Fangs For The Memories: Part 6 (The Ooo-Spooky Witchy Chicks Round Robin Story)

“I just need to ask you…”

Mal petered off, looking away from me as though even he couldn’t bear to say the words. Considering he was a vampire who witch-napped me right off the street while I was minding my own business, I thought it was a little rich. I wasn’t a particularly patient person to begin with, and unluckily for Mal, I was officially done playing his games.

“Ask me what?” I snapped, my temper firing up enough that sparks crackled from my fingertips now that I had my magic back. “You yank me off the street, subject me to your morose bullshit, and then think you have the right to ask me a favor? Man,” I scoffed, planting my hands on my hips. “Didn’t realize being immortal also gave you the right to be so damn entitled!”

I set my jaw, fully prepared to stare the bloodsucker down if he ever looked back my way. But instead his shoulders heaved with a long-suffering sigh, and he kept avoiding my gaze.

“You’re right,” he agreed, his voice low and despondent. “I’m sorry. You can leave if you want. Take my car back to your friend’s party…”

I frowned, only just able to stop myself from rolling my eyes. This fanged fiend might be hot–I was a woman, not a lady–but his Poor Little Me act was really beginning to tick me off.

“I’m not stealing your car,” I declared haughtily. “I have morals, unlike some people.”

“That’s exactly what got me into this mess in the first place,” Mal muttered glumly.

“What?” I asked, intrigued against my own better judgement. The guy had told me I could vamoose–so why did I want to even know what he was talking about? My granny always told me that curiosity killed the cat. I better not let it kill the witch, too.

Mal glanced at me sharply, those strange red-ringed irises of his suddenly looking more alive than I had seen them during our short acquaintance. “I wasn’t made vampire by another of my kind. I was made vampire by a witch’s curse.”

Anyone else might have gasped with shock. Not me. I knew that if a witch had cursed his ass then she’d of had a damn good reason for it. 

“What’d you do to her?” I challenged him, expecting him to snap back at me defensively.

All I received in response was a wry smile, the tips of his fangs brushing against his bottom lip as a timely reminder that he could rip my throat out in a matter of seconds if he thought I was getting a little too big for my boots.

“I spurned her romantic advances,” he confessed. “Well. Truth me told, I was a toal jerk to her when I found out she liked me.”

That’s when the penny dropped.

“And you want me to break the curse,” I said slowly, having a horrible feeling that I knew where this was going.

Mal shrugged. “Only if you refuse to de-fang me.”

“I am not ripping your fangs out and getting vampire blood all over my outfit.” 

We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. he sharpness of his features definitely had a kind of mysterious allure to them, and I could only imagine what he would have been like in life; tall, lean-but-muscular, witty. Hell, I’d probably have fallen for him too, so I couldn’t blame my sister-witch too much for succumbing to his charms. 

“How do I break the damn curse?” I asked, eventually.

Mal pressed his lips together, as though plucking up the courage to tell me. “You need to kiss me,” he explained. “And it needs to be… er. Romantic.”

Whoomp! (There it is).

My suspicions confirmed, I felt my insides do a somersault. Kiss a vampire? I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do it at all, let alone romantically! Not to mention that I wasn’t even sure if such a thing was logistically possible. Would his fangs puncture my lips? Would that make me a vampire? And what if…

“I assure you, it’s perfectly safe,” Mal said, interrupting my thoughts like he’d been reading them right out of my head. And then he looked very sheepish, because that’s exactly what he had been doing. Which meant he had heard all of my other thoughts about him too. Oh fu–

“Don’t worry about any of that,” he cut off my inner monologue sharply, with a glance at the clock. “If we’re going to try this, we need to hurry. It has to be done before the full moon on Halloween.”

“Of course it does,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes for the second time.

He smirked at me. “You down, or what?”

At this point I was kind’ve down for anything that would get me the hell out of here and back to Tuck’s party. My friend had probably called the authorities by now. 

“Fine!” I agreed testily. “But no tongue!”

“Suits me,” Mal smirked down at me, waiting. “So how do you want to–”

But I didn’t wait for him to finish his question. I closed the gap between us, standing on the very tippy-toes of my granny boots so that I could lock my hands together behind his strong but icy-cold neck. Another heartbeat saw my lips connect with his softly, and I closed my eyes so that I wouldn’t see anything. I needed to feel this in order for it to be romantic. 

I let nature take over. My body was flush with his in an instant, and I was more than pleasantly surprised to find that my initial wonderings about how this would feel were wrong–it felt so much better than I had imagined it. His strong arms circled my waist, cool hands splayed against my back in a way that made my warm flesh feel like it was actual fire.

A moan escaped me, and after being shocked by y own wantoness for a split-second I decided to hall with that as well! I pressed myself closer to the vampire and gave myself over to my desire for him, letting my tongue slip past his deadly fangs and dance with his. 

Feeling everything to be romantic was one thing. Guess I just felt it all a little too much.

But I could tell that he needed this too. The way he held me was needy, almost desperate. I felt my fingers slip up into his glossy locks as though by their own accord, and when he made a deep growl of approval during our kiss I knew that I had to stop now–or try explaining this all to Tuck. I broke the kiss, one hand on Mal’s cheek and the other in his hair, and glanced up to see his reaction.

If he had needed air to live, the guy’d have been breathless for sure. He looked almost dazed for a minute, before hitting me with the full force of that devilish grin of his. 

“What happened to the ‘no tongue’ rule?” he asked cheekily.

“Did I break the curse or not?” I asked, not willing to discuss my shortcomings at this particular moment in time.

Mal glanced down at himself, suddenly unsure, before meeting my gaze with a smirk. “I don’t think so. Let’s try it again, just to be sure.”

My hand left his cheek and thwacked him on the shoulder playfully. “Not funny. And your favor is done. Time to take me to my friend’s house, lover-boy.”

It wasn’t until we were on our way back to town that I realized how stupid I’d been.

“I can’t believe I fell for that,” I lamented as we drove, my forehead resting against the window of the fancy town car as I watched trick-or-treaters streaming along the sideway beside us.

“Just think… if you’d de-fanged me, I never would have kissed you.”

“I kissed you,” I corrected him, my feistiness back in spades.

Mal paused, glancing at me quickly from behind the wheel. He had a funny look on his face that I couldn’t quite decipher. “You sure?” he asked, looking decidedly paler than his already pallid complexion.

“Positive,” I declared, smugly, until I noticed that Mal had started glowing. But that was only second in concern to the fact that he was swerving all over the road. “Wait! What the hell!?”

Mal lost control of the car, which mounted the kerb–mercifully without hitting any little kids in costumes. I squealed as we ran straight into a familiar-looking letterbox, taking out a cute-looking skeleton couple holding a ‘Til Death Do Us Part’ sign between them.

It took me a minute, but I threw the car door open and stumbled around to the driver’s side and wrenched open Mal’s door. At least… I thought it was Mal.

The guy behind the wheel was still tall, with an aquiline nose and full lips made for kissing. But his skin was a very normal colour, and his cheeks were flushed.

“Mal?” I whispered in disbelief, looking him over.

“Lydia?” he replied, blinking as though he couldn’t believe his very human eyes, either. “I…”

But we were both interrupted by Tuck, who had coming flying out of his house like a bat out of Dracula’s castle.

“What the actual eye of newt, Lydia? I only just bought those this year!” He eyed Mal suspiciously. “And why have you been out picking up hotties, instead of being here like you were supposed to? Although I might not complain if you’re happy to share–Hi, I’m Tuck.”

Tuck offered Mal his most charming smile, batting his eyelashes for effect. Tuck was dressed as a zombie, complete with fake rotting hand, which he extended to Mal by way of introduction.

“Mal,” the vampire-formerly-known-as stated, eyeing Tuck’s gross-looking hand before reaching out to shake it hesitantly. 

“Are you coming?” Tuck asked me. “People are waiting. I’ll look after Tall, Dark, and.. available?” he asked Mal, linking arms with him in a bid to hasten him up the porch steps inside. 

Mal’s eyes, now a dark, velvety brown, looked to me first. “Nah,” he told Tuck, a glint of mischief in his gaze before he looked away from me. “I’m with the witch.”