"That was incredible! Oh my god, that was so good!" said Tessa, leaning back on the booth, a flush to her face that wasn't there a moment before.

  "Uh, thank you?" said Vincent, weakly, who was so drained -- physically and literally -- that he was at a bit of a loss for words.

  While both Vincent and Pantessa were distracted from their moment of passion, Angelina had pulled out a small packet of chocote chip cookies from her purse, and pced them in front of Vincent.

  "Uh, thank you?" said Vincent, still very confused.

  "Trust me, you need some sugar right now," said the elder of the two vampires. "As for you, Tessa, we should talk. Thank you again for your help, Vincent."

  Ange reached out for Tessa's hand. Giddy and giggling, Tessa took it.

  "Uh, thank you?" stammered Victor a third time.

  Eventually Victor did eat the cookies, and he did feel a little bit better after that.

  ***

  "Oh my GOD that was the best!" said Tessa. "I feel great. Amazing! Like... like, I don't know. Is this what cocaine feels like? I don't know, I've never done cocaine."

  "I have," said Ange, sadly, in the parking lot of the dive bar. "Live blood is better."

  "I can't believe that Caleb was going to not even tell me about this! That he was just going to leave me to die without letting me experience this! I feel like... I feel like Wonder Woman. I feel like ten wonder women! And... I think I'm horny!"

  "Yeah, that's what happens," said Angelina, again, a little sadly. "It's life. You are quite literally high on life."

  "Yeah, I'm down for this! I'm down for being a vampire! Sign me up!" Tessa broke into a spontaneous dance. "Wooooo!"

  "It's good, isn't it? Life, that is," said Ange, starting to guide the overexcited Tessa back towards the self-storage. "It's really the only thing that matters."

  "You said it! God, I wanna feel this way forever!" said Tessa.

  "It's too bad Vincent has to die," said Angelina. "He was a good sport."

  "Yeah, he was really--" Tessa stopped and tried to process Angelina's words. "Wait, what?"

  "Well, he's been bitten by a vampire. Three nights and... well, that's it. Unless you, the vampire in question die before then, then the curse is broken."

  Pantessa stopped, horrified.

  "WHAT?"

  "Didn't... didn't Caleb cover this with you?" said Angelina. "I would have imagined it would have been the first thing that came up."

  "No! No he fucking didn't!" said Pantessa. "I have to go back! I have to warn..."

  Angelina held Tessa back by her waist. The new vampire was strong, but the old vampire was stronger.

  "There's nothing you can do for him now. And to tell him would just be even crueler."

  "What... what do I do?" said Pantessa. "Tell me what to do!"

  "There's nothing to do. This is what being a vampire is. It's why Caleb wanted to kill you," said Angelina, bringing Tessa to a bus stop bench. "And let's be honest, little Pantessa. That feeling. That wonderful, warm feeling. That feeling of life and passion and excitement and wonder and feeling like you're fucking more alive than you've ever been..."

  Angelina pced a gentle finger on Tessa's chin and forced Tessa's eyes to gaze into hers.

  "...You'd still do it again. Knowing what it costs. Knowing what the result was."

  "No," said Tessa, tears forming in her eyes. "I wouldn't."

  "Wouldn't you?"

  "No," she said, this time more softly, the tear streaming down her cheek.

  "Because you'll have to keep doing it if you want to survive. Would you pay that price? For that warm feeling in your veins and that flushness to your skin?"

  "No," said Tessa, this time, barely a whisper. "No, no no!"

  And then Tessa cried into Angelina's bosom, because she knew she was lying.

  "Yes," Tessa said. "God help me, yes. This feeling. I... I'd kill for it. I would. I know I would."

  "Then Pantessa. You are a vampire."

  "I'm a monster," she cried.

  "Yes. But I'm so much worse," said Angelina. "I lied to you about the whole three days thing. Vincent's going to be fine."

  Pantessa immediately jumped back out of Angelina's arms and gred at Angelina in a rage that consumed her, and caused her to kick the bus stop, leaving a rather significant dent.

  "JESUS TITTY HUMPING CHRIST, ANGIE!" she yelled. "WHAT THE FUCK!"

  Angelina wasn't ughing. It wasn't a joke that she pyed for cruel amusement.

  "Sit down, and calm down. It was cruel and it was shitty, but I did it for a very good reason," Angelina expined. "And not to hurt you. Though I knew it would hurt."

  Angelina sighed and continued.

  "Sooner or ter, and let's face it, probably sooner, you will end up killing someone. Maybe it's an accident - you happened to sink your fangs into a hemophiliac and the wounds don't scab over like normal. Maybe you just get so hungry that you forget what you're doing and take too much. Maybe your victim survives the bite but they figure out what happened and you can't let them live as a witness. Maybe your victim bites you back and you end up tearing their throat out by accident -- personal experience with that one, by the way. Not fun for the victim," she expined. "You needed to know what the stakes are. You needed to know what it felt like to be responsible for someone's death. You needed to find out if you were willing to live with that price. If you are, then I'll help you. Caleb will... begrudgingly, if he has to... help you. But you needed to know what we are, Pantessa. What you are, now."

  Pantessa was still angry as hell, but dammit, she knew Angelina had a point. And she knew... she knew that exact point was what Caleb was talking about all along. She would kill people for that feeling. For that feeling of life and fulfillment. She would lie, cheat, steal. She'd do horrible things to get her fix. Things that would make a junkie blush. For however long she survived.

  Every time she would feed, she would be pying Russian Roulette. But she wouldn't be the one to feel the bullet if things went wrong.

  Of course Caleb wanted to kill her. Caleb would be responsible for every monstrous and horrible thing she'd do as a vampire. And Caleb knew exactly what things she'd do -- because Caleb, and ter, Angelina, did them first.

  "Hey, Tessa, I know... I know it's a lot. You need some time to think about all this. But we need to get moving. The sun's coming up in just a couple hours and you always want to give yourself a good margin of error. We can talk more about this when we get back to my pce, okay?"

  Pantessa wiped another tear from her eye.

  "That was still a shitty way to teach me that lesson," said Tessa.

  "I know," said Angelina.

  "There had to have been another way."

  "There was another way. The way that Caleb taught me," said Angelina.

  "What way was that?"

  "Exactly the same as yours, except... my Vincent didn't survive. I took too much. And Caleb and I spent the rest of the night burying a man I had never even bothered to learn the name of in the Mohave desert. That wasn't the worst part. The worst part... knowing that I can live with it. And, after having murdered a man, after taking him from this world for the most selfish of reasons... I knew I would do it again. And again. And again."

  "Okay. Point taken. Still shitty," said Pantessa.

  "I don't think there's a non-shitty way to teach that lesson," said Angelina, with her arm around Tessa's shoulders for support as they walked.

  "Is Vincent going to be alright? Really?"

  "If he eats those cookies and gets a very good night's rest, he'll be fine," said Angelina.

  "Oh god," said Tessa. "What if he's diabetic?"

  "Then tomorrow I'll show you where the backup desert holes are," said Angelina. "Always pre-dig, otherwise you'll be there all night."

  ***

  "Santianna gained a day! Away Santianna!" the mad vampire sang, speeding around corners and nearly sideswiping pedestrians and parked automobiles alike with a 1975 Buick LeSabre. "Napoleon of the West they say! All on the pins of Mexico!"

  Mad Tom, if you were to ask him, was a long lived and lordly vampire of the seas; he cimed to been an English privateer left unemployed by the War of Spanish Succession, captured by Anne Bonny and Mary Reed themselves. "T'was Reed", he would cim, "that was the elder of the two vampire pirate sses, but t'was Bonny that opened me throat and thrust me soul to darkness colder than Davy Jones Locker."

  Of course, this was easily disprovable bullshit. There was fairly little evidence that Mad Tom had ever seen an ocean, but that was one of the reasons that Mad Tom was called "Mad Tom."

  The nearest anyone could figure was that Mad Tom must have gotten far too close to the pyrotechnics at the "Sirens of Ti" show at the Buccaneer Bay at Treasure Isnd Casino one time, and hit his head a little too hard. Whether he became a vampire shortly before or after that, no one knew.

  Sitting next to him, curled nearly into a little ball was a small woman holding on for dear life to a pink Alpaca plushie. She was not having nearly as happy a time.

  "Ah, ye scallywag! Don’t be shy! We be vampires, bound by the eternal night, and we sail through time itself! What's the point o' livin’ if ye can’t squeeze every drop o' joy from it, eh? Full sail ahead and make yer bones rattle! The moon's high, and I swear on the Jolly Roger, we’ll be at Queen Angelina’s keep afore the cock crows!"

  "I never got my driver's license myself," said the timid, tiny vampire woman, voice shaking, "but I think you're supposed to stop when the lights are red."

  "Why would I be stoppin’ for that? What use has a pirate for the command of the crown, or a vampire for the ws o' ndlubbers!? Were I not tendin' to yer noble quest, I'd take me cutss and hack down every st one o' those cursed road signs, then send each light to Davy Jones' locker with a volley o' lead from me twin pistols! The only red I stop for, ss, be the blood o' a fair maiden I've made swoon, or a scoundrel, should he be so unlucky as to cross me bde!"

  "I don't know what you're saying, but please don't crash," said the timid vampire. "Jack and Trey said it was really important we get to Angelina soon, and we can't do that if we crash."

  "Don’t ye worry, ss! I’ve been sailin’, ridin’, and steerin’ ships since the days o’ Queen Anne’s Revenge! There be no vessel, carriage, or contraption I can’t take the helm of! In fact, tell me, ss, if ye think this be a daft notion: I’ve been ponderin’ takin’ the Sabre ss and makin' a tidy bit o’ coin as a privateer fer the East India Uber Company! Oh, the merry times the passengers’d have! We'd belt out sea shanties, toss 'em a bit o' grog, and if any got cheeky, we'd see how they fancy a spell tied to the bowsprit o' the Sabre!"

  The little vampire was reasonably sure that Mad Tom's Uber rating would quickly drop to well below five stars after just a few rides. Mad Tom was obviously not the vampire's first choice for transportation options, but vampires don't often have such luxuries as always being able to choose "sane and competent" friends to help out at short notice.

  ***

  "I hate leaving you alone like this," said Angelina.

  "What alone? I'm going to be right there, across the poker room, at the Orleans Sbarro, trying to figure out how to set up this prepaid cellphone we got at the 7-11," said Tessa. "I get the need for, you know, generally not being traceable, but there's this app, it's called Signal. It's like WhatsApp, only more paranoid. If we can get all the vampires on that, it's end-to-end encrypted. Maybe Philip can make it even more secure with his hacker knowledge. But it frustrates me that anytime we want to get around to share notes with other vampires, we're reliant on Caleb and his stupid stolen Camry."

  "I can't believe we didn't think of something like this before," said Angelina, heading with Tessa over to the cage to get chips.

  "I'm not," Pantessa said. "Granted, I'm just going off pop culture here, but like, I think vampires have trouble adjusting to social and technological change. That's why they party like it's 1899 in all the movies. Sure, for you and Caleb it's been only, what, twenty five years, but it's been an eventful twenty five years. Anyway, break a leg at the tables."

  "That's an acting thing. Gamblers just say 'Good Luck,'" expined Angelina.

  "Break someone's psyche then. Take them for everything they've got," said Pantessa.

  A middle aged man wearing distracting reptile-eye sungsses approached the two of them.

  "Angelina," he said. "Hey! How you been?"

  "Greg! How's things?" Angelina smiled back. "Don't you usually py the big games on the strip?"

  "Down 115k at the Aria this week. Had flopped sets cracked six times in a row."

  "Ouch," said Angelina, who actually winced.

  Greg just shrugged. "Variance. Decided to py lower stakes for a while since I'm pretty sure I'm on tilt. How about you?"

  "Can't compin. Been busy. Dealing with family issues. Oh, Greg. This is my..."

  "Cousin," offered Pantessa. "On her father's side. Hi. I'm Pantessa."

  If Greg was taken aback by the strange name, he had a really good poker face.

  "Greg Reynolds. 'Jurassic Dork' at the tables," he said, introducing himself. "So, Angelina. Finally going to take your shot and join us at the big tables?"

  "Nah, Greg, I'm just a local reg, you know. I can't afford the swings."

  "I've seen you py, Angelina. You're no reg. You're practically a grinder. Hell, you're one of the few pyers I know who could probably beat me, at least at cash games. How come you never py tournaments?"

  "Oh, it's just not my scene," said Ange. "You're sitting there waiting for good starting hand, no real post-flop py, and it's just hours and hours of sitting on your butt with thirty big blinds, hoping for ace-queen suited or better and hoping someone with a smaller stack raises ahead of you."

  "I'd stake you, you know."

  Tessa instinctively moved in front of Angelina, protectively. "Over my dead body!" said Tessa, angrily staring down this 'Jurassic Dork' or whoever he was.

  Angelina put a hand on Pantessa's shoulder.

  "Tessa," said Angelina, "He means that he will give me money to py in a tournament, in exchange for keeping a percentage of anything that I win. He will stake, as in, pay part of the entry fee, for me. It's not what you thought he meant."

  "What... did you think I meant?" asked Greg.

  "Uh... nevermind. Sorry," said Pantessa.

  "Right, uh, well, if you change your mind, I'm usually pying at the Aria these days. When I'm not, you know, really steaming." Greg waved politely, got 5000 in chips, and headed towards the 5-10 tables.

  "So, wait, who was that again?" asked Pantessa, not quite sure what happened.

  "Greg's a Vegas local poker pro. Has a couple bracelets, including one for the main event at the WSOP from way back."

  "And... he's going to give you money to py poker?"

  "Yes, he would."

  "Why wouldn't you take it, then?"

  Angelina sighed.

  "Those poker tournaments he's talking about usually run all day. Emphasis on day."

  "Oh."

  "C'mon, you've got some tech to wrangle, and I've got some suckers to bamboozle into check raise-bluffing me."

  ***

  It took a couple of hours, but using the Orleans free wi-fi, Pantessa finally managed to get the data pn up and running, and installed the Signal app. So long as Angelina could use cash won at the poker table to pay for pre-paid visa cards which could be fed into AT&T's prepaid account... they'd have a cellphone they could use. She wondered if it would be possible to set up something like Uber so that they didn't have to rely on riding around in stolen cars all the time, but that was a project she wanted to check with Philip on. After all, encrypted communication is one thing. A service which literally tracks your location so that you can get in the car with a complete stranger? That was a new level of dangerous.

  It was then that she noticed that there was a teenage girl who seemed horribly out of pce, nervously standing over by the entrance near both the poker area and the Sbarro.

  No, not a teenage girl. A short adult woman. She just looked like a small child at first gnce. The fact that she was tightly clinging onto an overstuffed pink alpaca plushie might have been part of the reason. And she was nervous for some reason. Out of pce.

  And even though Pantessa was very much new to this whole vampire thing, she was able to get that little tingle in the back of the neck that made her realize that little miss alpaca was also one of the undead.

  Around the same time, the young woman looked at Pantessa, and Pantessa looked back. They sized each other up for a few moments, before figuring out that they probably weren't a threat to each other.

  Pantessa decided to go ahead and make the first move, taking her things, stuffing them in her purse, and heading over to the nervous vampire, hoping to hell that this wasn't a situation where this was an amazingly powerful vampire that just looked like a nervous young woman.

  "Hi," said the nervous young-looking woman.

  "Hi. I'm Pantessa. I'm new here," said Pantessa.

  "I'm Cardi. I need to speak to Angelina. She's the girl in the cat-eye gsses, pying poker," she said, pointing.

  "I'm pretty sure you can just walk right up to her, if you want."

  Cardi screwed her eyes shut and shook her head violently. "I can't."

  "You can't?"

  "It... I can't. I'll never make it all the way. Not without help."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The chips. They... they click-cck, and they're not always in the right order and the numbers keep changing and sometimes they put a green one in a stack of red ones and that throws me off and I have to start over and I can't count them all and I have to count them all. I have to."

  Pantessa wasn't so up on her vampire folklore that she would have guessed arithmomania, but she knew someone struggling with a mental problem when she saw it. "Obsessive-compulsive disorder?"

  "Something like that," said Cardi.

  "You want me to get her for you?"

  "Please?" said Cardi. "It... I need to talk to her. It's important. Jack thinks Caleb's in danger, and Trey says that Angelina should call a meeting."

  Tessa raised an eyebrow. "Wait right there."

  She moved as fast as she could over to the 2-5 table, where Angelina was sitting on a stack of about 2500 in chips.

  "Angie?" she said, pointing. "I think that woman over there needs to talk to you. About Caleb."

  Angelina sighed.

  "One of these days I'm going to sit down at a hot table and not be interrupted by a family emergency," she sighed. She picked up a pstic chip rack tucked into her seat and started pcing the chips into the columns, then headed over to Cardi.

  "Two thousand, six hundred and thirty five dolrs," said Cardi, as Angelina approached. She looked down and away from Angelina and her rack of chips.

  Angelina smirked. "I'll cash out first, then we'll talk outside, alright?" she said to Cardi.

  Cardi closed her eyes tightly and nodded, and soon afterward, the three vampires headed out to the parking lot.

  ***

  Once they were sufficiently away from the casino that the chips, the cards, and the numbers on the slot machines all stopped tormenting Cardi, she became much calmer, but still held onto the alpaca for comfort.

  "So, You're a long way from South Point, Cardi. What's going on?" asked Angelina.

  "Caleb came to South Point and met with Trey st night. But his car is still there in the parking lot. Trey said that Caleb said that he was scared he was pying with fire or something and said that there was this bible verse that the stalker left, and so that's so Jack's thing, and Jack's been working on that, and then Jack got scared and said that there's something there to it but he's still working on the math, and then Trey said that if Caleb died or went missing that we should all talk to you and you should hold a meeting like Caleb did that one time and come up with new guidelines."

  If Pantessa didn't know for a fact that Cardi didn't need to breathe, she would have told her to take a deep breath.

  Angelina just patted the little vampire on the back. "Cardi, you got this. Though, how did you get all the way from South Point to the Orleans on your--"

  "Ahoy! Queen Angelina! I’ve brought ye the messenger o' ill omens! And who be this fair ss beside me?" said Mad Tom from behind them.

  "Oh lord," said Angelina, without turning around.

  "Pantessa. I'm new," she said, turning to face the vampire who dressed like he had just robbed, and possibly ate, several Jack Sparrow cospyers.

  "I can see that, ss. Still got the flush o' life in yer cheeks. Ain't got yer dead-legs yet, eh? Stick with Mad Tom, ye’ll be right as rain. I'll teach ye all the tricks o' the trade and the ws o' the Mohave Sea! And if yer keen, ter on, I might show ye me fishing tackle, and ye could share with me yer booty?"

  ---

  A few minutes ter, after Pantessa beat Tom into unconciousness and stuffed him in the trunk of his own car, Tessa turned back to talk to Cardi.

  "Sorry about that, Cardi," expined Pantessa. "Getting sexually harassed by the Gorton's Fisherman was exactly one more problem than I need right now."

  Angelica took the helm of the Sabre... *ahem*, took the wheel of the Buick LeSabre... and started taking the four of them (with Mad Tom in the trunk) back to South Point.

  "Thanks for getting me, Cardi. And yeah, I'll talk with Trey and Jack, but I'm not sure that the situation is all that dire. Caleb's fine. And I'd know if he wasn't. So would Tessa."

  "I would?" said Tessa.

  "Vampire thing. Caleb knows when I'm in danger, I know when Caleb's in danger. It's some sort of sire-childe bond. I have to assume you'd have it too. I haven't felt anything like that. So Caleb can't be in that much--"

  Suddenly, Angelina and Pantessa were stricken with an overwhelming feeling of fear and pain. Like someone ran nails on the chalkboard inside their internal monologues.

  Pantessa, wide eyed, stared at Angelina.

  "You mean like that?" said Tessa.

  "Uh, yeah. Caleb might be in some deep shit," said Angelina.

  ***

  Caleb woke up with a pounding headache, his hands cuffed behind his back, and a chain running through the cuffs wrapped around his legs and neck.

  In a box. A small box.

  But far, far worse than all of that, was the hideous smell. Whatever hell he had been dumped into, it reeked. It was eye-watering, and Caleb didn't even breathe. Still, the smell permeated everything, it was overwhelming.

  It was all Caleb could think about. And he pretty quickly realized what the smell was.

  Garlic.

  Enough garlic to make an Italian chef reconsider their life choices.

  That's when Caleb knew, he was fucked.

  Because there were ten thousand ways Caleb could have gotten out of this situation with his tricks otherwise. Just simply break the chains with vampire strength. Or turn into a Louisville Slugger and slip out of the chain. He could summon an army of rats.

  Well, maybe. He didn't get a whole lot of practice with summoning an army of rats. Turns out the ability to summon an army of rats? Not very useful, day to day.

  Point is -- garlic. It was just so pervasive, so rotten and odious and foul that Caleb couldn't barely even think, let alone do anything as complex as use any of his vampire tricks.

  He dare not scream. He dare not breathe in deeply enough to do so, and let that dominating odor permeate his lungs, infecting him from the inside as well as outside.

  And it wasn't going away.

  And Caleb realized that he very well might spend up to an entire month, trapped, in a little tiny box, surrounded by garlic until he eventually starved to death.

  That would be bad.

  So he thrashed, and he kicked, and he bucked, and the box moved around a little.

  And he whimpered. Because there was nothing else to do.

  And then for what seemed like an eternity ter, but which was probably only around thirty seconds, the box lid opened, and Caleb was looking up at someone he instantly recognized. And really wished he hadn't.

  Joshua Randolph, the Stalker, had a Remington 870 shotgun pointed straight at Caleb's head. And Joshua looked straight at him, right into Caleb's eyes, clearly weighing the pros and cons of just shooting the vampire in the head and being done with it.

  And Caleb knew he had only one card to py.

  "Someone is making you do this. Someone not me. I think I know who. Can we talk?"

  The Stalker narrowed his eyes, tilted his head back and forth, and thought seriously about Caleb's offer, truly considering it.

  "No," he said, then firmly started to close the lid on the box.

  "Oh, please, please don't! Don't! You don't know how bad it smells in here it's--" Caleb didn't finish that sentence as he retched, a sensation he hadn't felt in over twenty years. And as he wretched and dry heaved, the chain around his neck tightened slightly each time, uncomfortably. He was so distracted the smell and the pain and the nausea that he didn't notice the sound of a padlock shackle being clicked closed.

  But he did hear the sound of a cement mixer powering up.

  That's when Caleb found the breath to scream.