100 Miles and Vampin'

by C. T. Phipps

  “No hablo ingles,” I said, in a terrible Mexican accent. “The earlier message was by my partner and I only speak enough to say I don’t speak it. Dammit.”

  Okay, that was not my finest performance.

  “Wow,” David said. “Even I feel offended by that and I’m Jewish.”

  “I have a job for you.”

  “Kinda busy here, Thoth.”

  “I don’t care.” I could feel Thoth’s irritation through the phone. I wasn’t being metaphorical either since we shared a psychic connection as creator and scion.

  “Right, how high this time.” I muttered.

  Thoth, a two-hundred-year-old vampire, had been created in the chaos of the 1791 Haiti Slave Revolt. His creator, Doubye, was an asshole even among a race of assholes and forced him to kill his family among other atrocities. Thoth eventually killed him, a secret that could get him killed even today, and became one of the most influential vampires in the New World. I owed Thoth a lot but he often zig-zagged between a helicopter parent and a guy who didn’t know me from Dracula. I think it was hard for him to sympathize with my monetary issues when he’d been born in chains.

  “This is serious, Peter,” Thoth said.

  “Fine,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose and steeling myself for whatever demeaning task my creator wanted of me. “What asshole has screwed up this time? Did a guy go threatening to eat some tourist’s children? You know the Network’s cronies love doing that shit.”

  The Network was the informal labor union slash resistance movement for the Youngbloods and less potent supernaturals. Tens of thousands of people had been turned into vampires by their loved ones with the Reveal. They’d been less than happy to find out it meant they were expected to obey the Old Ones and the Council of Ancients in all things. They’d made a couple of revolts over the years only for the big guys to come down hard. Despite being only five years dead myself, I kind of sympathized with the Old Ones. Vampires didn’t need a hug and acceptance, we needed to be watched like foxes around the henhouse. The hens being poor unsuspecting dumbass humanity.

  “No, it’s not the Network.”

  “Then it can wait,” I said, looking down at the corpse on the ground. “At least for a couple of hours.”

  “You’ll be paid for this mission,” Thoth interrupted. “Well.”

  “Okay, how can I help?” I said, quickly changing my tune. “Also, how much?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars for a short time’s work.”

  I blinked, surprised at the offer. That kind of money would go a long way to making sure my mother remained in relative comfort. “I would be incredibly grateful if I didn’t know that’s probably what you spend on your suits.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I spend much more than twenty-five thousand dollars on my suits.”

  I both loved and hated my mentor. He was like the rich tightwad dad that every poor kid from Detroit dreamed of resenting.

  I both loved and hated my mentor some days. “Okay, what’s the job?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. This one is both time-sensitive and important.”

  “Aren’t they all?” I asked.

  “Is something wrong?” Thoth asked.

  “You mean aside from being saddled with a soul-crushing job that pays zilch? One that has almost gotten me fired from a paying job that most humans won’t take but is all I can manage?” It was hard being dishonest around Thoth. He had that surrogate dad thing about him and the power to control me with his voice. It was a bad combination. “A job that requires me to kill people for the undead on the off chance that I’m making the world a better place for humans by keeping the worst of us under control? Yet, maybe, the worst ones are the people that give me orders?”

  “Yes, aside from that,” Thoth said, without skipping a beat.

  I frowned. “I killed a guy in the bathroom a few minutes ago. He was trying to kill and eat me, but I feel bad about it.”

  “Ah,” Thoth said. “Feel any guilt?”

  “Uh, not really. The guy was an idiot,” I said. “I think someone is trying to kill me, though.”

  “Yes, that’s a danger of the job,” Thoth said. “People who want to protest the Vampire Nation tend to target those who enforce its dictates.”

  “And I’m not paid for it,” I said, feeling this was something that needed to be mentioned repeatedly. “I’m just saying the bellidix job should come with a five-figure salary. Five figures that aren’t zeroes.”

  “You’re paid in prestige,” Thoth said.

  “Whoop de fucking do,” I said.

  David snorted behind me.

  “Any other complaints?” Thoth asked.

  I thought back about it. “No, I’ve killed like ten other guys this year, but they all had it coming. Especially that one Bloodslave who ran a dogfighting ring. Fuck people who abuse animals. I say that not just because I can talk to them but because I can become one.”

  “So you just want more money.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Because ‘money isn’t everything’ is something said by rich people.”

  Thoth surprised me. “I’ll make your fee fifty thousand if you can get here in an hour. New Detroit Airport. Terminal 7B.”

  I blinked. “What is this about? Is it the apocalypse?”

  “Worse,” Thoth said, sounding like he was speaking through clenched fangs. “Rebecca Plum.”

  “Wait, the crappy vampire romance novelist?”

  “Just get here.” Thoth hung up.

  Vampire fiction tended to go in cycles, even before vampires were a real thing. Every ten years or so, someone would come out with a successful vampire novel that was hotter and sexier than the previous version but still tame. People would bitch and moan about it, talk about how vampires were ruined forever, and then eventually forget about it. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer, Charlaine Harris, and now Rebecca Plum.

  Rebecca Plum was different than the other vampire romance novelists, though, in the fact she was a direct employee of the Vampire Nation. She’d written about sixty vampire novels with the help of her ghost writers and gotten about twenty movies made in a frighteningly short amount of time. Some of them were allegedly based on true stories. All of them made us seem slightly less threatening than a Care Bear with fangs (thank you, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

  Every vampire I knew hated her work with a fury only someone accustomed to being taken seriously could. The books had a magnetic effect on the public, though, and were perfect propaganda for convincing middle-aged women and their daughters to vote against laws that would put us all in camps. I wasn’t fond of her crappy prose but was glad it was effective.

  “Rebecca Plum?” David asked, blinking. “That is awesome! Can I come?”

  “No!” I snapped.

  “Why?” David asked, looking confused.

  “No,” I answered flatly. I didn’t want David going Lady Gaga over the author lady. Not when there was this much money to be made. “Listen, David, I got to get going. You need to dispose of the body and cover my shift.”

  “Why should I do that?” David asked, crossing his arms. “I mean, if we get her to sign even a napkin, I could sell that on eBay for more than your car is worth.”

  “That’s not saying much,” I said. “Besides, you’re my friend and I need you to do this.”

  David raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “And I’ll pay you,” I said. “Four hundred bucks.”

  David smirked. “Awesome. I’ll see to it.”

  I opened the bathroom door where there were about a half-dozen customers waiting outside to come in despite the fact there was an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the door. Seriously, was Wendy’s that horrible? I mean, I was always a Burger King fan, but it seemed like an excessive reaction.

  Steve was behind the counter, tying a rubber tube around his arm. He was apparently going to shoot up behind the counter. “Wow, way to not give a shit.”

  “Did you cle
an up all the crap in the bathroom?” Steve said, tapping his vein while two nearby customers looked uncomfortable.

  “I can assure you there’s no crap in the bathroom,” I said, walking past the counter. “Off to do something secret and spooky.”

  “Right,” Steve said, not paying the slightest bit of attention as I left. “Remember to get me that autograph.”

  “No!” I shouted back.

  The sensible thing would have been just to take my car and drive to the airport at the speed limit. I would have gotten there roughly around the time I needed to, give or take a few minutes, but I was feeling pumped at the prospect of getting ahead of my financial problems and all the debt I’d been dealing with these past four years. I decided to fly there. To use my most awesome, terrifying, and spectacular new power. Not to turn into a bat but to be like Superman and lift myself into the air before firing off like a rocket. I’d done it only a few times, but each experience could only be described as pure awesome.

  Kneeling on one knee, I gathered up all my strength as a vampire and prepared to fly into the air. That was a power I possessed and was fully in control of (even if I wasn’t quite a master of its use). Staring upward into the smog-filled space above me, I leapt into the sky.

  And accidentally smashed into the Qwik and Shop sign.

  Chapter Three

  I sat in the passenger’s side of my eleven-year-old green Jeep Liberty, holding an icepack to my face while David drove. I wasn’t sure the icepack helped since my skin was room temperature, but I didn’t have anyone to snack on to heal either. We were about twenty minutes later than I’d hoped to be, thanks to my stupid attempt to fly to the airport, but well on our way to getting there.

  The state of Michigan had changed a lot with the legalization of prostitution, gambling, vampirism, and sorcery. It had revitalized the economy to a large extent. Supernaturals from all over the world were making their way toward the Great Lakes area out of the belief it would be more tolerant of their lifestyle. It had also sparked a backlash among the Religious Right that had been good for the state economy in its own way too.

  The sides of the highway were littered with mixtures of churches, blood banks, loan businesses, petty gambling parlors, debt contract firms (or DRACS), strip clubs, sex shops, fortune tellers, psychics, occult paraphernalia stores, and gun shops that specialized in anti-supernatural weaponry. New Detroit was visible from miles away, standing as a glowing Emerald City in the middle of our sleazy little Munchkinland.

  I couldn’t describe what the neon, starlight, smog, and street-light world looked to vampire eyes. The closest thing I could describe it to being like is a nice high but that could have been a concussion (did vampires get concussions? I dunno, I’d never hit my head against a sign at 60 mph). Everything looked simultaneously beautiful and disappointing, though, as if the nature of humanity was to reach up to Heaven while simultaneously sinking toward Hell.

  “You really shouldn’t have tried flying to the airport,” David finally said.

  “Really!” I snapped back at him. “I never would have figured that out by myself.”

  “No need to be sarcastic,” David muttered.

  “There’s always a need to be sarcastic,” I muttered, removing the ice pack. “How do I look?”

  “You have an eye again,” David said, quickly giving it a glance. “I think you’ve regenerated.”

  “Thank God,” I said, flinching almost immediately after. The biggest proof God existed was the fact his name, prophets, crucifixes, and holy water affected vampires. Mind you, saying Vishnu or Buddha had a similar effect so maybe they were just having a big party up in the astral plane. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’d seen in my short unlife.

  “So, you don’t know why Thoth wants you to come to the airport?” David asked, no longer content to listen to The Lost Boys soundtrack. Personally, I preferred gangsta rap, but it was “driver picks the CD” rules when my roommate and I carpooled. “I mean aside from meeting with a mommy porn vampire erotica author.”

  “Only that he mentioned the Rebecca Plum lady,” I said. “You heard everything.”

  “Do you think Melissa will be there?” David asked, reminding me of my vampire hunting ex-girlfriend (if you could even call her that).

  “I dunno,” I said, hoping she was. I had it bad for her. Melissa looked like Nathalie Emmanuel on Game of Thrones and sounded like a Southern Belle. “Maybe this is what she called me about. I thought she was too busy being the spokesvamp of the Human-Supernatural Friendship Alliance.”

  Which was the stupidest name ever. Still, the organization did good work. The HSFA was doing its best to try to fit vampires into the regular world. Unfortunately, doing speeches at UCLA and appearing on CNN didn’t leave much time for dating a poor clerk out in the boonies. The fact she was an ex-vampire hunter made it all the more ironic, but Melissa wasn’t exactly advertising that to her fellow undead.

  “You should give her a call back. Set something up. Finally make something serious between you two.” David sounded genuinely interested in hooking me up, and I appreciated that. It had been a long dry spell, and I wasn’t the kind of guy who took home Goth girls eager to try their first vampire. In part because they were all in the city and never came out this way.

  “If I have time,” I said.

  Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly excited about calling Melissa back. We’d met under exceptional circumstances and saved each other’s lives multiple times. However, that kind of relationship didn’t necessarily have legs. She was from a rich upper-middle class background in the South while I was a poor kid from the inner city. That sort of thing flew in movies but not so often real life. It didn’t help that she still had serious issues with vampires despite being one. Nothing worse than a self-hating bloodsucker. That was also something that worked better on television than in real life.

  David shook his head as he turned toward the airport. “I’m serious, though, why wouldn’t you call her?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not a romance novel. What do we really have in common other than the fact we went through a very harrowing experience together?”

  “You’re both vampires, duh.”

  “She’s an ex-vampire hunter turned vampire.”

  “And now she’s not!”

  “Relationships require a bit more. At the end of the day, she’s an uptown girl, and I’m the guy who works at the Qwik and Shop.” I grabbed a magazine from the floor that David had left. It had an interview with Snoop Vamp. I didn’t approve of Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr. changing his name again, but at least he had a reason this time.

  David was still trying to convince me we had a chance, though. “You’re a Qwik and Shop employee who has daring Jack Burton-esque adventures in his spare time. That’s something.”

  “Jack Burton didn’t get the girl at the end of Big Trouble in Little China. She got clingy and he left her hanging.”

  Truth be told, I was scared to pursue a relationship I knew was probably doomed. I’d left a powerful impression in her mind, and I didn’t want to screw it up the way I’d screwed up all my past relationships. Even before my psycho ex-girlfriend Elisha, I tended to have a strong opening and then blow it in the home stretch. Maybe this was why I never was going to be a smooth-talking sexy vampire.

  David mercifully gave up. “Whatever man. If you want to live forever with me instead of finding a nice girl, that’s your business.”

  Okay, that was a good argument. “Maybe, man. Maybe.”

  The two of us eventually arrived at the New Detroit Airport which had been built over the Detroit Metropolitan airport’s ruins. The place had been thoroughly monster-proofed with windows that blocked the harmful effects of sunlight, private airstrips for the comings and goings of the undead, plus security provided by Extraordinaire PMC that was the biggest employer of non-vampire supernaturals in the world.

  Terminal 7 turned out to be harder to find than I’d expected as it didn’t refer to the a
ctual Terminal 7 of the airport but the Terminal 7 on the private vampires-only airstrip. Which meant we wandered through a bunch of drunk Halloween-is-every-day-in-New Detroit-dressed tourists who kept trying to have their pictures taken with David and me.

  Thankfully, we finally got one of those little golf carts and started driving down the side of the airstrip to a private glass building with a big seven on it where a group of limousines was gathered. We were about an hour late and not at all going to make that extra $20,000. Which was just my luck since I’d been Charlie Brown getting the football pulled out from under him since the day I was born.

  “Think we’re still going to get paid?” David asked.

  “What do you mean we?” I asked.

  “I’m your partner in this!” David said, cheerfully. “I can’t believe you were going to cut me out of it.”

  “Because you’re not involved!” I snapped.

  David pulled us to a stop and pulled out his cell phone to take pictures, not even waiting to see if Rebecca Plum had arrived. I took a moment to survey the scene, hoping I hadn’t embarrassed myself too badly with my timing.

  Aside from the Extraordinaire PMC folk dressed as secret servicemen looking like Stallone and Arnold in their heydays (also a woman who I swear was a vampirized Gina Carano), there were three notable figures waiting for us. Thoth, my creator, a Haitian man in his thirties dressed in a bright crimson Armani suit only he could have pulled off. Thoth had silver rings on his hand and an amulet around his neck of a much more expensive quality than the man I’d killed in the bathroom. He also was leaning on a walking stick that probably would enhance his powers further. Not many vampires studied the mystic arts since natural forces were anathema to us, but Thoth was one of vampiredom’s grandmasters.

  Standing beside him was Voivode Ashura, who was equivalent to (don’t laugh) the Count or Countess of a region. Ashura was wearing an all-black mourning outfit that was far too fashionable and sexy for a funeral. Ashura was a woman of mixed Irish and Turkish descent who basically looked like a curvier Milla Jovovich as if the latter alone wasn’t blessed enough by the gods. The right hand of the voivode was made of the purest silver, replacing the arm she’d lost during our battle with Renaud, that was still regenerating. It functioned every bit as well as a normal hand, and it said just about everything you needed to know about her. She decided to keep the prosthetic design for herself.