The Vampire Always Bites Twice | Wattys 2022 Grand Prize Winner

31

Isla, Dinner...

The lord of fartness and livers, or whatever, lived in an old, brick house. It was quiet. A bloomless, thorny rose garden lined the brick walkway. Ivy had swallowed one of the walls and white shudders framed tall windows. Barely tell it was snug in the middle of Old City, the oldest and most touristy part of town. Just a few garden walls behind tourist traps like the Liberty Bell and Betsy Ross's pad and Independence Hall. Must be nice to be rich.

I shuddered and brushed a cobweb off my arm in the house's foyer. I take it back. They weren't that rich. Rich people hired cleaners. These vamps..."See you hired Vincent Price for interior design," I said.

Both Julian and the house sighed. Nobody appreciated my jokes.

Beside me, Greg twitched, momentarily tugging at his leather jacket. I noticed the back was scratched and ripped, like he'd been dragged across a stake pit.

Boy was acting weird. Well, to say he didn't regularly act weird would be generous, but this was weirder. My confession had rattled him. He was hiding that he wasn't over it. Vamps just really do have a thing about control. If they can't even stand sharing an apartment with ghosts, then yikes, nobody tell them they can't go anywhere in Philly without standing on one of them.

Like right now.

Julian's lord's home was littered with the dead. Mostly young people, late teens, early twenties. I guess they make good donors, as the vamps say. A pair of waifs lounged on the main stair; one girl completely sprawled across the top half of steps, the flickering sconces giving her eerie glow. I could see a few other haunting figures shuffling about down the hall too.

Closest to us, curled up like a dog on the bearskin rug, was another haunter. A ghastly thin boy. Twenty-ish I'd guess. His hair was dull and shaggy. Skin gray and papery. His sweater hung limply off his bony shoulders, stretched collar drooping down his chest. Tiny puncture marks dotted every inch of his visible skin, though mainly clustered around his neck and underarm. He just laid there, absently scratching at a plastic tube in his wrist.

Poor kid. Dying like a junkie in a vampire den clearly isn't a happy-fun-time way to go. Had this been what Lily was fleeing from the night she came to see me?

"Get up, Caleb," said Julian, bending over and scooping the kid up by the armpits. "You can't just pass out on the floor. Mistress has rules about this."

I leapt back as Julian helped Caleb to his feet. The boy nodded and yawned and shuffled off into the back of the house, bumping into Greg along the way. Caleb was, apparently, very much alive. Woops.

"And you two!" snapped Julian at the girls on the stairs. "Somebody's going to break their necks tripping over you!"

They giggled.

"Really?" I blurted.

Shit! What was this, screw with the necromancer night? Was everybody just alive in this dumb house?

Julian and Greg were giving me looks. Julian's was scathing. Greg's was more alas has the fever finally rotted her brain?

"More of your mister's servants?" I asked in a very smooth deflection.

"They're just donors. My position is an honor and a responsibility. One my Liege will reward me for, when the time is right." He rubbed his unmarred neck. "Excuse me while I announce your presence. My Liege! Lord of Darkness and Terror. I have fulfilled your request to bring you Gregor, son of—"

"Stop yelling and just go fetch the old coot, you twit," grumbled Greg, nose pinched.

Julian huffed, but still, gestured for us to stay put as he trotted up the stairs. Watching us like a joyless nanny over his shoulder, he slipped into a darkened hallway, leaving a vampire and a necromancer unattended a spooky old mansion. Somebody write me a punchline.