Chapter 3: The V-Tuber (The ‘V’ stands for ‘Vampire’)“You’re not going there alone,” said Angelina, to Caleb, as he and pants headed to the hotwired Camry. “You know it would be a bad idea if you went there alone.”

  “Why?” asked Pants.

  “I’m not going there alone. I’m bringing Pants with me,” said Caleb, to Angelina.

  “Why would it be a bad idea?” asked Pants.

  “You think bringing Pants makes it a good idea?” said Angelina, to Caleb.

  “Angelina, thank you for your help with Pants’ clothes, but I’m doing this, and–”

  Pants let out an ear piercing whistle.

  “Gah!” said the two older vampires, whose ears were quite sensitive, and therefore prone to piercing..

  “I get that I might be new,” said Pants. “But I am getting sick and tired of you two pretending that I’m not even here.”

  The two older vampires looked at each other, and sighed.

  “I get it,” said Pants. “It’s uncomfortable that you have to deal with me when I’m a dead girl walking. Figuratively, and literally speaking, I guess. You don’t want to get close, right? But guess what. If I’ve only got a month to live, I don’t want to spend it being ignored and condescended to, and treated like an object, like some ragged old piece of clothing that you can just toss in the trash when it’s too worn or stained for you to wear. Like an old pair of–”

  “Pants,” said Caleb, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Be better,” said Pants. “Now. Why is going to see this Stelian guy a bad idea?”

  Caleb sighed. “Stelian… is a sparkler.”

  “And Caleb is kind of a bigot,” said Angelina.

  “It’s not bigotry. It’s not… sparkling in the sunlight does not make you a marginalized community,” said an indignant Caleb.

  “Oh, I get it,” said Pants. “You’re envious.”

  “So what if I am?” Caleb frowned. “Wouldn’t you be? You spend nearly every moment of your life always aware that there is a giant massive ball of fme from outer space always looking to kill you and it will never stop, not ever, and you finally start to accept that that’s the way things are going to be for however long you live, maybe forever, then a bunch of… assholes come along and they’re like. ‘Gee, I can’t let the sun touch my skin. If anyone saw, that would be embarrassing!’”

  Pants sneered.

  “Life isn’t fair, Caleb. I got murdered yesterday. And you? You get to live, Caleb. It may be a shitty life, but you get to live. And you tell me I don’t. I’m sure as hell envious of that. You’ve done nothing but tell me non-stop that you’re going to kill me, and that I should get used to my imminent death.”

  Pants narrowed her eyes, and pointed a finger directly at Caleb.

  “Well, you know what, Caleb? Change of pns. I want to live. I’m choosing to live. And you don’t get to make decisions about my fucking life, and my fucking body, like some sort of… Republican!”

  “I literally brought you into this world, so that means I literally have the responsibility to take you out of it!” said Caleb. “I created a monster, and I’m going to put it right before I’m done. I’m your sire, and yes, that damn well does give me the right!”

  Pants reared back and punched Caleb square on the jaw.

  He went flying.

  This was incredibly bad for two reasons.

  First of all, it’s never good to openly punch someone on a city street, especially a city street that has all sorts of traffic at all hours of the night, and plenty of witnesses.

  Secondly, when most people go flying from a punch, they mostly have the common sense to remember that gravity is a thing that exists and to courteously, and nearly instantaneously, hit the ground.

  When Caleb went flying, he was so enraged and surprised by the blow that he forgot, for longer than he should have, to do so. So Caleb was just floating there in mid-air. Only a couple of seconds. But still. Far, far too long.

  Angelina’s joy at watching the new kid deck the asshole was genuine but short lived, at best. And someone had to be the adult.

  “Caleb! Pants! Get in the car! Now!”

  ***

  Caleb was rubbing his jaw and stewing in the back seat of the Camry, Angelina was driving, and Pants was moping with her arms crossed, slumped in the passenger seat.

  “Dammit, Caleb!” said Angelina.

  “What are you angry at me for? She’s the one who punched me.”

  “And you deserve that. And more. And not because you’re a killer, because you’re an asshole. Pants is right. Her corpse, her choice. I’m not going to let you kill her. If she starves to death of her own accord, that’s different, but if she wants to live, she gets to live.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “If it comes to it, yes,” said Angelina. “We get it. You’re older. You’ve got tricks. But there’s two of us, one of you, Pants has a hell of a haymaker, and I’ve got tricks too. Tricks I’ve been keeping close to my chest.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Maybe. But you’re not going to call, are you?”

  Caleb just stewed in his own self-loathing and indignation.

  “So, Angelina,” said Pants. “Tell me about this Stelian. Why are we going to see him?”

  “Stelian’s got this trick he does. He can see the st thing someone saw before death by looking in their eyes. There’s a chance you might have seen the licence pte of the red van just before you died, so we’re taking you to see him. And Caleb’s not happy about it because, A, Stelian’s a ‘sparkler’, and B, it means that Caleb’s going to owe him a favor. Part of the guidelines.”

  “Stupid guidelines,” said Caleb.

  “Caleb, they’re your guidelines,” said Angelina. “And they work well enough so far.”

  “Don’t know why,” said Caleb. “They were written by a moron.”

  “No argument from me,” said Pants. “I can’t believe that not a half hour ago, I was feeling sorry for you.”

  “So what does ‘owing a favor’ mean in this context,” said Pants. “Do I owe you a favor for these clothes?”

  “No. Basically, we realised we all had a better chance of survival if we agreed to mutually aid each other. Like a kind of… vampire support network. So things like the clothing, that’s – I would do that for any vampire in Vegas. Even the ones I think are real jerks.”

  “It’s all very Marxist,” said Caleb. “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”

  “With one exception. Everyone gets different ‘tricks,’” expined Angelina.

  “Tricks?”

  “Dark gifts. Supernatural powers. Whammies. My baseball bat trick,” said Caleb. “And the flying, which, by the way, I was keeping that one secret for a rainy day, so thank you so much for letting that bat out of the bag.”

  “Some are more useful than others,” said Angelina. “And if you’re a vampire with a particurly useful trick, then you’d be spending all your time helping out others, with no time for yourself.”

  “So we came up with a compromise. A system of favors. Mundane - in the sense of ‘of the world’ - it’s from the Latin, ‘mundus’ - mundane stuff is pretty much a freebie. But if you want someone to help out with something supernatural? Then you owe a favor. And we keep track of that shit. And I hate the idea of owing a favor to a goddamn sparkler.”

  “Damn,” said Pants. “You really are a bigot.”

  ***

  He was a sin carved from abaster and shadow. Draped in a bck coat that clung to his lithe frame like darkness itself had tailored it for his form. His hair, a cascade of obsidian silk, tumbled over his shoulders, catching the faint glow of the moon as if it was his own celestial body.

  His eyes, twin pools of molten amber, burned with an ancient hunger that promised both pleasure and peril. They seemed to pierce through flesh and bone, leaving secrets bare and hearts trembling. A smile pyed on his lips—sharp, cruel, and devastatingly perfect—revealing fangs so pristine they might have been stolen from an angel and twisted for a devil’s delight.

  His voice, when it came, was a purr so rich it felt like velvet brushing against bare skin.

  “Thank you, EvilWombat12, for the six months of subs!,” he said. “Now, let’s get this generator up and running, before– oh crap!”

  It was then that Dracu - er, the Dracu from ‘Castlevania’ - caught up with him - well, the character he was pying in ‘Dead by Daylight’, and impaled him, er, the character, on a hook.

  “Well, chat, looks like the killer won that round. GG to all. Let’s load up another game and–”

  Back in real life, there was a knock on his outside door.

  “Hold on, chat,” said the abaster and shadow virtual avatar. “We’ll take a quick break and then be back with more of the stream.”

  Stelian muted his mic, switched the dispy in the OBS broadcasting software, and headed up towards the patio doors, where the knocking was coming from. He pulled the curtain aside and looked through the gap.

  Crap. It was Caleb.

  Maybe if he pretended that he wasn’t at home…

  “Stelian, don’t pretend you’re not at home, we see you through the window.”

  “Hey Stelian. It’s me, Angelina,” said Angelina. “I’m here too. With a… third friend who needs your help.”

  Stelian sighed, and opened the patio door. What emerged from was a disheveled young man wearing a Maximo Park t-shirt and cargo shorts.

  He was a sin carved from the discount aisle of the gap. Draped in Axe body spray that clung to his skinny frame like broness itself had encompassed him. His hair, too long to be handsome and too short to be pretty, was like a wolf’s fur. If the wolf had mange.

  His eyes were twin pools of… actually, you know what? He had brown eyes. Let’s just leave it at that.

  He did have a nice voice, though, thought Pants.

  “What is it you need, Caleb?”

  “We need one of your tricks.”

  Stelian raised an eyebrow.

  “One of my tricks? Well, this is a first,” said Stelian.

  “Yeah. I heard you could do optography. Can we come in?” said Caleb.

  “My part of the house only. And don’t wake Mom,” said Stelian.

  Pants looked at Angelina, who expined what he meant.

  “Stelian lives with his mother. Has a separate entrance, so people can come and go - and she’s fine with it, so long as nobody wakes her.”

  “Does she know?” said Pants. “Seems kind of hard to keep that a secret, no?” said Pants, as the group descended into the basement dwelling of a basement-dweller.

  “You’d think that,” said Stelian, “but I just told her that I stream as a vampire V-tuber for a living, showed her the actually decent money coming in, and insisted that as a ‘professional actor,’ I needed to stay ‘method.’ So I sleep during the day. Unless I have to get some banking done or something, then I sther on some SPF 100, and cover the shiny bits with goth-white foundation. Some of us glitterboys and glittergirls prefer fake tan.”

  Pants immediately got that ‘glitterboys’ was the polite way to say ‘sparklers.’

  “So, I know Caleb and Angelina, but I don’t think I’ve met you before.” Stelian offered a handshake.

  “Patricia. But everyone calls me ‘Pants.’”

  “And I thought Caleb had a dumb name,” said Stelian.

  “It is dumb, Caleb,” said Angelina.

  “Twenty-five years and counting and I’m doing alright with it, Steve.”

  “Hey!” said Stelian. “That’s my livename. Don’t go livenaming me.”

  “Sorry,” said Caleb, sincerely. “That was a low blow, and I’m coming to you for help, so… yeah, I’ve just been–”

  “An asshole,” said Pants.

  “So, what brings the vampire ‘elders’ to the domain of the humble Stelian?”

  “You know that thing you can do where you can see the st thing someone saw before they died?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Pants died not too long ago and we think she might have gotten a look at the Stalker’s van. Maybe even caught a glimpse of the licence pte.”

  “And are you prepared… to pay the price?” said Stelian, ominously.

  Caleb sighed. “Stelian. Are you going to take this seriously?”

  “C’mon, Caleb, I never get to do the fun vampire stuff. You and the other reindeer never let those of us with glowing noses into your little reindeer games,” said Stelian.

  “Oh, go on, Caleb,” said Angelina. “Let him have some fun with this. You remember fun, right?”

  “‘Fun’… ‘fun’… no… is that some kind of vegetable?” said Caleb.

  “But seriously, though,” said Stelian. “I’d say what you’re asking is a greenbird.”

  “Bah. Barely a bluebird,” said Caleb.

  “What are they talking about?” asked Pants, of Angelina.

  “They’re haggling. They both know this is a redbird job, and Stelian will do it for a redbird, and Caleb will pay the redbird, and they both know it, they’re just haggling because they’re men and they have to be men about it,” Angelina said.

  Stelian and Caleb both rolled their eyes.

  “Hey, aren’t you the one that just said Stelian should have some fun with this?”

  “Yeah, this is the one time that I’ve got something Caleb wants, and I wanted to lord it over him for a little bit. But she’s right, this is a redbird.”

  “I know,” said Caleb. “Brought one with me.”

  Caleb reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a red casino chip, one from the Sands casino - which went defunct in 1996.

  Caleb held it up to show to Pants. “Redbird. Red 5 chip. We use gambling chips from dead casinos. It’s how we keep track of who owes who what.” He flipped it over to show Pants, and Stelian, the back, which had his initials, C.T., signed in red sharpie.

  Stelian reached out for it, but Caleb quickly snatched it back.

  “Payable on delivery,” said Caleb. “Pants. If you wouldn’t mind looking into Stelian’s eyes?”

  Pants raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s alright, Pants,” reassured Angelina.

  Stelian walked over, leading Pants to the day bed against the faux-wooden minate wall.

  Which, when Pants thought about it, was probably, quite literally, a day bed.

  Stelian sat down.

  “Gonna touch your face,” said Stelian. “Sorry about that.”

  “Is this going to hurt?” said Pants.

  “Don’t know,” said Stelian, holding Pants’ jaw to get her to look in his eyes. “I’ve only ever done this on corpses. Er, non-ambutory ones. Now… look into my eyes.”

  Pants did admit, it was a sexy voice.

  And so, she did look in Stelian’s eyes.

  You know, they weren’t that bad, his eyes. Not that they were… anything to… write home about. That… you could… get lost in. With little flecks of color and an inky bck to the pupils… that just… went on… forever… and ever… and ever… Those dreamy… perfect eyes, in an amazing face. Stelian’s perfect face.

  “7XZ-Q4K, Red Ford Econoline” said Stelian, as Caleb quickly jotted the details on a nearby piece of scrap paper. “She had a perfect shot. Gotta say, Pants, you have an eye for composition. Do you do photography?”

  “Just… instagram…” said Pants, who leaned in further. She couldn’t think of anything but Stelian’s beautiful brown eyes, wanted nothing more than his ruby lips upon hers, to be held and caressed and made to feel like a woman in the tall, handsome vampire’s embra–”

  “Dammit, Stelian, did you ‘Come Hither’ her?” she heard Angelina say.

  Stelian sucked air through his teeth, “Ooh, yeah, I think I accidentally did.” Stelian snapped his fingers a few times. “Pants, uh, Pants… we’re done.”

  Pants blinked. The devastatingly handsome vampire with the infinitely deep eyes was not in front of her - it was Stelian, the vampire computer geek in cargo shorts and the bad haircut.

  “Sorry about that,” said Stelian. “Truly. It’s a different trick that I can pull off. If I make eye contact with someone for long enough, I can make straight women and gay men want to make out with me. I use it for when I have to… er, top up the tank, as it were. I must have triggered it by accident. Seriously. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Wait, what?” said Pants. Then after a moment: “What? Wait?”

  “You got ‘Come Hithered,’ Pants, don’t worry about it. It looks like it was unintentional,” said Angelina.

  “Not just unintentional, downright comical,” said Caleb.

  “What,” said Stelian, “you think you can do a better ‘Come Hither?”

  “Oh, I know I can do a better ‘Come Hither,’” said Caleb.

  “Prove it.”

  Caleb and Stelian looked into each other’s eyes, and they froze. Stelian slowly got up. And then achingly, terribly slowly, they took tentative steps towards each other.

  Pants looked at Angelina. “Should… should we do something? We… we should stop them, right?”

  Angelina was grinning from ear to ear, biting the knuckle on her index finger.

  “Oh my god,” she said. “Don’t you dare stop this. I knew Caleb was bi. I just knew it.”

  Soon the two vampire men were at each other’s throats. And lips. And ears, and noses, and started making out with each other on the bed.

  “Right,” whispered Angelina. “I don’t think we should bother the two lovebats.”

  “But they’re not… it’s just magic, right? Hypnosis? We should stop them before they end up doing something they’d both regret…”

  “Pants,” said Angelina, “consider the way Caleb’s been treating you.”

  Pants thought about it for a moment.

  “On the other hand,” Pants said. “A free show is a free show,” and then sat down in Stelian’s gaming chair. “We will stop them before they go too far, right? This seems kinda rapey, even if they’re both doing it to each other.”

  “Mmm. I think you’re right. I just wish I had a literal hose that I could turn on them,” said Angelina. “Or a camera. Que sera.”

  ***

  There was no hose, but Angelina found that dripping a few drops of water from a wet dish sponge did the trick, and when they broke, both Stelian and Caleb were deeply silent, and couldn’t even look at each other.

  “I thought you were straight,” said Caleb.

  “I’m bi. I thought you were straight,” said Stelian.

  “I am straight,” said Caleb.

  “No, you’re not,” said Angelina. “When will you shed your internalized homophobia, and finally admit to yourself that some guys turn you on?”

  “No. And even if I did… not Stelian,” protested Caleb.

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry, Stelian.”

  “Right,” said Pants, turning in Stelian’s gaming chair towards the two of them. “While you two were hiriously canoodling, I looked up the licence pte. It’s a red Ford Econoline van, 2019, alright, but we can’t get the records for who owns it or where they live. Not without a police warrant, and I doubt that you have any tricks where you can impersonate a cop and get away with it, can you?”

  “No,” said Caleb.

  “So I thought, well, this is Vegas. Lots of pces tow in Vegas, and towing companies kept records. So I called around all the towing companies in Vegas, told them that we got in an accident, that it was a hit and run and we needed to find the driver for insurance company purposes. And there, I got a hit. Joshua Randolph. Got a phone number too, though I didn’t call it, obviously. But just the name, and the fact that they’re in the area? Took a shot, and, well…”

  Pants opened a window on the monitor. Up on it was the facebook page of Joshua Randolph.

  “Holy shit, Pants, you’re good,” said Stelian.

  “Mmm,” said Caleb. “Sure.”

  “Caleb’s impressed as hell, Pants, he’s just trying to be bzé. And failing,” said Angelina.

  “You don’t know that!” protested Caleb.

  “Poker pyer, remember?” said Angelina.

  “Right. What now?”

  Caleb looked at his watch, a digital Timex on a pstic strap.

  “Now, we do nothing,” said Caleb. “Sunrise is in forty five minutes, and even with the Camry, I don’t know if we can get back to either of our pces in the time frame. Not with a margin for error. I know you consider it a minor inconvenience, Stelian, but Angelina and I get a little bit burst-into-fmes-y when the sun comes up. So, while it might be an imposition, we’re staying here.”

  “Fair enough. What about Pants? Is she a glitter or a griller?”

  “We don’t know. But we’re assuming she’s like me,” said Caleb.

  “Oh?” said Stelian.

  Pants rolled her eyes. “Caleb’s my sire.”

  Stelian looked from Caleb to Pants, then back to Caleb.

  “My condolences, Pants.”

  ***