All In:Playing the Fool(54)

I really should give the guy some slack though. There didn't seem to be  an end in sight for his feline days. He'd showed me how to do the spell  reversal, and we'd tried it at least a dozen times, but using his kitty  blood was always a no-go. Dumb ass.

When the alarm went off again I finally rolled out of the warm cozy bed  and headed to the bathroom. I did remember to lock the bathroom door  before I found my way to the toilet. My eyes were still closed as I took  a piss then turned on the shower and got undressed.

As soon as the steaming water in the shower hit me I finally started to  wake up. I washed my face then scrubbed my head with shampoo, feeling  more and more like myself. Then I really woke up as my washcloth grazed  my morning wood.

Finishing that task only reminded me of my lack of a love life, but it's  hard to form lasting relationships with women when you're a disgusting  leech.

I grabbed the plush green towel from the rack beside the shower and ran  it over my body before using it to dry my dark blonde hair. Damn, I was  in desperate need of a haircut, but I just didn't give a shit. I could  use a shave too, but didn't feel like wasting the time on it.

I brushed my perfectly straight white teeth, pulled on the clinic's  white logo polo, a pair of jeans and my grey New Balances, then I was  out the door.

Shit! My foot was hovering on the first step of the porch when I  remembered I didn't feed Chris. I reluctantly turned back around and  unlocked the front door, heading to the kitchen. He could just rip open  the bag of food with his claws if he got hungry enough, but then I'd be  the one who'd have to eventually clean up the mess.

"Hey, Chris," I yelled. "Do you want bologna or cat food today?"

A second later he came bouncing all nimbly-pimbly into the kitchen from  his bedroom, directly across from mine. "Bologna! And make it two  slices," he answered.

Since he'd been a cat, his food preferences had tended to be that of a  regular feline, which was fine with me. Bologna and cat food were cheap,  and saved me a shitload of money at the grocery store.

"Fine. Here," I said as I threw the slices on a plate and sat it down on  the floor. I hated when he ate on the counter, getting his little white  and orange hairs all over everything.

"Thanks man. See ya' after work," he told me.

I turned on the TV in the living room for the poor bastard, then went  back out the front door again, this time actually making it to and  sitting down in my blue trash filled Mazda 3 Sport.

Looking at the clock on the dash I had a good five minutes to spare, so I  made a detour for a caffeine and sugar rush. Luckily the drive thru  lane at Donut World was short, and with four coffees and a dozen  doughnuts for myself and my equally grouchy coworkers, I headed to the  clinic. It would be my Happy Fucking Friday gift to them.

On blood drive days I'm supposed to check in at our headquarters  downtown by eight a.m. to get everything packed up before we hit the  road. I work at the local blood bank, but usually once a week we take  our enormous blood mobile out around the community.

It was a little over eight years ago that I had the brilliant idea to go  to school and get my certification in phlebotomy. Even as a vampire, I  was one lazy son of a bitch. Having to go out and find my own blood  sources was too stressful and tedious, especially when giving in to one  lust usually led to the other.         

     



 

Why go through all that trouble of finding someone to bite when I could  just work at the place that always had a supply? It's like they were  paying me to survive. I don't call taking a bag of blood here or there  "stealing" per say. I know humans need the blood donated for accidents  and surgeries and all that other blah, blah, blah. But what I do is a  freaking public service. Besides, I try to only drink the bad shit.

Since I've been consuming blood for over fifty-eight years I can smell  and taste the difference between healthy, sick, and really sick donor  blood. Over the years, each and every time I've sniffed or slurped one  of the closet deathbed cases, I've been a damn fine Samaritan. I get  their phone number from their records, call them right up and tell them  that our "laboratory tests" suggest they have an illness, and they  should contact their doctor immediately. I've lost count of the number  of lives I've possibly saved. Of course our tests will show when someone  has HIV and a few other diseases, and the donor might get notified  weeks or months after they donate. My way is much quicker.

I pulled into my parking spot in front of the rundown brick building  almost ten minutes late, and noticed all three of my coworkers were  already there. They overlooked my lateness however, when I walked in the  door and they saw what was in my hands. All three ladies converged on  me with a, "Thanks, Sam," to grab up breakfast and devour it at their  desks so we could hit the road.

Doris was the oldest and shrewdest of my three female coworkers, and  technically my boss. In her fifties with salt and pepper hair, spare  tire around her midsection, and permanent frown, she scared the shit out  of me until I realized she wasn't as mean as she looked.

Then there was Anna. She was in her mid-thirties and a single mom with  two small brats. She'd given up on appearances and rocked her ponytail  every day without the care or hope of ever finding a man. She'd only  been here at the clinic a few years longer than I had, and she pretty  much kept to herself, just trying to get through the daily exhaustion  that was her life.

Finally there was Betsy, the anti-Doris. Always happy and pleasant to  the point of annoyance, she was just out of college and still acted  childish. She showed up to work today, just like every day, as if we  were having a damn beauty pageant. Her face was caked with bright colors  making her look like a clown, and her bad blonde dye job was sticking  out and smelled like it held a can of hairspray. I knew Betsy had a  thing for me but she was so not my type, and I didn't just mean her  blood.

I wasted no time putting down my two doughnuts and coffee. Hell yes I  still had to eat and drink regular food, even though I happen to be a  bloodsucker. Then, since I was the only male in the building, it was  time for me to start loading up all the heavy boxes and equipment onto  the bus.

All three of the women were the stereotypical horrible drivers, so I  took over the blood mobile's huge steering wheel, and we made our way  through honking rush hour traffic to one of the local colleges. I was  all too familiar with the perfectly landscaped and picturesque campus of  Madison University.

As every guy in this town knew, Madison had an overwhelming majority of  rich bitches attending, most of them all caught up in their artsy-fartsy  majors. Twice a year the sorority girls took a timeout from their  partying and hazing to hold blood drives. It gave them the chance to put  out signs and get on the local news, bolstering their "community  service" image.

On a good day the school could usually get about fifty of the four  thousand students to donate. Forty-five of those donated to get out of  class for the entire day, and the other five gave just because they were  decent human beings.

By nine-thirty we already had two takers, or givers as the case may be.  The first went to sourpuss Doris, and the second to scatterbrained Anna.  Since Betsy was still learning the ropes and mostly doing the  administrative paper shuffle, it meant I was up next.

I was still arranging my supplies in the tiny cramped work area on the  back of the bus when I heard Betsy tell our next contestant to come on  down. I turned around with my professional smile to greet my first  donor, then instantly frowned and let out a sigh. Of all the people that  could walk through my blood mobile, it was just my luck that I would  get stuck with her.





Chapter Two




Kate Adams



I was already awake and getting ready when my alarm went off at eight  a.m. Since I had nothing else to do other than study, I'd been going to  bed by ten p.m. most nights. God my life sucked. I thought college would  be different, that I would be different here.

After a year of begging my father to let me leave the house for college I  was shocked when he finally agreed. I couldn't wait to get to  Greensboro, North Carolina and finally live on my own. I thought my  father had given in because of the full scholarship Madison had offered  me, but I had been so wrong. I should have been more suspicious of his  agreement, especially since for the last eighteen years, he hadn't let  me out of the house. Shit, I couldn't even hang out on weekends with the  few friends I had from my all-girls Catholic school.         

     



 

After freshman orientation I knew exactly why he was so gung-ho for me  to come here. It might as well have been a nunnery. And I could've made  do with the fifteen percent male population, if fourteen percent of them  weren't gay. I could count on one hand how many possibly straight guys  I'd come across in the three weeks since school started. To top it off, I  was a nursing major, so there was no way I'd meet a decent straight guy  there. Hell, at this point I'd take an indecent one.