her.
"You know what Chad? I think you may have a point."
Or two…
CHAPTER 2
"Happy Anniversary, Fangs," Sabine said, holding a glass of Tequila to the predawn sky.
Fangs, the rooftop cat, watched her with curious eyes. He purred from his spot next to her on the lounge chair as she downed the shot of tequila.
She shrugged at him. "What? Haven't you ever seen a vampire drink tequila before?"
Fangs flicked his tail in accusation.
"I know what you're thinking," Sabine said, even though she didn't really know. Other people's thoughts constantly intruded, but the little kitty never added to their noise. She pointed at the glass. "This is what got me in trouble last year to begin with."
She tossed the glass off the side of the building and rubbed Fangs behind the ear. The alley behind the building echoed with the tiny sound of a shot glass breaking more than a hundred feet below them. Sabine stretched and listened to the sounds of the city in its predawn slumber, under a foggy blanket of fading stars. She adjusted the lounge chair's throw pillows and settled in, taking a deep breath that she didn't need for the sole purpose of a dramatic sigh. The dazzling panorama of the San Francisco skyline from her rooftop sanctuary did wonders to calm her mood.
Another failed night hunting vampires. One year had passed. The night before Halloween again, and she had yet to find any other vampires. Regina and Michaela had disappeared. Doug lived in this building, at least according to the PI she'd hired. She'd moved in six months before becoming a vampire, in hopes of sighting him, but he'd disappeared too. She'd convinced the landlord to let her pay Doug’s rent after someone came and reported that Doug wouldn't be back, even though all his stuff was still there.
Her Louis Vuitton boots hadn't shown up on eBay or Craigslist, either.
She'd been watching.
Fangs assumed his standard position on her lap, probably because she was wearing black jeans and he could leave fur graffiti. He reached a lazy paw over her orange "BATTITUDE" T-shirt and flexed his claws. His warmth felt good, even though the pitter-pat of his little heartbeat had her own fangs stretching in her mouth. She mentally chastised her thirst. The cat is off limits .
Sabine sighed. If it weren't for all the negatives to being a blood-sucking monster, she'd be a huge fan of her current state. Drinking blood wasn't so bad once she got used to it. But she'd had to box all her silver jewelry because it burned her skin. Crosses made her eyes itch. She'd taken to wearing a gold one, since she could. She used to love garlic, but now even the smell of it made her nose tickle. She couldn't keep down solid food, and she missed food almost as much as the sunlight she hadn't seen all year. Whenever dawn came close, she'd feel like lead weights were hauling her down.
How many mornings had she gone to bed wishing she could be normal again? She found solace in nightly vampire hunts, dressed in skimpy outfits under a trench coat with a short Japanese wakizashi sword hidden in a sewn-in sheath in the spine. Starting every night with Kendo lessons helped her prepare to use the sword against another vampire. She'd had it silver-plated with some of the money from her inheritance, and knew from trying it on her finger that its damage healed human-slow. "VanHelsing451" on the vampire hunter forums had found vampires in Oakland and Sausalito, but she got an intensely weird feeling when she tried to cross the bridges.
Most nights she got propositioned by sleazeballs. She had finally learned some mind control tricks by practicing on Chad, which helped when she ended up biting the ones who wouldn't take "no" for an answer to their propositioning, or the ones that tried to mug her.
Feed , the thirst whispered.
Shut up and die.
She stared at the skyline before lifting the Tequila bottle in salute. Dawn would come soon, and vampires would be tucked away for the night. She should be too,