06 Aug Off the Menu

Unincorporated Jefferson County, Missouri

“Yes!” Hector Vasquez shouted as he gave his partner a high five. “Another sucker and another 2 Gs to our Mexico account!” He leaned back in his gamer’s chair with a satisfied grin on his face.

It had been a good night—the pair had fleeced $12,000 from local parents. Their con, while technical, was simple: They identified several marks before scouring social media for any clips of a loved one speaking. With just a seconds-long clip of audio, Hector’s partner Joseph Moloney would use AI to create audio of them in trouble. Hector would then call the mark using spoofing software to disguise the burner number to ensure they answered. Next, Hector would tell a wild story about a kidnapping and demand a ransom. (The two men preferred transfers via gift card or crypto.) Joseph would artfully intersperse the call with the loved one’s voice crying or begging the mark to just pay up.

About half the time, the mark would pay up. The other half, the mark was savvy, kept their wits about them, and figured out the scam. Those calls would end in shouting matches and impotent threats.

“Who’s next?” Hector asked.

“All that’s left is the special request,” Joseph said, wariness in his voice.

Hector grinned—Cassandra Robertson. Not all the cons were about wire transfers. Her meager social media presence showed a timeless beauty with coppery red hair, pale skin, and ruby-red lips. Her Facebook Reels revealed an Irish lilt to her accent.

“Think if we claim she didn’t take the bait I could keep her for myself?” Hector joked.

“Mr. Shefari wouldn’t like that,” Joseph said solemnly.

The kingpin freaked them both out. Mr. Shefari was a small man but exuded an intensity that intimidated all around him. He normally kept his distance from the seedy activities, letting others do his dirty work and take the risk of running afoul of law enforcement. But every so often, he would contact them directly with a specific target in mind.

“But I get what you’re saying. There’s something about her that almost makes even me hot under the collar.”

Hector felt the hot flush of jealousy as it flashed across his face. His friend’s smile only made him angrier.

“Hey, buddy,” Joseph said with a grin, “I said almost.”

“What do we know about her?” Hector asked, changing his tone to indicate a pseudo-professional shift in focus.

“She’s a barista at the coffee shop Mr. Shefari gets his morning joe at,” Joseph said, going through their target’s scant social media footprint. “Looks like she moved to St. Louis to attend Wash U, majoring in history. No local family, only one friend—a girl named Kate—and that’s where we caught our break. Cassandra doesn’t have much of an online life, but Kate is a wannabe influencer. I was able to get a great sample from her TikTok.” Joseph pressed a button, and a terrified young woman’s voice reverberated through his high-fidelity computer speakers.

“Help me, Cassandra! He’s going to kill me! Do what they want!” The shrieking was followed by deep AI-generated sobs.

Hector unconsciously shuddered at the sound. Something about the artificial voices screaming and crying for help disturbed what little humanity he had left. “Okay, enough. Let’s get this over with.” He picked up his phone and made the adjustments to his app that would cause Kate’s phone number to display on Cassandra’s phone.

His heart raced as it always did when he made these calls. This wasn’t the same as trying to get some boomer to buy a gift card or even log into their bank accounts and give the men access to their life savings. While those calls took planning, if they failed, they would normally just miss out on a payday, which sucked, but at least they would live. If he wasn’t on his A game with the girls like Cassandra Robertson, it would be his and Joseph’s asses in Mr. Shefari’s sling.

He closed his eyes, whispered a little prayer, and dialed as Joseph began playing a recording of highway noise.

Cassandra picked up on the second ring. “Kate?”

“This isn’t Kate,” Hector growled into the phone.

“Who is this?” The voice on the other side immediately started to sound nervous.

“It’s none of your business who the fuck I am. What is your business is that your friend and I had a little fender bender, and the bitch won’t let it go!” Hector shouted the last couple of words into the receiver as he got into character. “I didn’t want to get the cops involved, but she wouldn’t take my money and …”

“Cassandra, please! He’s got a gun! He’s–” the AI voice of Kate screamed in the background against the cacophony of St. Louis rush-hour traffic.

“Shut up, twat!” Hector screamed back. “I told her she could leave, but she insisted on trying to call the cops.”

“He’s going to kill me!” the AI voice sobbed.

Hector momentarily directed his voice away from the phone. “Now, now, Kate, is it? That’s not very nice,” he said, before turning back to the receiver. “But if you can talk some sense into your friend, I might be inclined to release her to you.”

“Okay, okay. If you want, you can drop her off at the corner of McPherson and Euclid in the Central West End. I can be there in 20 minutes.”

Hector laughed. “No way. You’re coming to me. Meet me at the vacant lot across from 2523 North Grand Boulevard. Bring all the cash you have, and do I even have to tell you to come alone?”

“I’m just a college student! I-I don’t have much.” The warble in Cassandra’s voice could be heard loud and clear over the phone. “Her … her parents! They have money! Why haven’t you called them?”

“Duh!” Hector shouted. “I’m not a dumb bitch! I tried them first! No answer! Now, are you going to come help your friend or not?”

“Please, Cassandra! I don’t want to die!” the AI-generated voice of Kate sobbed. “Do what he says!”

“Okay … please don’t hurt her.” Cassandra’s voice showed the strain of worry and concern for her friend. “I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

“Try 15, bitch,” Hector said, his voice chilling in its lack of emotion, “or your friend is done.” He ended the call before the target could respond. He turned, smiling at Joseph. “I’ve got a good feeling about this!” The pair once again high-fived.

North St. Louis, Missouri

The chatter on the police scanner was normal for this time of night. This area had been blighted a few years earlier and became a ghost town. Hector’s heart still pounded in anticipation of hearing police coordinate a trap on him and Joseph. However, it appeared that Cassandra was a good girl who did what she was told. He smiled, thinking how much easier that would make things in her new life.

He was parked in a Dodge cargo van—with a freshly stolen license plate—in the hotel lot across the street from where he’d instructed Cassandra to go. Joseph was in a stolen late model Chevy truck on the other side of that abandoned lot. When headlights cut through the dark, Hector sat up in his seat.

As the car slowed and turned into the lot toward Joseph, Hector started the van and crept toward the street, lights off. When he saw that Joseph had his brights on, Hector accelerated, sliding in behind Cassandra’s car. If all went to plan, she’d be blinded by Joseph’s headlights and not notice the van pulling in behind her. Joseph parked his truck about three feet from her car.

Parking perpendicular to her, Hector got out, opened the van’s sliding cargo door, and stepped into the back. He watched as she emerged from her car, her waifish frame silhouetted in the bright headlights. He froze, taking in her gorgeous form and wishing that he could keep her for himself. He was barely aware of Joseph’s large frame hurrying toward her.

She screamed as he grabbed her and pushed her backward toward Hector. She began kicking and punching Joseph wildly.

“For fuck’s sake!” Joseph yelled, his irritation obvious. “Help me!”

Hector shook off his daze and leapt from the van, quickly grabbing her from behind.

She shrieked in shock, her eyes widening when she saw there were two of them. As they’d seen happen with countless women once that particular realization dawned on them, Cassandra went limp. “Please don’t hurt me!” She began to sob as she was pulled into the van.

With practiced efficiency, she was zip-tied and placed in a hogtie. She squirmed as Hector held her down and Joseph tried to put a ball gag in her mouth.

“You don’t look 19,” Joseph observed as he finally got the gag secured. “You look more like a MILF.” His tone was matter of fact, like a rancher examining a heifer at auction.

“Stop trying to sound straight, man. Hold on a second. Let’s get her strapped down, and then I’ll take a look,” Hector said, and he started hooking the 10,000-pound cargo straps into tie-downs mounted to the floor on either side of a grungy twin mattress. Once secured, Hector moved toward her. Her sapphire eyes sparkled in the beam of the dazzling LED headlight of Joseph’s truck. “She looks absolutely perfect to me.”

Joseph huffed as he got out of the van. “She’s gorgeous, but you’re blinded by it,” he said as he slammed the cargo door shut.

Hector took a moment to admire their catch: She wore skintight black leggings that accentuated the curves of her ass and strong legs. He placed a hand on her waist and caressed her for a moment. Her Washington University T-shirt had ridden up, and he thought about sliding a hand under it.

The sound of Joseph honking his truck’s horn snapped Hector out of whatever spell he’d been under. He slid into the driver’s seat, put the van in gear, and drove out of the empty lot. Joseph would drop his truck at a chop shop before meeting Hector at the safe house, wherein Cassandra would await pickup by Mr. Shefari with some of the other women.

Tower Grove South Region of St. Louis

Vic Shefari was giddy as a schoolboy as he pulled up to the abandoned house. There was something about the barista that had captivated him several weeks ago. Since then, he’d been obsessively getting coffee from her every day. Whenever he saw her, he had a hard-on that needed taking care of immediately—then several more times throughout the day. It was like he was a teenager again. It was addicting, and he would get his fix whenever he wanted. He had to have her.

With all the composure he could muster and suppressing the urge to skip into the shabby brick building, he headed inside and made his way to the basement door. After knocking softly in the rhythmic cadence that told the overseers not to shoot, he descended the stairs.

The ancient wooden runners squeaked under his weight as he made his way down into the dimly lit room. It smelled of mold, sweat, and sex. There were several hastily crafted stalls, each with a filthy mattress and a nude woman chained to the wall. Above each, their country or state of origin was scrawled in block letters. He passed a couple of the “Mexico” stalls, and a bright-eyed “Guatemala” girl glared at him as he surveyed the room.

He smiled and continued browsing the other menu options. The next stall boasted an offering from China. Placed in a single stall were two white girls from Alabama. Next, there was a Black woman—a local.

Shefari peered into each one, hoping the overseers were not so foolish as to put his barista in these stalls. But in one stall toward the end of the room, he not only saw the flash of flowing red hair but a member of his organization having his way with her. Shefari felt his ire begin to rise, anger flowing through him, until he saw her face. It wasn’t his barista.

“Sir,” the deep voice of his lead overseer interrupted his thoughts. “We have her in the coal room. No one has touched her.”

“Good. Thank you, Jordan,” Shefari said, licking his lips as he followed him to the wooden door.

The other man unlocked a padlock and worked a rusty latch. “There’s no light in there.”

The door squeaked as it opened.

Shefari pulled out his phone and turned on its flashlight. The bright light pierced only a small portion of the darkness. He scanned the opposite wall, the light glinting off the stainless steel eye hook that had recently been set in the concrete. A length of chain dangled from it. On the floor laid a link from the chain, broken at the weld and pulled apart just enough to let its captive go. Next to it lay broken and discarded zip ties.

“What the fuck?” Jordan said as pulled out his flashlight, immediately going to the coal shoot door.

It was large enough for a woman to escape, which is why they had welded it shut—and those welds remained intact.

“I’ve been here this whole time! No one has entered or left this room since Hector and Joseph dropped her off!”

“I want answers, not excuses!” Shefari screamed as he entered the room, furiously swinging his phone around. But as the beam of light illuminated the corner to his right, he saw his angelic barista.

She cowered before looking up at him with her wide blue eyes, and wisps of coppery hair hung down, seductively obscuring her face.

“Cassandra, you naughty girl!” he softly chided, unable to stay angry at this magnificent creature. “How did a little thing like you manage to break the chain?” he said as he played his light along the metal collar locked around her lithe neck, a short length of chain dangling impotently from the D-ring.

She smiled, revealing gleaming white teeth. Her incisors were longer than he remembered. Her lips curled into a maniacal grin, and she began laughing before she leapt toward him.

“What the fu–” Shefari cried out as she latched onto his throat, her teeth sinking into his Adam’s apple, crushing it.

She began thrashing her head wildly, tearing out his throat with the brutality of a lioness making quick work of her prey.

Jordan looked on in horror. He had seen a lot of horrible things overseas, but never had he seen such savagery, especially from someone so frail as the barista. He pulled his Glock and began firing at her. The first several bullets hit their mark.

She grimaced but managed to twist her body so she could use the lifeless Vic Shefari as a bullet sponge while she rushed Jordan.

The weight of the two bodies slammed him to the ground, pinning him as she scrambled on top of the macabre dogpile. He tried to bring his pistol up but could barely move before he felt her teeth briefly graze his neck before slowly piercing the skin. An unexpected wave of euphoria overtook him as blood began to trickle from two shallow pinpricks.

* * * * * *

Cassandra looked up from her latest victim. She knew there were at least two other men in the basement. The closest was the asshat who had been brutalizing the other redhead. She moved with purpose.

When he entered her line of vision, he was scrambling to pull his pants up.

She couldn’t help but point and laugh at his small dick before leaping forward and taking it in her mouth, biting down and ripping it off before unceremoniously spitting it out. “I never learned not to play with my food,” she said with a grin before seeking the artery of his inner thigh. She tasted the metallic vinegar of heroin in the man’s blood and spat it out.

He lay there with the same dumb euphoric look on his face as the head overseer. The anticoagulants in her saliva ensured neither’s wounds would clot before they had bled out.

She would need to feed on at least one of them, as the other bastard had shot her three times. Feeding would make healing faster, but the tainted vinegar sludge just wouldn’t do. The squeak of the stairs brought her attention back to the present.

The last overseer had wisely decided to make a run for it.

She was too injured to move at her fastest, but, much to her delight, she was still faster and stronger than him. In a blur, she chased the man upstairs, knocking him face-first to the floor. Laying atop his prone form, she gripped his outstretched hands and pinned them above his head as if she were his lover. She leaned down and gently pierced his jugular, feeling the delightful taste flood her mouth—this guy wasn’t doing the hard stuff, just the pleasant high of quality THC.

“Don’t worry, but this won’t be over soon. I’m going to take my time so we can enjoy this,” she whispered into his ear. “Well, maybe not you, but I will at least.” The pain from the gunshots faded as she began feeling euphoric herself. Her muscles relaxed as the body beneath her went limp.

The runners did not creak as Cassandra returned to the basement. Her T-shirt was red with blood, and her face, neck, and cleavage were smeared with gore. Most of the women stared at her with glazed-over eyes. One, however, stared at her with a mix of curiosity and defiance that Cassandra did not find unattractive.

The rumbling of her stomach drew her attention from the other woman. She went to check on the men. The heroin addict was dead, his blood staining the concrete and soaking into the mattress where the redhead still lay staring listlessly at the ceiling. The boss was dead and mostly drained of blood. The head overseer was still alive, giggling softly as blood slowly leaked from her bite marks.

She straddled him and leaned over, slowly easing her fangs back into his neck and suckling—taking what she needed to help her body heal from the injuries he had inflicted. When the blood stopped coming and he twitched for the last time, she sat up and looked at the women around the room.

She went to the redhead, gently caressing the woman’s face, and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. “It’s over,” she whispered, letting her vampiric pheromones wash over the woman and lull her into a blissful high, before gently piercing her flesh and tasting the disgusting traces of heroin.

She barely pierced a vein so the woman would not bleed out, and Cassandra’s bite would be just enough to heal her physically and forever ruin any future high.

“I’m sorry I can do nothing for your trauma,” she told the comatose woman.

She went around the basement and repeated the process until only the girl with the curious eyes remained.

“Please,” the girl said, “don’t leave me here. Take me with you. I want to be just like you.”

“Do you even know what I am?” Cassandra asked sweetly.

“Yes”

“And do you know what it takes to become like me?”

The girl shook her head.

“I would drain you until you danced on the edge of death,” Cassandra said tenderly as if speaking to a would-be lover. “Then, you would suckle on my blood before sleeping, buried under a foot of earth, for three days until you awoke. Doomed never to die, you’d watch your loved ones die, only to be replaced by more loved ones fated for death.”

“I do not have anyone left,” she answered defiantly. “The gangs killed my family in Guatemala. I left because I grew up in a Maya community that loved America. The people who made it here sent money that let us live. If you made it to Texas, they said, you would be able to buy a house and a car. My kids would have a future.

“So, I found a coyote to bring me to the United States. But the reality does not match the fairy tale—my coyote sold me after he was done with me. Others in my group, he ransomed to their families or left in the desert to die. The only reason I lived is because he liked to fuck me.”

“I could free you of pain,” Cassandra offered as she approached. “Sometimes, death is better.”

A fire burned in the girl’s eyes. “I want to live. To get revenge on those who would do this to the desperate and weak.”

“What’s your name?”

“Olivia.”

“That is a beautiful name,” Cassandra replied and kissed her, their lips parting and tongues entwining.

Olivia’s body yielded to Cassandra’s touch.

Cassandra broke the kiss and teasingly moved to the girl’s neck, her teeth gently scraping against Olivia’s smooth skin. “Last chance,” Cassandra whispered, her voice trailing.

“Please,” Olivia whimpered just before Cassandra’s teeth sunk into her neck.

Unincorporated Jefferson County, Missouri

“Fuck you, too!” Hector screamed into his phone as another mark refused to pay. He turned toward Joseph. “Fucking Channel 5! Ever since they aired that damn story, people just aren’t falling for it anymore.”

The other man nodded silently. “Yeah, we’ve only scored five times in three days. Might be time to hang it up.”

“Got any ideas what to do for money?”

“Go legit?” Joseph said with a short-lived straight face before busting into a laugh that was soon joined by Hector.

“Good one.” He sighed and slumped into his chair. “But seriously, what in the hell are we going to do without Mr. Shefari?”

“The asshole is dead,” Joseph said. “You don’t have to call him ‘Mr. Shefari.’ He’s Vic With the Little Dick.”

Hector chuckled again. “Damn, I forgot about that. God, he hated being called that.” He made the sign of the cross. “It’s crazy that he’s dead.”

“I don’t buy that it was a hit. Why would they only take two girls and leave the rest for the police to find and release?”

Hector nodded and was about to say something when there was a knock at the door. “That had better be the Imo’s Pizza guy. I’m starved.”

“I seriously don’t know how the hell you can eat that shit,” Joseph said, having lost the game of rock, paper, scissors to pick the pizza place. “You know Provel is not real cheese, right?”

“Fuck you,” Hector said with a smile as he opened the door. “Fuck me,” he said, his jaw dropping as he looked into the face of Cassandra Robertson.

“In your dreams.”

She looked like death warmed over, covered from head to toe in a thick patina of dirt. Dried, cracked blood flaked off her face, neck, and chest. Her shirt had several holes surrounded by blood stains, but her skin betrayed no signs of injury. A worm wiggled across her shirt, clinging desperately to a clump of earth. Calmly, she picked it up and opened her mouth wide, leaning her head back and dropping the wriggling creature down her throat.

“You … you … you’re alive!” Hector said, turning to Joseph. “She’s alive!”

“I don’t think that’s a good thing,” Joseph said, unmoving.

Cassandra giggled and shrugged. “I wouldn’t say I’m alive, just not dead, but I am hungry.” She stepped inside and close to Hector, caressing his chin before kissing him. “I know you want me, but you’ve been a bad boy so I’m giving you away.” She turned toward the door. “Olivia, darling! Dinner!”

She sidestepped as Olivia rushed in and leapt onto Hector, pushing him to the floor. She was covered in dirt like Cassandra but lacked the blood splatter. Straddling her victim, she leaned over and sank her virgin fangs into his neck, snorting like an abused and starving pig at the trough.

“No! Please, God! No!” Hector whimpered as the initial euphoria wore off. He fought against the small girl, but it was futile. She possessed superhuman strength and had him pinned to the floor, and all he could do was feel her feast on his body.

Cassandra stepped close to Joseph, who stood frozen in place as his friend screamed in agony. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I know I’m not your type, so I’m not going to bother with the foreplay. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to take my time and enjoy this,” she said as she pushed him to the floor and began to feed.