Chapter 1

“Kayla!” I screamed as I made my way down the stairs.

“What!” Kayla screamed back.

“I thought I asked you to clean up down here.”

Silence.

“I know you can hear me.” I yelled back.

“I’ll get around to it.” Came the abrupt reply.

“You said that two days ago.” I replied angrily.

“I said I’ll do it DAD!” Kayla shot back.

I bristled.

Any time Kayla called me ‘Dad’ she knew that she was intentionally trying to get under my skin.

It had been six months since the events at Alicia’s property. In the few weeks immediately following, Kayla and I had been in our honeymoon phase, which basically meant hours upon hours of sex.

Not that I was complaining. As I’d mentioned before, I’d never had a real girlfriend before, so having a female give me so much direct attention was something rather amazing.

Unfortunately, things didn’t last long.

Kayla had a lot of problems. I’ll admit that being turned into a vampire at 19 wasn’t her fault, but I’d come to learn over the last year that she was rather lacking in personal responsibility.

In other words, she was a lazy ass slob.

In the first few months we were together, I’d overlooked it out of guilt for what I’d done to her. She also had her own room so I just closed the door and ignored the huge piles of clothes everywhere. But, once she had moved full time into my room, that mess had come with her.

Vampires didn’t eat a lot of ‘normal’ food, so there wasn’t a huge issue with dishes and other kitchen messes to deal with generally, but Kayla thought nothing of leaving glasses and empty blood donation bags laying around where ever she had been when she finished them.

It’s not like she had a lot of chores or other daily activities to do. She spent most of her time watching TV or playing video games, so there was plenty of time to pick up and run laundry on occasion. She just seemed disinterested in anything of the sort.

I’d begin to gather that she was a fairly spoiled child in her human life and now that she was a free spirit, she saw no reason to change her behavior.

Only I wasn’t her maid, or her father.

The last thing I wanted to do was laundry after spending all day on spreadsheets and all night at the club.

In the first few weeks as my frustration grew, Kayla tried to distract me with offers of freaky sex to buy my temper, but she soon learned that wouldn’t work forever. Our sex life slowly tapered off until it was virtually nonexistent unless she got way too drunk at the club, which happened.

“Are you going to come tonight?” I asked, trying to take a breath.

“No.” Came the reply from up the stairs.

Another interesting development was the amount of time that Kayla spent at the club. Or, that she DIDN’T spend at the club.

I wasn’t entirely sure of what she was doing at night when I was at work, nor was I entirely sure that I wanted to know. When I’d ask, Kayla said that she would go out hunting, since she was so tired of drinking cold blood that I got from the bank and absolutely hated the taste of the new synthetic blood that come out recently.

“It tastes like stale beer that came out of someone’s butt!” Kayla had exclaimed the first time she’d tried it.

I had to admit that I didn’t care for it either, but it wasn’t as bad as she made it out to be.

The idea of Kayla out hunting on her own made me very nervous. She never seemed to be particularly careful about her actions the few times that we had gone out together and I was extremely worried that she would get herself into trouble.

Again.

But, Kayla insisted that she was ‘a big girl’ and ‘could take care of herself’ so I just shrugged and hoped for the best since I didn’t have a better idea as to what to do about it.

“Fine, see you later!” I yelled.

No reply as I closed the door behind me.

Things at the club had been pretty even lately. After the events at Alicia’s house, I’d been concerned that she would cut me off from my blood supply and we’d have to shut down. But, the stock kept flowing. I assumed that to Alicia a dollar was a dollar, regardless of if it came from me or someone else.

Attendance had been up and down and Kayla’s disappearance from her duties meant that I had even more work to do to keep things hopping. It was completely exhausting. On top of that, Chelsea, who had been annoyed at some of my rule changes, had stopped coming to the club. I didn’t have the time or the energy to find a new blood buddy and there was something about the idea of the club owner sucking on one of the party goers that smacked of Steve to me.

So, I sat in my office, watching the video cameras and thumbing through spreadsheets, occasionally coming out to walk the floor and take a blood shot at the bar from Raven.

“Hey boss. Good morning.” Aaron waved as I made my way to the door.

“Hey buddy. How’s it going today?”

Aaron shrugged.

“Same as yesterday. Eat, sleep, fuck. No one trying to kill me today, so I can’t complain too much.” He replied.

“Things with Jill still good I take it.”

Aaron nodded.

“She coming out tonight?”

“No, she’s still binging Game of Thrones.”

“Hah! I can’t wait to see how she reacts to the end.”

Aaron grimaced.

“Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that one either. Oh well, it keeps her out of trouble.” Aaron shrugged.

At one point Kayla had convinced Jill to go out with her to a human club. Thankfully the cop that had been called on them had happened to be a vampire. It still cost me a pretty penny to cover up the mess that they had made. I had wondered if Kayla was hanging out, or going out with Jill at night when I was at the club, but Aaron insisted that she was not.

“How’s things going inside?” I asked.

“About normal.” Aaron shrugged again.

Great.

A normal night wasn’t going to make us a lot of headway. We were breaking even, generally, and I’d been using my personal money to float the difference on off months. I still had plenty of cash in the bank, but I had to stretch that over many, many years. Being a vampire didn’t come with a pension plan and I didn’t offer my employees a 401k.

I wandered inside to a half full club.

As I approached the bar, Raven slid a double height shot glass full of blood towards me.

“Looking a little down today boss.” Raven commented quietly as I bottomed the blood shot.

“Just another day at the vampire bar.” I shrugged, dropping the glass on the bar and walking towards my office.

The night was like most others and thankfully un eventful. I sent Aaron home early and Raven made quick work of cleaning up the bar area. I felt the weight of a million people on my shoulders as I locked the front door.

“Why so glum, stud?” Came a voice behind me.

A chill ran up and down my spine. It was a familiar feeling, but one that I’d not felt in a long time. I wasn’t in the mood, but at least I was ready.

I spun around and cocked my fist back, preparing for the worst.

As I suspected, Liz stood behind me, a cocky grin on her face. She glanced down at my fist and then back up at me.

“You want to play rough already? Boy, you have changed.” She smirked.

“What the fuck do you want?” I asked, slowly moving my hand down towards my belt. After our last encounter, I’d taken to wearing a knife horizontally at my waist.

You never knew when some nutcase would show up.

“Woah boy. Is that any way to treat an old friend?” Liz asked with a mock pout.

“We are NOT friends.” I said slowly.

“Oh, come on now Scotty. Be nice. Besides, I think you owe me.”

“For what exactly?”

“Well, how about for NOT killing you and your friends at Alicia’s?”

I didn’t have a reply to that. I did sometimes wonder why it was that Alicia let us go.

“Thought so. Speaking of, where is your yummy little girlfriend?” Liz asked, cocking her head to the side.

“At karate practice. What do you want?” I shot back.

“Karate practice huh? Sounds rather dull. I’m sure you missed me so I wanted to stop in and say hello and see what you did to the place. I must say I’m rather disappointed. It used to be such a fun, sexy place. Now it’s a typical college bar. All you need now is some TV’s playing football.” Liz shook her head.

“Yeah, sucks the place is so lame. Sorry. Real shame that I had to get rid of the sex slaves in the basement huh?”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with some sex slaves.” Liz said, her voice dropping into a seductive tone as she took a step towards me. I automatically took a step backwards but found myself pinned between her and the door.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice breaking slightly.

“Like I said, I know you missed me.” She replied, putting her hand on my chest and dragging a finger down it slowly.

My cock twitched. I was still mostly human after all and Liz was still hot.

“What game are you playing now? You tried to kill me! Or, have my friends killed. Now you’re just here to say hello?” I asked. Liz’s pout increased.

“Oh Scotty, you keep bringing that up. Stop living in the past.” She teased.

“You tried to kill me!”

Liz shrugged.

“Life, death. It’s all the same. Don’t take it personally.”

“Don’t take it personally? This isn’t fun and games. This is real life!” I exclaimed.

Liz took another step towards me and her scent filled my nose.

“Oh no Scotty, that’s what you’ve got wrong. It’s all fun and games. All of it. We’re all alive, or sort of, and we’re all going to die, eventually. Being a vampire just makes it more fun. You need to stop taking life so seriously. You and your girlfriend and your little club and all that crap. Stop being so concerned with shit like, I don’t know, me trying to kill you. Tomorrow I’ll kill someone else. Maybe I’ll kill your mother. Maybe I’ll kill your girlfriend. What does it matter?” Liz said.

I stiffened at the last bit.

“You’re fucking insane.” Was the best I could come up with, though what she was saying did seem to make a little bit of sense.

“Am I? Or are you just upset because I’m speaking the truth and you know it?” Liz grinned, her hand sliding down my chest and resting on my belt buckle.

“I fucking hate you.” I gasped.

Liz shrugged.

“I can live with that.” She replied.

“I should fucking kill you.”

Liz grinned at me.

“You know, you probably should. So, kill me or fuck me, whatever you want. At least it would make the night more interesting.”

“You’re fucking insane you know that! Fuck you!” I exclaimed.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Liz grinned.

“Huh? What part?” I asked, confused.

“The part about us fucking.”

“Why in the hell would I fuck you? You’re completely nuts and keep trying to kill me! I fucking hate you, you crazy bitch!” I stammered.

“There you go living in the past again. The fact of the matter is that I’m hot and you want to bone me. Always have, always will. I also happen to be in the mood for a good hate fuck, so I thought I’d drop in and see you.”

“Yeah, and you’ll end up ripping my throat out. Or, at least trying to.” I replied.

“Already thought of that lover boy. Step aside.”

Bewildered, I stepped sideways. Liz unslung a bag off her shoulder. My hand closed around the handle of my knife as she reached into the bag and I watched her carefully.