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12
Irving
The morning was overcast; for a vampire this was the perfect weather. Irving’s spirits were much improved, and it wasn’t just because of the weather. As he read the local paper and sipped his blood, he hummed a latin song. He normally didn’t bother scanning through the newspaper as he found the majority of the reports dull, but this was a different morning. This was the morning following the day he managed to get Sage back.
“That’s an old tune,” Blake remarked. “Since when do you hum at the breakfast table? Last I checked you hated mornings, along with afternoons and evenings.”
Every day Irving and his brothers started things off by sitting in the lounge, sipping their blood cocktails and discussing vampire related matters. Irving didn’t much participate in his brothers’ gossip, as it usually pertained to the humans they were dating in the Fang Club.
“He’s won back the affections of the mortal woman,” Cameron spoke.
“Thank god for that!” Blake exclaimed. “I was nearing my wits end with the many instrumental versions of Beethoven’s sonatas.”
“Indeed,” Cameron agreed. “I wouldn’t have minded the violin so much if it had been tuned properly.”
Irving swiftly ceased his humming. “Why must you both mock me so? Can’t you just once in your lives be happy for me?”
Cameron chuckled, almost choking on his swig of blood. “We tease because we care. You needn’t be so serious all the time. We’ve been alive far too long to take matters sternly.”
“I’ll drink to that!” Blake declared, raising his glass of blood.
“The pair of you make for quite the comedic duo,” Irving remarked with a sardonic eye roll. “If this place was run by a monarchy I’d suggest you both work as jesters to entertain the royals.”
“Mmmm, royal blood,” Blake said, with a dreamy sigh.
Irving was thankful to be pulled away by the ringing of the phone. His brothers’ antics were absurd. There had been a time where they’d both held passions, but after living for so long they’d become apathetic and flippant in their ways. This was likely the reason why they failed to comprehend Irving’s condition.
“Good morning this is Irving Garrow at the Church and Chapel funeral home, how can I help you?” Irving delivered the sentiment as though he was a robot programmed to do so. His brothers snickered at his monotony.
“Hi, Irving, it’s Sage. I need your help.” There was an urgency in the woman’s voice that Irving recognized. She’d held a similar tone during the night when someone had tried to break into her house.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Harper’s missing. When I woke up this morning, I found her room empty,” Sage explained. Irving didn’t need to hear anymore. He told her he would be over right away and hung up the phone.
“This mortal seems rather needy,” Blake commented. Irving hated that, as vampires, they had the ability to hear all of his phone conversations.
“I’m taking the car,” Irving announced, ignoring his brother’s jab.
Irving drove far faster than he needed to, arriving at Sage’s house only ten minutes after she’d called him.
“That was fast,” Sage said when she opened the door.
“I defiled every speed limitation,” Irving stated. Sage’s expressed concern - what if he gotten into an accident or was stopped by police? “It’s okay,” Irving told her, “I can easily survive a car crash, and if I was to be stopped by a policeman I could hypnotise him into thinking I was innocent.
“Well that’s reassuring,” Sage replied, though she sounded far from it.
She then informed him that she’d contacted the authorities and that they were on their way.
As if on cue, a police cruiser pulled along the side of the road in front of the property. Sage rushed out the door; Irving followed, ensuring to close the door behind him.
If they ask to see my driver’s license, I’m going to have to hypnotise them,he thought. Irving hadn’t bothered to renew his license since its invention. There was no point, as he could always use his mind-bending powers to confuse the police. Besides that, the card licenses used contained a photograph of the owner. Being that Irving was a vampire, his image would not show up in a photo.
“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?,” the male officer asked. There were two of them: a woman and a man. The man was broad and rather short, while the woman was both taller and thinner than average.
Sage explained her situation, while Irving attempted to look innocent. Before the infiltration of vampires in the phlebotomy labs, as well as the developments that allowed for venipuncture and donations, Irving had been forced to kill for his blood. Hunting had never been a sport he’d particularly enjoyed.
After biting a human, Irving would make certain they were dead. The last thing he wanted was for someone else to experience the curse of being a vampire. He would then have to determine a method of disposing of the corpse. His solution was to become a funeral director. What better way of hiding a dead body than by going into the business of dead bodies? Even so, Irving had dealt with the authorities on numerous occasions, and they’d never ended well. For this reason, he felt nervous whenever he was around them.
