Smorgasbord for a Vampire

I had only moved three slow paces when I smelled a familiar scent, and pretending surprise I gave Liam a “eeeek” when his arm snaked around my waist. Liam liked to think he could surprise me. I pretended to be shocked, then leaned back into his cold, hard embrace and turned my face up to his for a kiss. Liam and I had had a thing. Several centuries of thing. I was always happy to see him.

“Shall we hunt together tonight?” I asked breathlessly (yeah, like I really had breath – but you know?) after he pulled his lips off mine.

“No companion like you, Roslyn dearest.” He spun me into the doorway of the nearby Howard Johnsons, ensuring our entrance through the mob-scene with the barest glance at the Host. “Coffee and Brandy and ice-cream sundaes,” he told the hovering waitress, then me, “all of your favorites, my dear. I would never forget … anything that pleasured you. Now, do we want a couple or shall we share?”

I noted the expression of one of the pink suburban types at the next table and laughed under my breath; although, her husband looked me over and was definitely interested. Just to get a rise – out of both – I had run my tongue over my lips suggestively, causing Liam to laugh.

I remembered from years past that they barred the doors at eleven-forty-five, so we would need to be back on the street before then, but for now the warm cup of Joe to warm my hands and the presence of Liam across the table was welcome. He was a large part of my issue with the new world of the Twenty-first century: hard enough to create a new identity for one, let alone for a couple. Policy had forced us to separate except for rare New Year meetings back in the 1970’s when technology began making it hard to vanish victims, and ourselves, adequately.

“What do’ya think?” Liam asked, indicating the pink people with a tip of his head.

“Nah, they look too sweet for me,” I told him as my head swung towards the door scenting two more familiar scents: Roxy and Rachael.

Roxy dropped a cheeky kiss on my cheek with his eyes on the suburban woman, running his tongue over my jawbone before he crowded in beside me on the bench. Her eyes opened wider before she turned ostentatiously to the man across from her, forcing him to look at her by leaning in closer to mutter something close to his ear.

Roxy laughed as he tugged my warm mug from my hand to take a deep slug from the heady mix of coffee and top-shelf brandy. “You can do better than them, and they’d be missed,” he reminded me.“Damn. Sometimes I miss the old days when we didn’t have to be so darn choosy.”

“I’d like to get me a young run-away,” Rachael told me a bit too loudly. “I like the taste of despair in their blood, the taste of wasted opportunity and lost hope.”

Overhearing that, the woman across from us picked up her purse and her man, and hustled toward the cashier in front to pay their check. They’d wait the New Year in outside in the cold. Safer that way.

“Rachel hasn’t changed much over the years,” Roxy’s breath warmed my ear as he spoke, “which is why I still like her so much. Always know what you got.”

My eyes met Liam’s across the table and knew he agreed with my assessment that in this time period, always doing the same thing would get one discovered and staked by government black ops. Or perhaps dragged before the vampire Council and condemned by our own. There’s worse things than dead. We wouldn’t hunt with Rachel tonight if we could avoid doing so.

The observant waitress showed up with more cups of coffee and took the others’ drink orders. She lingered at Roxy; Roxy is worth lingering over – modern parlance? Hot. But a quick look at Rachael moved her back to business and their order showed up in record time.

I settled myself to small talk with the others, catching up several years of solitary wandering in the half hour before we had to leave and make our feasting choices. Yet the pounding of the heartbeats around me, the scent of the human blood racing though the veins of potential victims aroused my hunting instincts. I wouldn’t make midnight. My eyes told Liam, “My feast needs to be soon or I will go crazy and tear the restaurant and the humans in it apart.”

“Come’n honey.” He grabbed my hand and gave Rachael a shove to get her to let him out of his side of the booth. “Let’s go find us some real food.”

Rachael and Roxy fell in behind us as we moved though the aisle, sidestepping through the humans crowding the door waiting to get inside.

As Liam and I moved to the left, edging through the crowd to move towards Eighth Avenue and Forty-second, I scented the man who would be my food that night. He was a third wheel; the single man trailing along behind two couples. Each member of the couples had eyes only for their partners. This guy; his eyes were dead. But what sealed the deal for me was that he swaggered. I always had hated men who swaggered. They reminded me of my father, a thing which brought no pleasant thoughts. He’d swaggered through the world for far too long until Liam had arrived to save me. I indicated my choice with a simple tug at Liam’s hand and Liam smiled his approval.

He released my hand and his hand caressing my butt moved me gently towards the chosen one. I crossed the street and hugged the shadows to get in front of the man – my best approach at parties, and this was a party, was a full-frontal approach. Liam shadowed me, watching me without obviously doing so; watching for any hunters who might also be using the crowd as cover for their hunting.

Swinging back to the victim’s side of the block, I put a strut in my step, pulled the tank top a bit lower to expose more breast, and with a welcoming smile on my face I ran towards him, exclaiming loudly, “Steve! I haven’t seen you since high-school! Imagine running into you here!”

For a few moments his “friends” did him the courtesy of noting he was alive, then they moved ahead, leaving him explaining to me, glued to his side with breasts rubbing into his chest, that he wasn’t “Steve” but was happy to meet me anyway.

I pretended disappointment, and pretended to be a bit tipsy and horny as I slowed his movement towards the larger crowd in the Square. With that in mind, I moved in front of him and ran a hand down his chest to his groin, simpering that “he was better than Steve any day.” He bought it, swaggering men always did, and he soon was tugging me back down the side-street attempting to find a dark corner. I wasn’t resisting. I wanted a dark deserted corner as much as he did.

Soon he steered me into a narrow opening beside a stinky dumpster and pulled me into a kiss. I let his tongue work its way into my mouth. It would be a moment or two before his brain registered my fangs since he was thinking with a totally different body part. I pulled back and circled my hands behind his waist and dropped my head against the wall, jutting my breasts forward with a low moan. As he dropped his head towards my right breast I reached quickly and jerked his head to my preferred angle. He still thought that I was encouraging him. Stupid human male, all testosterone and little sense of self-preservation. He moaned as I licked down the side of his chin and onto his neck, nuzzling it briefly before my fangs nicked it to cause his blood to flow. The scent of his blood on the air was the final straw, and soon I was swallowing deep draughts of his blood. He was dry humping my leg, overloaded by the venom in my fangs which told his body it was being pleasured even as his life was being taken.

It was all I could do not to snarl at Liam as he sidled carefully beside me. But several lifetimes of love took over and I swallowed one last mouthful before ceding my place to Liam. I laughed to myself as I watched the swaggering man dry-humping Liam. It was just funny. All too soon Liam dropped the body and reached for me. We shared one bloody kiss before he lifted the lid of the dumpster and indicated to me that I should shove the man in.

Soon we walked back towards Times Square, just two more tourists there to watch the ball drop. Smiling as the ball dropped, we welcomed in the New Year hand-in-hand. It was a grand Smorgasbord. We ate our fill that night.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2010 Leslie Ormandy