Here Be Monsters - By M T Murphy Page 0,38

two young women trembled in horror and looked helplessly at their vampire hosts. The vampires made no move to protect them.

Mickey took a step towards the couch. “Do I really need to tell you what to do next?”

Neither woman moved a muscle.

“Run,” he snarled. They scrambled to their feet and rushed toward the door.

“No,” Doug gasped. He tried to grab Lindsey’s wrist, but Mickey clamped a hand down on his throat and flung him to the couch.

The women ran out the door and did not look back. They clamored into their rusty old sedan parked on the curb and drove away, leaving the neighborhood full of young urban professionals none the wiser.

Chad found a reserve of courage and rushed at Mickey, thrusting the blade into his neck.

The shaggy stranger didn’t flinch as the metal sank into his skin.

Chad tried to push the blade in further, but Mickey grabbed his right hand, squeezed, and twisted, breaking Chad’s thumb, index, and ring fingers with a sickening crack. The young vampire barely managed to let out a yelp before Mickey tossed him onto the couch next to Doug.

He removed the blade from his neck and tossed it to the floor. “Even for vampires, you guys are really weak.”

“Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.” Chad held his injured hand and buried his face in the arm of the plush maroon couch.

“That’s right.” Doug tried to sound forceful and confident, but instead he sounded like what he was: a guy who was in over his head and knew it. “We are vampires. We may be young, but our master is old. If you lay another finger on us, you’re dead.”

Mickey slammed the front door and regarded the vampires with narrowed eyes. “Okay. If you’re vampires, what does that make me?” He smiled, again displaying the four disproportionately large, pointed canine teeth.

“A lonely vampire looking for friends?” Doug asked, with a hint of hope in his voice.

Mickey shook his head. “Not even close.”

His smile faded and he lunged for Doug, pinning him back against the couch and forcing his head to the side. He sniffed his neck. “All wrong,” he muttered, and reached over to drag Chad’s head down and smell him as well.

“What the hell is this?” he growled. Then he forced Doug’s mouth open. He grabbed the two sharp, pearly-white vampire teeth and pulled. They popped free with little resistance, revealing normal human teeth beneath.

He looked at Chad. “And you?”

Chad held his broken fingers tight against his body and voluntarily removed his own fake vampire teeth with the other hand.

Mickey stood and took a step back, looking the two men up and down. “You aren’t vampires. Eight-hundred-dollar silk shirts? Leather pants? Ten gallons of hair gel? You’re just…” He paused, searching for the right word. “You’re just stupid.”

“Please don’t kill us,” Doug blurted. He suddenly noticed he was still holding the razor.

Mickey noticed as well. “You going to use that?” He turned his head, giving both men a view of the damage caused by Chad’s razor. Only a barely noticeable scab remained.

Doug tossed the razor away without hesitation.

“I should kill you both right now for being idiots,” Mickey said, “but you have sparked my curiosity. Why are you playing dress-up, and why were you going to murder those two women?” He sat down on the coffee table in front of them and drummed his claw-tipped fingers on the wood.

“What?” Doug managed to sound shocked. “We weren’t going to kill them. We were just …” His words trailed off when Mickey’s expression grew even more sour. “Oh my god. You can tell I’m lying, can’t you.”

Mickey nodded.

Doug burst into a fit of hysterical crying. Between sobs, he blurted out a frantic explanation. “It was Hines. He promised to make us vampires, but first we had to dress up like this and bring him an offering.”

“The women?” Mickey asked.

“No…”

“Their blood?”

“No.”

“What, then? Their heads? Their skin? Their teeth?”

Doug’s gaze drifted to the floor. “No. Their underwear.”

The answer hung in the air like a two-ton flying pink elephant that no one wanted to acknowledge. Mickey’s eyes narrowed. Finally he stood with a sigh.

“Whatever. Lucy … I mean, Lucifera, the master vampire of Los Angeles, wanted me to give a message to the vampire or vampires responsible for the rash of bodies popping up lately. Are you two morons responsible for that?”

“No,” said Chad with a sigh of relief. Both men shook their heads.

“Lucy doesn’t care who or why you kill. I don’t either. The point is, even though you’re technically