Vampires Don't Sparkle! (22 page)

“No, see I said I was a vampire. So like we drink, but it’s like blood and stuff. Get it?” he explained in a sexy European accent and stuff.

Touchamahboobies stepped away from him, seeing the evil within him for the first time. Bringer of Death or not, he was probably a bad tipper.

“Fear me not, my butterfly.” he charmed her as he extended his hand. She fell under his spell. “Although I thirst, I wish to fill your lonely night with excitement. I was about to partake of your town’s major attraction…”

“The Maize Maze?”

“So you are of native American decent.”

“I’m only part Indian,” the hypnotized girl confessed.

“Which part?”

“My Titicaca.”

Dracula’s passion swept over him with a passion he hadn’t felt in decades. He spun her around and forced her against the bar. He ripped her skirt off and ran his hands over her firm rounded hiney cheeks. He knew he must have the Native American goddess then and there.

“I must have you here and now!”

Raw sexuality exploded throughout the room, fueled on by the vampire’s insatiable desires. The girl gasped, unable to do much more than surrender as he thrust his hips forward and slammed into her waiting tatonka.

“Oh, don’t stop!” Touchamahboobies cried out. “Yes! Please tell me this forceful entry comes with a penis!”

Dracula flung his arms about in a fury as he separated from his boink target.

“I have a circulation problem, okay! Do you have any idea how much blood flow has to be redirected to achieve an erection?”

“We do!” the card playing cowboys joyfully screamed at the back of the bar.

Touchamahboobies regretfully pulled her buckskin undies back up. She shrugged in sympathetic disappointment. Dracula knew the moment was now gone. The passion forever destroyed. His deflated all radial tire suffered a blow out before he could even lay a patch. He could feel the eyes of the other patrons judge him. Anger got the best of him and he grabbed the young girl, flinging her to the floor.

“Taunt me no further, harlot. Be gone.”

“You can’t throw me away like an open bag of trash!” she sniped as she landed at the feet of her people’s chieftain. A single tear ran down the cheek of the old Indian, the 70’s parody lost on so many readers.

Helplessly, the patrons watched as the stranger stormed out of the bar. Despite his rage, his exit was a graceful eerie glide. Then a frigid wind kicked up and slapped their faces, breaking the powerful trance they all had fallen under.

“Um, hey,” the drunk at the juke box muttered. “Little help here. I’m kinda stuck.”

-----

Dracula, the most powerful evil creature who ever walked the Earth, escaped into the moonlit cornfields to hide his shame. Indiana was not the promise land he was promised. He would not be screaming out, “Hosier Daddy?” As he pushed through the rows of maize, he tumbled into paranormal romance hell. Was there more to it than body glitter, bad acting and brushing your hair with a rake?

His meat-wand jumped. The answer was in front of him the whole time.

That Kristen Stewart was one hot trollop …

I FUCK YOUR SUNSHINE

Lucy A. Snyder

Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels 
Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess
, and the collections
Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines
, and 
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger
. Her writing has appeared in 
Dark Faith, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague, Chiaroscuro, GUD
, and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
.

Her favorite vampire movie is 
Near Dark
. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com

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V
ampires? Of course I know them. You are surprised? Some call me … what is it? “Fang hag.” Ugh. Demeaning. I am crow to their wolves, eagle to their lions. You do not understand? I am succubus; the upyr and I, we do not compete, because we do not want same thing. Sometimes, we feed on each other, yes: cock is cock, and blood is blood. Their seed is … acquired taste. Sour and bitter like rust, and sometimes sticks in throat like stale gummy candy. Not so zingy as live semen. But takes edge off!

I have known the Baron Stierherzov since before he turned to the night. He was warrior lord, much fierce in battle, merciless to the peoples he vanquished in the Old Country. Dracula himself gave him the eternal kiss as reward. Such pedigree you do not find! But before, I knew him as young boy eager for my visits. So full of delicious salty life! I could milk him over and over until his testicles bled, and still he would rise to please me.

So, is only fair I let him take my neck sometimes, now that we are equals. Is only necessary when he cannot hunt, after all; if he is housebound, then likely so am I. I miss olden days of the plagues; you could take anyone you wanted, and unless someone glimpsed you winging away into darkness, who was wiser? But now, every alleyway corpse is put under microscope, put in newspapers. So the Baron adapted, tries to live “green” as they say, and only takes a little here and there. Is frustrating to him, I know. And accidents happen, and then we all must stop feeding for a while.

The sun? No, of course it won’t harm me. But it is not my ally, either. My glamour cannot hold under full light; there is not enough Estée Lauder in the world to full conceal the 600 years in my skin. Oh, is so kind of you to say, darling! But really
…
for best hunting, the Baron and I need same thing: darkness, and drunkards.

So, was bad thing for us all when Dansky’s was torn down. They bought whole block for stupid mall, and put enormous Starbucks where bar had been, can you believe? Not so much as drop of vodka to be found, so goodbye to all our drunkards. And all those dreadful windows and skylights! So much sun, and so many reflections – I made do, as a lady must, but poor Baron could not stand it, even after sundown.

There was only one reliable hunting ground left to him in the whole city: the Iron Pit Athletic Club. Open all night long, and no windows. He went in one evening, and I did not see him again for whole nine months.

But when I did
…
oh, what a sight he was.

It was noon; the sun burned high in sky. Miserable cloudless day. But I sat there in the coffee house with my black tea, watching the people come and go. I had just spotted young man, shy, ordering a mocha latte, and I could smell the miasma of stifled lust on him. I had just stood up to go work my wiles on him when it happened.

“I FUCK YOUR SUNSHINE!”

It was an inhuman shout, loud as a war cannon. We all turned toward the noise, turned to stare out at the street, and I saw an absolute monster out there. A man-shaped thing, hulking, massive, muscle piled upon muscle, flesh wormed with thick veins. It strode down the street, naked, skin aflame in the relentless sunlight.

“I FUCK YOUR SUNSHINE!” the thing bellowed again. The purple flames devouring its flesh were rising higher and higher, skin blackening, curling like paper and ashing away, revealing gray-red muscle and yellow tendons beneath.

“I FUCK YOUR SUNSHINE!”

I recognized the voice
…
it was the Baron! In an instant, I realized that for those nine months he’d been hiding behind concrete walls, he’d been lifting weights and drinking blood from the thick, brutish necks of hundreds of sweaty steroid junkies. His diet had made him huge, and the unnatural chemicals had inflamed his frustrations with the modern world until it drove him mad as a Spanish arena bull.

His eyeballs were burning in his skull like furnace coals as he strode up to the Starbucks; the glass in the door shattered from the heat of his burning flesh. The smoke pouring off him smelled like the corpse pyres of the old battlefields.

“I FUCK YOUR SUNSHINE!” he roared at all the suburbanites shrieking and scrambling to get away from him.

He stood there amid the chaos, burning in the sunlight streaming down from those hateful skylights, proud as he had ever been as the victor of countless duels, and my cold heart broke at the dire beauty of him.

He took another deep breath to bellow his war cry, and I heard a loud
pop!

And he exploded, shattering all the windows, piercing the fleeing humans with the flaming shrapnel of his bones. Cutting glass rained down on me, slicing my flesh to ribbons, but I did not care — I could see his heart there in the wreckage of his blown-apart body. It glowed and smoked, but still it pulsed with power.

So I snatched it up and hid it beneath my blood-soaked blouse. I carried it to the safety of my dark apartment, and kept it beating in a jar of my own blood. Later, when I realized what I must do, I broke into the morgue at night and pulled the bits of his bones from the bodies of the dead. It was not much, but it was a start.

What? You do not understand? Come down the hall with me to the guest bath
…
come see.

There. Do you see how the blood moves in the middle of the tub? That’s the throbbing of his heart. Already you can see his skull growing back together, and the tendons of his ribs. I am sure the organs and muscles should be next, and then his skin.

Oh, darling
…
no. Don’t struggle. It is already done, see? You’ll just waste your own blood. Let it flow. The Baron needs fresh every day, now. Soon he shall be awake, and he and I will hide no more. We shall treat this city and its people the way we should have treated them all along. We will be crow and wolf, eagle and lion.

We will fuck everybody’s sunshine.

ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN

“Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted;
a world in which murder was easier than hope.”

–Richard Matheson,
I Am Legend

A SOLDIER’S STORY

Maurice Broaddus

Maurice Broaddus has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles.  His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including
Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine, Black Static
, and
Weird Tales Magazine
.  He is the co-editor of the
Dark Faith
anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy,
Knights of Breton Court
(Angry Robot Books).  He has been a teaching artist for over five years, teaching creative writing to elementary, middle, and high school students, as well as adults.  Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com.

His favorite vampire tales are
The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova, and
Summer of Night
by Dan Simmons.

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J
uly 23, 1895 – Parsons, Indiana

“There are things … ” he started to say, but how do you begin such a horrific tale to one so young. “Once upon a time, there was a town under the spell of … ” Of what? Unsettling madness?

He casually stroked her downy, blonde hair, as if appreciating her beauty for the first time. Her small wood hewn bed framed her like an idyllic picture, just as he always imagined it would. Though it was the dream from a different life, he mentally pictured this very scene a hundred times. It inspired him to labor on when he hand-crafted each piece. He knew the nine months would pass too quickly when he started working the wood, and he wanted it to be perfect. Whittling away long, devoted hours on the headboard alone, he lamented that his skill didn’t match his passion. Translating what he imagined into what he carved: a broad willow tree in a field of blooming flowers. Where better for his child to lay her slumbering head? She slept, innocent against the backdrop of violence, mayhem, and blood. It always came back to blood, so much of it on his own, still-trembling hands. A miasma of despair, grief, and guilt, he only distantly recognized the hollow sounding voice as his own. He pressed on with the telling of the tale anyway.

“I’ve committed some awful things. Deeds of which I am not proud. Things a child ought not to hear. But things which I must tell you anyway.

“It hurts to remember, like a dull headache you get when someone wakes you too quickly from a nightmare. The story begins with Holten Owensby. That opportunistic devil.”

She grimaced in her sleep, furtive sounds escaping as she jostled her blanket. Only then did he realize how sharp his words had become. No matter how many generations down the line she may be, she was still kin.