Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) by Truant Johnny B

Author:Truant, Johnny B. [Truant, Johnny B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-06-02T21:00:00+00:00

PIMPING AND SUBTERFUGE

REGINALD KNEW NOTHING ABOUT WHERE Maurice lived except that it was close to the office, so he’d formed a mental picture based on the kinds of places that were nearby: Maurice would live in an aging, smallish two-story colonial with chronically peeling paint at its corners, like the house that Reginald lived in.

But he was wrong. Maurice didn’t live close to the office at all. Reginald had decided that he did before he knew Maurice was a vampire, and hence before he realized that “Maurice comes to work on foot” didn’t equate to “Maurice lives nearby.”

It took Reginald and Nikki nearly a half hour to reach their destination the following night, and what they found when they arrived wasn’t an aging colonial with peeling paint. The houses in Maurice’s neighborhood were huge — and even amongst the houses in Maurice’s neighborhood, Maurice’s house was massive. It was a giant white palace with sprawling grounds pocked by Grecian statues that Reginald felt were probably authentic and definitely excessive. (Nikki wondered aloud if Maurice even knew that all of the statues were even there, considering that he never saw them during the daytime.) There were complicated hedges. There were tiered planters. The house itself was all pillars and parapets.

“He’s rich,” said Nikki.

“Yet he works with us,” said Reginald.

“He’s two thousand years old. I’ll bet you run out of things to do when you’re that old. He must work because he’s bored. How much wealth can you create simply by existing longer than everyone else? How many fancy hedges can you plant and trim? How many novels can you write? How many paintings can you paint?”

“So what you’re telling me,” Reginald said, “is that given enough time to live and create and grow, we all default to selling treadmills in the end.”

But Nikki didn’t hear him. She’d walked up to a massive, grooved pillar and was stroking it, running her fingers along the stone. She jumped a little when Maurice appeared behind them, holding a sword in his hand. It took Reginald a moment to realize that it was the sword he carried all the time, including at the office.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry. I was trimming the hedges.” He sheathed the sword, then walked between them and pulled the front door open, gesturing them inside. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

The foyer was classic marble, but Maurice seemed to have added his own touches to make the rest of the decor less classic. There were beautiful iron sconces along the walls, but each had been draped with a blood red cloth, which gave the room a foreboding feel. There was a small fountain in the middle of the foyer (Reginald couldn’t resist tossing a penny into it), but someone had done something to the water in it to turn it as black and opaque as ink. There were paintings on the walls in elaborate frames, but they were all black velvet and, Reginald thought, fairly tasteless. Gold was everywhere — accenting upholstered

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