Free Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse by Johnny B. Truant Page B

VAMPIRE — WHOSE NAME WAS Vincent — died a few hours later. There were no fireworks. He simply dissolved into ash and was gone.  
    Reginald and Nikki, knowing they needed to sleep, took turns napping in the bed in their old room. With only two people to stand watch (and one of them being Reginald), they had to do their best and hope. The lower door seemed secure and was difficult to find from the outside, so they concentrated their guard on the upper door. They were able to close and latch it, so they set up a chair in the cathedral space at the foot of the giant stone staircase to watch it. Nikki, whose entire body was a weapon, merely sat and waited. Reginald armed himself to the teeth, having no idea what species of firepower he was wielding, and hoping against hope that nothing would happen — seeing as he had no confidence in his ability to handle it alone.
    Their bunker remained unperturbed. At sunset, they struck out with plans to make their way to Paris. Every train they were able to book along the way was efficient but slow, mocking the time they both felt ticking by.  
    Nikki wondered why they were bothering to seek Karl. They’d both known the EU Deacon for a couple of years and knew him to be a notorious bisexual playboy — not a scholar or an archivist. He might not even be in Paris, Nikki argued. And besides, she added, how exactly was finding Karl going to get them closer to finding the codex anyway?  
    Reginald, who was getting the hang of predestination (and its more foo-foo cousin, fate), told her that “finding Karl is what I would do next” was, in itself, enough reason to find Karl. Fate was the one place where circular logic was useful. Why was finding Karl the right move? Because Reginald thought it was the right move. That was all that was required. If Claire’s glamour-enduced trance had been correct, there was an objective truth about how things were supposed to happen. The very fact that they were doing a thing made it the right thing to do.  
    “Then let me ask you a question, hot shot,” Nikki said.  
    Reginald told her to go ahead.  
    “You’re telling me that you were supposed to become a vampire.”  
    “I guess.”
    “Because one day, you were supposed to find this code thingy.”  
    He nodded.  
    “Which, of course, was possible because you were supposed to find Claire in order to learn that the code thingy existed.”  
    “Three for three,” said Reginald. “As I understand it, anyway.”  
    “Then if all of that’s true, why do we even need to find it? You act like we’re going to read the future off some scroll or whatever, then use what we learn to prevent the human/vampire war and the deaths of like… billions of people. But how can you prevent anything if what’s going to happen is just… you know… going to happen anyway?”  
    “If that’s how it unfolds, then I imagine it will be because I’m supposed to prevent it from happening.”  
    “You’re sure of that.”  
    “I told you a long time ago that this war feels very wrong to me — and I mean ‘wrong’ in terms of ‘isn’t supposed to happen’ rather than morally wrong. I can feel it in my gut.” He slapped his gut. “And this bitch is never wrong. It has authority.”  
    “But it’s pointless either way. If you’re destined to prevent the war, why are we working so hard and risking our asses to find the codex?”  
    “How can we find it if we don’t look for it?”  
    “You have to find it. It’s all predestined or whatever.”  
    “Nikki, in order to find something, you have to actually look for it.”  
    She put her fingers on her temples, then let her head sag. “This makes my head hurt.”  
    They rode through the night. Reginald’s phone rang, despite the fact that he’d forgotten to charge it and its battery was dead. The call was from Maurice. The ringtone was the Revolting Cocks cover of Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,” because Claire had