Page 69 of Zombies, Satyrs and Vampires, Oh My!

chapter

eleven

Hudson

“Hudson, you need to come over here,” Chester yells.

“Give me a minute,” I say.

“No. You’re gonna want to be here right the fuck now!”

I turn to where he’s pointing and race in that direction because when Chester is serious, it means the situation is serious.

What I see makes the old dead heart in my chest seize. There is some sort of creature—I don’t know what the fuck it is—that looks like a cross between a lizard and a caterpillar. Creepy. He’s got someone wrapped in a cocoon of sorts.

Then I recognize the someone as I meet panicked brown eyes.

“Put her down! We do not abduct unsuspecting humans!” That’s what I say because I’m used to being civil. What I want to do is squeeze his neck—necks?—until his head pops off. “Let her go,” I grit.

“No,” he says in a clipped voice. “Mine.”

“The fuck she is!” My fangs are tingling and the urge to bite, to maim, to kill surges through me.

“Hudson,” Chester yells. He interjects himself in between us. “Slime monster. Evidently the oozy stuff is a type of paralytic. You need to take her to your suite and wash it all off of her. Right now. I’ll take care of bug boy.”

His words penetrate my brain and enable me to calm down to some extent. It’s far more pressing for me to save Rosie than it is for me to kill this idiot. Thankfully one of the cool things I can do as a vampire is move super fast. I’ve grabbed her from his arms and am halfway out of the lobby before he realizes what has happened.

“I’m so sorry, Rosebud, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I’m going to fix it, all of it. I promise.”

She makes a noise like she’s trying to talk, but it just comes out a bit like she’s playing a kazoo.

I race into my suite and into the bathroom where I deposit her in the bathtub. When I moved here, I added a state-of-the-art shower for myself that’s built for me to stand beneath it properly. Most showers I would have to bend myself nearly in half to get my hair wet. But this tub still has an attached shower head.

She stares up at me with those beautiful eyes. How has she come to mean so much to me in such a short amount of time? She’s worked with me for a while now, but until today, we might as well have lived on different planets.

The slime has seeped into her clothes and imprisoned her in a pseudo mummified case. Chester said to wash her off. I turn the water on.

“Can you close your eyes at all?” I ask. The encasement has left that part of her body open like she’s wearing a body mask and only her eyes are visible.

She slowly closes them, and I aim the water spray right at her. It takes far too long for the slime to begin to melt out of her hair and off the sides of her face.

“This smells terrible,” she says through her teeth.

I laugh, because of course my Rosebud isn’t even phased by any of this. She’s a survivor. I guess we have that in common.

“If I could cut this damn fabric off of you, that might ease the paralysis faster.” I don’t keep any knives or scissors in the bathroom though and I’m not about to leave her side. So, I do the only thing I can think of. I lean forward and grab the neckline of her t-shirt with my fangs, then I pull backwards. The shirt rips clean in two.

“Ermegard. That’s hot!” she says, through her clenched jaw.

She’s the epitome of hot in her basic white bra which is now soaked through and completely transparent. Her nipples are tight, pressing up against the fabric.

My cock hardens. Now is not really the time, buddy!

I lift her body to turn her so I can fully remove the shirt and get the water on her back.

Her eyes widen in fear, and she makes indecipherable noises of protest.

“What’s the matter, Rosebud? I’ve got to clean it all off of you. The sooner the better so it doesn’t have lasting effects.”