A Vampire's Rotten Heart

Angeltwice

    I could smell it. I could hear it. Pounding in my ears.

    I tried to listen to their voices instead, but their words were drowned out by the pounding.

    And the moment one of the men put his hands on my shoulders, I could feel it, too. A merciless pulsating mass, filled with warm blood.

"Are you sure it's dead?"

"It's at least undead."

They shared an awkward laugh. Using humor to hide how scared they were to each other. I could tell.

I could tell.

I didn't care when they pulled me out into the cold Mitford sun. I barely noticed.

Saliva pooled in my mouth. It got so heavy that I had to swallow it. Or let it drip out of my mouth.

Swallowing was the better option.

My head hit the ground with a thunk.

"Holy Bhale its throat just moved."

My legs followed suit.

    "God this is fucking sick. Who mails a live vampire?"

    "No one ever thinks about us!"

    "Oh, let's mail a box full of actual pig shit to Bob. Oh, that would be a fine prank."

    "'Til the box collapses and the actual pig shit splatters on everything else in the car."

    "Oh, but they're not the ones rubbing feces stains out of the Count's parcels."

The two grumbled to themselves for a while.

"Well, I'm not dying tonight. What do you suppose we do with it?"

"Leaving it here and running doesn't sound like a bad idea."

"Winston would be pissed. This thing's probably worth a thousand pounds at least."

One of them prodded the side of my head with his foot.

"And besides," he continued, "it's probably faster than us."

    "We could... put it back in the coffin. It'd be a lot harder to carry, but I think I saw silver on it."

     "Let's do that."

——————————————————

    It took them quite a while to get me to the post office, who in turn took a while to get me to the Angeltwice Institute. I was surprised I held out for that long.

But the moment that door opened, I wanted nothing more than to jump up and rip the first throat I saw.

"Oh, God. Not this again."

My eyes twinged open. A woman in a long dress and lab coat stood over me.

"What is it?" shouted someone from inside.

"Marvin, probably. Again."

She grabbed the end of the coffin and dragged me inside.

A man walked over, and the two of them stared at me.

"There he goes again. Thinking all research institutes are the same."

The woman knelt down and touched my bare wrist. That was it. The pulse from her finger was all I needed.

I grabbed her forearm, yanked it to my mouth, and plunged my fangs into it.

"Didn't feed it right, either." The man laughed.

I glared at him and drank faster. The woman laughed, too. Sincerely. She put her hand that wasn't being gorged on on the back of my neck and rubbed it with her thumb.

"We'll fill you right up and send you back. As soon as Borthwell gets you off of me."

She looked at her coworker.

"Oh. Yeah. Right. I'll get the holy water."

——————————————————

The three of us sat in the main lobby of the institute. I with scorched lips, the woman with bandages around her arm.

    "I'm... sorry about that."

    "It's alright. It comes with the job."

    I stared into the mug of blood they had given me. It was probably best if I didn't look either of them in the eye.

    "Though I've never been bitten by anything as large as you. I'll consider it an experience."

    There were a few moments of silence.

    "So you really can't help me?"

    "We would love to, but we don't have the funding for that sort of thing. We're barely scraping by as is!"

    "Can't you get more?"

    "No one really wants to fund vampire research. They let us do worms because they're so much of a nuisance, but the idea of storing blood around makes people uncomfy."

    I glanced to the side.

    But then something came down the stairs. She was a tiny, dark-skinned woman in a long, fur dress, holding a cane in one hand and a swagger in the other.

"Lady Angeltwice!" said the woman, "So sorry about this. We'll get him out as soon as possible and get back to work."

    Angeltwice said nothing. Instead, she walked straight up to me, getting uncomfortably close and prodding me with her cane.

    "...Interesting. I'll take him back to my office. You two carry on."

    She looked at me, squinted, and tilted her head back to show me where to go.

    "Oh– Uh–"

    I stood up and walked up the stairs. Lady Angeltwice stayed close behind.