The Vampire Always Bites Twice | Wattys 2022 Grand Prize Winner

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This chapter contains mature and violent content, and references to animal harm.

Isla, Underdressed and Under Duress

You know what, before meeting the murderous ghost of a vampire's ex-lover in possession of a reanimated barista's body who seems to be holding my not-boyfriend hostage for a presumably WrestleMania style grudge match, I probably should've changed.

Then maybe my nips wouldn't already feel like they were about to fall off just walking up Dmitri and Sloane's front lawn. They were hard enough to poke a hole through Greg's t-shirt. Hugging my silken robe tighter around myself did nothing to cut the windchill. It had begun to snow. The cold weather finally broke into the first blizzard of the new year. With every step I dragged my hem through the accumulating slush. My fuzzy slippers were already soaked through. Two pairs of footwear down in a single weak. Damn it.

Also my Uber driver probably would've given me more than a single star rating.

Grumpkin mewed and wove between my ankles.

Okay, well, I probably got some stars deducted for bringing a cat along too, but Grumps was my backup!

As I ran from the café and killed my phone battery summoning a car, any car (I didn't have time to walk back to the vamp house) I reached my will out onto the third floor of the building and not so quietly shouted: "Come here, Grumpkin!" up the fire escape. My clever kitten nudged the bathroom window open and wiggled his way out, didn't bother with the fire escape, and just tossed himself out the window onto the pavement below.

Shattered one of his legs and bent his tail into a perfectly 90-degree angle, but whatevs, he was still limping along fine. Keeping my ankles warm, at least.

Hey, he managed to scare some spookies, Rosemond included, off once before. Cats were excellent guardians of the underworld. Naturally gifted with second sight. Liquid at room temperature. Knives in their feet. Perfect combo.

The front door was open. Not, like, ajar. But it was unlocked. Just like the gate. I let myself, and Grumpkin, in.

"Greg?" I called. "Hello? Rosemond?"

My voice echoed through the empty halls. Despite the time approaching mid-morning, the house was dark. But all the blackout curtains and newspapers plastered over the windows were meant to keep the sunlight out, weren't they?

"Hello!"

For emphasis, Grumpkin meowed quite loudly along with me that time.

No answer.

Whatever blood donors remained post Sloane's staking and Caleb's death weren't home, I guess. Or, worse. They didn't remain at all.

No sign of Greg either. Not that I should have been expecting Greg's rich voice to call back. It was daylight. He was dead. But where was he slumbering? With each slide of my slippers down the hall, my ribs seemed to tighten around my lungs. Where was Greg?

The house was cold. Draftier than I remembered. As I ventured deeper inside, the biting chill's teeth grew sharper. A breeze tore through my pajama bottoms. Twigs and ice skittered inside from the open doors of the sunroom. In from the graveyard out back, I should say.

My anklet was ice cold against my skin.

"Well, Grumpkin, you ready to do something stupid?"

He bopped my shin with his soft head. Mewed. And pranced out into the yard.

Yeah. That's where I was heading too.

Fuck. Shit. Troll balls.

Rosemond's mausoleum was open. The naked rose bushes surrounding it shuddered under the weight of the drifting snow, undulating as if in worship to the gruesome scene displayed within. The bones, always those freaking bones, were arranged on the slab that formerly held her coffin much in the same way I'd seen them at the Cabroni house (the coffin was in pieces on the floor). Her skull seemed to sneer at me, even with the bottom half of her jar unattached.