Immortal Chocolate (a vampire novel)

Part 17

Chapter 11

“I want to watch you transform them,” I told Hairy Blondie.

“I’m Clyde, just so we are formally introduced,” Claud’s brother said with a stiff bow. “And I’ll finish the job right now.” Clyde motioned toward a few of his lackeys who I hadn’t noticed until now. They came over to my group of friends, who looked at the werewolves or whatever they were, with bleary drunken expressions. Part of me wanted to look away—these were my friends—I’d never wish vampirism on any of them.

“I’ll give Claud a chance, on one more condition,” I said, as out of the corner of my eye I watched his henchmen finish the transformation—which included killing all of my human friends.

“Anything.” Clyde ushered his hands out with a curling smile so similar to Claud’s it made me want to hurl.

“I get to keep at least two of my friends.” I pointed to the now dead humans whose heads had banged against the table. Clyde weighed my request, his eyes narrowing as he stared at my idiot friends.

“Why?”

“Because they make me laugh.” I felt my chest squeezing.

“You’ll give Claud a fair chance? No tricks?” He stroked his hairy face with his hand.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t make a difference to me. You’ll have to deal with the newborns then.”

“I will.” In a few hours they’d all come back starving and mad with the itch. It wasn’t pretty.

“Then it’s a deal.” He gave me another Claud-like smile and motioned toward his men to grab five out of the seven once humans. “We’ll even hand deliver your two idiots. Where do you want them?”

“I have a place.” I got to my feet, still feeling numb that all of my friends were now dead. What about all their families? It made me sick.

Clyde’s men loaded up the new vampires into an obsessively large van. I led the way to my house, my whole body still shaking—an aftermath of the itch. I needed to feed and feed fast. The men dumped two of my random friends on my floor, gave me a grim smile, and stalked off. Clyde stood in my doorway staring at me, triumphant that I’d at least agreed to give Claud a fair chance at love. I’ll show him love alright. The love of a stake to the heart. This obsession with me had been strange at first, at times a bit endearing, but now—now it was just getting plain stupid.

Just because he held the power of the universe in his disgusting claws didn’t mean he could boss me around by hurting people I cared about. Clyde turned and left after one more glare my way.

After taking a long run with Kitty, feeding, and trying to control my urge to go on a rampage, I walked inside my house. My mouth slid open slowly, like an animated cartoon, as I came into the living room. It looked like someone had a crazy party all night. I saw my two friends slouched together on the couch, sucking down wine. I sniffed the air. That wasn’t wine! My feet blurred with incredible speed as I batted the two cups away from them.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Iva!” Fish-Face gawked at me, her way too large of eyes blinking rapidly. “I was drinking that!”

“That. Is…” I fumed, trying to control myself. They were babies, Iva, they were babies. “How did you find that?”

“I could smell it; I’m so…hungry…” Fish-Face said, staring at me like a hurt puppy dog.

“Listen, you can’t drink that—that will drive you…” Before I could finish the word mad Green pounced on me, biting into my neck. “God!” I threw him over my shoulder, cracking him onto the glass coffee table. Shards exploded all over the floor, which only proceeded to make me more furious with them. Newborns, Iva! I reminded myself again. They both stared up at me with horror on their faces.