by S. E. Babin
The Vegan Vamp
S.E. Babin
Copyright © 2019 by S.E. Babin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design by Dreams2Media
Created with Vellum
Contents
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Also by S.E. Babin
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Afterword
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One
Maron
“It’s broccoli, not Hitler,” I said as my best friend stared at my plate like the broccoli had suddenly gotten up and done the rumba across the vinaigrette. She tended to do this every time we went to lunch together. I would normally think it was weird, but she had a good point.
I was a vampire.
I was also a vegan. For the most part. I was finding cheese a very difficult friend to break up with.
I know.
Ridiculous, right?
There’s a lot of vamp lore rolling around out there, but one thing most people didn’t know was that vampires didn’t drink blood until they turned thirteen. Before that our appetites were human. We ate the same things, craved the same things, and never turned down sweets. But when we hit that magical age, our bodies changed. And not in the let’s talk about babies kind of way, more of a hunger sort of way.
Except… it missed me. Somehow, someway, I’d escaped the whole changing bodies talk. I never began to crave blood. I never lost my mind when a human got too close.
For me, this was a relief.
For my parents? An absolute embarrassment.
A lot of parents had stories of chasing their kids down in a shopping center when they’d gone after a human who smelled too good not to bite. My parents had none of those stories. And when I turned fifteen, I started watching way too many documentaries about the world’s food supply and decided then and there… I would never eat meat again. Even if I could.
My mom had fainted dead out to the floor. My father stared at me with the most hurt and disappointed expression I’d ever seen. When the smelling salts were brought out for Mom, her first words when she woke up were, “We shall never speak of this again.”
I stopped eating at their house when I was a teenager because the only thing they served was meat, bloody rare of course, and goblets of O+ from my family’s personal cellars in Italy, shipped over in temperature controlled coolers on a ship with the world’s most elite bodyguards.
My family took blood seriously.
I didn’t take blood at all.
A sneer of disgust flickered over my friend’s pretty face, but I was used to it by now. She was a vampire, after all, and even though she loved me, even she couldn’t understand my aversion to blood.
She kept asking me if I was human. No. I was not. Though looking at me and knowing my aversion to the red stuff, you might think so. However, I had super speed, super strength, super hearing... all the super things other vampires had, I just didn’t have to drink blood to keep or maintain them.
If you thought about it, it was kind of cool. Blood was kinda hard to get out of clothing, and now I never had to worry about stray dribbles of O+ messing up my dress clothes.
Once I shoved a massive bit of lettuce and carrot in my mouth, my friend stopped staring at me. Cassidy shook her head, shoved her fork into a piece of meat so rare it was a wonder it didn’t moo, and speared me with a glance.
“So…” she began slyly.
I sighed because I knew where she was about to go, and it was a black hole I tried never to enter.
“No,” I said, more sharply than I intended to.
A flicker of hurt flashed over her face, but she soldiered on determinedly. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but this town is due for some babies. What’s the hold-up?”
I rolled my eyes. “You haven’t been paying attention. Lots of new couples have gotten together lately, and at least one of them is knocked up.”
The Deadication Dating Agency had installed a running, digital announcement board above their headquarters a few weeks ago. It listed the matches they’d made over the last six months so all I read every time I passed by it was, “CONGRATULATIONS HELEN AND HANK!! CONGRATULATIONS KATIE AND MARTIN!! CONGRATULATIONS GRACE AND LUCAS ON UPCOMING NEW BABY!!”
I had no idea who any of those people were, though I had heard of the necromancer and the jinn. They were pretty powerful paranormals in this town, but they seemed to keep to themselves. Fine by me. I was the same way myself. Not that I’d had a lot of time to make friends. I was relatively new to Midnight Cove. My parents thought it best we left the spotlight of our old hometown after my failure to fully morph into a bloodthirsty creature of the night. Really what it was was that my parents were too embarrassed to be around their old friends once it became apparent I wasn’t quite like all the other kids.
I was amused by the fact that we made fun of humans for being overprotective helicopter parents, but when confronted by something as embarrassing as my failure to manifest into a proper vampire, they did the exact same thing. Even though they would burst into ash if they knew I was comparing them to humans, I couldn’t help it. At the heart of things, parenting was the same, no matter what species you were.
I guess I needed to clarify, though. When I said I was relatively new, I’d actually been here for over ten years. This is still considered “new” to the non-humans. We were immortal. Time ran differently for us than it did for others. So I wasn’t quite as familiar with the dating agency in this town as others were. What I did know about it could fill a thimble. The owner, Portia, was reclusive yet also super nosy, depending on who you asked. At any time she could show up and start shoving potential matches in your face whether you wanted her to or not. Her word was supposedly law, though I had heard rumors she’d had some pushback with a few of her most recent clients. Also, her track record was impeccable.
Not that anyone would be interested in me. Plus, I didn’t want word of my “affliction” getting around town. It was the last thing my parents needed. We’d finally come to some sort of shaky peace about it. The peace was kind of like a rickety bridge missing a whole lot of steps and with frayed rope holding it all together. But it was there, and as long as I didn’t bring it up, they didn’t bring it up. And we could go on pretending everything was fine.
Cassidy pressed on as if she hadn’t heard a word I said. “It doesn’t matter if other people are doing it. It matters if you are.”
“Flawed logic,” I pointed out as I neatly sawed my broccoli floret in half.
Her nostrils flared in annoyance.
“How is it flawed?” she asked, though I could tell she didn’t really want to know.
“You assume I want to be tied down with screaming b
abies. At this time in my life, I have no desire to saddle myself with things that require constant supervision for the first two years of their lives.” This wasn’t exactly true. I did want kids. I just wasn’t interested in telling someone my secret and getting shunned over it.
My friend blinked at me. “Two?” she said. Her brow furrowed together and a soft snort escaped her nose.
“Isn’t that right?” I inquired. “Two years where you constantly have to be at their beck and call?” I knew next to nothing about children, but before the age of two not a lot of children could walk or do anything much of importance except for scream and poop themselves.
Something that seemed like amusement sparkled in Cassidy’s eyes. “Yes,” she said, her expression stoic, at odds with the weird look in her eye. “Two years. That’s all.”
Her lips twitched.
“Are you making fun of me?” I demanded. I speared my broccoli with my fork and shoved it in my mouth. Chewing ferociously, I glared at her.
“A little,” she admitted. Cassidy sat back in her chair and stared at me. “You’re gorgeous, Maron. Anyone would want to procreate with you.”
I choked on a piece of greenery and took in a few heaving breaths to steady myself. I held up a finger. “First of all. Eww. Second, I don’t want to just procreate. I would like to have a meaningful relationship, preferably with someone who also doesn’t want children. Right now.”
Cassidy’s expression went from amused to guarded. “Wait. Are you serious? You really don’t want children?”
I shrugged. “Someday. But why in the world would I want to bring upon them what happened to me? It’s obviously some kind of genetic quirk. What if I have a daughter the same way?”
My friend’s expression softened. “Then I’d expect you’d love them the way you would have wanted to be loved.”
Unbidden tears swam up to my eyes, and I blinked furiously to keep them from spilling. “But what about everyone else, Cassidy? The world is a lot bigger than just the two of us. Wanting kids is one thing. I can’t just go out and tackle someone down to the ground and have them impregnate me. Not without a prison sentence.”
Cassidy held her hands up in surrender. “You win the day. I can’t argue with your weird logic. But I will say that life is about struggle. But it’s also about victory when the struggle is won. Sometimes the struggle is within ourselves and the only person we’re fighting is the demon within us.”
I waved my broccoli at her. “Deep.”
The waitress chose that moment to drop the check on our table. I pushed it over to Cassidy. “Since you made it awkward, you get to pick up the check.”
She growled in annoyance but dropped a few bills down on top of it.
I smiled sweetly at her. “Thanks for your concern. I’ll take it into consideration.”
Cassidy rolled her eyes as she stood. “No, you won’t.” She grabbed her purse. “Enjoy your rabbit food.”
I waved my fork and watched as she walked out of the restaurant.
She was wrong. I would think about it. Figuring out how to have a productive relationship had been on my mind for the last two years. I just never said anything about it because I still hadn’t figured it out.
I finished my salad, dropped a couple extra bills on the top of the pile Cassidy had left just in case there wasn’t enough, and slid out of the booth.
Two
Sterling
“The earth is flat and the moon landing was a conspiracy designed to distract us from the very real possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.”
A lot of heads were nodding, bobbing up and down in tacit agreement with the slight man’s words. He stood on the stage, his glasses sliding down his nose every few seconds. He wasn’t much to look at. Perhaps that was why no one ever took him seriously. It was a sad state of affairs in this world that being attractive somehow meant you should be listened to. Celebrities peddling weird, harmful vitamins and weird ass contraptions to make your butt more round was the proof. As of today, I had seen no real proof of anyone having a perfectly round butt by using something they attached to a wall and pulled with their legs.
Round butts were mostly a myth. Sir Mix A Lot had gotten it wrong there. At least in the paranormal crowd. Slight was in. Waifish even better. Plus our metabolism screwed us a lot of the time. Our bodies simply couldn’t soften and round like humans could.
But back to the man speaking candidly about why no one fell off the face of the earth when they stepped onto the edge of it. My mind happily fuzzed away from his convoluted explanation and back to the latest conversation I’d had with my sister. Well... not happily. The conversation I had with her was ridiculous and uncalled for, but it made more sense than the world being flat.
I believed a lot of weird shit. It was basically in my job description. After all, I was tied to the phases of the moon and once a month, I grew furry and fanged and had to pick bones and sinew from god knows what out of my teeth for a week after shifting. So if I could change into a werewolf, was it really so hard to believe that things on this world weren’t always as they seemed?
Well… except for the world being flat.
That was just crazy.
My attention wandered back up to the stage, and I studied the short man. He had piercing blue eyes that couldn’t even be tamed by the thick-rimmed dark glasses he wore. His hair swam around his head in Einstein-like fashion and his clothes hadn’t seen the hot side of an iron in forever. Or since his mom’s house. Though it wasn’t a stretch to think he might still be living with his mom.
The cover of his book popped up onto the Powerpoint screen.
“Disc Planet - How the World is Similar to a Compact Disc and Why We’re all Aliens.” It was only $25 bucks on online retailers right now.
I rolled my eyes, stood, and made my way quietly to the exit. It was why I sat at the back of the room in ninety-nine percent of these presentations. Like I said, I believed in a lot of weird shit, but this was just too much for me.
We did these little get-togethers once a month. Everyone in the Society for Nonconformist Beliefs had something to say, so everyone got the chance to say it. Much to my chagrin. Not showing up put you in a bad light with the people who ran this thing, and since I wanted to be here, I did my best to put on a smile and grin and bear the weirdest of it.
This was not to say I wasn’t weird. I was super weird. Just not as batshit insane as some of the guys I’d met in this club. But all that was overruled by the good ones I’d met.
One who was sitting outside of the auditorium sipping coffee and grinning over his mug at me. “I knew you wouldn’t last more than fifteen minutes. Shaw!” he shouted over to another guy grabbing some java. “Pay up, asshole!”
Shaw discreetly flipped his middle finger up at both of us before he sauntered over.
Jeremy Barkwood motioned for me to sit down so I pulled a chair out and made myself comfortable. Jeremy was one of my closest friends. He was a dryad and, even though he didn’t advertise it, if you looked hard enough at him, you could figure it out. His skin was nut brown and slightly lined around the mouth and eyes. His hair was a deep muddy brown and his eyes were the color of fresh maple syrup tapped from a tree. His knuckles were slightly gnarled, enough to make you mistake them for arthritic when in fact they were just branches made human-like to make the rest of us feel comfortable and so he could somewhat make a life here in this weird town. He could stay in human form for up to a week, but soon enough he had to retreat into the forest and back to his tree for restoration.
“Hey, Barkman,” I said.
He rolled his eyes because I was running out of tree jokes and puns. I needed to step up my game.
“Hey, Dog Breath,” he retorted. I had to laugh. The thing about Jeremy was that he didn’t give a shit if he used the same insult once or a hundred times. I tried my best to always have fresh material. “So… Flat Earthers, eh?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Bunch of idiots. All they had to do was
ask the trees. They couldn’t even do that.”
Shaw finally made his way over, hooked a chair with his foot, and pulled it over to him before he sat down. “Bitching about the Flat Earthers again?” Shaw snorted. “No one cares what the trees think.”
“You need your own personal Lorax,” I said to Jeremy.
Jeremy sipped his coffee and stayed silent, though he did send Shaw a withering glare.
Where Jeremy was dark, Shaw was pale. There were a lot of vampires in this town and a lot of them were pale. Shaw was alabaster. Moonlight pale. Yet, he wasn’t a vampire. I didn’t know what the hell he was, though it wasn’t for a lack of asking.
He was secretive and quiet, but he had a hell of a wicked sense of humor and a brain that science should study. Although, knowing him, he probably had already made plans to have his brain safely stowed away after his death.
“Dude,” Shaw said and tipped his mug in greeting. He was a man of few words, so when he did deign to drop some wisdom on me, I perked up and listened.
“Shaw,” I said in return, but I didn’t have a mug or a glass to tip.
“The girl is over there again,” Jeremy unhelpfully interjected. “She’s looking pretty cute today. Less makeup. You can see her freckles.” His nose wrinkled adorably, but it made him look feminine so I didn’t comment on it. “It’s so weird how humans get freckling. Especially when the sun doesn’t shine here all the time.”
“She hasn’t lived here her entire life,” I said before I could think about it.
