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Copyright © 2016 by Michael Spring
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Scotia, NY 12302
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Vampire silhouette courtesy of Marek Isalski (mazpho.to)
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Bloodsucker Blues:
A Vamps in Vegas Story
By
Michael Spring
This book is dedicated to my wife, Melissa, without whose love and support this wouldn’t have been possible.
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Chapter 1
Everything you know about vampires is wrong.
I mean, sure, we do drink blood. And yes, we have fangs, (Have you ever tried to pierce the skin on someone’s neck without them? Okay, probably not, but trust me, it’s next to impossible.) And, yes, a stake to the heart will kill us, but to quote a popular animated movie, “Who wouldn’t that kill?” Other than that, a good old-fashioned beheading will pretty much do it, but not much else.
Everything else you’ve learned from Hollywood and fiction about vampires? It’s generally… well, complete bullshit.
For example, sunlight? Listen, I don’t want to spend any more time in it than I have to, but mostly exposure to sunlight just feels like a bad rash. It doesn’t kill us. Some of us with higher pain thresholds have even taken up tanning. It’s a trend in vampire culture lately. We call it “sunfanging.”
And we sure as hell don’t sparkle.
Will I cringe if you wave a cross at me? Only if you follow it up with a sentence like, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior?” I have no particular truck with religion, it’s just not my thing. And I’ve never quite understood why people want to go to strangers’ houses and talk about god, anyway. That seems like a good way to spend a day getting doors slammed in your face.
And listen, I love Italian food. A nice plate of baked ziti with meatballs, a little garlic, some extra parmesan, a side of garlic bread to go with it? Delicious! My very Italian ex-girlfriend would have crucified me if I tried to turn down her cooking.
We also don’t fall in love with every wisp of a girl (or hunky guy) who happens along. It seems like every book or movie about vampires has some sensitive vampire guy meeting a human girl (who’s usually too young for him) and falling head over heels for her, typically resulting in either his death or her turning into a vampire. That’s not how it works. Vampires tend to date other vampires, and only other vampires. I mean, would you want to date somebody who hates everything you like? I doubt it. I mean, maybe if you’re a masochist…
But me, I want someone who I can enjoy a nice warm cup of O positive with, not someone who’s going to gag every time I feed. Plus, the temptation to drain them would be pretty intense. You think it’s bad when you’re horny and not getting any? Try being horny, not getting any, and wanting to drink your significant other’s blood at the same time. Now that’s frustration. And don’t even get me started on what happens when it’s your girlfriend’s time of the month. Trust me, you really don't want to go there.
And why does every vampire in popular fiction seem to dress like something out of either 19th century France or the set of Grease? Black leather and hair gel? No, thanks. Most vamps I know like to be comfortable; trendy, of course (we do have a reputation to maintain) but comfortable. And we do tend to dress up rather nicely, but I’m not going to put on a frilly shirt and leather pants when I’m heading down to the corner market for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. What the hell is that about? Have you ever tried to put on leather pants? That Friends episode had it right.
And then there’s the mirror thing. Of course we can see ourselves in mirrors. How else could we make our hair look cool and trendy with all that hair gel if we couldn’t see ourselves in mirrors? Plus, seriously, don’t you think people would notice that after a while? It’s pretty hard to avoid mirrors all the time. We may not dress like pansies, but I like to make sure my outfit matches before I head out the door. Not to mention, what about my clothes? Wouldn’t a vampire looking in a mirror just look like an empty outfit floating in midair?
So how do I know all this?
Simple. I’m a vampire. And my name… is Alex Blood.
Chapter 2
Bwah ha ha ha ha! Oh my god, I’m just kidding! Could you imagine?! The vampire community would eat me alive (no pun intended) if I had the balls to call myself Alex Blood! That’s a bit on the nose, don't you think? Holy shit, Alex Blood… please.
No, really, my name is actually Alex Jarczynski. I know, I know… sexy, right? But that’s the thing: we’re born human. Whatever name you have when you’re human, you keep when you turn into a vampire, unless you’re a complete douche. My grandfather was from Poland. Or Germany. I don’t know, I never really listened to my parents when I was a kid. (Which, come to think of it, probably has something to do with how I ended up where I am now…) If I tried to change my name to something pretentious like Alex Blood, I’d be laughed out of Vamp Town. (Not that there is a Vamp Town. That would also be a pretty stupid name for a place full of vampires, don’t you think?)
All of which leads me to my main point: if I’m a vampire, what the hell am I doing chained up in some dusty warehouse surrounded by a bunch of cheap suit-wearing goons?
Well, that’s a bit of a story…
Chapter 3
The French Riviera
1953
I was born in 1928, right in the middle of the depression. I grew up poor, and I hated every minute of it. By the time I was 15, I was out of the house and on my own, looking for fame, fortune, adventure… anything that would keep me from living the shitty lifestyle my family had been suffering through my entire childhood.
I found out pretty early that I had a talent for thieving. I started off small, working as a pickpocket on the streets, before moving up to breaking and entering. By the time I was in my 20s, I was one of the best B&E men in the northeast. I could break into any house — no matter how sophisticated its alarms might have been — clean it out, and be out the door in under five minutes. In fact, I got so good that my specialty became breaking into the places that were considered impossible to break into. I had a number of high-paying clients who would regularly engage my services to retrieve valuables from veritable fortresses: high rise apartments, high-security vaults, remote mansions with elaborate security. In the popular vernacular of the day, I was what you’d call a cat burglar. And I’m not gonna lie; I was damn good at it. One of the best, in fact.
So here I was in the French Riviera. I had been contracted to steal an incredibly valuable set of jewels from the vacation house of a major movie star, and I figured while I was here, I may as well do a little shopping for myself. I cased a few houses on the waterfront, and found a nice little block of three or four mansions in a row that I could hit and clean out in less than half an hour. The value on these properties had to be in the tens of
millions of dollars, and I knew that chances were good I could score a big enough haul to keep me in the salad days for a long time to come.
The social scene on the Riviera at the time was such that it made it particularly easy to hit more than one house at a time. On a Friday or Saturday night, nobody was home. Anywhere. All of the socialites and movie stars and their mistresses and misters would hit the town, dressed to the nines. They’d be out until all hours, most of them rolling in drunk as skunks sometime shortly before dawn. That gave me plenty of time to hit the houses in the dead of night and not have to deal with any pesky homeowners.
I hit the first three houses without incident, and I was already planning the ways I could spend all the money I was about to walk away with. It was while I was in this daydream reverie that I slipped up and failed to notice something pretty important: the last house was still occupied. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I had been casing the strip for a couple of days, and the house was always completely dark. I assumed it was unoccupied.
I was working on cracking a safe that was oh-so-cleverly concealed behind a painting on the wall (apparently, the movies do get some things right), when a voice came from the darkness behind me.
“I can promise you there’s nothing in there that you’d have any interest in.”
I whirled around, caught unawares in a rare moment of carelessness. Not knowing what else to say, as I’d clearly been caught red-handed, I simply said, “Well, now, how about we let me be the judge of that?”
“Hmmm… tempting, but I don’t think I can allow that.” The voice was female, and it dripped with a mixture of sexuality and innocence that was intoxicating. “Perhaps we can come to some kind of… arrangement?” she said.
Well, this was interesting. “What did you have in mind?” I said.
“Why don’t you have a seat here with me on the couch and we can discuss it?”
I was about to say, “Lady, you do know I’m a thief right? I’m not exactly in the habit of getting cozy with the people I rob,” when she flicked on a light and I caught sight of her. She couldn’t have been more beautiful, her eyes more hypnotic. I was instantly mesmerized by her, and I found myself walking over to the couch and sitting down next to her.
“That’s a good boy,” she purred. And then there was a flash of ivory in her mouth, and she buried her face in my neck.
Long story short, this was how I met Audrey, the woman who would eventually turn me into a vampire. She was a lonely housewife back in the 1920s in an abusive marriage with a real asshole, and when she turned, she got the hell out of dodge and never looked back. Before she left town, though, she practiced her newfound blood draining skills on the sonofabitch who had beat her for all those years. I was always a little bit sad that Audrey had killed him so quickly. For years, I imagined what I would have done to the guy if I ever got my hands on him.
Anyway, I may have started off as her latest plaything, but eventually Audrey and I fell in love and… well, voila, here I am. Eternally twentysomething. We were together for a long, long time, but somewhere along the line we realized that our being together was making both of our lives worse rather than better. I haven’t seen her in well over a decade now, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. Losing her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through in my life (or afterlife, as the case may be.)
But that’s a story for another time
Chapter 4
None of which has anything to do with my current situation. So how did I get here? Well, it started with a night on the town. When you live in Las Vegas, pretty much every night’s a night on the town, especially if you’re a vampire. This is a town that only really comes alive after the sun goes down, so it’s a natural draw for us bloodsuckers. Plus, it’s a city where literally anything goes, so vamps like me tend to blend in no matter what we’re doing.
I had hit the strip looking for a lovely young lady to spend some time with. Just because we don’t fall in love with every girl who comes along doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy a healthy love life. And my love life is pretty healthy, if you know what I mean.
That’s one thing that’s nice about being a vampire; we’re pretty damn attractive to members of the opposite sex. It’s not like every vampire in the world is a supermodel, but let me ask you this: if you were going to turn a person into somebody who’s going to live forever, would you pick Bob from accounting? Probably not. No, most vampires who have turned people into fellow vamps have chosen from the beautiful and the memorable, not the plain and forgettable. So by and large, most vampires that you meet tend to be damned attractive.
Add to that the sort of natural vampire charm we exude, and most people tend to fall for us pretty hard. I don’t know if its pheromones, magic, or just general vampire mojo, but people find us irresistible. It’s a very rare thing to find a vamp that has a hard time getting a date. Me? Living in a city like Vegas, filled with hot young women looking for a good time, I do extremely well for myself.
Anyway, on this particular night, I was out in the casinos, winning a few bucks at the poker games. We vampires don’t have mind reading capabilities, but we do possess preternatural instincts; a kind of sixth sense. Between that, my acute hearing, my sense of smell, and my keen vision, I can usually predict exactly how a hand of cards is going to go down. I can read the dealer’s emotions when they’re handing out cards. I can sense someone’s heartbeat jump when they get the card they need. I can smell the sweat when someone’s bluffing. And I notice every. little. thing. If you’ve got a tell, I’m going to have it nailed in about three seconds flat. In short, cards are a vampire’s game.
That’s another reason so many of us live in Vegas. We don’t want to work a nine-to-five any more than you do, and a lot of us make a comfortable living as professional gamblers. Sure, we have to take a dive once in a while — you can’t have too many hot hands in a row or they’ll catch on to you — but as long as you’re smart about it, you can make a nice six-figure income without ever having to wear a name tag. Me, I like to play it safe with small bets and losing hands until I get a sure winner in my hand like four of a kind or a solid blackjack, and then I go all in. A few hours of that, and I can go home with 10 or 20 grand in my pocket, easy.
Anyway, on this particular night, after I picked up about six grand at a poker game, I decided to hit the craps tables. Craps has some of the worst odds in Vegas, and it’s actually one of the games where being a vampire gives me no advantage whatsoever, but it also attracts some of the hottest girls in town. There’s something about the game that women find irresistible. You know that scene you always see in movies, where one guy is shooting craps and he’s surrounded by hot women cheering him on and blowing on his dice for luck? Yeah, that’s actually pretty accurate. It’s rare that I can shoot more than a few rounds of craps without catching the eye of some buxom blonde or brunette.
So in that respect, it was a night like any other. Me, at a craps table, with a half dozen hot women whooping and cheering and flirting with (and occasionally groping) me, throwing the dice, blowing through more money than I wanted, but still in the red thanks to my hot hand at poker.
And then, there was a shift in the atmosphere, like all the air suddenly rushed out of the room.
I looked up, and slowly making her way towards me from the other side of the table was this incredibly hot girl staring directly into my eyes as she sidled up the table. She was almost as tall as I am, with long hair that was clearly once brunette and had now been dyed and highlighted a half dozen different shades of blonde (and was that a hint of red I saw in there?) She was wearing a low-cut sparkly dress that showed off her ample… um… assets, and I was immediately struck by her.
And let me tell you, when you’re surrounded by beautiful women in Vegas, it takes something pretty special to immediately make you forget all about them and develop a one-track mind. But this chick… well, she had it. The minute I saw her, I couldn’t take my eyes
off of her. As she made her way over to me, the other girls around me actually moved out of the way for her, as if she was parting the red sea; she had that kind of presence. She wormed her way up next to me, pressed her body against mine, and planted a light, feathery kiss directly on my lips. Then she took my hand, raised it to her mouth, blew on the dice, and winked at me. Hell, I know my cue when I see it, so I threw the dice, and what do you know? Lucky number seven.
I grabbed my winnings, and with an audibly collective groan from the other girls who had been playing along, made my way out from the table with this mysterious chick draped around me like a scarf.
“So, what’s your name?” she purred, her voice like velvet.
“Alex,” I said. “Yours?”
“Most guys around here call me Raven.”
“That’s your real name?”
“Real enough,” she replied.
“So, what do you do around here?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I like to keep my options open.”
A woman who was as veiled about personal information as me? I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the head at the top of my neck that was doing the thinking at this point. As we strolled through the casino making small talk, I could really only think about one thing: getting this chick into bed. I worked my way through some conversational points in my head that would lead things in that direction, when she suddenly trumped me by saying, “So this is great and all, but can we just skip the getting-to-know-you crap and go up to my room?”