Page 10 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

He scrolled past useless notifications from friends he hadn’t spoken to since high school until finally, he saw what they must have been referring to. He gripped his phone so tight that a crack split down the glass screen, catching himself just before his vampiric strength fully crushed it.

bloodsucking memes for immortal non-teens (new england clan)

Brennan put his fingers to his temples while staring at the newly cracked screen, the name alone giving him a headache. This was, apparently and unfortunately, his life now.

“If he didn’t RSVP then he didn’t get the welcome pack, Nel,” said Sunny.

“Oh, gosh, you must have had one heck of a confusing week,” Binder Girl (Nel?) was saying, digging through her backpack under the table and pulling out a thick folder. She pushed it toward Brennan, obstructing his view of his phone. “I have physical copies on hand for this very reason!”

He sank into one of the open seats and cautiously took the folder. It was bright red and had a neat label in the upper corner that said VAMPIRE ORIENTATION .

“That’s not the reason,” Sunny corrected with a wry smile. To Brennan, she added, “Physical copies are all she knows how to do. Nellie’s still figuring out how the internet works. She just learned what a PDF was two weeks ago.”

“It’s the moving picture one,” Nellie said with such pride that Brennan hated to burst her bubble, but Sunny had no such hesitations.

“That’s a GIF, sweetheart.”

Nellie huffed in frustration. “I don’t get why it matters.”

“So, making sure I have this straight, you guys are vampires ?” Brennan said, his heart picking up speed with something like hope. “Vampire Orientation” meant they were here to help, right? His headache deepened, temples throbbing.

Sunny and Nellie looked at him then and it was like a university stock image with purposefully diverse models, both girls perfectly put-together and beautiful with twin smiles and amused eyes, like they were charmed by his disbelief.

They didn’t look scary, or dangerous. They just seemed like people.

“I’m Nellie. I do community outreach,” said Nellie. “Sunny does surveillance, which is a fancy way of saying she stalks people on social media.”

“I’m very good at it,” Sunny added.

Before Brennan could respond or really process either of those introductions, a new figure approached and loomed over the table.

The newcomer was short and plump, white with a round face. Her arms were crossed in front of her stomach like she was trying to make herself smaller. She was wearing winged eyeliner and a frumpy sweater.

And, more important: she was, without a doubt, the person he had seen at the place he had died.

Driving a car that had possibly killed him.

Her hair was darker now, an inky black straight from a box, but it was her, he was sure of it.

Brennan shot up from his seat, alarm bells going off in his head, but he managed to bite his tongue while she scanned the table, eyes flickering over Sunny, Nellie, and finally Brennan.

When they locked eyes, he could tell there were complex calculations going on behind hers.

Whatever it added up to, she didn’t seem satisfied.

“You must be Dominique!” Nellie said, springing up to give her an enthusiastic handshake.

Dominique crossed toward the table with slow, small steps, casing the room like she was looking for exits.

“It’s just Dom,” she said.

It was so pretentiously mysterious that Brennan couldn’t help it. He snorted. Nellie shot Brennan a dirty look, but Dom’s mouth curved into an amused closed-lip smile.

And somehow, her smiling like they shared some secret was what pissed him off enough to say, “We’ve met, I think. You were driving the car that killed me.”

Dom arched an eyebrow. “And you were the idiot standing in the middle of the road that made me crash into a tree.”

“Come on, guys,” Nellie cut in. “I totally want you guys to get to know each other, but we do have an agenda I’d love to stick to.”

Brennan narrowed his eyes at Dom and she stared back, unperturbed. Reluctantly, Brennan took his seat at the table. Dom followed suit.

Nellie clapped her hands together in the universal camp-counselor signal to begin a meeting. “Great, now we’re all here, let’s get started.”

She launched into an impassioned speech that somehow sounded exactly like the speech Brennan’s RAs and orientation leaders had given in his freshman year of college.

Lots of stuff about a scary time of transition and stepping out of your comfort zone and community and we’re here as a resource.

Sunny sat silently next to her, sipping her iced coffee while scrolling one-handed through her phone.

With Nellie’s intense focus not on Brennan, he finally turned to the folder she had given him, which was near bursting with little pamphlets that could have been cutting-edge designs in the ’90s, with the WordArt and Comic Sans.

There had to be hundreds of them, and dozens of others folded up like zines.

They must have been added over time, because each one seemed to reference another ten or more pamphlets, forming an endless chain of leafing through papers.

Heaven help him, he was gonna make an organization and filing system the second he got home.

So You’re a Vampire; Now What?

The Modern Vampire’s Guide to Drinking Blood Safely and Politely

What Your Clan and Clan Leaders Can Do for You (and What You Can Do for Your Clan!)

And on and on into specifics that Brennan had yet to even consider in all the pages of questions in his journal. His head throbbed faintly. Did Advil work on vampires? Or was he thirsty, yet again? It was exhausting trying to keep up.

On his phone, the Facebook group had post after post about vampirism written by, allegedly, vampires.

The number on the screen taunted him. There were thirty-two people in the New England vampires group.

So many, but also, so few. It gave Brennan the strange warm feeling in his stomach he’d gotten when he first learned about bisexuality, then depression, and then anxiety.

The deep comfort and the deep-seated dread of not being alone in the world.

There were a few frequent posters in the group, including Sunny and Nellie and a few others spread out in Maine and Vermont.

One post mentioned a blood drive and blood collection, another advertised that some old, powerful vampire was doing a meetup.

Nellie and Sunny posted a lot about when they’d be in different cities—Providence, Portland, Boston, and beyond in an endless rotation.

“—and that’s why it’s so important to have trust and transparency within the vampire community,” Nellie said, finally stopping for air.

“Did you get a chance to look at the pamphlet ‘Finding Your Clan’? It’s about the types of clans, the different laws and cultures, and how to transfer if you want a different lifestyle.

” She waited expectantly but was met with blank faces.

Brennan, of course, hadn’t read it, and Dom was picking at a hangnail, barely paying attention.

Nellie’s mouth twitched into a frown, and Sunny didn’t even look up from her phone to put a manicured, placating hand on her shoulder for a second before grabbing her coffee again.

“So, just for housekeeping purposes,” Nellie said, “the New England clan is an urban clan. We stay under the radar, and we don’t attack humans, ever, at all, period.”

Brennan nodded, because, yeah, definitely, he was on board with not murdering people. But then—

“Um, sorry,” Dom interrupted Nellie’s latest ramble and Brennan’s racing thoughts. “So that’s it? You guys keep it secret, drink donated blood, and act like everything’s normal?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that’s it, ” Nellie said. “We also provide community and resources—”

“I’m supposed to keep quiet and act like my entire world didn’t explode? Like I couldn’t kill someone with my bare teeth if I wanted to?”

Brennan flinched.

“Come on,” Dom continued, “tell me about the dark powers, the freaky shit!”

“Well,” Nellie started, neatening the papers in her binder, “there are other clans you could transfer to if we aren’t able to meet your needs.”

“Meaning that there are clans that do kill people?” Brennan said. He shuffled through the folder of pamphlets, trying to find the one Nellie had mentioned.

Nellie and Sunny exchanged looks.

“You can read up on it later,” Nellie said, gentle but firm.

Sunny finally put down her phone and leaned forward to look closer at Brennan. She was intimidatingly beautiful, with perfectly understated makeup. Her eyes flashed a warning. Brennan was reminded again that these were vampires, capable of things he didn’t understand yet, and he swallowed hard.

“Obviously it seems strange from a human perspective,” Sunny said, far less gently than Nellie. “It’s an option, for some vampires.”

“But not in the city!” Nellie interjected. “The pamphlets have a map of borders and clan laws by area, but the point is, we don’t kill here, and we all have to protect each other by following that.”

He finally found the “Finding Your Clan” pamphlet.

It unfolded thrice as much as he expected, like a tourist’s map.

There was a complex map, first of the US and then of New England, all sorts of color-coded borders labeling different jurisdictions.

But what Brennan wanted was below it, a description of vampire clans.

A quick scan gave this information:

Urban—live among humans… sustenance from clan-run blood drives… maintain secrecy

Nomads—travel from city to city… hunt bits at a time in unclaimed cities and rural areas… rules to avoid overhunting and threats to secrecy

Colonies—traditional… established fortresses of vampires and thralls… captive human farms and thralls provide sustenance

Brennan’s stomach turned, and he slammed the pamphlet closed as if that would make the information go away. His head was spinning in that unpleasant, too-many-thoughts, loud-brain way. His therapist would say—his therapist would tell him to—

“If you… did something,” Nellie said, slow and careful, and Brennan couldn’t look away from the orange paper of the pamphlet, “when you first turned, it’s okay. If you’re honest about it now, we can handle it.”

He stood from his seat, pushing away abruptly with a loud scrape that had even Dom looking up from her fingernails.

“You realize that none of this is normal ?” Brennan demanded, his chest getting tight, like the room was getting smaller, hotter. “You’re talking about human beings! You’re talking about murdering human beings! Like, people. ”

“Brennan, let’s not get confrontational here,” Nellie was saying in a placating therapist’s voice that only annoyed him. “We want to be open and honest, even if you make mistakes.”

“Mistakes? An overdue library book is a mistake, biting and killing someone isn’t a mistake.”

He didn’t know how to convey the importance of that, the fact that they were talking casually over brunch about covering up baby vampires’ first kills.

Of course, vampires were dark creatures; that was their whole schtick.

Of course murder would seem like nothing, the lives of humans minuscule in the scale of their long lives.

How old were Nellie and Sunny, really? How many humans had they bitten?

Underneath their deceivingly human exteriors, were they monsters?

Was Brennan a monster, too?

A choked sob pulled Brennan from spiraling, and Dom started to cry, curled in on herself.

Nellie and Sunny regarded both of them like fires to be put out.

Brennan swallowed around a thickness in his throat, taking in the way Dom’s shoulders shook, the way she held back whimpers like she was used to crying quietly.

Maybe she was as lost and confused as Brennan, but her expression wasn’t one of horror—it was guilt.

And Brennan knew then that Dom had killed someone.

Whether it was the girl missing at his school or not, he would have to find out.

The thought made him sick to his stomach—both at the realization, and his own guilt as he watched her cry.

Was he being an asshole, or was he the only one being rational?

Even worse were the worried gazes of Sunny and Nellie. He couldn’t stand it. He could never stand others’ concern, even when it was justified.

“Let’s take a walk, Brennan,” Nellie said, voice as cheerful as before. But she caught Brennan’s eye with the sort of intent that said he didn’t have a choice.

He didn’t, really. Either walk away and forfeit the treasure trove of knowledge he’d finally found, or pretend he was fine with murder to appease these new and fashionable vampires.

Brennan bit back a groan, proud enough to resist sounding like a kid complaining after getting in trouble with the teacher, and grumbled, “Let’s.”