Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors) (20 page)

Xander was ahead of me, walking determinedly
toward the bridge’s entrance. “Hey,” I called to him in a low voice. “Why are we doing this again?”

“To save Rini,” Xander growled. “Damn it!”
he added as we had reached the entrance. It was secured by a metal door. “I should have known this would happen.” Xander kicked the door in frustration. “Come on. I have a crowbar in my car.”

He pushed
past me in his rush to get the crowbar. “Listen, Xander.” I dogged his heels. “I care about Rini. I mean, I care about her as much as you do. But I’m not sure potentially getting ourselves killed in there is such a good idea. Maybe we need to, you know, rethink this.” I had to increase my speed to keep pace with him. “Okay, so the cop thing didn’t work out. That doesn’t mean we don’t have other options. Maybe you could whip out your dad’s credit card and we could hire some kind of commando security force or something. That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

“You don’t understand, Sherbie. If something happened to
Rini, I could never forgive myself.”

“I know.
I don’t think I’d ever get over it either. It would be awful.” My wrists started to itch just thinking about it. “But let’s try to figure out a plan that makes more sense.”

Xander came to an abrupt halt
. He stopped so fast that I nearly ran into the back of him. He whipped around to stare at me. “Do you love Rini?”

“What?” I squinted at his face, but he was perfectly serious.
“Um… sure. I guess. I mean, if I think about it, you and Rini and Grandma are probably the people I’m closest to in the whole world.”

“But are you in love with her?”

“What?”

Xander took a step forward and lowered his voice. “Are you in love with Rini
?”

“No. What are you talking about?” I let out a
n awkward half laugh at the thought of it. “I mean, she’s Rini.”

“Are you in love with her?” he asked again. He was being weirdly intense about it.

“No,” I repeated. “Of course not. Are you?”

“Yes,” he said in a quiet voice.

“What?”

“Yes, I’m in love with her.”

Chapter 28

I’m not sure which I found more shocking: the fact that vampires actually existed or that my two best friends were in love. Actually, to be more accurate, that Xander was in love with Rini. He wasn’t all that clear if she was in love with him.

At first
, I called bullshit and was kind of annoyed because we were about to go stake a vampire, and it really wasn’t the appropriate time to be joking around. But he let me know pretty clearly that he was completely serious. “You always think you know my type or who the ideal girl is for me, but you never even came close. It’s Rini. She’s my ideal.”

I suppressed the urge to say, “
You’re kidding,” and settled for, “Since when?”

Xander sighed. “I’m not even sure when it started. I do know when
Gerald, that Smiths-loving poser, came sniffing around last summer, I just about wanted to kill him. That’s when I had to admit it to myself.”

“Yeah,
I was wondering what your deal was. You weren’t very nice to him, and he just wasn’t that bad.” In truth, Xander had behaved like a total ass, and I had thought the guy was pretty all right.

“He was a tool,” Xander grumbled.

“If you like her, then why aren’t you and Rini together? She’s had a mad crush on you for years. Why not just tell her how you feel?”

“I have. And we
would be.” Xander sighed, his posture sagging a little. “But you know…”

“No,” I told him
. “I don’t know.”

“She
’s all weird about it because she says I’m better looking than she is, which is totally bullshit. And besides, she doesn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

There was something about the hand gesture Xander made when he said “
our friendship” that confused me. It almost felt like he was indicating me, so I asked, “She’s worried if you date it’ll ruin your friendship?”

Xander looked me straight in the eye. “No, she’s worried it would ruin our friendship with you.”

“Whah…?” was the only thing I could make come out of my mouth.

“Yeah. She doesn’t want you to feel
, I don’t know, left out or something. That’s why I’m always giving girls your phone number and stuff.”

Nothing Xander was saying made any
sense. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, how I always try to slip girls your
number or email address. Like with Lana.”

That’s when I knew he was BSing me. “
Come on, Xander. That’s Rini.”

“No
.” He shook his head. “It’s me.”

“What? W
hy?”

Xander gave me
a look of someone long suffering. “Don’t you get anything? If you have a girlfriend, then we can double date. You won’t feel left out, and maybe Rini would agree to be my girlfriend.”

“Wow.” I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. “I really am the most oblivious person on the planet.”

“Yeah.” Xander wasn’t going to argue with me. “Sometimes you’re not too bright.” He opened the trunk of his car and pulled out the crowbar. “It’s getting late. We’d better get this over with, or it’ll be dark out.” He slammed the trunk. Rummaging in his satchel, he pulled out two stakes and handed one to me. “Here. You might need this.” I gulped and tried not to think how unpleasant it would be to use the pointy stick to pierce someone’s flesh.

Gripping a stake in one hand and the crowbar in the other,
Xander said, “Let’s go make Cleveland a vampire-free city.”

Getting the metal door open was much easier than we’d anticipated. The door itself was solid and would have been
too difficult to penetrate, but the cement wall surrounding the door was quite crumbly. Xander just hacked at it with the crowbar until he’d carved a notch around the lock and we could jerk the door open. “Do you think he sleeps in a coffin?” I asked as we tiptoed inside. The bare light bulbs overhead were still illuminated even though it was daytime. I guess that was a good thing because neither one of us had thought to bring a flashlight.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t see one when I was looking for Rini. I did see a big bed
, and the windows have all been sealed up pretty good down there. I bet he just sleeps in the bed.”

As we were sneaking down the
long hallway with the dirty white tiles, I tried to visualize what we were about to do. “How do you think this is going down? We’re just going to run in there, stake him, and leave?”

“
I guess.” Xander kept his voice low. “There isn’t exactly an etiquette book for these things.”

“What about Aerony?”

Xander glanced back at me. “What about her?”

“Do we stake her or not?”

Xander frowned. “I’m not sure. Is she a vampire?”

“I don’t know. What’s the litmus test for vampires besides seeing her suck on somebody’s neck?”

“Burning in the sun?” Xander raised his eyebrows.

I shuddered. “Let’s try to figure out something else.”

We both quieted down as we were about to enter the main area under the bridge where we had attended that first party after the Young Lords. I had the priest’s Bible in one hand and one of Xander’s homemade stakes in the other. The door that accessed the bridge, which was usually propped open, was closed. Fortunately, it wasn’t locked, and Xander pushed it open causing an eardrum-piercing squeak. I winced at the sharp noise and at the thought that if somehow our hacking through the metal door had gone unnoticed, this noise would definitely alert Vincent to our arrival.

Absolutely no one was around. Under the bridge was devoid of people or any trace of decoration
s, plastic cups, or confetti that would have hinted about the parties that had recently taken place there. “Maybe he left,” I said in a hopeful whisper.

“Can’t happen
,” was Xander’s reply.

“
Why?”

“Because if he left, then he took Rini with him.”

That didn’t exactly preclude Vincent from fleeing the city. He could have easily taken several of the Chosen along as snack bags, but I wasn’t going to mention it to Xander. He was being enough of a spaz already. “Should we check out his rooms?” I said, peeping over the railing at the staircase.

Xander had a tight grip on his stake. “Definitely.”

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling back. “Grandma would be super pissed if I got myself killed.”

“You’re not going to get killed,” Xander assured me. “We’re just going to run in there, stake the vampire
, and get out. Got it? Run in, stake him, get out.”

I
knew it was time to man up. “Okay,” I said, adjusting my grip on my own stake. “Let’s do this.”

There was a
steady mechanical droning coming from the vampire’s lair. It echoed off the walls and ceiling as we headed down the staircase and through the passageway. “What is that?” I wondered aloud. Xander just shrugged.

It was immediately obvious that Vincent hadn’t made a break for it. Or if he had, he’d left most of his possessions behind. The chairs were still there
scattered around the room, along with the large tables covered with their ornate tablecloths. The food and platters and stemware had all been cleared away. Besides that, the room was the same. The droning was from a vacuum cleaner, and there was a man in a white apron bent over as he was absorbed in the task of cleaning under one of the tables. While he vacuumed, he was humming with the openness of someone who is unaware he is being observed. “Bum, ba-bum, ba-bum ba-bum ba-bum.” I thought I recognized the strains of Beethoven. Maybe Mozart—I get those two confused. The cleaner must have sensed we were there because he straightened up in surprise. It was the vampire himself with the shirt sleeves of one of his frilly blouses rolled to the elbows.

“Oh, my darlings,”
Vincent said, quickly shutting off the vacuum cleaner. “You surprised me. I was not expecting you.” He removed his apron, obviously a little embarrassed that we had found him in a state of domestic industriousness. “Everyone else has gone out,” he explained. “You find me quite alone.”

“Where are they?” Xander asked in a loud voice, his words echoing off the walls of the empty room.

“They went to that amusement park. Cedar Point, I think it’s called. There is a new rollercoaster that they all very much desired to try.” He examined his shoe buckles. “I could not go, but I did not want them to miss the entertainment.”

Xander shot me a sideways glance. “I didn’t know Cedar Point had a vampire
groupie day.”

Normally I would have fired back with a snarky comment of my own about how donating a pint of blood got you half off admission, but there was something about the slightly forlorn expression on Vincent’s face that caused me to check my remark.

“Can I offer you some type of refreshment?” the vampire asked. “I know you do not prefer champagne, but there is bottled water and apple juice.”

“No, that’s okay,” Xander told him. “We’re not exactly here on a social call.”

“Please excuse my appearance.” The vampire unrolled his sleeves and buttoned a few buttons on his embroidered silk vest. “I was just cleaning up a little, and I really wasn’t expecting company.” He appeared as debonair as he always did, so I wasn’t sure why he was apologizing. Vincent smiled at us. “I am so glad to see you, my darlings. Why have you done me this honor?”

“Because of this!” Xander brandished the cros
s that the priest had given him.

I hadn’t anticipated that we were
sticking to the plan and going immediately on the offensive. It seemed rude attacking someone after interrupting him in his apron. But I had to back Xander, so I immediately thrust my Bible into the air and shouted, “And this!”

“Arrrrgh!” the vampire shrieked
, throwing his arms in the air to shield his face.

Chapter
29

After a few seconds, Vincent lowered his hands and started to chuckle. “I am sorry, my darlings. I’m afraid these lovely symbols are no threat to me. But I didn’t want you to feel disappointed.” He took a few steps toward us. “If it’s any consolation, during my lifetime, I was a Jew.”

“Stay back!” Xander yelled, releasing the contents of his squirt bottle directly into Short Vincent’s face.

“What are you doing?” the vampire sputtered, trying to wipe the holy water from his vest. “This is silk, you idiot. It has to be dry cleaned.”

“I’m sorry,” Xander mumbled.

“Do you know how hard it is to find a twenty-four hour drycleaner in this town?”

“Sorry,” Xander repeated.

“Um, he’s Jewish, Xander. None of this stuff is going to work.” I tossed the Bible on the nearest table, and the vampire promptly picked it up.

“What about garlic?” Xander
looked hopeful.

“S
orry, my darlings, that is also not true,” the vampire told us, which was just as well because I’d left my bag of garlic in the car.

“Do you mind if I borrow this?”
Vincent asked, thumbing through the holy book. “I haven’t read the old testament in so long. I find some of the passages are quite beautiful.”

“Help yourself
.” I shrugged.

Pleased, the vampire put the book to one side.
“So, my darlings, you have come to kill me. Is that right?” He turned back toward us.

“Kind of,” I admitted. “But we thought you’d be asleep in a coffin or something.”

“No, no, no.” The vampire shook his head and clucked his tongue. “That was just a myth from many years ago. I tried it once on a bet. But I must tell you, it was very uncomfortable.”

“Sunlight doesn’t kill you
either?” Xander wanted to know. It was obvious the wheels in his head were spinning as he tried to formulate a new plan.

“Not in the way you think, my darling.”
The vampire didn’t appear concerned that we silly humans were obviously preparing our next assault. He was also way too amenable about answering our questions. I got the impression that he was a little bit forlorn at the moment and pleased to have the company. “It is unpleasant for me to stay up all day, much like it is unpleasant for you to stay up all night. Plus, you must see that it is better for us vampires at night when people aren’t at work or in high school.”

“But can it kill you?” Xander persisted.

The vampire gave him a patient smile. “Yes, the light of the sun has the power to kill me. But I would not burst into flames like in some low-budget horror movie. That is just ridiculous.”

Xander narrowed his eyes. “How does it kill
you?”

Short Vincent walked over to where his brocade coat hung on the back of a chair. “Come,” he said, slipping it on. “Let
us sit and talk like gentlemen. The days are so long during the summer. It makes me nostalgic for when I was a human and had my friends about me.” He pulled a chair away from a table and nodded toward it. “Sit. I will get the apple juice.”

There was a commotion in the passageway
, and we all turned to look. Aerony, a few dozen of the Chosen, and several beefy boys clamored into the room clutching cheap carnival prizes and bags of cotton candy. Laughing and chatting, they were all so attractive they could have been cast in the Goth version of
Beverly Hills 90210
. I could see Violet Maureen in the crowd, but after making initial eye contact, she studiously ignored me.

“Ah, m
y darlings.” The vampire clapped his hands with delight. “You are home so soon. I was not expecting you until much later. How was the rollercoaster?”

Aerony came forward to speak to Vincent as the Chosen chatted excitedly amongst themselves. “It was very exhilarating,” she said in her warm,
honeyed voice.

Vincent put a hand to her cheek. “Aerony, you look pale.” And he was right. The beautiful woman looked
more like a beautiful woman with amoebic dysentery.

“It was a very sunny day,” she told him.

The vampire shook his head and made a tsk, tsking sound with his tongue. “You should not have stayed out so long. It has sickened you.”

“I couldn’t resist,” she confided. “
I know I will not be able to enjoy the sunshine for much longer.”

While I was eavesdropping on
the vampire’s conversation, Xander had plunged into the thick of the Chosen, looking for Rini. He must have found her because I heard him exclaim, “What are you doing here?”

“I came with Rini,” said a
defensive female voice.

I
caught a glimpse of Xander clutching Lana by the elbow. “Lana,” I blurted.

Xander dragged her over to me. “
Look who decided to join the Chosen.”

“What are you doing here?” I
asked, keeping my voice low.

“We went to Cedar Point,” she said, tossing a stuff
ed polar bear she’d been clutching onto a chair.

“Cut it out. You know what I mean.”

She let out a long breath, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. “I just want to let him bite me once. Okay? I just want to know what it’s like to feel pretty.”

I felt like I was losing my mind. “You are pretty,” I
growled at her through clenched teeth.

Lana
looked away. “You obviously don’t think so.”

I was about to explain to her in detail that she was definitely wrong about that, but Xander interrupted with,
“Is Rini with you?”

Nodding, Lana indicated a large chair that someone was cro
uching behind.

Slamming the
crowbar down, Xander shoved his stake back in his satchel. Hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, he stormed over to the chair. “Come out from there,” he commanded.

Reluctantly, Rini
appeared from behind the chair, looking rather sheepish. “We just went to Cedar Point.”

“With vampires,” Xander fired back at her.

“That’s not true,” Rini sulked. “Vincent couldn’t go.” She turned away from him and started heading toward me, but on second reflection, she was probably headed for Lana.

Rini’s hair
was glossy and thick; her figure had smoothed out into a compact hourglass; her sun-kissed complexion was radiant. It was obvious she had let the vampire bite her again. Xander chased after her, grabbed her by both shoulders, and turned her to face him. He gazed deep down into her eyes. “Rini,” he rasped, “why do you keep coming back here?”

Immediately
, she twisted her face away, not willing to meet his gaze. “I just want to be pretty, Xander.”

“But…”

“Don’t say I’m pretty.” She put her hands to his lips, cutting him off. “We both know it’s not true.”

“It’s true to me.”

“But not to the rest of the world.” He tried to speak, but Rini kept going. “Don’t you get it? Maybe if I looked a little better, it wouldn’t be so weird.”

“What
wouldn’t be weird?”

Rini
met his gaze, her eyes glistening. “Us being together.”

That’s when he kissed her. And it wasn’t his usual Xander kiss where he was all smooth and ready
for his close-up. He kissed her as if it was the only thing he could do to stop his heart from being torn out of his chest.

When they finally pulled apart, Xander buried his face in Rini’s hair. “Can’t you see I love you? You could be the most beautiful woman in the world or the ugliest. It wouldn’t matter to me because it’s you, Rini. It’s you that I love.”

“You can’t.”

“I do. But you keep letting that vampire bite you. You’re letting him erase who you are. He’s erasing what I love.”

A few tears slid down Rini’s cheeks. “I didn’t know it was like that.”

“How could you not know?”

Rini sniffed. “Gee, Xander, I don’t know. Maybe it was all those other girls you’re always dating.”

“Well, I had to do something. You wouldn’t date me.”

“I guess I never believed you really liked me.”

Xander kissed the tears from her cheeks. “Do you believe me now?”

“Yes.” Rini sighed, leaning into him as he wrapped his arms around her.

“
Um, guys?” I interrupted. “Could you maybe talk about this later? We’ve kind of got other things to deal with right now.” Like getting out of the vampire’s lair alive was the most pressing thing, but I didn’t want to say it out loud because it was obvious the vampire and soon-to-be vampire were listening.

Aerony had watched the exchange between Xander and Rini with the keen interest of a cat watching its prey. She
leaned toward Vincent. “What are the boys doing here?”

“My darling, it is nothing. They just came to
murder me.”

“What?” Aerony seemed to think it was more than nothing. She swung around to confront me. “Why do you want to kill Vincent?”

I couldn’t believe she was asking me, but under her gaze, I simultaneously felt really embarrassed that I’d even thought of such a thing. I tried to conceal the stake I was clutching by hiding it behind my leg. “Because he’s a vampire.”

“
What does that matter? He doesn’t hurt anyone.” She waved a hand toward the Chosen. “Everyone is here because they want to be here. They’ve signed contracts. They want the gift that nature denied them and only a vampire can give.”

“What about Lydia Sarducci?”

Aerony’s perfect brows furrowed together. “Who?”

“Fro
m the other night,” Vincent explained, for once being the aid to her memory. “I told these boys they could only take their one friend. They left the other girl behind and we…” He put his wrist to his lips in a nonchalant gesture to explain the rest.

“Oh
.” Aerony turned her giant lion’s eyes back to me. “She was a friend of yours?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Well… our grandparents
were… are friends.”

“I am sorry.” Aerony touched my arm
, and I felt myself tremble against my will. “She was such a nice girl. And getting so pretty. Who could have known that she was actually suicidal?”

“Oh, cut the crap, already.” Xander
came to stand next to me. “We know you killed her. Okay? Then you faked her suicide so no one would find out.”

Aerony drew back, offended. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve read too many vampire novels.”

“Ah, my darlings, please stop,” Vincent interrupted. He had seated himself on his throne. We all turned to look at him. “Yes, yes, there may have been a little too much feeding on Miss Sarducci. It was a shame, and I’m sorry. Accidents happen.”

“Accidents happen,” I repeated. “Are you kidding me? I think there’s a much, much bigger chance of an accident happening while you’re sucking the blood out of someone’s neck.”

“There is no reason to get so excited,” the vampire told me. “I didn’t mean to kill her. Not really.”

“You’ve had over a dozen accidents in the last six months,” I accused him.

Short Vincent shrugged. “Sometimes I get so hungry. And I must train Aerony. She is about to make her transformation, you know. But don’t worry, my darlings, there is always a bit of trouble when we are recruiting, but it won’t last forever. A lot depends on the die-off rate, but then you won’t hear from me for maybe another twenty years.”

“You can’t keep doing this
,” I told him. “You can’t keep killing people off, even if it is only every other decade.” The vampire was being so blasé about murder that it was really pissing me off.

“Yes, I can see why it might upset you,” the vampire said
, the corners of his mouth pulling down slightly in empathy. “But what can be done?”

“You can stop.”

“No, my darling, I cannot.”

“I will stop you,” I told him. I know it was an incredibly stupid thing to say, but I was angry. “
Mr. Sarducci is a friend of my grandmother’s. His whole family is devastated because you killed his granddaughter. And you don’t even have the balls to own your murders. You faked it, so her family has to suffer the added torture of thinking she killed herself. And that goes for every family of every person you’ve ever killed in your entire sick vampire life.”

Vincent
gave me a pitying look. “I’m sorry, darling, I know it seems cowardly, but it is necessary, or I could not enjoy my quiet life. You cannot stop me. There’s nothing you can do.”

“
I will stop you!” I raged, clenching the stake in my fist. “Or I will make the police stop you.”

The vampire sighed.
“I see it’s come to this.”

Vincent clapped his hands twice
, and out of nowhere, the beefy boys grabbed Xander and me. I could have tried stabbing one of them with my stake, I guess, but they were so quick. For such big guys, they were pretty stealthy. Dragging us in front of the throne, they thrust us to our knees.