Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (32 page)

He shouldn’t do it.
 

“I can’t do it,” he said.
 

“You have to. I’ve been thinking about it ever since Balestro, since getting my approval in the mail. It’s not the wrong choice this time.
And it’s mine to make
.”

Her neck was very close. He could feel the heat coming off of her skin.

“You’re sure.”
 

“Yes.” It was almost a whisper.

“And you’re sure you want it to be me. You want that bond.”

His nostrils flared. His fangs extended.
 

“Yes.”
 

Reginald closed his eyes and leaned in the rest of the way. His senses filled with the scent of her, of her flesh, of her body, of her blood.
 

And then the long wait, in both ways, slowly and slowly and slowly ended.
 

D
EAR
O
LD
D
AD

NIKKI ANNOUNCED HER NEWS TO Maurice the next day by repeatedly running into his room and placing
HIT
crackers onto the dresser in his room when he wasn’t looking. Eventually, after the fourth cracker appeared, Maurice noticed the odd brown-and-black discs and looked around. Nikki appeared in the doorway and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” And then, in a blur, she ran forward, removed the cracker sandwiches, ran back, and began eating one of them. She bounced the remaining crackers on her palm and smiled, and Maurice ran forward like a family greeting family at a big wedding, and wished her congratulations.

It didn’t last long. Almost immediately after the hug, Maurice realized what this would mean for her as Reginald had, and began chastising her. Then he stormed in on Reginald, who was lying awake in bed, and began chastising
him
. The debate went on for two or three minutes. It ended when Nikki began quoting Maurice back to himself about heart and soul and mind and Zen, and then pointed out the simple fact that what was done was done, and that it had been her own damn choice.
 

Maurice relented, fatalistic, and the evening fell into what was beginning to feel like an old rhythm in a new place.

There was such a huge difference between the dawn of Nikki’s vampire abilities and Reginald’s that he felt a strange pang of jealousy. Where he’d been slow, she was lightning fast. Where he’d been weak, she was astonishingly strong. Nikki ran through the catacombs picking up everything large that wasn’t nailed down. She kept picking up rocks and crushing them. When it was time to eat (the kitchenette had pouches of human blood that Reginald impaled with a straw like a Capri Sun), Nikki said she’d join him after she showered. Reginald began walking. When he arrived at the kitchenette thirty seconds later, Nikki was waiting for him in a chair, two blood pouches on the table, her hair clean and wet.
 

“Give her time,” said Maurice later, sitting across from Reginald in Reginald and Nikki’s room while Nikki was off exploring the catacombs. “It’s always like this on the first night, when a new vampire’s abilities captivate them.”
 

“Not always,” said Reginald.
 

“Hey, I remember you shamelessly doing a pushup,” said Maurice.

Reginald told Maurice to get the fuck out of his room. Maurice told Reginald to make him. Then Nikki arrived in a blur and Reginald found himself flat on his back on the bed, his arms pinned above his head. Then she let him sit back up and made herself comfortable beside him.

“Thank you for my gift,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. Then she noticed that she’d placed her hand on his crotch and pulled it back. It was the third time her hand had ended up in his crotch without her conscious awareness.

“Again, I’m sorry,” she said, standing up and starting to pace around the room. “It just keeps going there. Did this happen to you?”

“What?”
 

“The pervasive sexuality. Everything is making me horny. I was having some habit hunger earlier, so I went into the kitchenette and microwaved a hot dog. That was a mistake. I had to run into the bathroom after I ate it and take care of business. Oh, and just FYI, there are no more Fudgesicles in the freezer. I couldn’t take it. I pitched all of them.”
 

She paused.
 

“But then I couldn’t stand the thought that they were still just sitting there in the garbage, so I pulled them out and melted them down under a stream of hot tap water.”
 

“Wait,” said Reginald. “Am I to understand that you’ve removed all of the Fudgesicles?”
 

“Twinkies too. And rocket pops. Strangely, the donuts aren’t bothering me. I guess I don’t swing that way.”
 

“Among new vampire women, it’s about fifty-fifty,” said Maurice.

“So did this happen to you, Reginald?” she said.
 

“No. I became very interested in pizza.”
 

“Weren’t you already interested in pizza?”
 

Reginald took a bite of one of the non-offensive donuts he’d snagged earlier. “It ratcheted up a notch.”
 

Despite her new vampire pallor, Nikki managed to flush. “Oh, Jesus. I just thought about that hot dog again. Is it always like this?”
 

Maurice shrugged. “You’ve still got a ton of human blood. Feeding and sex go together. Give it a week. After you’re more vampire, it’ll be more manageable. Especially after you lose your taste for human food.”

“Ath if that vud haffen,” said Reginald around a huge mouthful of donut.
 

“Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus.” She was flitting around like a ball in a pinball machine. “It’s
my human blood
that’s doing this? I’m turning
myself
on?” She crossed her legs. “Hang on.” There was a blur and she was gone. A door banged. She returned with a major tuft of hair sticking up on her head.
 

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, touching Reginald’s arm. “I’m afraid that if this really is the end of our world, you’re in for an ending filled with workouts.”
 

Reginald raised the donut as if he were making a toast. “Fine by me. I’d better carb up.” Then he took a bite.
 

A week passed, and neither Nikki’s food hunger nor her sexual hunger abated. All she wanted to do was eat and have sex. Reginald wanted to see the sights, so in the evenings, they took what trains there were to the sites they could reach in the time they had and looked at ruins and attractions. Nikki kept stopping for crepes and pastries and to pull Reginald into bathrooms and hidden areas in parks to relieve herself.
 

Her blood hunger increased, too, and she began to hunt. She was much better at hunting than Reginald. Once, on an overnight trip to Paris, Nikki caught, fed on, and glamoured a young French woman while Reginald was waiting in line for a crepe at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. When she returned, she told him, “I’m so hungry after all that eating!” Then she ate three crepes, said how glad she was that she could no longer gain weight, and then picked Reginald up over her head and ran with him into a nearby cluster of hedges.
 

When the night came for Balestro’s return, Reginald, Maurice, and Nikki took a train to Munich, rented a car, and drove south under Reginald’s direction. After a half hour, they pulled into an empty parking lot at the foot of a massive hill with a feeling like doom. Karl and the other EU Vampire Council members, who’d said they’d show up but would travel on foot, hadn’t yet arrived.

“Has it occurred to anyone else,” said Nikki, playing with the car’s door handle without opening the door, “that what we’re about to do really isn’t much different from what those nutjobs do when they’ve predicted the end of the world? I mean, it must feel like this. At a certain time, head up to a certain place and wait for a certain hour, at which point some crazy thing is supposed to happen.”
 

“Yes,” said Reginald.
 

It hadn’t just
occurred
to him; the idea had more or less
consumed
him. Over the past two weeks, with the deadline looming, he’d felt as if he were on a bizarre and foolish countdown to destiny. On one side of his mind, he remembered talking to Balestro and he remembered talking to the voice in the anteroom. When those things had happened, he had totally and completely believed in angels and armageddon, and it had all made sense. But now, when he thought about those things or the hill or the end of the vampire world, the other side of his mind dismissed it all and told him that he was a giant retard. That was the terminology it used, too.
 

“We were all there, and I totally believe in Reginald’s location-scouting,” said Maurice, leaning forward to stick his head between the front seats. “If Balestro doesn’t show, it’s because he’s ditching us, not because it’s not true.”
 

“Maybe this is a cosmic joke,” said Nikki. “Maybe we’re on universal
Candid Camera
.” She shivered in the chill night, not because she was cold, but because it fit the mood. “I just keep thinking that as sure as we are, so are those doomsayer cults. Where is our Kool Aid?”
 

They got out of the car and looked up at the top of the hill, at the huge rock at its top.
 

“That’s a big hill,” said Reginald.
 

“I’m going to head up,” said Maurice. “Not trying to be rude. I just want to get the jump on things.”
 

Reginald and Nikki nodded at him to go ahead, and in less than a second they saw Maurice appear far above, now very small, pacing around the rock.
 

“You can go up too,” said Reginald. They’d begun to climb and he was already short on breath.
 

“Don’t be a dickhead,” she said, taking his hand.
 

The hill was steep. He fought to keep his breath.
 

“Want me to carry you?”
 

Reginald shook his head. “Leave me
some
dignity,” he said.
 

A few minutes later, Nikki shook her head. “I wasn’t kidding about what I said earlier,” she said. “Part of me very seriously expects that we’ll sit up here all night and nothing will happen, and then we’ll go home in the morning feeling stupid, and life will go on.”
 

“That would be okay with me,” said Reginald.
 

“I believe in this — in all of it,” she said. “But it’s just so surreal. The world doesn’t end every day. And look around us, Reginald.” She made a sweeping motion with her arms, taking in the sprawling countryside. “The American Council and the American vampires you know didn’t believe us. The Europeans believe us, but hell, who knows if they’ll show? We’re three people in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, climbing to a giant sacrificial altar… or something. How often have three people been right and tens of thousands been wrong?”
 

“History is created by crazy individuals who believed in something stupid and impossible,” said Reginald.
 

“Why is it our job to save the world?” she said. “If we’re right, we shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
 

“Karl and the others will show.”
 

“Maybe.”

“And we’re not saving the world. I give us a ten percent chance of saving anything, including ourselves. Really, we’re just choosing to be the first to die.”
 

“Oh, well, that changes things,” said Nikki. “Now I’m all for it.”
 

It took them ten more minutes to reach the top of the hill. The rock, Reginald realized, did look like a giant sacrificial altar, which was unsettling. He mentioned it to Maurice, who knew the history of the area, and Maurice assured him that yes, sacrifices did happen here. It was, in a way, why they were there.
 

“I’ll be the one to say it,” said Nikki. “We’re at a place of sacrifice, and we’re not the high priests. Does that implication bother anyone?”
 

“I think it’s pretty cool,” said a voice.
 

Nikki turned as if her head were on a swivel. She found nothing, but then looked down and located the source of the voice and gave a moan. It was Claire.
 

“Claire?”
 

“And mom,” said Claire, indicating a second, taller person now arriving at the top of the hill. “I can’t drive. It would be absurd to think I’d just show up here by myself.”
 

Reginald was enjoying the look on Nikki’s face. He said, “There’s a scene in one of the
Highlander
movies — the third one, I think — where someone inexplicably shows up thousands of miles away from home to find someone they know on a random mountaintop. And the first person says to the other, ‘I knew I’d find you here.’”
 

“Right,” said Claire. “I knew I’d find you here, Nikki. Reginald. Maurice.”
 

Maurice looked much less surprised than Nikki. Nikki looked from one man to the other and stared into their impassive faces. Then she met the eyes of Claire’s mother, Victoria. Victoria introduced herself to Nikki with a smile, as if they were meeting at a coffee shop for lunch.
 

“Why are you here, Claire?” said Nikki.

“Reginald called,” she said.
 

“What a lovely rock,” said Victoria, touching the stone.
 

Nikki shook her head, then turned to Reginald.
 

“Let’s not play the game where I act all surprised and try to get the story out of you. How about you just tell me what happened here?” she said.
 

“I Skyped Claire. Asked her to put her mother on. Victoria thought it was very strange that her daughter was video chatting with the fat guy from her gymnastics class, but then she understood, and then I suggested they pack up their bags and take a European vacation. And here we are.”
 

“When?” said Nikki.

“Last night.”