CHAPTER TWO: The Vampire Who Cheats At PokerIt’s a cliche that vampires wear sungsses at night. So do poker pyers. But despite being both, Angelina wore cat-eye spectacles, a comfortable hoodie, and leggings.

  And she was ticked off that she was going to have to fold kings preflop.

  But despite the outwardly calm appearance, her opponent couldn’t fool Angelina. She could smell the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Hear his heart pumping. See the bead of sweat roll down his left temple.

  He had aces. She knew for a fact he had aces. Not ace-king. Not kings. Not queens. Aces.

  Turns out the keen senses vampires use to seek out their prey are really good things to have when you py poker for a living.

  But still. Kings.

  Oh well. At least she could get some advertisement out of it.

  She folded her hand face-up.

  There it was. The second best hand in poker. Thrown away. Like it was nothing, to a single raise.

  Showing her hand had the intended effect. It intimidated her immediate opponent - the one with aces. Nobody folds kings to a single raise. Especially not a single raise from te position when they’re in the blinds. Not unless they have a stone-cold read on their opponent. And while Angelina had one - it was not a read any human could have picked up on. For the rest of the night - maybe longer, her opponent would be over-paranoid about giving off tells.

  Which meant he’d be giving off more of them.

  As for the other pyers at the table, Angelina just informed them that she was capable of making big ydowns under the slightest amount of pressure. So they might be inclined to bluff her more often. Make her make some tough decisions with marginal holdings.

  Which would have been a bad thing, except that Angelina could pick off bluffs like an owl picks off field mice. It was easy. Too easy.

  She sighed and remembered when this game used to be fun.

  ***

  Caleb pulled the hotwired Camry into the parking lot of the Orleans, an off-strip, but still prestigious gambling establishment, themed after the French Quarter and invoking the riverboat gambling aesthetic of the 18th century steamboats.

  As he parked, he looked over to Pants, sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Are you going to be okay if I leave you in the car?”

  Pants raised an eyebrow.

  “Why would you leave me in the car?”

  “Because it’s a casino. You’re not used to… the sensitivity. It can get a little overwhelming.”

  Pants rolled her eyes. God damn condescending vampire.

  “I’ve been to the Orleans before, Caleb. I know what it’s like.”

  Caleb darkly chuckled.

  “Changed my mind. C’mon with.”

  Caleb held the door open for Pants and immediately she was overwhelmed. Oh god, the noise, and the people, the lights everywhere, fshing in staccato cacophony, too bright, far too bright. And dear god, the smell. It was rank with people, and the smell of old, crumpled dolr bills, lingering cigarette smoke and the stench of old people who had not bathed for 72 hours because they knew that their machine would hit the moment they left it.

  “Oh, uh, best let me do the talking, Pants.” Caleb gestured towards the back of the casino. “C’mon. This way. Don’t get lost.”

  She very nearly did, but managed to keep up with Caleb as he headed towards the poker area.

  “There she is. At the two-five table,” said Caleb. “The girl in the cat-eye gsses.”

  She wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t looking for it, but it was true. There was something slightly different about the woman in the cat-eye gsses. Something she couldn’t put into words. Something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  Caleb headed over there, so Pants too, followed.

  When the woman in the cat-eye gsses saw Caleb approaching, she slumped.

  “Angelina!” Caleb said. “How long has it been?”

  “Go away, Caleb,” Angelina replied. “You’re bad luck.”

  “I thought you said this game was all skill, not luck,” said Caleb.

  “I wasn’t talking about the game. You’re just bad luck in general.” Angelina looked past Caleb at Pants, still dressed in the Panthers victory t-shirt, men’s jeans, and a pair of fuzzy bathroom slippers. .

  “Oh no, Caleb. You didn’t.”

  “I did. But she’s not here to stay. She’s why I’m here, actually. Was wondering if you could help her out. She’s about your size, right?”

  Angelina grunted, and reached behind her to pull out a chip rack.

  “And it was a good table, too.” She carefully pced her chips into the rack, then headed over to see Pants.

  “Hey kid. What’s your name?”

  “Pants. It’s kind of a long story.”

  Angelina looked Pants up and down, sizing her up. “God, you are new. Caleb, how could you?”

  “Not my fault. Not really.”

  “C’mon,” said Angelina. “We’ll head to my pce. We’ll have a little bit of privacy there.”

  ***

  Angelina’s pce turned out to be a storage unit about four minutes away by stolen car. She let the duo in, then rolled the door behind her. Inside the storage unit was a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a queen sized bed.

  “So, you live here?” asked Pants.

  “Yeah,” said Angelina. “Be it ever so humble. At least it beats Caleb’s pce out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I like the middle of nowhere,” Caleb replied. “I’d even go so far as to say the middle is my favorite part of the nowhere.”

  “Right. Let’s get you some clothing.” Angelina started grabbing some simple dresses and a pair of sandals from the wardrobe, pcing them on the bed. “In the meantime, Caleb, what the hell were you thinking?”

  Caleb sighed. “Pants, here, was the Stalker’s test victim. I’m just keeping her around in case she remembers a detail that can help us find him. And also, use her as bait to lure him out.”

  “Yeah,” said Pants. “And I’m not thrilled about the bait part.”

  Angelina glowered at Caleb. “Does she know?”

  “I told her enough,” said Caleb.

  Angelina facepalmed.

  “Wait. You told me enough?” said Pants. “What is it? What is it you’re not telling me?”

  Caleb sighed. “I told her that if she wants to sustain her unlife, she’s going to have to feed from the living. And I told her that I’m not going to let her do that. So yes, she knows she’s here for the short term.”

  “You’re not going to let her do that?” said Angelina. “What, are you going to hit her over the head with a frying pan and leave her out in the desert?”

  “If I have to,” said Caleb.

  “I’m standing right here,” said Pants. “Can you wait until I’m out of the room before you casually talk about murdering me?”

  “Would you rather I talked about murdering you behind your back?” said Caleb.

  “Caleb, you ass!” said Angelina.

  “I’m being kind,” said Caleb. “You know what it’s like for us. We live shitty lives, stolen from the lives of others. We try not to kill, we end up killing anyway, we feel guilty about it, we mope, we resolve to do better, and that sts until the next big hunger pang and we go through the cycle all over again.”

  Caleb then turned to Pants. “And to quote my favorite movie, ‘If I’m curt with you, it’s because time is a factor.’ Okay?”

  “Nah man,” said Pants. “I’m pretty fucking far from okay.”

  Angelina frowned. “You’re not wrong, Caleb, you’re just an asshole.”

  “And there’s my second favorite movie,” said Caleb, frowning. “Look around, Pants. Look around at the gmorous life of the vampire prince and princess. This isn’t a castle in Romania, or a luxury penthouse suite, or a romantic cabin in the woods. I live – well, reside – in an abandoned industrial park. Angelina resides in a self-storage. And Angelina’s fucking loaded by vampire standards, because she cheats at poker.”

  “I do not!” said Angelina, indignantly.

  “When you can pick up changes in their heartbeat from across the fucking casino floor, and they can’t? When you don’t give off any fucking tells because you don’t even breathe? You can’t tell me that’s not cheating. It may not be in Hoyle’s, but it’s a fucking unfair advantage,” said Caleb. “And I’m not ragging on you! I think it’s great that you’re good enough at math and stuff to make money that way. I steal shit! I’m a thief. I used to be a fucking w student and now I’m a fucking thief and a killer, and I don’t know why the former bothers me more than the tter and maybe that’s fucked up, but being a vampire isn’t a good thing.”

  “You honestly believe I’m better off dead?” said Pants.

  “Yes!” said Caleb, without hesitation.

  “Then why did you do this to me?”

  “Because I thought you might be helpful! Because it wasn’t fair that you were murdered, but you were and I couldn’t stop it, and I’m sorry about that, I tried, I really did, but right now there’s some other girl who’s going to be the next victim and doesn’t know it yet, and maybe if I stop this guy… maybe if–”

  “Caleb!” Angelina addressed the older vampire harshly. “You’re spiraling. You’re in my house, and you’re being an ass. Take a walk.”

  “Angelina!”

  “Take a walk, Caleb! I’ll handle the newbie.”

  Caleb grimaced, rolled up the metal door, and stepped out.

  Pants, now finally dressed in a blouse and skirt, sat down on Angelina’s bed.

  “Christ. Why him?” said Pants. “Why’d I have to end up turned into a vampire by Count Condescension?”

  Angelina sat down next to Pants.

  “Caleb’s… complicated. He’s been at this longer than anyone else, and he’s just gotten more bitter every year about the life he had. The life that was taken away from him.”

  “Does he have to be such an ass?”

  “No. I think he chooses to be, though. He sees himself as a monster. Which – y’know – accurate. He’s incredibly lonely but feels he has to push people away. He wants friends and feels he doesn’t deserve them.”

  Angelina sighed deeply and continued. “None of which excuses his behavior. He’s right. We’re killers. But Caleb chooses to be rude. Me? I see things another way. There’s good, and there’s nice, and good isn’t an option for us. So I choose to be nice. And Caleb? Caleb wants so badly to be good, and can’t, so he figures he doesn’t deserve to be nice. Like I said. Complicated. He really should see a shrink.”

  “Hunh. He actually mentioned that when we first met, that he couldn’t find one.”

  “Yeah. The world isn’t exactly set up to make things easy for us. Caleb’s right. We’re kind of fucked. I could probably afford an apartment with the money I make from poker, but that means I have to sign a lease. Leasing offices open in the day. I can’t set up a bank account. Bankers hours are during the day. I can’t even win too much money at the tables or the IRS gets involved, and if I’m called in for an audit? Any interaction with the police? Day. Day. Day. It’s not just you. All of us are living on borrowed time. I called Caleb the ‘oldest’, but did he actually tell you that he’s only about fifty years old? And that includes time spent alive.”

  “He mentioned something like that.”

  “We’ve got a theory as to why. Turns out, trying to avoid the sun? It’s fucking hard. And you don’t get any margin for error. I think that’s why Caleb resents the sparklers so much. Sure, they don’t go out into the sun, but they can, at least for short times, and he’s envious. One of these days, he’ll mess up. Or just get unlucky. Just like I’ll mess up. Or maybe we’ll get tired of living like this and just… not care if the sun catches us. Not even suicidal… just… not caring enough to be as careful as we need to be.”

  “So all those stories about vampire immortality?” said Pants.

  “None of us have lived long enough to figure out if it’s true,” said Angelina. “But neither Caleb nor I have aged. Nor have we caught a cold, so… theoretically…”

  Angelina shrugged.

  “Caleb’s right about one thing. The world’s bad enough without a serial killer on the loose. There are too many monsters already. I’m sorry. You got dealt a rotten hand. We all did. All that’s left is how you py it.”

  “If you were me,” asked Pants, “what would you do?”

  “Oh honey,” said Angelina. “I was you. Why do you think Caleb is so adamant about you not sticking around as a vampire permanently? It’s because he doesn’t want you to become another me.”

  ***

  Caleb sighed, walking along Tropicana Avenue, past the vape shop, the Del Taco, the corporate Discount Tire across from the family owned ‘Lntes Y Frenos’, the check cashing pce, and the pawn shop. He stopped, breathed in the extremely arid desert air, not that he needed to, and leaned against the stone wall separating the mobile home park from the road, staring at one shop in particur.

  ‘Nails & Tanning’, the sign said.

  He wondered what would happen if he got into that tanning bed.

  It wasn’t sunlight, after all. Just UV light. Maybe he’d be fine. Maybe he’d actually get a tan. He might actually look good with a tan.

  Or maybe he’d burn to a crisp. Fifty-fifty. Who knew? Who cared?

  God, Angelina was right. He was being an ass. Such a downer. And not in a healthy way. He owed her an apology. Her and Pants, if he was to be honest, but if he were to start apologising to Pants about being rude, that opened up a whole can of worms about how to apologise to her for making the st month of her conscious life a living hell.

  Best to keep her at a distance then. Don’t get attached, Caleb. And if she hates him? So what. That’s better. She should hate him. After all, he murdered her. The fact that he wasn’t the first should be little comfort, after all, he murdered her st and worst. And he’ll murder her again in the future.

  That’s what he was. That’s what being a vampire was. Murder, panic, boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom, murder, panic, boredom, boredom…

  Sometimes the panic came before the murder. That was always nice. A change of pace.

  He watched the cars go by. Pickup truck, pickup truck, coupe, station wagon – oh, how he hated how the station wagons from his youth went out of style, repced by those impractical SUVs and…

  Wait a sec. The van. The red van that the Stalker had. He didn’t catch the licence pte. But maybe Pants did. Even if she didn’t realise it herself.

  Caleb started running back – not as fast as he could – but as fast as he could do without drawing suspicion. A totally non-suspicious, non-supernatural pace. Back to the self-storage facility.

  He might have a lead.

  ***

  “So,” said Angelina, to Pants, “Did Caleb expin the guidelines?”

  “He said that there weren’t any, not really. That every vampire was different.”

  “No, I mean his guidelines. Caleb’s guidelines.”

  “What?”

  “When the sparklers started showing up, Caleb gathered everybody together - no small feat - and said that he’d come up with some guidelines so that we’d minimize our risk of fucking each other over. It’s not like Caleb has any authority over the rest of us, but he is the one who’s been surviving the longest, so when he speaks, people at least pretend to listen. He called them ‘Caleb’s Commandments,’ and almost immediately, we started calling them ‘the guidelines,’ because who the fuck was he to start commanding people?”

  Pants snorted. “The guy’s a mess. I’ve been a vampire for less than twenty four hours and even I can see that.”

  “Exactly. But sometimes he can be clever. And the guidelines - they work. Don’t go telling people you’re a vampire, because they’ll either not believe you, or they’ll believe you and then the world goes batshit crazy hunting down vampires as the horrible threats to humanity we are. Don’t go biting people around the touristy areas. No casinos. No casino parking lots, no Area 15, no First Fridays, no nothing. Locals go missing, no one gives a shit. Tourists go missing, all of a sudden, tourists don’t start coming to Vegas, and that means that the people with money - they people who actually matter to the cops - start getting antsy. Plus, cameras everywhere, it’s just stupid. Other than that, it’s just common sense. Clean up your own messes. Don’t shit where you eat - it’s why Caleb believes the Stalker isn’t a vampire. The other victims’ bodies were found near the Circa and the Strat. Where were you… if you don’t mind me…”

  Pants let out a gulp. “I was on my way to meet a friend at the Las Vegas North Premium Outlets. I had just gotten off the bus, and was waiting for an Uber to take me the rest of the way.”

  “There you go, too close for comfort. Another thing is don’t leave a paper trail, treat cell phones as if the government was listening, don’t go around making more vampires because why the fuck would you? Don’t give interviews to Christian Ster, that sort of thing.”

  “Be kind, rewind,” said Caleb, coming in from his walk. “Everyone always forgets that one.”

  Angelina sighed. “Caleb, you going to behave yourself?”

  “I am. But I need to ask Pants something.”

  “What?”

  “Can you remember what you were looking at right before you died?”

  “It’s all… hazy.”

  “I understand. But… if I remember correctly… sorry, Pants, I’m going to need to position you…”

  Caleb headed over near Pants and Angelina on the bed.

  “Gonna grab you for a second. Just rex… Pretend you’re dead. Or almost dead. Or pretend you’re not dead, but only very barely slightly alive.”

  Pants looked at Caleb in confusion.

  “Just, go limp, if you can,” said Angelina.

  Pants raised an eyebrow, as Caleb reached his arms around her.

  “Now, if I recall correctly, you were bleeding to death, but you were fighting to hold onto life, I needed a good angle on your jugur, because if I hit your aorta, blood was just going to go fucking everywhere and who needs that? So I dipped you like this…”

  Caleb dipped Pants, to her surprise, and stuck his face into her neck. Her eyes shot wide open.

  “It’s okay, Pants,” said Angelina. “I think I know where he’s going with this.”

  “So, I had you like this when your heart stopped beating. Angelina, what’s Pants looking at right now? Where are her eyes?”

  Angelina got up, walked around the two of them, Pants followed her movements with her eyes.

  “No, uh, Pants,” expined Angelina. “As Caleb said. Don’t look at me. Try to rex. Pretend it’s really difficult to keep your eyelids open, but you’re fighting to do so anyway. What do you see?”

  Pants did her best to focus on… unfocusing. She closed her eyes, and opened them again. And she was staring at the back wall.

  “Just… the back wall,” said Pants.

  “The wall?” asked Caleb in a voice that was muffled because he was, technically, speaking into Pants’ neck. “Not the ceiling or the floor?”

  “No. Also, stop talking into my neck, it tickles.”

  “Sorry,” said Caleb.

  An awkward pause.

  “Caleb, are we done?” asked Pants. “You’re still holding me.”

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry,” said Caleb, letting go. “Lost in my own head for a moment.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Angelina. “Admit it. You liked the close contact, and wanted it to st a bit longer. You needed… a hug.”

  “Wait, what?” said Pants. “Should I be spping him?”

  “For a lot of reasons, yes,” said Angelina. “But honestly, Caleb, when was the st time you hugged someone? And I’m not talking about grabbing someone from behind and grappling them.”

  “Not that long ago.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t remember. When did ‘Gangnam Style’ come out? It was around then, so, like, a few months ago?”

  “Oh god. I was in middle school when that came out,” said Pants.

  Caleb thought about it.

  “Okay, so maybe more than a couple of months.”

  Pants sighed and wrapped her arms around Caleb.

  “You’re an asshole,” she said, “but Angelina expined that you had a rough time, so yeah, you can have a hug.”

  Caleb sighed, and hugged Pants back. Angelina joined in, because Angelina was touch starved too.

  It felt wonderful.

  God.

  This was just going to make it that much harder to kill Pants ter, thought Caleb.

  ***