“I will wager three virgins on that one to take it,” Nodin said.
“I’ll take that bet. And make it five,” Delia said.
“Done.”
Chaz laughed uproariously. “Nodin, we don’t wager virgins anymore. He’s kidding, folks.”
Sometimes virgins were wagered but not with the frequency of earlier times. Virgins these days were more likely to be socially awkward and pimply middle school kids than the ripe, supple, beautiful young men and women preferred by any self-respecting nightwalker.
“I think Lola might expend too much energy trying to appear as she is not,” Delia said. “An unfortunate consequence of finessing what one wants from others instead of simply taking one’s due.”
“Did you never finesse before you became powerful?” Nodin wanted to know.
“I don’t believe I did. Of course, I can hardly remember.” Delia smirked at the crowd. “My point is that one will never win,” Delia said. “Please make sure my virgins are comely and capable of pleasing me.”
“Control the judges,” The Voice snapped in Chaz’s ear.
Edmund sneered. “She means hung like a–”
“Okay–! It’s time to move on,” Chaz said, interrupting Edmund. “Seriously, you guys, enough about the virgins.”
So this was how it worked.
Lola studied the man in front of her, the man who had been waiting to pull her away from the girl vampires who’d escorted her offstage.
He didn’t look like much. But he acted like he was something, and she was inclined to believe him.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she nodded as though she was on the same page, because if there was one impression she was getting, it was that she had better be on the same fucking page. And it was a page that made sense for her. More sense than pretending to be sweet and adorable. It felt like fate. That they saw the bad-ass bitch she was and thought she was a winner. Although, suit guy hadn’t said, “winner,” but the gist was clear to Lola. She probably would have thought of it herself if they had just given her room to work.
“It’ll be your brand for the duration of the show.” Little P studied the girl to see if she was getting it. Talking to the contestants was the worst part of his job. “If you win, your brand can be the tooth fairy for all the fucks we’ll give. Got it?”
“Got it,” Lola said.
Onstage, Chaz extended a hand to Celeste and proclaimed with sweeping enthusiasm, “Now, here she comes, last but, as they say, not least, meet Celeste!” The audience roared their encouragement. Celeste, however, took so long mincing across the stage that by the time she fetched up against Chaz, he was ready to snap her neck.
“How are you?” Chaz could see how she was.
“I’m good,” Celeste said. “Happy to be on the show.”
“I can tell,” Chaz said. Someone in the first row let out a nervous giggle. Chaz leaned in close. Her reaction to his nearness would give her some pep. She smelled like dinner. Celeste had been tearing at a fresh scab with those ridiculous pointy, black fingernails. Chaz knew the others would be able to smell it too. A room inhabited by vampires wasn’t the place to be walking around smelling of blood.
“Unless she wishes to be dinner,” Nodin said.
“Hi, everyone,” Celeste said. “I’m excited to be here, and I can’t wait to get started.” Chaz believed her. Her type could never wait to get started.
“Are you worried about the competition?”
“No,” Celeste said with perfect honesty. “I’m looking forward to the competition, and I can’t wait to get to know the other contestants.”
Which was a lie, Chaz knew. “Do you like meeting new people?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Celeste said. She wouldn’t look at him. Chaz knew she must be deeply absorbed by something internally because what better view was there?
“Maybe you’ll meet your new bestie right here on Creature of the Night,” Chaz said. Celeste crossed her arms and moved her gaze from his knees to his shoes. “And the good news is those that bond on our show tend to bond for the rest of their lives.”
Celeste managed to bring her gaze up to his chin and nod. Chaz decided to wrap it up. She’d done enough to fill her spot, however lackluster it might be. He looked forward to seeing what would become of Celeste. Her type was sometimes good for a surprise along the way.
Edmund leaned forward and inhaled deliberately. He had also caught the scent of blood. At Chaz’s silent urging, Riley and Kiley swooped up to hustle Celeste offstage, and it was time for the guys. “That was the last of our lovely ladies,” Chaz said. “We’ll be right back with more!”
“Okay, what are their names again?” Nick said, hugging a bottle of bourbon to his chest, and hitting the mute button on the remote.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Mike wanted to know.
“I can’t remember which one is which,” Nick clarified.
“Jesus, man. They’ve been promoting the shit out of this for months. There are two hot ones with dark hair, right?”
Nick nodded. “Sure.”
“The one with big tits is Lola. She’s the slutty one. And the one with the perfect handful is Emily. She’s the smart one. Got it?”
“Got it,” Nick agreed. “What about the crazy one?”
Mike had to consult the Creature app on his phone before answering. “The crazy one is Madeline. She looks like your mom if she had tattoos. The average looking redhead is Celeste, who I don’t think is crazy, but you never know.”
“I like the blonde,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “That’s Portia. She was smokin’ hot, like, seven years ago. She’s an actress. Not bad.” Mike was one of the thirty-three thousand five hundred and seventy-two, but he hadn’t been disturbed by the lack of eroticism; the nudity had been enough.
“I’d still do her,” Nick said. “And the little cute one too.”
“The dancer?” Mike shrugged. “Eh. She has arthritis or something. She’s probably not that flexible.”
“I’ll help her flex,” Nick said with a laugh. “What’s her name again?”
“Cassie.”
Ollie had been taken over by a down-the-rabbit-hole sensation. The city was crazy; the house was crazy; the whole idea of this competition was crazy. Maybe Ollie was crazy for being here. But like Ollie’s dad had said, he’d made his bed, and now he was getting ready to lie in it. Speaking metaphorically, of course. He had gotten out of his actual bed after spending the night tossing and turning and nursing regrets. And now he was here, waiting to be called onstage for the world to judge him.
It was all just nerves, he told himself. Nerves meant nothing. He would win, or he wouldn’t and there was no shame in either. Just shame in not doing his best and he didn’t intend for that to happen.
True, he was way out of his comfort zone, but that didn’t mean everything wasn’t under control. There had been a contract laying everything out; it was all aboveboard. Ollie hadn’t done much more than run his eyes over it, but he assumed the lawyers for a set up this fancy knew what they were doing.
Ollie wished his dad could be here with him, which was impossible for a number of reasons. His dad would be watching though; he had promised, and that meant the world to Ollie. There was a time when Ollie had believed his dad would never speak to him again, but it seemed that thought had never occurred to his dad.
Ollie had spent a lifetime feeling not quite unloved, but as though he were a curiosity, inexplicably showered with fondness by those close to him. Winning wouldn’t mean he suddenly fit in with his family, but he had grown accustomed to that alien feeling. What had driven Ollie for the last six months was the possibility that this was the beginning of a new adventure that would lead to real manhood and his permanent niche in the world.
From that niche, he would be able to make amends.
Physically, Ollie knew he was up for most anything. He wasn’t a huge guy, but he wasn’t scrawny either. He had grown up
playing football and helping his dad out on the farm; he was healthy and strong. He wasn’t feeling confident about his outfit; they’d dressed him up to look like a city version of a cowboy, even though at home he hadn’t dressed like a cowboy at all. One hint of a Middle America accent and you end up the token hick. In this case, he was the token hick in a pair of two hundred dollar jeans.
Ollie wiped his sweaty hands on his denim-clad legs and realized his remaining time could reasonably be counted in seconds.
Stewart had spent half the night hugging the toilet and not due to his customary drowning of the sorrows. Last night had been all about good old–fashioned fear. (For fear, read “shit-your-pants-terror”.) Fucking kids, the love of those little bastards was going to be the death of him. If he’d been able to come up with any other way to win them back, he would have done it twice, but he had been labeled an absentee father, which was true enough, although not entirely his fault. That was hard to overcome. Marcy, his bitch of an ex-wife, incessantly plotted against him, never missing an opportunity to point out who was the good parent and who was the deadbeat piece of shit.
He had been warned, by his camp and hers, he was marrying up; he was taking on a wife who had expectations. Stewart had expectations too; they consisted of modest comfort, football on the weekends, and kids who made it to college without getting pregnant or hooked on drugs. Marcy’s expectations were so far beyond Stewart’s, their marriage-to-be began to unravel the moment they met.
Stewart knew Marcy had plans to change him. Marcy had always loved a good project, and he was fine with being one of them, even happy to be. What he hadn’t envisioned was his future as a failed project, and Stewart never expected the girl who had been a virgin on their wedding night to cheat on him with not one but two other members of the club they couldn’t afford. Rather, the club he couldn’t afford because Marcy was a fucking Stay-At-Home-Mom. Not that the kids had stayed at home with her since they had started preschool and begun padding their little resumes with extracurriculars.
Nor had he expected Marcy to gloat about her extramarital adventures over dinner. The savage announcement the night she’d thrown him out had included a detailed list of indiscretions punctuated with the fun fact that she had already been pregnant when they married. Stewart, who had believed wholeheartedly in her premarital virginity, had been left speechless and unable to retaliate.
So much for the memory of their romantic whirlwind elopement.
Now here he was, making the big gesture, trying to win back the tolerance of his fucking children and damn the biology. Stewart checked the clock again. His attempt would begin in less than two minutes.
“Okay people,” Chaz said. “First, we met our lovely ladies. Now, it’s time to meet some equally lovely gentlemen!”
Ollie was first up. He jogged out and offered Chaz a hand to shake, sweeping his fall of sun-lightened blonde hair out of his eyes with the other.
“What brings you here today, Ollie?”
Ollie laughed. “The show brought me, sir.” The truth was Ollie had also applied to be on Paradise Fought, The Bi-Bachelor, and What Would You Eat? Among others. Creature of the Night hadn’t even been in his top ten. Ollie was desperate for something, anything. “I want to be just like you.”
Perish the thought. Chaz forced a smile. “Tell us more about you.”
“Well, I grew up on a farm, and my dad, well, he always wanted me to help him out with farm stuff and follow in his footsteps, maybe. But it wasn’t for me. It always made me too sad, eating some animal I’d been taking care of, you know? Although I did earn my allowance fixing fences, maintaining equipment, and such.”
Chaz’s head was nodding along, but his attention had fled at the first mention of farm life.
“I’m here to make my dad proud since I couldn’t do what he wanted. I feel like if I win, well, that isn’t exactly what he wanted for me, but me choosing my path and going after it and succeeding, that will make him happy.”
“I find it charming that you seek to honor your elders.” Delia’s smile of approval had the same effect on Ollie’s complexion as a good public shaming. Delia had honored her father with exsanguination the day after she’d risen. It was her favorite auto-anecdote.
“So then, you must not miss your family farm,” Edmund said. “Did your father find it as easy to let go?”
Ollie looked stricken. “My dad is still there. We don’t own the land anymore, but if I win, we’ll get it back. I promised my dad.”
Nodin laughed. It was a grating, rusty sound and sent chills even along Chaz’s spine. The vampire twins cast furtive glances Nodin’s way as they came to escort Ollie away.
It was almost time to go. The anticipation was almost too much to bear. He had spent most of the day trying to distract himself by playing Lord of the Manor, a fantasy impossible to maintain in the generic cube of a room he currently occupied. It had been easier to keep calm in the Manor that had been home for the past week with gargoyles flanking the fireplace and a four-poster bed. Jeff and every girl he’d ever slept with could have climbed into the bed all at once. Jeff lost a few minutes dwelling on that. Followed to its logical conclusion, the fantasy ended with the girls turning on him.
He must be nervous to be this unfocused. Chalk it up to jitters and focus on the plan. The plan wasn’t too specific; specifics were hard to nail down when you didn’t know what was coming, but he’d done his best. Besides, most of The Plan focused on after Jeff had won, when he would venture out and make the world a better place.
Jeff wasn’t entirely clear on what he would do to make the world a better place, but he believed deeply in his vision. Jeff was a sucker for a cause. In college, he’d clocked more hours protesting than studying. When this was over, he figured he would make sure there were no more starving kids, and everyone would have clean water. It would probably be best for everyone to practice the same religion too. Jeff didn’t much care what religion; he just knew it would solve a lot of problems if everyone prayed to the same God.
The fair thing would be to draw straws or something.
Jeff did a few jumping jacks to get his blood flowing just like he did before a softball game or a bowling match. The spirit of competition was strong in Jeff, although he was known to be as gracious in defeat as in victory. But he never planned on defeat.
A tap on the door alerted Jeff to the fact that he was on deck.
“Let’s hear it for Stewart,” Chaz said. The Vampire Stewart? Chaz would bet his last virgin Stewart wouldn’t make it to the final challenge. Maybe he could sucker someone into taking that action. To atone for his inner doubt, Chaz signaled the crowd to cheer harder for Stewart.
“Not a chance,” Delia said.
Stewart made it all the way across the stage with his hands sunk deep in his pockets and came to a stop beside Chaz without bothering to remove them. “How goes it?” Stewart said.
Not well for whoever had instructed Stewart on his entrance. Chaz offered a hand for Stewart to shake just to force those hands out of their pockets and disrupt the picture of uptight suburbia Stewart was projecting.
“Let me guess,” Chaz said. It wasn’t a guess. Even if he hadn’t had The Voice’s intelligence in his ear, he could almost smell the divorce. “Your wife threw you out, and there are kids who prefer not to see you.”
“One girl, one boy,” Stewart confirmed with a rueful smile. “Best things that ever happened to me.”
Humans always said their children were the best things in spite of evidence to the contrary.
“Hi, Audrey. Hi, Logan,” Stewart said. “They love the show, so it’ll be like we’re spending lots of time together while they watch me this season. I don’t get to see them as much as I used to.”
Pre-divorce, Chaz knew. He wouldn’t see them much after the show either. But without misguided dreams, there wouldn’t be reality television.
“So all you kids out there, give your dad a hug,” Stewart said. “He loves you more than you kno
w.”
“Do you believe that your offspring will be suitably impressed with this gesture?” Nodin regarded Stewart with what Chaz would have taken for sympathy on a human face. “It is a potentially expensive gesture.”
“Of course they will,” Stewart said. Not even Stewart believed it.
“Give the overachieving dad one more round of applause and let’s meet Jeff!” The wave of cheers lasted long enough for one contestant to be replaced by another. Jeff arrived and took Chaz’s hand in both his own, doing a half bow and grinning so hard Chaz could count his molars.
“I love you, Chaz,” Jeff gushed once Chaz had convinced him it was acceptable to stand upright. “I love all of you.” Delia smiled as though she expected nothing less. Nodin nodded solemnly. Edmund sneered.
“I’ve wanted to be on the show since season one. When you guys went public, I marched for Vampire rights. I was at the Million Fang March and everything.” The Million Fang March had, through a somewhat glaring oversight, taken place during the day, so all the participants had been human. Although the vampire community had by and large appreciated the support, many of them hadn’t forgiven the fact that all the protestors had sported fake vampire fangs.
“I’m ready for whatever you guys throw at me and winning this competition would be the proudest moment of my life.” Jeff was so overcome with glee he was making Chaz jittery.
“And our pride be damned,” Edmund said. He had not been a fan of the fangs.
“I don’t think Edmund should be a judge next season,” Delia announced. “You must approve of someone. A winner is necessary.”
“Such a simplistic view may be all we can expect from you, Delia,” Edmund quipped. “For me, it’s about choosing the least of a dozen evils.” A snicker came from someone in the audience followed immediately by a whispered apology. “And that one wore fake vampire fangs. Very racially insensitive. You wouldn’t be defending him if he’d marched in blackface.”
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