"Yeah, yeah."

"Fuck you, Duke."

"Blow me, Earl."

Earl stormed from the diner, stopping just long enough to leave his breakfast by the kitchen stove. "Thanks, but I'll find my own."

Loretta cast a disapproving glance but didn't offer a reply. She hunched over a stubborn grease stain on the counter and continued scrubbing.

The vampire found his meal snoozing half-a-mile west of the diner. He leaned against the picket fence and watched the slumbering cow. Earl hated bovine blood. The only thing he hated more was cold bovine blood. He could live off the stuff, but that didn't mean he wanted to. But, much as he hated to admit it, Duke was right. This was safer.

Earl didn't need to kill his meal when he ate, but accidents happened. In a truckstop outside of Tulsa he'd been caught in the middle of dinner and nearly got his head lopped off by an eager bunch of religious nuts. Duke had saved his butt then and hadn't gone twenty-four hours without reminding him since.

He'd stalked livestock before and taken a bite of most domesticated animals. Emus he could stand, but they startled easy and kicked like a son of a bitch. Goat was good, but always left him hungry an hour later. Pig was almost pleasant, but he didn't like crawling in the mud. Horse had a horrible aftertaste, and donkey was terrible until properly aged. He'd never had llama. Never could get past all that hair to find a vein.

He hopped the fence and carefully snuck up on the cow. The beasts were easy pickings most of the time. Repressing a shudder, he remembered the time he mistook a bull for a heifer and found himself on the receiving end of a nasty goring that left an inconvenient hole in his intestines for the rest of that night and ruined a brand-new shirt. He double-checked for an udder before biting into the cow's jugular. He drank his fill (as much as he could stomach). The cow slept through the whole process.