Kiss Kiss Fang Fang: A Sucky Vampire Romantic Comedy

by Penelope Bloom

  “I watched as the same, black spikey balls rushed through the sample and converged anywhere there was one of the viral hitchhikers. They’d shake against it and turn it to dust, then move on to the next.

  I looked up at her. She was beaming, but all I felt was dread. “This is dangerous,” I said.

  “No. Well, I mean, yes, we’d need to do clinical trials and get all kinds of approvals to get permission to treat patients. But it’s incredible. Do you realize what this could mean? Imagine if these things could attack cancer like that. Or freeze the aging process?”

  “It’s dangerous because if my kind discover you’re working on this, they will stop you.”

  “What?” Cara asked, face draining of color.

  “If your world finds out about us, they will never allow our existence to continue. Not as it does. And worse, if they find out our blood is a super cure to fix all their problems, they’ll use us. Shove us in cages and siphon our blood when they need more.”

  Cara lowered her eyes. “It wouldn’t have to be like that.”

  “It would,” I snapped. “You’re toying with things you can’t even begin to understand. And there are already extremely dangerous, powerful forces trying to convince the rest of my kind that humans should be our servants. Something like this might push vampires to their side who weren’t sure yet.”

  “Sounds like boyfriend having bad day,” Anya said, laughing deeply. “If my boyfriend mad like that, I make him happy. You know,” she added, twirling her finger as she tried to find the right word. “In pants. I touch his—”

  “Thanks, Anya,” Cara said. “We’re fine, though.”

  “Can we talk in private?” I asked.

  Cara followed me upstairs where we didn’t have Anya eavesdropping. “I think you’re being selfish. So what if it puts me in danger?”

  “What do you mean ‘so what’? Bennigan would kill you if he knew you were working on something like this.”

  “Last time I checked, Bennigan wanted to kill me anyway, right? I might as well try to do something honorable if he’s going to want to kill me either way.”

  I gritted my teeth. “It’s not that simple. I can’t let you risk it.”

  “You can’t stop me,” she said, eyes blazing with defiance. “This is more important than me or you.”

  “No. It’s not. I swore I’d get you through this in one piece. I’m not going to let you risk your life.”

  “Maybe you forgot what it’s like to be human, Lucian.” Her tone was harsh, and I immediately felt the sinking sensation of knowing I’d crossed the line. “But humans have to deal with pain, sickness, diseases, and losing the people we love. And we have to know there might eventually be a cure for all those things, but that it didn’t come in time to help us. I could change that for all those people with this.”

  My nostrils flared. “You’re not thinking carefully. How will you save anyone if you’re dead?”

  “That’s what my big, selfish bodyguard is good for. Isn’t it?”

  She gave me a little shove to emphasize her point. I caught her wrist, locking my eyes on hers.

  “I need to know you’re safe, Cara,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “And I need to do what is important to me. This is what matters most to me, and you can’t change my mind about it.”

  She was breathing heavy and I could see her pulse pounding beneath the warm softness of her neck. Cara was watching me from behind thick eyelashes, her full lips parted slightly. She was so beautiful it hurt.

  I was about to say something when the phone she’d given me buzzed in my pocket. I picked it up and saw an image had been texted to me from Alaric. He and Vlad were flashing peace signs with their fingers from what looked like a rooftop view of the building just outside Anya’s. Then I noticed a black car parked in front. Bennigan, Jezabel, and Leah were getting out with weapons in their hands.

  Shit. I’d gotten complacent. I’d started thinking Bennigan was waiting for me to slip up and leave her alone, but apparently, he was tired of waiting for an opportunity and was hoping to make one.

  “We need to go,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Out, quickly.”

  I briefly considered trying to hunker down in Anya’s basement, but we’d have a better chance on the street than we would trapped inside this house.

  “What’s happening?” Cara asked.

  “Bennigan.”

  29

  Cara

  Lucian took me by the hand and pulled me outside into the street. It was dusk, and there was a healthy amount of foot traffic. But when I looked to my left, I saw Bennigan in a heavy-shouldered fur coat that dragged behind him on the pavement and flared out. In the dark, the profile made it look like a high collar and a cape—almost like the picture of a vampire from some old movie in the 1800s. At least if I ignored the gun in his hand. On either side of him, Jezabel and Leah were following with guns in their hands, too.

  There were mostly college aged kids out on the street at this hour, and they were used to seeing enough strange things that Bennigan and his women were only drawing an occasional curious glance.

  “Can I just say the whole vampire with gun thing is still weird?” I asked as Lucian pulled me in the opposite direction.

  “We can talk about it another time.”

  I flinched when a gunshot rang out like a rogue firecracker. Except it wasn’t from behind us. It was from high above and on the other side of the street. I looked up and saw Alaric holding a pistol sideways and firing wildly. If the little puffs of dust exploding from buildings and the glass bursting from cars was any indication, he had inhumanly bad aim.

  Next to him, Vlad was holding a crossbow. He aimed, fired, and I heard one of the vampire women call out more in annoyance than pain.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw our pursuers had ducked behind a car and started firing toward the rooftop.

  Within seconds, the streets were full of people running in either direction, which thankfully meant Alaric was less likely to take out an innocent bystander with his horrible aim.

  We had covered quite a bit of ground when I heard Alaric let out a frustrated grunt. “Fuck. I really liked this shirt, assholes!” His voice was drowned out by a flurry of gunfire.

  “Are they going to be okay up there?” I asked once we’d reached the end of the block and turned a corner. I could still hear gunshots in the distance and the wail of approaching police sirens from all directions.

  “Yes,” Lucian said.

  “How can you be so sure? What if those three go up to the rooftop to get them?”

  “They won’t want to wait around to deal with the police. In small numbers, they could charm them. If they get surrounded in the streets, it would be a much lengthier ordeal to charm their way out of captivity.”

  “How will Alaric and Vlad get away from the police, though?”

  “Vlad… He has a unique talent. They will be fine.”

  I squinted. “A unique talent? Like what?”

  “He can turn into a very large bat.”

  I stopped, forgetting the gunshots. “You’re serious? Vlad can turn into a bat?”

  “Yes. But don’t ever ask him to do it. When he changes back, he’s completely nude. He loves to show it off at parties.”

  “I’m sorry I asked,” I said, resuming our half jog away from the carnage. “So what does that mean? Bennigan and his people keep coming after us with guns. I thought all your diplomacy was supposed to be protecting us, or something.”

  “That hasn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. We may end up having to deal with Bennigan more directly to resolve this.”

  “Directly? Like what, killing him?”

  “That’s one option on the table.”

  “You still haven’t even told me if it’s possible to kill you people.”

  Lucian’s smirk looked like it belonged more in a darkened muscle car parked above the city instead of the aftermath of a firefight. “K
eep asking how to kill us, and I’ll start wondering if you’re a vampire hunter.”

  “Wait,” I said, jogging to catch up with him as he continued walking. “There are really vampire hunters? What about werewolves?”

  Lucian’s grin told me he wasn’t going to answer me and that he was highly entertained to get to leave me hanging. It seemed like deadly gun fights and ricocheting bullets weren’t enough to stop him from enjoying a little casual teasing.

  Asshole.

  30

  Lucian

  Once I got Cara back to my house, I gave her a very thorough look. I ran my hands down her arms and turned her by the shoulders, all while she watched me with a wry, amused smile.

  “I’m starting to wonder if you are staging these gunfights for an excuse to feel me up,” Cara said.

  “I need to make sure you’re not hurt.”

  “The benefit of dealing with humans instead of animals is you can just ask them if they’re hurt. Have you tried that?”

  I gave her a slight smile. “I considered it but preferred the hands-on approach when it comes to this particular human.”

  Cara’s eyes twinkled with innocent shyness and mingling fire. It was a devastatingly effective combination on my libido, which was pounding in time with my heart.

  “I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into this. It’s far too dangerous for a human. And if anything happened to you, I—"

  “Hey.” Cara put a hand on my arm. The slight contact was making shockwaves of heat roll through my cold body. “You’re taking better care of me than anyone ever has. I mean, my roommates are super protective. But this is different. I guess because I feel like you actually can keep me safe.”

  “That’s a ringing endorsement for your roommates.”

  She laughed. “They mean well. But they’re basically over-sized puppies. And they are typically trying to protect me from things like walking home at night or dating guys they don’t approve of. Nothing serious, I mean.”

  “Yes, well. I will need these oversized puppies to learn to do a better job of keeping you safe when this is over.”

  Cara looked sad for a moment, but she recovered quickly. “You think they’ll leave me alone when the bond is done?”

  “I think this will be over when I find a way to make sure they know you’re off limits.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. But death and dismemberment for anyone who dares to touch you is on my list of options.”

  The door to my house flew open as Alaric and a very naked Vlad came in. Alaric had a wound on his neck that didn’t look too serious but appeared otherwise as casual and unconcerned as usual.

  Cara threw her hands in front of her face and let out a terrified little scream. “Oh, God,” she said, averting her eyes from Vlad. “He’s so naked.”

  “I know,” Vlad said, smiling like a pirate. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “So the bat thing is real?” she asked nobody in particular, still turning her head and squeezing her eyes shut.

  “Oh,” Vlad said deeply in his thick accent. “She wants to see my bat. She can touch, if she wants to see how it feels in her grip.”

  “Vlad,” I warned. “Go find some pants so we don’t have to keep looking at your… bat.”

  Vlad waved me off, then clutched his lower back as he walked up the stairs. “Alaric,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re fucking heavy, man. Next time you want a ride, you are going on a diet. Virgin blood only,” he said, wagging a finger and laughing from his belly as he left.

  Alaric gave Vlad’s hairy ass the middle finger, then looked Cara and I over. “You two appear to be alive.”

  I nodded. “You as well.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What does Bennigan think he’s going to accomplish like this? If he really wanted me dead, he’d stop charging at us with guns in the open. He’d get the supposed army of charmed women in his harem to surround us. Something about these attacks feels wrong, like he’s not really trying to accomplish what it looks like he’s trying to accomplish.”

  Cara looked thoughtful. “Maybe he’s trying to make it look more like a war and less like an assassination.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “You said it’s all political with you guys, right? What if he’s not really trying to get the revenge he wants on you yet? Maybe the others will just start hearing about all these times you two were fighting and they’ll lose track of who was starting it.”

  Alaric gave Cara an impressed look. “She sounds like she understands this better than I do.” He pulled out his phone then took a picture of himself and the wound on his neck.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

  “There’s this place called Instagram. As soon as I post pictures of myself, swarms of women try to sleep with me. It’s wonderful.”

  “I’m glad you’re devoting your full attention to Bennigan and the threat he poses to us.”

  Alaric shrugged. “You worry too much, Lucian.”

  “And you don’t worry enough.” The truth was I might not have cared as much as I did if I hadn’t tied Cara up in the mess with us. To a lesser degree, I also cared about keeping Seraphina and Alaric safe. I was the oldest remaining Undergrove as far as I knew, and that put the responsibility of the family on my shoulders.

  Cara’s stomach rumbled, reminding me once again that humans needed to eat actual food on a regular basis. I’d dragged her straight here and completely forgotten she most likely wanted dinner.

  “Let’s go get you something to eat.”

  Cara smiled a little shyly. “Are we going to get shot at if we go outside?”

  “No,” I said. I paused briefly. “I don’t expect we will, at least.”

  “Good enough. I’m starving.”

  31

  Cara

  I woke in the morning and looked to the floor, where I expected to see Lucian in all his hot, ridiculously cliché vampire glory—arms crossed and gorgeous pale face at rest. Except there was just an empty place on the floor. He wasn’t even looming in the corner as he liked to do sometimes.

  My heart jumped in my chest and I sat up suddenly. “Lucian?” I hissed. “Lucian! Where are you?”

  I looked around the room and didn’t see him anywhere. I didn’t even feel the tug I’d become so used to pulling me toward him. He was just gone, and apparently, so was the bond.

  We’d both known it was growing weaker for days now. I’d been on my own during the daylight hours and back with him at night. But we hadn’t had a real conversation about what would happen when the bond was completely gone.

  Except that wasn’t entirely true. Lucian had made it clear from the beginning that he was going to do anything to keep me safe. His disappearance meant he thought I was safer with him gone, and I wished he was here so I could tell him what an idiot he was being.

  It felt like something deep inside my chest had been scooped out and left hollow. All I could think for those first few seconds was about filling it back up to stop the rushing emptiness from eating me inside out.

  I went downstairs, not bothering to tame my hair or change out of my pajamas.

  All my roommates were scattered around the kitchen and dining table in various states of morning bleariness like nothing had ever changed. Parker had some website pulled up on his phone that looked like it was made in the early 90s, complete with pictures of UFOs and poorly rendered aliens in the borders.

  Mooney had a freshly cut head of hair, a well-put together, trendy outfit on, and a smug expression on his face as he read something on his phone. Probably a sext.

  Niles was lurking in all his ten foot whatever of lanky, shaved-headed glory as far from the mess on the kitchen counter as he could.

  The only one who seemed to notice me was Zack, who had his arms crossed and was watching me from beneath a ridge of curly brown hair. There was an unusually perceptive glint in his eyes. “Missing something? Or
someone?”

  “Have you seen him?” I asked.

  My voice garnered the attention of my roommates, which lead to a barrage of accusations—some playful and some serious—about how they hardly saw me anymore and how I was avoiding them.

  I knew Zack and Mooney knew the real truth, but Parker and Niles were still out of the loop. It meant I couldn’t just blurt out what was wrong, even if I thought Zack and Mooney suspected something from the way they were watching me.

  I twirled my hand in the air, hoping some convincing near-truth would pop out of my mouth if I started talking. “It has been a really long time since I liked a guy,” I tried. “I just got carried away. We don’t need to turn this into an interrogation. All I want to know is if anyone saw Lucian leave?”

  “You mean the vampire?” Parker asked. He had half turned in his chair and had one arm thrown over the backrest to go with the crooked, cocky smile on his patchily bearded face.

  Niles normally gave Parker’s conspiracy theories about as much attention as Zack gave to expiration dates on food. But he was watching me with interest now.

  “Am I supposed to even dignify that with a response?” I asked.

  Parker scoffed. “Come on, Cara. Lucifer? What kind of name is that? Wait, what was his last name again? Bloodsucker? Crossburner?”

  “Lucian. His name is Lucian.”

  “Last name!” Mooney chanted in an exaggerated deep voice.

  I wanted to punch him. The asshole knew what was going on and he was still trying to make this worse? Although if I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, I guessed it would’ve been weirder if he didn’t help antagonize me.

  The other guys chimed in, pounding their fists on whatever they could reach like a frat-guy drum beat. “Last name! Last name!”