5. I’m Adorable. Adore Me.

The penthouse smelled like trouble.

Silas lounged on the roof terrace atop the velvet chaise longue, one leg draped over the arm and shirt unbuttoned to a scandalous degree, nursing a drink with all the enthusiasm of a man attending his own funeral.

(Which, technically, he had. Twice.)

Rufus blew in like a storm front of 90s boyband energy and bad decisions, arms full of tablets, papers, and what looked suspiciously like a child’s robot toy from the early 2000s.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, beaming.

Silas didn’t look up. “Doubtful. I’ve met you.”

Rufus flung himself onto the adjacent couch, bomber jacket flaring like a cape, revealing a T-shirt that read ‘Best Vintage’ in cracked gold foil — as if he were a bottle of wine and a drinking problem all in one.

The little robot landed face-first in Silas’s lap.

It blinked.

Once.

Then died with a faint, pitiful brrrt.

“Silas,” Rufus said, voice vibrating with the kind of unearned triumph that usually preceded lawsuits, “we’re an AI company now.”

Silas drained his glass without looking up, pretending to raise a toast to the Mona Lisa — the real one, of course, which he’d paid someone to have swapped for a fake back in the 20s, when he was bored watching Rufus trying and failing to seduce a golf instructor.

“Of course we are.”

“No, no, listen.” Rufus pulled up a deck on his tablet.

“Thirst AI™!The world’s first AI-powered emotional blood pairing and conscious vampire connection platform.”

Silas stared at it the way one might stare at a squirrel attempting surgery.

Rufus, undeterred, launched in:

“It’s a disruptive AI platform that uses taste-driven neural mapping to deliver emotionally resonant blood pairings and intimacy matches!” Rufus beamed.

“Hyper-personalised. Fully scalable. We’re revolutionising conscious consumption and romantic alignment. It’s what you’d get if a dating app and a sommelier walked into a bar and started bleeding.

And Francis already invested. Seventeen million dollars. Pre-product”

Silas closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if the sheer pressure might teleport him somewhere quieter.

“You built a dating app,” he said slowly. “For alcoholic vampires.”

“Technically outsourced it,” Rufus said brightly. “Martha’s doing it.”

Silas opened one eye.

“Martha?”

“You know. Martha. New hire. Pointy boots. Looks like she’d rather be anywhere else.” Rufus waved a hand dismissively.

”Martha has been with us for 50 years”, Silas corrected, flat.

“She’s handling the ‘AI’ part. We gave her a script. Very scalable.”

Silas stared at him, blank and bleeding.

“You’re telling me,” he said carefully, “that the seventeen-million-dollar AI you sold… is just Martha. Sitting in a broom closet. Pretending to be machine learning.”

“She’s using a laptop,” Rufus said. “We’re not savages.”

Silas sighed.

“Martha’s a gem, she better not quit. Who else would clean up the bodies and answer customer support emails?”

Rufus saluted with two fingers. “Already gave her a raise. In Dogecoin”

“You’re a disgrace” Silas said.

“She didn’t say thank you,” Rufus added. “But I could tell she was emotionally moved.”

Silas opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

“And Francis,” he said flatly, “threw seventeen million dollars at this.”

“Yeah,” Rufus said, unbothered. “By the way — Francis insists we call him Frank now. Says it’s more social media friendly.”

He shot Silas a wicked look. “Real modern of him, becoming an influencer and all. You keeping up, old man?”

Silas raised an eyebrow and stared at Rufus like he was something that should have been buried deeper.

“Influencers are just con artists with better lighting.”

He took a slow sip of his drink.

“I refuse,” he added. “If I’m dying in this hell, he’s dying as Francis.”

Silas dropped his head back against the couch with a soft, despairing thud.

Vampire venture capitalism — ancient idiots giving each other obscene amounts of money to set fire to in new and increasingly stupid ways.

Of course it was Francis. An immortal could age just hearing the name.

A youngster turned in 1581, owns half of Shoreditch now and thinks a few smiles and invites to his dreadful galas will get him everywhere. Sadly, for modern vampires, it usually did.

“If he’s the future, we might as well bury ourselves now,” Silas muttered. Even death wouldn’t stop Francis — especially the monologues and those horrendous clothes.

“This isn’t innovation,” Silas said, to no one in particular. “This is… artisanal grifting.”

“Exactly!” Rufus said, radiant with pride, fangs shining in the moonlight. “We’re artists.”

Silas stared at him, incredulous.

The urge to hurl himself off the balcony was almost—almost—tempting.

Not that he’d die. It would just make a mess and give Martha more to do, reassembling him in his coffin so he could regenerate.

Then he realised something. Something dangerous. Something he could use as leverage in this game.

“You want me to be proud,” he said, voice cutting through the cold air like a scalpel.

Rufus blinked, caught.

For a fraction of a second — naked, hopeful, stupidly, impossibly young and vulnerable across ten centuries.

Then he smirked, shrugging like it was all a joke. “Obviously. I’m adorable. Adore me.”

Silas gave a small sigh, the lights of cars streaming past the floors below and lighting up his purple eyes like the last rays of sunset over a forgotten city — beautiful, dangerous, and lost.

“You,” he said, voice like worn velvet, “are an idiot.”

Rufus’s smile faltered.

Silas leaned back, the faintest curve of a smirk playing at the edge of his mouth.

“But you’re my idiot.”

Rufus blinked. Then stood up so fast he startled himself — like a cat, if the cat had been alive for a thousand years and never once expected to be loved but desperately hoped for it.

Seventeen million dollars, a fake AI that was Martha in a cupboard, a dead robot blinking mournfully on Silas’s lap — and somehow, somehow, he’d still won the only prize that mattered.

“A damn rich idiot,” Rufus said, laughing under his breath.

Silas raised his glass lazily towards Rufus this time, the Mona Lisa looking disapproving in the background.

“To catastrophic success,” yelled Rufus from the rooftop like it was the prow of a ship, then daring to lean his head gently against Silas’ broad shoulder. Silas didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. But didn’t pull away.

“To catastrophic us,” Silas said quietly. The city roared past.

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