1
VINCENT
Vincent Barnes was perpetuating stereotypes, and he knew it.
Any vampire with a firmly placed moral backbone would tell him that sneaking into a stranger’s home to drink their blood while they slept was rude, illegal, and, above all, a terrible portrayal of the vampiric community. The problem was, back when Vincent had associated with the vampiric community, none ofthosevampires had turned out to have a moral backbone. And Vincent was starving.
Dealers of bagged blood charged as much as rent—which he already couldn’t afford—and existed in tight black-market clichés he didn’t have the social prowess to hunt down. Seducing some drunk fool into letting him have a quick nibble went far beyond the limits of his flirting expertise. Straight up attacking a human in a back alley? Vincent could feel his panic rising just thinking about it, not to mention all theotherterrible vampire stereotypes it would perpetuate.
So that left home invasion: the vampiric equivalent of that old game show with the doors. What’s behind door number one? An empty bed, or an elderly lady wearing three bottles of perfume, or an angry naked fireman with an ax? Vincent hadn’t realized it was possible to have horny nightmares, but after the fireman encounter he didn’t sleep through the day for a month.
He stared at the small suburban house he’d chosen for tonight and hoped for a slightly less angry, less ax-murderous, abs-bared fireman behind tonight’s door. With its three-bedroom floorplan and tight side yard, it didn’t look like much, but it sat just far enough back from the aging streetlamps that its deep shadows and ancient locks made it a perfect game-show-style hunting ground. Vincent’s ‘door’ in question was technically a large second story window with a slightly bowing screen and an incredibly tiny ledge outside.
If he’d been any taller than five-foot-nine he wouldn’t have fit. With one bare foot curled around the sill and the other wedged into a lump in the stucco, he fiddled with the screen. The fraying strings of his fingerless gloves dangled in the starlight and he flicked his head to dislodge a chunk of shaggy hair from his eyes as, with a final finessed pop, the screen slid free.
His bare feet made only the softest rustle as he lowered himself inside. The gentle swish of his dark clothes blended into the white noise of the distant highway. He breathed slow and deep, waiting for the first sign of a twitch in the night. Despite the moonless sky, Vincent could clearly make out the room’s contents in his monochromatic night vision. An open closet revealed a tornado of clothing. The desk and dresser held a cluttering of books, games, and other knickknacks. A collage of photos had been pasted across the far wall. And halfway between the window and the door was a queen-sized bed bearing Vincent’s prey like a silver platter: a single human soundly asleep beneath the blankets. The man’s pillow was bunched underneath him, his head already tipped to reveal the crest of his neck below the lazy curls that flicked around his ears.
This was, undeniably, the best door of the month.
As Vincent stepped closer, he corrected himself. This was the best door ever, or at least since Vincent had become a vampire during his first and only semester of college four years prior. Even the most average humans—those who took regular showers and didn’t wear cologne to bed—all tasted and smelled a bit different. In most cases, different meant a unique brand of mediocre. But Vincent could already tell this particular human’s blood would be absolutely delicious. He even smelled delicious. The scent wasn’tlikesomething, not sandalwood or fresh bread or motor-oil, but the natural musk of him was better than any signature fragrance, a dark, lovely aroma that urged Vincent to press his nose to the man’s skin and just breathe.
The thought almost made him turn tail and run. He was here, breaking into people’s homes while they slept, because not doing so would mean starvation and eventually death. He wasnothere to creepily think about how wonderful they smelled while staring at their perfect cheekbones and the gentle flutter of their long lashes and… oh god he was still fawning over this complete stranger.
Vincent pressed his lips together and steadied his thoughts.Feed and get out. Feed and get out.
He eased his weight slowly onto the mattress to reach the delicious man—feed and get out, Vincent repeated,feed and get out. The scrappy edges of his long jacket hung threateningly, and he held them back as he leaned over the sleeping human. His fangs slipped from above his canines as instinct moved him toward the juiciest curve of the man’s neck.
After the initial break-in, this was the most precarious part of the act. If he could nick his prey’s skin with just the right dose of venom, then the neurological effect would keep the human slumbering peacefully through the feeding. If the human woke at the first touch of teeth, though, both of them would be in for a wild time, one that usually involved a lot of screaming and throwing things on the human’s part and a rapid relocation to another neighborhood on Vincent’s.
Vincent’s hair fell back into his eyes as he lowered his mouth to the human’s neck. He indulged himself with one long, deep breath of the man’s scent before piercing his fangs through the man’s skin. The man made a little involuntary sound, soft and low, and continued sleeping.
The tension slipped from Vincent’s shoulders. He settled a little more deeply onto the mattress, propping one arm against the back of the man’s head. Oh god, his hair was so soft—feed and get out, feed and get out. You can do this.
Vincent drank.
Becoming a vampire had given him a healthy craving for blood regardless of the flavor. Usually blood tasted alright. There were exceptions, humans so far out of Vincent’s palate range that it made them disgustingly flat, or so far into it that each swallow was like a hearty dessert. But blood wasn’t supposed to taste this good, he was pretty sure. Nothing was supposed to tastethisgood.
The man’s blood was rich and dark and sweet, like his scent but in the form of the best quality maple syrup, the kind Vincent’s mom used to buy—and probably still bought—but duskier, as though it had been turned into whiskey or bourbon but without the bite of hard liquor. Vincent forced himself to drink slowly, to savor each drop. When he left this room, that would be it. No repeats, no returns. That was the rule he’d set for himself when he’d finally broken down and jiggled free the lock of his first door; if he was going to take blood from humans who couldn’t consent, he would at least not go to the same ones over and over again. He wasn’t going to be the stereotypical vampire who stalked a human like it was some kind of game.
But, fucking hell, this particular human was going to make that rule difficult.
Vincent continued to drink, not quite curled against the man’s back, but not quitenotcurled against him either, until his mind buzzed with the initial signals of over-indulgence. That was one thing the stereotypes got entirely wrong; it was hard to drain a human to the point of death. Hard physically, because the average adult body contained multiple liters of blood, and hard psychologically, because murder was still murder, and hard because it went against the vampire’s natural instinct to keep the human alive so they’d produce more blood for the next meal. But Vincent wasn’t coming back to this meal, no matter how tasty.
He repeated this to himself as he withdrew his fangs and pressed his tongue to the side of the human’s neck until he felt the skin close up. He repeated it as he checked that the wound had vanished, gently patting the area clean with his sleeve, the taste of that amazing blood slowly vanishing from his tongue. He repeated it again as he slipped out the window, leaving behind the man’s frustratingly wonderful scent: no more feeding on this particular human. One time was all he got.
He stopped repeating the thought around late morning, as he finally drifted off to sleep, still thinking of the man’s taste, his smell, his dark curls, and gentle sounds of slumber. A week and a half of bland and bitter blood later, Vincent broke his rule of no returns.
He went back for seconds.
2
WESLEY
Wesley Luis Smith Garcia was perpetuating stereotypes.
Again.
“Dude, there’s no fucking way. I’m too young and hot to waste my life in a cubicle for the next forty years. Dammit, I auto-spawned in the fourth quadrant again, are you close enough to back me?” Wes kicked his leg over the couch’s armrest as he leaned forward, controlling his avatar into a dive roll behind a broken wall.
