Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire (Vampire Innocent Book 7) Read online

  Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire

  Vampire Innocent Book 7

  Matthew S. Cox

  Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire

  Vampire Innocent #7

  © 2019 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons living, dead, or undead is coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author. (Except for quoting a line or two in reviews/blog posts.)

  Cover & interior art by: Alexandria Thompson

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-950738-06-9

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-950738-07-6

  Contents

  1. The Zen of Alternate Dimensions

  2. Our Worst Fears

  3. A Few Minutes of Forever

  4. How To Deal With Annoyances

  5. Swords, Sorcery, and Daemons

  6. The Naraj Cube

  7. Oopsie

  8. Minor Accidents

  9. All Things Weird and Sarah

  10. Ugh. Not Again

  11. Deals with Darkness

  12. Living Precariously

  13. Eww

  14. Tainted

  15. Bait Goblin

  16. Harmless

  17. A Little Bit Heated

  18. Soft Spot

  19. The Grand Life

  20. It's Only Grand Theft Auto

  21. Early Risers

  22. A Shortcut's a Shortcut

  23. Of Course

  24. The Moon Pond Motel

  25. Innocent Bystander

  26. Kinda Rough

  27. Permission to Lie

  28. The Velocity of Kittens in Space-Time

  29. Playing Catch-up

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  The Zen of Alternate Dimensions

  Peace.

  If death had anything going for it, I might have once said ‘they’re at peace now’ or something hokey like that if someone I knew passed away. Once. That is, before I got to experience death personally. As it turns out, being dead is anything but peaceful—at least in general. Moments like this, where I’m soaking in a nice hot ‘orange creamsicle’ bath bomb, are the exception.

  Okay, to be completely fair, I’m not dead. Not all the way. Let’s just say I had a really strange day last summer. Within the span of a few hours, I went from being a reasonably typical girl who’d recently graduated high school to a murder victim that knows vampires are real. How did I discover that vampires exist? Simple—I turned into one. Not by choice, mind you. But yeah, I’m a vampire.

  That’s kind of compelling from an evidence standpoint.

  However, I have to say becoming a vampire is the best worst thing to ever happen to me. I’d say it’s the best thing to ever happen in my life, but technically speaking, my life ended before it happened. So, there’s that. Anyway, ever since I found myself in a morgue cooler a couple days after my ‘death,’ my unlife has been a little on the crazy side. Okay, a lot on the crazy side. The only thing I want is to be as normal as possible and enjoy the time I have with my family.

  But for some reason, the Universe has other plans.

  And, I really am bending over backward to be normal. Seriously, how many vampires go to college? The latest insanity du jour is that my little sister, Sophia, has resumed having nightmares about a monster she made up when she’d been three. She calls it Fuzzydoom. It’s basically a massive black pom-pom with itty bitty wings, like the size of the ones you get fried from a Chinese restaurant. I’m not entirely sure how something that silly looking could scare anyone, even a three-year-old, but this is Soph after all. Poor kid spent fifteen minutes once when she’d been like two trying to run away from her own shadow. She’s nowhere near that bad now, but she’s still super high strung.

  Normally, if a ten-year-old started to have ‘wake up screaming’ nightmares about a huge, furry pom-pom monster they invented at three, it would probably be time to start considering a therapist. However, in our case, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for her fear: we saw the damn thing in a parallel dimension after going through a mirror.

  I said, reasonable, right?

  Okay, so theoretically speaking, if even one strand of that monster’s fur touches something, it’ll kill it. But that thing crept along. Like, we’re talking makes the DMV look fast. Another mark in the plus column is that I’m not entirely sure the thing is real. And yeah, weird as that sounds, I literally am debating the actual existence of a figment of my kid sister’s bizarre imagination.

  Did I mention she’s got magical ability?

  So, that whole alternate world behind the mirror thing may or may not have really happened. It might have merely been some sort of mass-hallucination illusion that Sophia planted into our heads. Part of me is inclined to believe that entire escapade happened for real, but I am trying to be in denial here. Stuff like that simply doesn’t happen… right?

  Then again, neither does a small invasion of imps.

  What’s an imp you ask? A minor demon type critter that evidently adores playing pranks. They’re also not particularly concerned with the victim surviving said prank. While the little bastards don’t try to hurt people, if someone gets maimed or killed, they find it hilarious. My sisters wanted to do something spooky for Halloween and ended up summoning a ton of those things by accident. Every liquor store within driving distance of my neighborhood has to be wondering why business is booming lately.

  I’m still in awe that the PIBs didn’t show up to ask about that.

  What’s a PIB you ask? Persons In Black. Government agents who are in on the whole ‘vampires are real’ thing. They got wind of my less-than-stealthy escape from the morgue and came to visit. That mostly felt like they wanted me to know they knew about me, and bad stuff would happen if I didn’t behave myself. I wonder if they visit all new vampires or if I got lucky? And for that matter, how long has the government known about all this weird stuff without telling anyone? There has to be magic involved. No one can keep secrets that long, that perfectly.

  Right. Back to the peace issue, or lack thereof.

  Two in the morning is like the vampire equivalent of eight at night, except for me. I could be out partying or doing stuff with other undead, but not even dying changed me that much. I’ve never been into hitting nightclubs or bars or simply going to random places and hanging out. For the last half of grade school and all of high school, ‘fun’ usually consisted of hanging out at home with my friends or maybe a mall trip. As soon as we got licenses to drive, we started hitting the occasional restaurant together for something of a girls’ night out, but still never really went wherever the ‘cool kids’ go. Yeah, we were kinda nerdy. So, I’m staying in my room.

  If Ashley and Michelle—or my boyfriend Hunter—happened to be around, that would be different. But, our schedules have mostly gone in two entirely different directions. They can’t stay up this late anymore due to school and jobs.

  I’m going to classes, too. At Seattle Central College. Night school if that wouldn’t be obvious. The type of vampire I am—Innocent—gives me a little leeway with the damn ball of nope in the sky that most normal people call the sun, but attending classes on a normal teenage schedule is out of the question. My inner nature forces a hard sleep on me the instant the sun rises. Most vampires are stuck as still as corpses until sunset. I consider myself lucky to wake up by two in the afternoon most days… unless I’ve had my ass kicked.

 
Fortunately, I’ve managed to avoid that for a good while now.

  Between chasing imps around, leaping across dimensions—twice, dammit—having a psychotic vampire bitch wanting to tear my head off, and narrowly avoiding a war between vampire elders, I’ve had a heck of a few months. It’s hard to believe it’s only been five. And ugh… Thanksgiving is coming up soon. That’s going to be interesting. Actually, hang on. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I’m thinking. Thanksgiving ten years from now is going to be strange when all the relatives we only see twice a year start noticing that I still look like I’m eigh—sixteen. Grr. If there is anything that I’m not totally thrilled with about becoming a vampire is how it made me look younger.

  And yeah, I get that ‘looking younger’ happens to almost every vampire, but usually we’re talking about a thirtysomething who could pass for their hot twenties or a forty-to-fifty-year-old who looks thirty. Me? I legit look like a freakin’ sophomore again. I mean, I didn’t get any shorter or anything but something about my face…

  Has to be the ‘Innocent’ blood. My best defenses are: being underestimated by other vampires who think my kind are weak, and looking as harmless as possible. It does have a rather compelling upside though. While awake, I appear totally alive. Lifelike color, body heat, still appear to be breathing, blinking, sweating, and a normal heartbeat. When I sleep? Not so much. No one has yet shown me a picture of that, but the parents ‘can’t bear to look at me’ when I’m out cold because I evidently resemble a corpse.

  And in the most bizarre twist the universe could ever come up with, Sophia doesn’t at all mind how I look while sleeping. Well, I mean she minds, or else she wouldn’t use me for a cosmetics crash test dummy, but she doesn’t freak out and scream. This is the same girl that my brother Sam once reduced to shrieking tears of terror by wearing a werewolf mask and sneaking up beside her bed.

  So, I’m less frightening than a five-dollar Halloween mask. Go me.

  Sophia’s present glitch is worrying that Fuzzydoom will somehow escape the mirror dimension into reality and come after her. Sierra and I have both been trying to convince her the creature is a product of her mind so she has total control over it. No, I don’t know this for a fact, but undeath requires a certain degree of guesswork. My fangs didn’t exactly include an instruction manual. Most vampires spend a couple years ‘living’ with the one who gave them the Transference, learning the ropes so to speak.

  Did I mention the guy who made me a vampire is a bit, umm, unreliable?

  Okay, some of that is my fault after all. Most vampires spend their first few years in their sire’s shadow and don’t decide to run home as fast as possible to their mortal families like me. However, I have zero regrets about my decision.

  What I do have is an orange creamsicle bath bomb and a bathroom all to myself for several hours.

  Oh, and there’s Aurélie. She’s a four- or five-century-old vampiress who has—for some strange reason—taken a particular liking to me. Sure it kinda felt weird and creepy at first, but what 600-year-old woman with an entire room full of haunted old dolls wouldn’t be a little weird and creepy, amirite? Naturally, nothing in life—or death—is free, but so far, the only thing she’s wanted from me is going to fancy vampire parties with her while dressed up in a ridiculous gown. Oh, that and posing for paintings. Not creepy paintings, or even nudes. She dolls me up in these super elaborate gowns. But the woman is hard to look at without feeling emotions of some kind. I’m straight, but she could make me question myself. While she’s physically beautiful, the attraction mainly comes from her constant mental radiance.

  Good thing she’s taken on a maternal vibe with me or I might’ve found myself getting way strange with her. She already seduced my friend Ashley without even trying. Ash is at least bi, so being attracted to women is normal for her. But I think Aurélie is so old she’s merely stopped caring about trivial things like what kind of plumbing someone has. People talk about the French for being great in the bedroom, and after existing for centuries, if an act is possible, I’m sure Aurélie has done it until it’s become boring.

  Shudder.

  I really hope she keeps thinking of me as a daughter. Or she waits until I’m old enough that mental cracks start appearing in my sanity. Pretty sure every vampire eventually gets a little odd in the head once they’ve gone well past a normal human lifespan.

  But, like the teenager I still really am, I shouldn’t be worried about what’s going to happen a week from now, much less a century. Okay, so there are two things about becoming a vampire I find annoying: being mistaken for sixteen and this weird precocious maturity thing. How many eighteen-year-olds think about the future this deeply?

  Anyway…

  It’s two-something in the morning, all my friends are asleep, my entire family is asleep, and I’m all caught up with homework. So, I’m treating myself to a soak. Most of the people—I don’t say kids because I’m going to night classes and a good portion of my classmates are over thirty—at school constantly grumble among themselves at never having enough time to do their homework. Even Ashley and Michelle do, and they’re going to normal morning classes like ordinary freshmen who the sun won’t incinerate. Both of them are taking more classes than I am this semester and they have jobs.

  I have no job and a buttload of time when everyone’s asleep. College coursework is barely a burden when there’s not much else to do. No parties, dorm craziness, sports, job, or other distractions in my life other than the paranormal insanity. Speaking of… it’s been almost three weeks since my kid sister ripped open a hole into another world. Feels like I’m about due for something to blow up in my face.

  Sigh.

  Some girls get drunk when they want to cope. Me? I lie here underwater in the bathtub. Breathing is for lesser mortals. Only, I’m having trouble relaxing with my brain poking me about two tests coming up this week as well as a project due for biology, plus the supernatural stuff.

  The bathroom door opens. Someone small walks by the tub toward the toilet.

  What the heck? I know for a fact I locked it this time.

  I sit up slow like a prop from a haunted house—dead girl in the bathtub—and peer around the shower curtain. A tiny figure stands on the toilet seat, about the size of a three-year-old with batlike wings and glowing red eyes.

  Sam’s closet imp.

  Wow. Okay. Whatever. Screw it. Just a minor daemon taking a post-midnight whiz. Who am I to criticize? I lower myself flat again under the nearly opaque orange water, unsure what I find the most strange:

  Imps exist.

  There’s one in our house who’s apparently decided to make friends with my brother and not prank anyone.

  Imps have to pee.

  He’s using the actual toilet.

  And apparently, imp pee glows lime green.

  Any one of those things would leave most people scratching their head. Since the little guy plays video games, I suppose it’s not that bizarre that he’s figured out how toilets work. Pretty sure Mom wouldn’t appreciate cleaning smoking messes up off the rug.

  No, I’m more hung up on the whole ‘imps really exist’ thing, because that also means the mirrorverse we went into is probably real and my little sister has magical abilities. Yeah, I’m a vampire who’s struggling to believe in supernatural things. How is it that I’ve taken becoming an undead in stride but stuff like that still feels implausible?

  A flush breaks the silence in the bathroom. Seconds later, the door closes and the lock secures with a faint, metallic snap.

  That stuff really happened. Great. Does that mean Alice in Wonderland might have been real? Things we saw in there certainly qualified as trippy, but definitely had a darker overtone. Hmm. Mirrors are reflective. Perhaps what occurs on the other side is a reflection of the person who opened the door?

  Or maybe I’ve been underwater too long.

  And… I lied before. I’m not all caught up on my schoolwork. I’m done with the small assignments. I still have t
hat project for biology to do, and a paper to write for computer science. Would it be wrong to make my biology project about blood? I’ll probably wind up doing something lame like trying to demonstrate which type of cheese grows mold the fastest or maybe I’ll do a study on oceanic coral. I probably still have pieces of it inside my left lung from that stupid rapier.

  Grr. I reluctantly get out of the water and grab a towel.

  By 2:48 a.m., I’m down in my basement bedroom staring at a blank word processor. There might be some people in the world who would find writing about the evolution of digital storage media fascinating. I’m not one of those people. Like, do I really need to care that old computers used paper punch cards to store data, and how that technology gradually developed across various storage mediums to the multi-terabyte hard drives of today? Oh sure, a ten-megabyte hard disk used to weigh as much as a Prius. How is that important to know?

  Ugh. It probably is, but it’s boring as hell. Sierra would probably like this stuff. She’s far more of a tech geek than I am. Going into programming happened as a kind of dart-throw ‘why not’ decision. My father writes code for a living and it’s a theoretical job that could be done at home without requiring I go anywhere during daylight hours. Theoretical, because almost no one hires a newbie programmer for a work-at-home gig.

  Then again, I wouldn’t be an ordinary newbie programmer. Any future boss of mine would give me whatever hours or work arrangements I want them to. That would be a seriously unfair advantage if we worked actual jobs. Whoever heard of a vampire with a day job? My unlife has already defied tradition in staying with my mortal family. Would going into the workforce break the gears of the universe further? And for that matter, dare I condemn myself to a job I don’t really love?