The Vampire Always Bites Twice | Wattys 2022 Grand Prize Winner

32

Isla, Dinner... GUEST. Dinner guest!

"This—" Julian gulped, "is my Liege's chalice."

"That was a gift, actually, so it's mine. Now pour our guest some wine in it, you undescended sack."

"He requested—"

"It's part of a fucking set, isn't it?"

Julian's fingers strangled the stem of a golden wine glass. Sloane hadn't glanced over her shoulder at him once during their exchange, but still, I got the vibe she was fully aware of how her snark affected him. After a long moment of awkwardly pawing at himself through his trouser pocket – and poorly hiding it – he nodded at the back of her head and retreated from the sunroom. A minute later he reappeared, uncorking an entirely French labeled pinot noir that probably cost more than my rent.

Sloane's smirk was wide as Julian stretched across her to hand me the glass. I didn't stretch to meet him. Guy was just another a prick (with poor impulse control when it came to his prick).

"Excuse me. My master is waiting," he muttered, and left.

"It's difficult to find good help these days," Sloane said. "Nobody wants to work. They just want to be turned."

Julian had a chub for the vamp lifestyle, that was certain, but he didn't strike me as the freeloader type. Especially after the rant he went on about Lily in the car, using almost those exact words himself. He was very clearly their entitled vampy-simp forty something year old whipping boy working for every drop of blood they promised to drain from him. But that was none of my business, was it?

I leaned back in my wicker chair. A palm leaf smacked me in the face. The small room at the back of the house was, technically, an all-glass sunroom. Adorned with tropical plants and wicker furniture that had cushions with exotic prints. Despite the sun being long since set, the glass remained covered by thick black out curtains. They did little to keep out the chill. Newspapers and ancient issues of Vamp Vogue were mod-podged over the ceiling as well to filter out the daylight. Nobody, it seemed, was really tending to the plants. Many were wilted and brittle.

Sloane snapped her fingers and in shuffled Caleb. Seems he'd gotten a second wind. He dropped to his knees at the foot of her rocking chair and thrusted his quivering arms forward, bowing his head and presenting his near translucent wrists. The tube in his veins flopped like a flaccid penis.

There was a stopper at the end of the tube. One that practically advertised stolen from your local community blood drive. Sloane popped it off with her thumb.

"Cheers."

She even sucked on it like it was—"Ahem, cheers," I said, raising my glass.

Ruby blood flushed through Caleb's tube as Sloane slurped him like a crazy straw. And the boy was feeling it. He moaned heavily, head thrown back, eyes closed in a blissful surrender as his body trembled.

Hot. But pathetic. Kinky? Yeah. Creepy? Oh, heck yeah. In a sexy and yet still somehow uncomfortable to watch kind way. And the slurping? Gross. The teal lipstick stain left on the plastic tube? Yum. Wonder what Greg was getting up to with Dmitri right then. Had the boys also ordered the bottle service?

I was all set to drown these thoughts in the wine, but when I ran a thumb over the glass a crystal a thorn pricked me through my glove. Ouch. You'd think I'd learned my lesson on how to handle these after grabbing the one in—oh mother of goblin shits. A gold stem, engraved with trailing ivy and thorny roses, crystal glass, with a red stone embedded in the stem. I found a pair of these babies in Lily's apartment.