into a rear parking lot. The main entrance was at the front, and most of the cars were parked there. There were only four cars and two dumpsters behind the building. The lot felt cavernous and quiet.
 

Maurice put a hand on Reginald’s chest and looked in his eyes. Then, very authoritatively, very unlike the shy and quiet IT professional Reginald knew from the office, he said, “Stay here. You won’t be interested in our discussion.”
 

Reginald decided to stay where he was. He leaned sideways against a dumpster, his elbow on the lid. He discovered that he wasn’t remotely interested in what the three men were going to talk about. He was mostly interested in staying where he was. In fact, he couldn’t conceive of
not
staying right where he was. Once Maurice said it, it seemed so obvious.
 

Despite his intense interest in staying by the dumpster and his relative lack of interest in what Maurice, Charles, and Isaac were doing, Reginald caught the gist of their conversation. Charles and Isaac had apparently been sent to reprimand Maurice about something that was, naturally, far less interesting than standing by a dumpster. Charles even pulled a sheaf of official-looking papers from an inside pocket of his coat and tried to give them to Maurice in the way a server would hand over a summons, but Maurice slapped them away and laughed. There was some shouting. Reginald heard a few uninteresting phrases and snippets tossed around. Among them were Charles saying, “Your age doesn’t give you any authority” and “Relic of a obsolete era” (despite being uninteresting, that caught Reginald’s attention because it was such a strange thing to say) and Maurice saying something about “bigotry” and “short-term thinking” and about his “not recognizing authority” of some kind. It was all very uninteresting.
 

Suddenly there was a sensation on his ear that cut through his lack of interest like a knife. There was a puff of cold breath on his neck. A soft, sexy voice at his right shoulder purred, “We couldn’t stand to be away from you.”
 

Over the other shoulder, on the dumpster side, another voice and another cold breath: “You’re…
intoxicating
.”
 

Right: “We were
supposed
to stay inside, but…” And a giggle.
 

Left: “It’s
fun
to be naughty.”
 

He turned and found himself face-to-face with Moira. Her face was two inches from his. She smelled amazing. She was unbelievably pale. He found himself falling into her green eyes, which had a silver tinge, as he’d fallen into Penelope’s earlier. They were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
 

“Do you want to be
ours
?” she said.
 

“
Ours
,” purred Penelope’s voice somewhere to his side.
 

“You don’t have to choose between us,” said Moira.
 

“We can share,” said Penelope.

“Yours,” said Reginald.
 

He fell and fell and fell into her eyes, and then there was a distant pain and then nothing at all except pleasure, and everything he’d ever, ever wanted.

F
IGHT
F
IGHT
F
IGHT

IN HIS MEMORY, THE SCREAM he makes is an exclamation of pleasure rather than an expression of pain. Moira is on one side and Penelope is on the other, their mouths and tongues soft and sensual on his neck. The feeling is like being between two erotic clouds. He feels himself floating, careless of matters that seemed so pressing just a few hours earlier. But despite this, despite his ecstasy, Maurice reacts in anger as if it’s his business to deprive Reginald of his companions. It happens like magic, the back of Maurice’s head suddenly becoming his irate face as he hears the scream, as if he’d turned it faster than the eye could see.
 

In the next moment, the women fly backward as Maurice appears in front of him, both Penelope and Moira landing on the pavement near the back door to the bowling alley. Reginald feels his euphoria lift and pain descends like a hammer, his head feeling as if it’s been mostly severed at the neck. But moments later, blessedly, the pain starts to dissolve into a swimmy semiconsciousness and he feels his shirt becoming wet, starting to sit heavy against his skin.
 

His perspective changes and he wonders why, but then realizes that he’s fallen against the dumpster and has slumped down, and might have been that way all along. He’s not sure. The world is nothing but pain and obscene fantasy.
 

Exhibit:
Maurice yelling like some kind of a beast, a roar coming from him that can’t be made by a man.
 

Exhibit:
The two women skittering backward on their hands and feet, chests up, moving like crabs.
 

Exhibit:
Maurice rounding on Isaac and Charles, returning to where they’re standing so fast that Reginald knows he must have lost a blink of consciousness, and Reginald is suddenly very interested in going to sleep as soon as this odd dream ends. Anger radiates from Maurice like heat from a coal, somehow blaming the men for whatever has gone wrong, and suddenly the fact that Maurice is very much in charge is apparent to everyone. Isaac and Charles back away. Maurice says something. Isaac says something back and, fear and anger mixing on his face, pushes Maurice in the chest. This is the wrong thing to do. Maurice pushes back, but it’s more like a
strike
than a
push
and the noise is like a sledgehammer hitting a steak and suddenly where Isaac was is not where Isaac is and he’s flying backward across the parking lot, striking a car, the car folding in half around him, broadside, the car/Isaac hybrid then flying into a lamppost, which falls over in a shower of sparks.
 

Maurice is suddenly back by Reginald in another quick cut of memory, too fast to have actually happened, and then Penelope appears — doesn’t climb onto, but
appears on
— Maurice’s back. Both of Maurice’s hands swing over his head and behind his back and then he’s got her lengthwise and then, as if she were a twig, he brings her down onto the top of the second dumpster, on the other side of the back door. The dumpster, humbled by the impact, warps at the front edge and its right front wheel digs two inches into the concrete with a sound like a shotgun.
 

And then Isaac, who is obviously dead, appears in front of Maurice, clearly not just
not dead
but also
unhurt
. And now
he’s
angry, and who could blame him after being blown into a car and then into a lamppost, and his hands go to Maurice’s throat and his teeth bare and they’re sharp and his fingers are like claws, tendons twitching in his forearms, but then he stops suddenly, backing away, his hands up like a supplicant.
 

There’s a blur as Maurice’s arm moves at his waist, and Isaac disintegrates into fire, like the flash of a pile of gunpowder.
 

Then Maurice is over Reginald, ten or twenty feet tall, his coat pendulous behind him like a cape and Charles, Moira, and Penelope are making odd noises of surrender, their hands up and palms out, backing away, and Charles is on one knee and there are sparks from the felled lamppost and shouts and then

F
OG

MAURICE’S FACE IS ABOVE REGINALD’S. The terrible thing that Maurice became a minute ago or a second ago or a year ago is gone and this is now just Maurice again, and Reginald wonders why he’s laying on the floor somewhere, he doesn’t know where. He remembers furor and fire and as he starts to fall asleep he asks the most irrelevant but most interesting question on his mind.
 

“What happened to Isaac?” he croaks.
 

“My sword,” says Maurice. “It’s tipped with wood.”
 

This is as good of an answer as any, and Reginald lets sleep take him again.
 

D
RINK

SOMETHING WET IS AGAINST REGINALD’S mouth and he wonders if it’s water. Then there’s movement and he remembers that it’s Maurice there with him, somewhere, and possibly they’re bowling. Maurice’s arm is hurt; it’s red with blood and Reginald wonders if he can still pick up that spare, if the pizza Reginald ordered is ready yet.
 

“Stay here,” says Maurice. “Look at me. Look.”
 

So Reginald finds Maurice’s eyes and suddenly, as he peers into them, there is a modicum of clarity.

“I can make you focus and I can make you decide, but the actual decision has to be yours,” says Maurice. And the bloody arm is above him and Reginald wants to wince, but can’t summon the will.
 

“Decide?” says Reginald.

“Decide to die now, a few minutes early,” says Maurice, “so that I can save you.”
 

“Sure,” says Reginald, and then Maurice covers his mouth with the arm, trying to smother him, and despite the smothering he can feel the blood running down his throat and then a great pain climbs his spine, starting from the base and radiating through every nerve and it’s like being consumed by fire while being slit open by a thousand razors and there’s a great flash of light and

D
EAD

REGINALD AWOKE PAIN-FREE, FEELING good, feeling strong. He didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten to wherever he was, but one thing he knew was that he was sitting in a pool of red liquid so large that it had to be some sort of gross practical joke.
 

“What is this?” he asked Maurice, holding up a dripping red hand and spreading his fingers. Something seemed to be wrong with his eyes. The liquid appeared pearlescent, as if lit from within.
 

“It’s blood,” said Maurice, who was sitting on a rock a few feet from Reginald and looking off into the distance. He turned to Reginald. “
Your
blood.”
 

“It can’t be my blood,” said Reginald. “There’s gallons. I’d be dead.”