“This one may be past saving,” Jack said, picking at the nice round dent right over Face’s, um, face.
Ginny came to save me, peeling off the tape for me. I held my rash-covered hands up. They hurt less that way. Ginny made a move to touch one, wincing in sympathy.
“I don’t know how to do first aid on vampires,” she said. “I didn’t think vampires could get hurt.”
“Learn something new every day,” I muttered. Apparently, vampires could also get adrenaline spikes and crashes, because I suddenly just wanted to sit down. My whole body felt like jelly.
“Blood,” Rick said. “You need blood to heal that. Then give it a night, you’ll be fine.”
Yeah, that was what I thought. Blood always came into it somehow.
Ginny got this look, wide eyed and full of trepidation. I hated to see her scared. But you know what would have been even worse? Her stepping forward. Volunteering. I didn’t want to hurt her. I couldn’t hurt her.
“I’m not going to ask you for that,” I said.
“Okay, thanks—but I thought that was what you guys were all about.”
“Maybe, sometimes… really, I’m just happy to have a friend I can hang out with and talk about gaming. You don’t even have to move in. I mean, you should probably pay a couple of bucks to make the good on the lease—”
“We’ll talk about it,” she said.
We stood there grinning at each other, me with my hands still raised and covered in red welts, Rick regarding us with obvious amusement.
Jack had been clearing debris from the doorway when he came over and grimaced at my hands. He called out, “Hey, Aaron—Sam’s hurt, he needs blood.”
Still wearing rubber gloves, Aaron had been cleaning up Nerf darts. “Okay, I’ll call for pizza.”
Rick looked back. “Pizza? Is that how you’ve been doing it?”
“Um, yeah,” Aaron said. “They don’t usually remember and no delivery place has banned us yet. Sam usually takes the pizza to the homeless shelter a few blocks down the street. But I guess this time… Ginny, you want some pizza?”
“You know, I think I do. Pepperoni.”
Aaron disappeared into his room, where we could hear him making the call.
“I don’t know why I ever worried about you three,” Rick said.
“Thanks for, you know. The help,” I said.
“No, thank you. You have no reason to look out for me, but I’m very glad you did. I’m happy to return the favor. In the meantime, I’ll get some people over to clean up the bodies. If that’s all right with you.”
“That would be great,” I said.
“Very well, then.” He nodded, a gesture that coming from him almost looked like a bow, and turned around.
“Who was that?” Ginny asked in awe.
“Rick, Master vampire of Denver,” I said.
“Really? Wow. Not what I’d have expected.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Oh, and when the delivery guy gets here… you may not want to stick around for that.”
“I thought I was getting pizza out of this.”
“Well, yeah, if you want it, I just thought maybe—”
She patted my shoulder and finished picking duct tape off my shirt. “Don’t worry about me, Sam.”
Impossible. Just impossible.
Ginny did not move in. Not entirely. But she paid ten bucks a month and kept some of her stuff here, and came over for dinner sometimes after work and to help playtest games or to just blow off steam. It was… nice. She never said anything about the mess.
Sometimes, Ginny and I would go out to a movie or coffee shop or something—she’d get a drink, I’d watch her drink. I didn’t know where this was going between us, or what was going to happen. I assumed at some point she’d get tired of hanging out with someone who could never take her out for dinner—or rather, who’d be all too happy to take her out for dinner. At some point she’d want to get married and have kids. All the things I couldn’t do for her. She’d find someone, and I’d maybe see her once a month instead of a few times a week. Or maybe we’d carry on like this for decades. Rick said you had to be fatalistic about these things. You had to be okay with letting go, you had to enjoy what you had in the moment. She didn’t want to be a vampire, so she would get old and I wouldn’t, and we’d have to deal with that at some point. But whatever happened, I hoped we’d stay friends.
Because I could apparently still make friends. I could still have a life. That made me happy.
We managed to get the place cleaned up in a couple of weeks, with Rick and the Family’s help. Windows replaced—and new grates put over them. Door and locks replaced, carpets cleaned, furniture replaced. Aaron even managed to sell the dented lunch box. So that was where we stood, with the living room still impressively cluttered, cardboard boxes waiting to go out for morning pickup, a table full of action figures waiting to be packaged up. Jack was out at Psalm 23, Aaron was in his room at his computer, and I was sitting on the sofa, playing video games. Ginny was on the sofa with me. All completely normal.
An entire fantasy world bridge on the TV screen exploded, sending a swarm of orcs—and Ginny’s avatar, unfortunately—plunging to their doom in an electronic abyss.
“I think your vampire reflexes give you an unfair advantage,” she said, frowning.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The response time on this game is awful. You can’t tell because you move the controls so fast.”
“No I don’t—do I?”
“The other alternative is that I’m a shitty player. Are you calling me a shitty player?”
“I’d never do that.”
“Good.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Reset that bad boy, I’ll get you this time.”
“You say you will. Hey, aren’t we supposed to be working together on this one?”
“I thought so, until you blew me up.”
“That was an accident. Won’t happen again.”
She smirked.
Aaron came out of the room then. He didn’t even blink anymore at Ginny being here. “Hey, anyone want pizza?”
We did.
Carrie Vaughn is the New York Times Bestselling author of a series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio advice show for supernatural beings. She’s also written the Golden Age superhero novels, the contemporary fantasy Discord’s Apple, and the young adult novels Steel and Voices of Dragons. She’s a contributor to George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, and has written upward of 70 short stories for various anthologies and magazines. She attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop in 1998, and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2011. Carrie had the nomadic childhood of a typical Air Force brat, but managed to put down roots in Colorado. She collects hobbies and entertains a fluffy attack dog named Lily.
Paranormal Bromance
by Carrie Vaughn
Copyright © 2014 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC.
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Tiger Bright Studios
Copy Editing: Molly Tanzer
Formatted by:
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Table of Contents
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About the Author
Copyright Notice
Carrie Vaughn, Paranormal Bromance
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