Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (19 page)

“Good.”
 

“I just want him to suffer.”
 

“Of course.” Maurice turned to the newcomer. “How’s your mom, Frank?”

“She’s good. She bought that new minivan.” And again Frank rapped his neck with his fingers, making the veins stand out.
 

In the past six months, Reginald had tried three times to hunt like a normal vampire, but his success rate hadn’t improved even with a half year of practice under his belt. On one hunt, he’d been maced and then outrun. On another, he’d been kicked in the crotch. The third time he’d tried to hunt, he’d been shot in the face. After that, he’d decided that it would be Walker or willing prey from here on out. No more fighting losing battles.
 

“C’mon Reginald,” said Frank, still tapping his neck and shaking his head to make his black hair jump off of his face.
 
“Let’s get it on.”
 

“Jesus, Frank. Never say that. And turn around. It’s hard enough to put my mouth on you without you watching me.”
 

“Just keeping it real, Mister B,” said Frank. Then he got up and sat on the chair backward. Watching him revolve on the spot was like watching night turn to later that night on a doomed black planet.
 

Frank seemed to genuinely enjoy serving the vampire community. Reginald thought that volunteering to be fed on was kind of sick, but apparently sick was a popular thing to be. There had been no shortage of volunteers when Maurice had put a call out to his goth circles, and Reginald had turned away several applicants — including all of the girls, because feeding on your preferred gender was considered cheating in vampire couples.
 

Reginald bit into Frank’s neck. Frank sighed in a way that was decidedly sexual.
 

“Bammit Fwank,” said Reginald, his mouth muffled by the fat covering Frank’s carotid artery.
 

“Pain is good, Mr. B,” said Frank. Then the neck under Reginald’s drinking mouth started moving as Frank began picking at the bag of pork rinds.
 

Two minutes later, Reginald pulled away, bit his own lip to draw a drop of blood, and smeared the blood on the punctures in Frank’s neck to seal the wounds. Then he thumped Frank twice on the back like a member of a pit crew signaling a completed refuel.
 

“Thanks, Frank.”
 

“No problem, Mr. B. You ready to turn me yet?”
 

“No, Frank.”
 

“Any time. I can get chicks for us, you know.”
 

Reginald doubted it.
 

“Thanks, Frank. Here.” He started digging in his wallet.
 

“It’s good, Mr. B,” said the big goth.
 

“You sure?”
 

“You want to thank me, turn me.”
 

“Can’t do that. You know the rules.”
 

“I guess so. Later Mr. B.”
 

And with that, Frank was gone.
 

Maurice looked up. “You’re an idiot,” he said.
 

“Thanks.”
 

“Feed on Nikki. She wants you to. Do it while you can, because her blood is going to be a lot better now, while she’s still human. And you can’t imagine what it’s like to feed on someone you’re bonded to. It’s amazing.”
 

 
“I can’t.” And he couldn’t. He was still too human, and there was a taboo in human culture about biting those you were dating. Besides, it was a sexual act between couples, and even with six months between them, Reginald and Nikki still hadn’t crossed that particular bridge. Reginald wasn’t ready. Nikki was too good for him, he thought, and he had decades of rejection to unlearn.
 

“You’re a vampire, you know,” said Maurice.
 

Reginald made a
What do you want from me?
face and gestured at the door. “I just drank a kid’s blood!” he said.
 

“Not good enough.”
 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Reginald. Then he got up, grabbed his pork rinds, and left.

B
ALANCED

MAURICE WAS A GOOD RESOURCE and a good friend, but he hadn’t been much help to Reginald as a mentor on the physical aspects of being undead. It wasn’t Maurice’s fault. Reginald couldn’t run like a vampire, so Maurice didn’t need to show him how to corner without falling and how to move without knocking things over. Reginald couldn’t lift big objects like cars, so Maurice didn’t need to show him how to manage heavy loads. Reginald couldn’t jump high, so Maurice didn’t need to show him how to land softly. Maurice suggested that Reginald hire a human physical trainer, but Reginald said that sounded a lot of work with no discernible benefit.
 

So Maurice made a strange suggestion. He told Reginald to take a gymnastics class.
 

Reginald asked why, already shaking his head
No
.
 

“Because,” Maurice explained, “when you don’t have much, you need to learn to make the most of what you have.”
 

Besides, Reginald had exhibited amazing mental gifts as a vampire. He could pick up languages almost instantly. He could calculate huge numbers in his head. He had photographic recall of everything he’d ever experienced, both as a human and as a vampire.
 

“Those are nervous system functions,” he said. “You know what else are nervous system functions? Things like balance. Coordination. Neural efficiency.”

“I’m six feet tall and weigh three hundred and fifty pounds, and you want me to be a gymnast,” said Reginald. “Perhaps you don’t understand physics.”
 

“I don’t expect you to be a gymnast. I expect you to teach your nerves how to get the most out of the abilities you have. Did you read
Dune?
It’s like what those witch ladies did in
Dune
. They weren’t strong, but they could do amazing things because they’d trained their nervous systems to control every single muscle, including the ones most people don’t have voluntary control over. They weren’t supernatural; they’d just trained normal bodies to do things that most people could never do.”

“I understand the concept. But I am not the Kwisatz Haderach.”
 

“The what?” said Maurice.
 

“Never mind.”
 

Reginald had mulled the idea for two weeks. Maurice kept bugging him, but Reginald was sublimely unmotivated to do anything physical. It was Claire that finally got him to do it.
 

“Come on, Reginald,” she told him over the phone. “I’ll bet you’d be really good at it.”
 

Reginald, who’d never been good at
anything
physical, said nothing. He let silence hang on the phone until Claire got impatient and yelled at him to stop being so self-loathing. That was the phrase she used.
 

“I’m not self-loathing,” he said. “It’s just that sometimes, in some ways, I kind of hate myself.”
 

“I even know a place. I take lessons there.”
 

“You do gymnastics?” said Reginald.
 

He’d had no idea. But really, how much could a vampire know about a 10-year-old girl who he’d once stalked as prey? The fact that they talked on the phone wasn’t even weird anymore, because nothing about the relationship that “Uncle Reginald” shared with Claire made any sense. At least it was better than Reginald spending his 2am lunch hour in her living room, watching
Columbo
reruns while her mother was drunk upstairs. He’d put an end to that. Once Reginald, Nikki, and Maurice had saved her from the Vampire Council and gotten her a blanket order of protection and it had become apparent that Claire was in their lives for the long haul, Reginald had declared that enough was enough and insisted that she get some sleep.
 

Claire gave him the phone number of a rec center and urged him to call, promising that it’d be good for him. It felt strange taking life advice from a 10-year-old.
 

So he’d called the rec center and inquired about adult gymnastics. The woman he spoke to told him that there
was
no adult gymnastics program. Reginald was about to thank her and hang up, but then he remembered how persistent Claire could be. He had to at least try or she’d never leave him alone.
 

“How about individual lessons?” he asked.
 

The woman had asked him to hold while she rang an extension. Eventually, a chipper, young female voice answered, and Reginald repeated his question.

“I can do lessons,” said the girl. “I’m only there Thursdays, though. Does 9pm work for you?”
 

“Sure,” Reginald said. He sighed.
 

“Were you a college gymnast?”
 

“No.”
 

“Just interested in learning?”
 

“Apparently.”
 

“Do you have a gymnast’s build?” she said. “Just wondering how to set our sights for what you’ll work on.”
 

“I’m six-foot, three-fifty,” said Reginald.
 

A dog barked outside Reginald’s window.

“Are you still there?” said Reginald.
 

“Oh, yes,” she said.
 

“You said Thursday at nine?”
 

“Um…” But she’d already committed.
 

“See you then,” he said.
 

When he arrived at the rec center, wearing a huge grey sweatshirt and huge grey sweatpants, the instructor looked him over from top to bottom, made a “Hmm” noise, and then introduced herself as Rebecca. She was maybe five-two and was waifish enough that Reginald had originally thought she was a teen boy. She explained that they’d be joined by another student for a joint lesson.
 

“I’m just here Thursdays, and she’s been training with me for a while, so I figured I’d lump you together, and….” Then she looked past Reginald, waved, and said, “Oh, hi!”
 

Dammit.
 

Reginald turned and found himself looking down at Claire, who was fighting unsuccessfully to hold back a smile. A tall woman was holding her hand.
 

I even know a place. I take lessons there.

The center wasn’t dedicated to gymnastics use. Had Claire known that the only instructor was only available at one time, no matter how many students chose to join her? He thought she did.
 

And so, all of a sudden, Reginald found himself taking not an
adult
gymnastics class, but just a
gymnastics
class… with a little girl. This had to look bad.

Rebecca introduced Reginald to Claire and Claire to Reginald.
 

“Charmed,” said Reginald, shaking Claire’s hand.
 

“I’ve never met you before now,” said Claire.
 

Then Reginald extended a hand to the tall woman beside Claire. “I’m Reginald,” he said. Then, because he felt he should say something more, he added, “I’m not a creep.”

The woman took his hand and shook it. “Victoria.”
 

Reginald had never laid eyes on Claire’s mother before. She didn’t seem drunk or messy or even negligent. He found it hard to believe that he’d spent untold numbers of hours less than fifty feet from this woman while she slept off a bender.

“I have a nervous system disorder that affects my balance and am here on doctors’ orders, and it was Rebecca’s idea that she teach us both at once, and also, I thought I was taking individual lessons.”
 

“Rebecca told us you’d be joining us,” said Victoria, deftly ignoring his backstory.
 

“I’m not creepy,” Reginald repeated.
 

“I’m sure,” said Victoria.
 

“I’m also not a great gymnast,” said Reginald.
 

Victoria smiled.
 

After a few minutes of stretching, Reginald asked if they could start with some balance activities, so Rebecca ignored him and lined them up for vaulting. Reginald protested. Rebecca said, “It’s just like jumping a fence” in a way that was supposed to sound dismissive, but that to Reginald rang more like a threat.
 

They lined up in front of a thing that looked liked a giant flat mushroom with a springboard at its base, and while Rebecca adjusted the apparatus, Reginald whispered with Claire.
 

“She seems nice, your mother.”
 

“She got laid off from one of her jobs,” said Claire. “So to save money, to keep off of food stamps, she quit drinking. Interestingly, it worked out to be a wash. Apparently her second job made just enough money for a lot of booze.”
 

“So I wouldn’t be able to come over at 2am anymore anyway,” said Reginald.
 

“Not unless you wanted to get shot,” said Claire. “Once she got more conscious at night, it suddenly dawned on her how unsafe our neighborhood is. So she bought a gun. Could you get shot and live, Reginald?”
 

“Yes,” he said. “I got shot a few weeks ago. I don’t recommend it.”
 

“When you heal from being shot, does your body spit out the bullet?”
 

“Sometimes,” he said.
 

“Sometimes it just stays in there?”
 

“Yeah. It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. And if it does, there are vampire surgeons. They can work fast enough to get stuff out before you heal over it.”
 

“That sounds awesome.”
 

“They’re crooks with fast hands. It’s closer to a smash-and-grab burglary than a medical procedure,” said Reginald. Reginald didn’t have a high opinion of vampire doctors. He’d gone in once for liposuction, reasoning that if he could put foreign items inside of his body (bullet slugs, his stunt at the Council trial), there was no reason he shouldn’t be able to pull items out of his body. The doctor smirked knowingly and put him on an unsanitary table and, after numbing him up, began shoving a large tube into his abdomen. Reginald had watched as a suction tank beside him filled with white fat and red blood, then watched as his stomach re-grew in front of his eyes and the fat in the tank turned to ash.