I tried to shove the lifeless big lug off me, but he was dead weight. Literally. Yes, I was fully aware I was a vampire and I possessed superhuman strength, but I was also a girl and I had a big, ugly, smelly, bleeding, and disgusting body sitting on top of me. So I did what anyone in my position would do...I panicked and screamed my freaking head off...so sue me.
"Why are you screaming?" Bubbles asked, staring down at me with her hands on her hips and all sorts of judgment on her face.
"I have a dead body on me!" I screeched, flaying my hands around from underneath the behemoth. I'm positive I looked like a tipped over turtle.
"So?" The lack of caring in her tone was not lost on me.
"So? So? So!" I squealed, my voice getting higher in pitch with every so that blasted past my lips.
"Oh for crying out loud, calm down," Bubbles said, putting her hands over her ears.
"I will not calm down!" Okay...I really needed to stop acting like a parrot and repeating everything she said. It wasn't like she was about to give me a cracker. Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm down, but all I got for my efforts was another repulsive whiff of the dead body and all my attempts at calm flew out the window. "Get this asshole off me!" I cried.
A set of size 14 shitkickers came running up to the side of my head. Looking up, I saw Fang smiling down at me.
"Nice work, Red," he said with an appreciative nod of his head.
"I helped, your Majesty," Bubbles cooed with a curtsy.
"Good work, Courtanya."
"Thank you, your Majesty." She giggled, ducking her head as she blushed under his approval and twirled a lock of her hair around her finger while looking down at her toes peeking out from her sandals.
"Excuse me!" I broke up the party with a screech. "If you haven't noticed, I am plastered underneath a dead body!"
"By the way she is acting, you would think she'd never killed anyone before," Bubbles sniffed, looking down at me with a frown.
"I haven't killed anyone before!"
"What kind of vampire are you?" She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me. Her lips were pressed together so tightly it looked like she didn't have any.
"She has killed before," Fang said in my defense. "She wiped out at least four of Stoker's men by sending them plummeting to their death over a cliff where they exploded in a ball of fire."
Oddly, I was both proud and mortified at the same time.
Bubbles snorted, unimpressed. "Causing a car wreck doesn't count," she said with the finality of an Idol judge sending someone off the stage with nothing but shattered dreams. "Having personally witnessed the way she drives, I would assume wreckage would naturally follow in her wake."
"Hey! What did I say about the insults, Tinkerbell?" Obviously, the bonding faze of our relationship was long gone. Unless she was one of those ones who shows affection by insulting you, then I would have to say the girl was down right in love with me.
"I'm not insulting you. I am simply describing you." She gave me sugary smile. "There's a difference."
Fang chuckled, but quickly muffled it with a cough when I growled at him.
"You know what's not different?" I asked, looking up at the both of them and blinking my eyelashes innocently.
"What?" Fang asked, cocking his head at me.
"I'm still stuck under a freaking dead body you morons!" I screamed, pounding my fists on the stiff laying on top of me. My patience with Tweedledee and Tweedledum wearing out faster than the battery on my cell phone when I'm Snapchatting.
Courtanya simply rolled her eyes, yawned and looked at me as if she was bored out of her mind. Easy for her, she didn't have a bleeding corpse sitting on top of her cooling with rigor mortis.
Fang jumped to action and tossed the reposing giant off me. "Are you okay?" he asked, but he didn't wait for a response. Before I could utter a peep, he scooped me into his arms and stood with me cradled against his chest. Not that I was complaining. I was one eye twitch from going totally postal, which made no sense. I've never even worked at the post office.
Sighing, I took a much deserved breather...without a dead body. His scent was as addictive as the man himself and I nuzzled closer to replace the burning, metallic scent of death lingering in my nose. I could feel the heat from his skin against my cheek, thanks to his shirt having been shredded into something resembling a rag. A rag that had cost me an arm and leg. Drat!
"Are you okay?" he asked me again.
"I've been better," I grumbled, looking down at my blood stained shirt and then what was left of his. "Dammit, these were new," I whined.
But before I could utter one more complaint, Fang dropped his head and started kissing me. No half-assed brotherly peck for him. Nope, he gave me a full-on I-want-to-suck-out-your-brains-through-your-lips kind of kiss. His mouth taunting and teasing mine until I opened my lips so he could do things with his tongue that had to be illegal in at least a couple of states.
Hearing Bubble's disgusted grunt, cooled the blood burning in my veins to a low simmer and I managed to yank my mouth away from his. But just barely. For some reason, him kissing me didn't quite offend me the way it should have. The realization shocked me. The last thing I needed right now was to feel even more attracted to him. Or...ahem...have him knowing I was attracted to him.
I shoved his head, pushing his dangerous lips away from mine. "Dude! Wrong time and definitely the worst place on the planet for that. Put me down," I ordered, even though my inner slut was on her knees and begging for me to reconsider.
"You're wish is my command, Red." He grinned at me and very purposely, let me slip down his body. I felt like a fireman sliding down a pole...except...this pole had a surprisingly large bump in the middle.
Taking a few steps away from him to get a grip on my runaway libido, which right now wanted to get kinkier than a cheap garden hose in the Waffle House parking lot with him...I looked around at the devastation to distract myself. Out of all the bodies scattered around, there were three I didn't see. Vinny, Druilla and Nicolai seemed to have vanished.
"Where's Nico-lame and Cruilla?" I asked, walking from one prone vampire form to the other to double check I hadn't simply misplaced them. I did that a lot. I was always losing my keys, phone, the remote...that toddler I was babysitting. It certainly wouldn't surprise me to add dead bodies to that list.
"Nicolai ghosted when he saw you stake Arnold." Fang's eyes went flat and his lips curled up in a snarl.
"Arnold?" I stopped in my tracks. "His name was Arnold?" I asked in disbelief as I turned to look at the dead monster of a vampire with the wimpy name. No wonder he had anger issues.
"We should leave, your Majesty before my Mis...," she halted and swallowed hard. "Before Druilla recovers and returns with reinforcements. She will not take this defeat well." Bubbles grabbed at Fang's shirt...or what was left of it...and tugged at it, trying to haul him off.
"But...but...she was out cold." I spun around still hoping I had overlooked her and she would still be laid out on the asphalt. "How could she have ghosted?"
"Druilla is a very old and powerful vampire," Fang explained, sighing in frustration. "She might have been hurt, but she heals quickly. She must have come around while we were otherwise engaged and made her escape."
"Yes! That is why we must go...now!" Courtanya insisted, practically hanging off Fang's upper arm as she tried to drag him away from the crime scene.
I had to admit, I agreed with her. Not that I would actually do that out loud. But now that the excitement of nearly being murdered...again...by the hands of that bitch was dwindling, I wasn't exactly in the mood to repeat it.
"What about all this?" I asked, waving my hand around at the carnage. "We can't just leave them here. And what about the Waffle House staff?" I turned expecting to see several faces smooshed against the glass with cell phones pointed and recording the vampire fight of the century to later be uploaded on YouTube. But all was quiet. Too quiet. I cocked my head and listened, but other than a couple of out of tune crickets...I heard nothing. No impending wail of sirens from someone having called the cops. No screaming in disbelief that vampires exist. Nothing.
With dread heavy in my gut, I ran back to the Waffle House. Fang yelled at me to stop, but I ignored him and pulled open the door. The first thing I saw when I stepped in was Brittany draped over a table, one of her blond pigtails swaying eerily in the breeze from AC vent about her. Stanley laid in an undignified sprawl on the floor some distance away from her. His cheap, plastic boat shoes pointing in separate directions.
I didn't see any of the cooking staff, but I assumed they hadn't fared much better and to be honest, I really didn't want to go look and see. For one thing, I was at my seeing dead bodies limit and second...I frankly had no interest in knowing exactly how filthy the kitchen was. I mean, seriously, I just ate.
"Are...are they dead?" Though he hadn't made a sound, I knew Fang was standing behind me.
Brushing past, he bent and checked the pulse on Brittany. I know I had said earlier I wanted to run her over with a speeding bus, but honestly...I didn't mean it. The thought all these innocent people had died because of me using my credit card, choked me with guilt. This was bad...really...really...really bad. Far worse than anything I have might have accidentally done in the past. I weaved unsteadily on my feet, fairly certain I was going to pass out any second.
"She's alive," Fang stated, his jaw tight. "Only sleeping." He then proceeded to check on Stanley and came to the same conclusion.
My whole body sagged. Nico-lame had done his sleepy time trick. They weren't dead. But now, I wanted to rip out his heart for scaring me. I know...my emotions were all over the place. One minute I was mourning the loss of life and the next...I was wanting to create more. What can I say? It had one hell of a night and I was a little bit on edge.
"What about the mess outside?" I asked him, as he placed the palm of his hand on the small of my back and escorted me back outside where Bubbles was dancing around in an aggravated frenzy. Put a ball on her nose and she could have been one of those performing poodles from the circus.
"You're Majesty! We must leave!" she panted, running up to us.
I noticed she didn't deem it necessary to include me in her desperate need to escape plan. Little brat.
Fang took a look around at the carnage and turned to me. "It's not long till dawn, we will put them in the SUV's. If nobody comes to collect them, then the sun will do the rest in come morning."
My mouth fell open and my eyes popped wide. We? What? Did he have a mouse in his pocket? I wasn't about to touch dead guys...uh-uh...no way Jose.
Fifteen minutes later and dragging my end of the third dead body to the back of an SUV, I was cussing my life...or rather...my undead life. If these guys were big and ugly when they were alive, they were even bigger and uglier, not to mention heavier dead. As Bubbles and I heaved the limp vampire up into the back, I couldn't help but remember the warning given to me by my third foster mom. Or was it fourth...anyway...she was the one who was the master at giving infamous parent warnings. If you don't learn to behave now, then a prison guard will be teaching you how to later and they won't be nice about it.
I wonder what she would think if she could see my new hobby of stuffing bodies into the back of vehicles? I snorted under my breath. Knowing her, she would probably have a cow. After all, she totally freaked just because I accidentally superglued her daughters banana clip together. Course, she was wearing it at the time, but still, no reason to be all unreasonable about it.
Turning, I was about to go collect another body, when one of the arms of the dead vampire I just shoved in, flopped back out. With an annoyed sigh, I picked it up and shoved it into the car. That's when I noticed the Rolex winking under the dome light. This hoser was loaded. Not thinking twice, I started ferreting through his pockets, grimacing a little when I had to shove my hand into his back pocket to reach his wallet.
"Why are you molesting the dead?" Bubbles asked, her Bambi eyes wide in horror.
"It's not like I'm feeling him up!" I snapped, yanking out my tri-fold leather prize. Opening it up, I did a little happy dance at the amount of hundred dollar bills tucked inside. I may hate math, but I loved counting money and this dead dude had plenty to count. Oh my! They say money can't buy happiness, but it sure can buy one heck of a pair of fabulous shoes and really, isn't that the same thing?
"Your Maaaaaaajesty!" Courtanya went running off tattling on me as fast as her tiny feet could carry her.
Figuring I only had a few seconds before she brought Fang over here to rain on my parade, I started rifling through the rest of the corpses like people digging through a five dollar movie bin at Walmart, Stuffing my pockets full of cash as fast as I could.
"What are you doing?"
Even though I knew he was coming, I still yelped and jumped guiltily at the sound of his disapproving tone.
"I'm..." I paused for a second, poking my hamster in his wheel to come up with a plausible excuse. I came up blank. What could I say? I was busted red handed stealing money from deceased vampires. A new low...even for me. There wasn't a whole lot you could say. "I'm relieving them of their cash." There...that at least sounded better.
Fang exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Why?" The single word sounding pained.
"I can't use my credit cards and you two don't have a dime between you and it's not like they are going to need it," I said quickly. Plus, I added to myself, I really, really needed a new pair of shoes dammit! Course, I didn't let that last bit slip. He didn't need to know all my reasons. "Listen Fang, we are going to need gas and some new clothes. Unless you like looking like a Flashdance reject while we try to hitchhike across the country."
He raised a dark brow, his icicle eyes narrowing for a moment before his lips stretched into a smile. The points of his teeth flashed a little and my legs wobbled. My longing for him burned more than a urinary tract infection when he looked at me like that.
"Good thinking, Red." He bent down and placed a swift kiss on my surprised lips before he sauntered off across the parking lot to toss the last of the bodies into their SUV coffins.
In no time at all, we were back on our road trip from hell.
"Why didn't we use one of the SUV's?" Bubbles whined from the back hatch of Gizmo who was presently purring thanks to two quarts of oil and a full tank of gas courtesy of my ill-gotten financial gain. "I can hardly move back here and it's absolutely filthy."
"Be grateful we took you along. We could have left you behind for your darling Mistress to find." I smiled sweetly at her over my shoulder, enjoying watching her blanch. She'd been pissing and moaning back there for the last twenty miles and the thought of leaving her tied up on top of a SUV with a big red bow was sounding better and better with every mile marker.
"And I could have let her stake you through the heart your redheaded wench."
"And I could shave your head while you sleep you little..."
"Enough!" Fang barked, breaking us apart. "It's almost dawn. We need to find shelter." Scrubbing his palm over his face, he turned to look at me. "Hopefully, sometime tomorrow we will be at the compound."
"Great, the compound," I said with a forced chipperness as Courtanya's face fell. My stomach suddenly felt as if I had swallowed a barrel full of battery acid. What could possibly go wrong there, I thought to myself knowing better than to even try and answer.
Author's Note:
Just one big happy family on an outing to the Compound. How do you think the "brothers" will react to our Mel? Will it be with open arms or with a lynch mob? Stay tuned to find out!
I hope you enjoyed this latest installment of FANGED and if you liked it, you will consider giving it a vote. I love hearing from you and comments are always appreciated. If you don't see any updates here, feel freed to check out my other stories Bending Steele, When Roses Collide or Steal You Away.
The next scheduled update for this book is July 15th.
I want to wish everyone a SAFE and fun Fourth of July!!
As always, thank you for reading!
Sincerely,
K