Liquid Diet Chronicles (Book 1): Bite Sized

  Bite Sized

  Holly Chism

  Copyright © 2018 by Holly R. Chism

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Also By Holly Chism

  Survivors

  Lizzy’s Tail

  Detritus

  Normalcy Bias

  Modern Gods

  The Godshead

  Highway to Tartarus

  Fire and Forge

  Gods and Monsters (forthcoming)

  Legends

  The Last Pendragon

  Pendragon Resurgent

  The Liquid Diet Chronicles

  Bite Sized

  Acknowledgements

  To my beloved husband, Andrew, and our two beautiful children. Thank you for letting me go on my writing binges.

  I hold a giant debt of gratitude toward my beta readers: Brenda Laub, Crystal Closser, James Wyant, Jim Curtis, Donovan Dion, and Tom Rogneby.

  Contents

  Mr. Humpy Has a Lie-Down

  I Don’t Drink…Chocolate Shakes

  Who Sleeps in Coffins Nowadays?

  What Do People Who Don’t Eat People…Eat?

  Roomies, Yes. Buddies? Maybe.

  Movie Night Isn’t the Same Without Popcorn

  Perchance to Dream

  Building a Mystery

  Is That a Cloud or Part of a Kitten on That Puzzle Piece?

  Not Your Fun Kind of Puzzle

  What Are They Teaching Kids in Home-Ec?

  I Thought This Would Be an Interview, Not a Booty-Call

  Interview with a…Yeah, Let’s Not Get Sued, Here.

  Missing Pieces

  Something Happenin’ Here

  Plotters Gonna Plot

  A Different Wake-Up Call

  What Dreams May Come

  Tuning Up

  Fat Lady’s Warming Up

  Aria

  Drink, Drank,…

  Mr. Humpy Has a Lie-Down

  The smell of fresh, hot blood led me down the alley between the trendy, women’s-only gym (lose pounds and inches in half an hour a day!) and the family-friendly ice cream shop (try all thirty-four flavors!). Of course, idiot that I am when I’m hungry, I investigated. My sharper-than-human vision let me see what was going on down the alley: a large man wearing jeans, work boots, and a heavy flannel shirt—and a greasy, dark mullet! Ew!—had a fat girl in purple sweats, pants shoved halfway down to her knees, smashed face first up against the rough, dirty wall of the ice cream shop, fumbling with his pants. Normally, I’d think hm…sounds like some kinky, kinky fun, but the whimpers choked by his forearm pinning her face against the wall (and probably cutting off her air), and the blood dribbling down her face and dripping off of her chin from a busted nose and split lip told me that she really wasn’t into it. So did the scents of fear and revulsion. Like burned vomit

  I smiled. Looked like I had a twenty-ounce steak dinner coming up rather than the take-out Chinese I’d planned. And I wouldn’t be hungry thirty minutes later, either. Probably wouldn’t be hungry for a couple of nights, after dealing with this.

  I put on my ditz act, slipped up the alley and tapped Mr. Humpy (who towered over me by more than a foot) on the middle of his bicep. “Excuse me, but do you know where I could get a really good banana split?”

  “Huh?” Mr. Humpy gaped over his shoulder at me. He looked confused, which was miles away better than raping the brunette he had pinned to the wall. “What the fuck?”

  “Well, I’m not impressed with the service, around here! I don’t like your language!” The ditz act may have covered the sarcasm, but I don’t know. Didn’t really care, as long as the girl got turned loose before I got mine.

  “You wanna meet your maker, you dumb bitch?” he growled, turning muddy brown eyes a little more toward me.

  As his attention had shifted from his intended victim to me, she wrenched away and went running back up the alley, hitching up her sweat pants with one hand and wiping the blood from her upper lip with the other as she went pounding past full speed. I had a brief glimpse of hazel eyes under a short, dark, bob haircut with bangs. The cute little face was tear-streaked, but nowhere near as terrified as I’d expected. Mr. Humpy yelled wordlessly and started after her. I grabbed him by the mullet and swung him into the wall he’d just had the fat chick pinned against. His breath, when it exploded out of him from the impact, smelled of Rocky Road ice cream. His legs went out from under him as his head hit the wall with a hollow thud.

  “I’d love to meet my maker,” I said as I put a foot in the middle of his back and yanked, bowing him backwards to bring his carotid artery down to where I could reach it. I leaned in and inhaled the scents of cheap cologne, body odor, and terror oozing from him. “I owe the sonofabitch a kick to the balls so hard that his grampa feels it.”

  And then I bit him. And it was like the best steak, the best chocolate milkshake and the best sex you’ve ever had in your life, all rolled into one. Details jumped out at me—the feel of Mr. Humpy’s nasty, greasy hair wrapped around my fists; his semi-hard body, muscles under layers of fat, struggling fruitlessly against mine; the hum of traffic, not too far from the entrance of the alley—

  —and the fat chick in her purple sweats less than six feet from me, the blood from her face haphazardly smeared on her sleeve, with an aluminum bat sagging in her grip. Burned vomit smell replaced by a stale popcorn smell of stunned surprise.

  I startled, pulling away from the now-dead rapist’s carotid artery. I let the corpse slide down the wall to hit the ground with a wet thud as the smell of feces and urine filled the air. I glanced down, glad his sphincters hadn’t released until I’d let go. It got really gross when the timing was off. I’d have to remember to thank the fat chick, if she didn’t brain me or run off screaming. “Um…”

  “It doesn’t look like you needed help after all,” she said. Her voice was a little breathy with surprise, but was much stronger than I’d expected.

  “Yeah…” I said faintly. “Not so much. Are you okay?”

  “A little bruised, a couple scrapes, a bit shaken, and really grossed out,” the chick replied, shuddering.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Don’t be. That doesn’t gross me out,” she said, pointing at the corpse. “What grossed me out was that he was all over me, hadn’t bathed in days, stunk, and I’d just gotten out of the shower. I’m glad you were here to help. Otherwise…” her voice trailed off, and she shuddered.

  I nodded. Then I squatted down, and rolled the corpse over, plucking his wallet out of his right back pocket, and flipping it open. Only five bills in the wallet. I pulled them out, folding them up without looking at them, then put the wallet back into his pocket, avoiding the lumpy pile of excrement in the back of his jeans like the pro at this that I was.

  The fat chick—I really had to learn her name—edged over a little closer, looking over my shoulder. “Um…is he dead?”

  “Yep,” I said, rolling him until I could get my hand into his right hip pocket. Managed to not get piss on my hand, too. Keys, and a pocket knife. “If there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s a rapist.” My satisfaction definitely bled through in my voice.

  “Are you robbing his corpse?” She sounded like she wasn’t sure if she felt horrified or fascinated as she kept drifting toward me.

  “Yep,” I replied, rolling him to the other side and fishing out a wad of cash that could
choke a mule from his left hip pocket. Under that was what felt like a Ziploc bag with crushed herbs in it. The smell of pot clung to my fingers as I pulled away. “Why not? I’m only taking the cash, and it’s not like he needs it anymore. Besides, it’s more than likely the local police department would call it drug money and confiscate it anyway.”

  The fat chick stepped up right beside me, rolled dead-boy over, and gingerly fished his wallet back out of his pocket. “What are you doing?” I asked curiously.

  She picked up the untucked tail of the corpse’s flannel shirt and held the wallet carefully, flipping it open and rubbing the shirt over the inside, where my fingers had brushed over the edges of the drivers’ license and credit cards. “Making sure you didn’t leave any fingerprints,” she said shortly. “It’d suck if you got arrested for killing someone saving my non-existent virtue at least, if not my life, and I let you go to jail because you didn’t clean up after yourself.”

  I raised an eyebrow, turning to look at the chick, and noted that she was pale and clammy (as well as bruised and bloody on her right cheek and the side of her nose—but the split on her lip had stopped bleeding, and she no longer had blood oozing from her nostrils, either). “That’s a really interesting reaction,” I said. “In fact, all of your reactions to me have been really interesting.”

  She glanced at me, then back down to the wallet. “Yeah?” She flipped it closed, then tucked it back into the corpse’s back pocket. “How do people usually react?”

  “They run screaming, then convince themselves that they didn’t see what they thought they saw,” I said. “They don’t come back with a baseball bat, ready to brain a would-be rapist, don’t stick around while I’m feeding, and they definitely don’t stick around after the corpse hits the ground.”

  She shrugged one round shoulder. “How many have you saved from being raped?”

  “A lot. Mostly stupid coeds,” I admitted. “I tend to hunt rapists. I don’t kill them, often, though. Look, you’re still shaking. Why don’t you head inside and get some ice cream? I’ll wait for you on that bench over in front of the gym.”

  “Okay, but what about the stuff in his other pockets?” she asked.

  I held my hands up in front of her. “I don’t know if you can see it in the dark, but I don’t have fingerprints. They started to disappear a few days after I woke up in the morgue, and were completely gone within a week.”

  She pursed her lips, eyes sparkling with the same type of odd, dry humor I had. “So, me wiping down the inside of the wallet wasn’t necessary.”

  “Nope.” I stood smoothly, and offered the chick a hand up. She accepted, and gasped as I pulled her all the way to her feet more quickly than she’d expected. She was a lot taller than she’d looked, pinned against the brick wall by what turned out to be a very big man. She was probably about six or eight inches taller than my five foot even. “Name’s Meg Turner.”

  “I’m Andi Donahue,” she replied. “I’d love to take you up on that ice cream, but I don’t have any ice cream money.”

  I fished the bills I’d taken out of dead guy’s wallet out of my pocket and glanced at them, peeling them apart and counting them quickly. Four hundred-dollar bills, and a twenty. I peeled the twenty off and handed it over. “Go get something chocolate. It’ll help with the shakes,” I said before I jerked a thumb toward the bench in front of the closed, college print shop just on the other side of the ice cream place. Closed, but the lights were on inside, and shone out through the window reassuringly. “I’ll be over there.”

  I Don’t Drink…Chocolate Shakes

  I watched the fat chick—Andi—hurry into the brightly lit ice cream store, and wandered slowly from the alley mouth past the gym to the bench in front of the university’s print shop.

  God, I missed chocolate shakes. I hadn’t had even a taste of one since I finally accepted that they made me too sick to move, something like twenty years ago.

  I hadn’t had anything but blood, water, coffee, and tea for twenty goddamn years.

  On the other hand, I hadn’t aged a day since then, either. I might not be able to enjoy the summer sun on my skin anymore (or, for that matter, any sun on my skin), but my skin was still the unlined, unmarred skin I’d had when I’d been killed.

  Better yet, I hadn’t had a period in twenty years. Nor had I been forced to deal with acne.

  I also hadn’t really had an in-real-life friend in twenty years. I had plenty of friends online, and most of my business was conducted online, but there were things that I just couldn’t do. Maybe I didn’t need to grocery shop (though, having Walmart open 24/7 made getting non-grocery sundries a lot easier), but my house was beginning to need repairs, what with leaky pipes, rotten flooring in one of my bathrooms, and a light fixture in one of the spare upstairs bedrooms I’d considered turning into a second office when I got antsy that not only quit working but started smoking, and I had no one to be there to let the plumbers, electricians, and/or carpenters in. No local, real life friends meant no help at all while I was out for the day. And I badly needed the help.

  My thoughts drifted back to Andi, and I considered, again, her reactions. In the first year after I’d been turned, I’d been attacked twice, and seen (and stopped) three more. Almost all of the near-victims had run. The one who hadn’t had been wheelchair bound, and her chair had been dumped over. She’d watched me feed, watching me like a bunny trying to edge away from a snake, using her hands to try to drag herself away bit by bit, making these awful, little terrified sounds. I’d finished up, set her chair up, hypnotized her into forgetting what had happened, then helped her find the group of friends she’d been with before some ass-bag had run off pushing her chair to dump her out in the alley on a lark (she thought).

  I’d had similar experiences (except without the wheelchair bound near-victim) every year since.

  It was impossible to overstate the amount of courage Andi had demonstrated, not just coming back to help, but not fleeing when she saw me finishing up dinner.

  That courage…I couldn’t help but wonder if Andi might be willing to hire out to be the help. I suspected friendship would follow. Anyone that has the ovaries to see a vampire feed (and kill someone), then stick around afterward to make sure there wouldn’t be any forensic evidence left behind probably had an open enough mind to make friends with.

  The other thing was that it was incredibly quiet in the house without the sounds of a living being keeping me company. And the saddest part is that I’d have been thrilled with a pet, but since I woke up dead, that was out of the question. Cats fled, and dogs…dogs cowered, or attacked. Smaller pets just…dropped. Not even reptiles survived long. Their little hearts just couldn’t sustain the levels of terror I inspired in all creatures except humankind.

  Ironic, that. I didn’t eat animals. I did eat humans. Sort of.

  I figured I had a better than even chance to hire her to oversee renovations and repairs, even if we didn’t actually become friends over this.

  A throat clearing next to me on the bench startled me back into the present. Andi was back, cradling a disposable, black plastic bowl containing a brownie, topped with chocolate ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup, Oreo pieces, whipped cream, and chocolate shavings.

  It smelled heavenly.

  “Um…I think there’s enough for both of us,” she offered timidly, holding it out toward me.

  I smiled. “Thanks for the thought, but I react worse than a diabetic. You doing okay?”

  She shivered a little. “No, but I’ll feel a little better after I finish this. I’ll get over it eventually, if you’re talking about Mr. Stiff over in the alley.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was. I wasn’t sure if you were in shock, if you’d processed things, or if this was your normal.”

  “Oh, shock, yes, definitely,” she said wryly. “I’ll probably have the weeping shakes later when I get behind a locked door and feel safe. For a while. Then, it’ll go away, only to rear its ugly head ag
ain when somebody like Mr. Stiff comes in for bail bonding,” she finished, shuddering.

  “You’re a bail bondsman?” I said, surprised.

  “Among other things,” she answered, taking a bite. She paused while she savored the ice cream, then continued. “I’ve got a CJ degree, as of two years ago, and I decided being a cop wasn’t for me. So, bail bonding, and private investigations, because I thought it’d be less likely that I’d have to hurt somebody.” She took another bite, glaring at the pavement. “It’s not worked that way, honestly.”

  I grimaced. “Doesn’t sound like it pays well, either, if you don’t have ice cream money.”

  Andi’s lower lip and chin trembled a little. “Honestly? No. It doesn’t. I lost my apartment a month ago. I’ve been sleeping in my office. I couldn’t pay rent on both. Rent costs in this town haven’t helped, either. I shower here at the gym, otherwise I wouldn’t be using the membership that the wicked bitch west of the Mississippi convinced my father to get me for me for my birthday.”

  I flinched. Yeah, she was a little chunky, but not that bad—and to get her a gym membership? To that particular gym? That went a little beyond just rubbing her face in it. “Nice.”

  “Well, if I couldn’t go into a profession that would be ‘fitting for our family,’ at least I could lose weight and stop ‘disgracing’ them that way,” she said, digging her spoon viciously into the brownie. “My father has, at her insistence, stopped helping me out when jobs are thin. Despite the fact that at least I’m doing something. Her son lives in the pool house, and spends his days playing video games online and smoking dope.” Her eyes narrowed as she spooned the bite of brownie and ice cream into her mouth, chewing on it like she wished she could be sinking her teeth into her step-mother or step-brother. “Pretty sure he’s dealing something, too. If it wasn’t for how much I love my dad, and don’t want him to lose his stuff to the government, I’d have turned my step-brother in for it a long time ago.”