The music kicked back in, the bass dropping in with a thud that shook the world and brought reality back all at once for everyone, especially me. Ryan was looking at the stump of his hand, that bemused look still on his face, but then the blood started to come.
The masked idiots were already leaping into action, weapons swinging in vicious blood spattering arcs. They were fast and they were efficient, their vampire strength and speed putting them on even par with everyone else in the room, and this is the tragedy of it all. When you're accustomed to being homo superior, the biggest dick in the room, you're usually fighting the 3 inch guys who complain that it's just cold, they just need to get warmed up, and besides it's how you use it, blah, blah, blah... But when your fellow big dick swingers come in, you suddenly lose all advantage and that laziness, that privilege you used to swing around so easily? Yeah, buddy, time to get down and fight like you mean it.
In hindsight, it would have been so easy to take these guys down if everybody had forgotten their human side for a minute and stood their ground. Instead, swords and axe swung, and heads went flying as if the Middle Ages had shown up with a vengeance. A sword split Ryan's head in two, the masked vampire flying off the wall and adding his weight to the task, neatly bifurcating Ryan down to his sternum and that was the end of him having to worry about his missing hand.
Here's the scary part, at least if you were standing in my panic stricken shoes, unable to pull yourself out of that forever moment and just run like you really wanted to. Through cutting off Ryan's hand and even as he sailed down through the air to make a further bloody mess of Ryan, masked psycho number three kept his eyes on me the entire time.
Screams split the air now as murder was committed and people tried to run, some of them getting between me and my would-be murderer.
"Mistakes like you don't deserve to live. You're not one of us."
"Fuck you," was my best and wittiest response. Seriously it was the best I could muster at the time. "Shit, is that Elvis over there?"
By that time my flight response had kicked in and I turned, lunging over the surging, panicking and screaming crowd as everyone tried to run in three directions at once.
"You all deserve to DIE," my personal psycho was screaming at the crowd, and I knew all at once that he was coming for me, jumping through the air that oversized sword ready to show me exactly how sharp it was. Somehow I dropped to the ground, twisting my back as I did since the human body was not designed to do what I had just made it do, and I saw the sword, fucking saw it, swing through the air literally an inch from my nose. I had time to see psycho number three’s surprised expression, but my back was already screaming at me for some urgent attention. One arm shot up with something unexpected held like the unusual weapon that it was.
My aim may have been a little bit off but not that far off, and I'm sorry about the two other vampires I hit, but this isn't the movies where the hero can shoot all he wants and never hit a passerby or even some poor dude half a mile away drinking his coffee and minding his own business wondering why he had just been killed by a hail of bullets from the sky. Besides, a gun is more direct than pepper spray. And just when the hell did I even have time or the sense of mind to get the pepper spray anyway? Apparently my hands had a mind, and a strong sense of self-preservation of their own. So lucky me.
They really should add pepper spray to the official list of things bad for vampires, but at the time I was glad that not that many vampires seem to have encountered it. So even after I had released it directly into psycho number three’s face, he still had that look that told me I was a fucking idiot for doing that, and now here comes his sword to tell me personally--
Identical expressions were on the other two people's faces who had been caught up in the pepper spray onslaught. Imagine if you will, irritation, then annoyance as pain suddenly flares up, then the realization that oh god it burns oh how it burns and it’s not going to stop, why does it burn so much make it stop! Imagine that and then amplify it by 10 and you're still not close to how much a vampire is affected by a simple pepper spray.
To say that psycho number three went down like a twitching screaming sack of bricks would be underselling it. But it was enough to break the spell. The other vampires in the room suddenly remembered what they were, and that no, they didn't die like this. I was still pulling myself up off the floor when the crowd moved in on psycho number one.
One of the vampires in the crowd had found the sword.
Somewhere on the other side of the room, I could hear a man screaming... And the ripping, tearing sounds that caused the screaming.
***
I need to come clean about something. At this point, I could just spin some distorted lie about what happened to me, but I'd slip up at some point and then I'd just look like a damned idiot. So I want to be absolutely clear with you about how I got where I am. The whole Texas motel situation will make sense eventually, but you gotta understand how I got there in the first place. I wish I could just tell a story from point A to point B, and yes everything will make sense when you understand how it happened, but what we're going for here is more about why it happened.
See, I ended up in that Texas shithole of a motel because Harry decided to use me as bait.
***
One night, a week before the massacre at the Hall of the Drunken King, I ran into that girl from my funeral, the one who had slipped me her number.
This was right after Claude and I had almost come to blows about what he calls me "stalking" Jaime, and I'd just said fuck you, and a bunch of other really nasty things, and had stormed out of the condo, heading out, heading anywhere, but knowing that I was really just itching for some easy blood. I'd hoped that maybe Harry would let bygones be far gone and let me into the club, but I wasn't holding my breath. If he decided to just be a dick about the whole thing, I could always just hit the nearest bar and grab the first redhead I came across. The idea had formed in my head that I could always just grab some girl off the street, drag her into an alley and just get a little taste, just a little... but that idea just terrified the shit out of me. It made me think of Daemien, what he had become, and then what I'd done to him, and I almost threw up on the spot. As much as I wanted just a teeny tiny taste of blood at the time, I also didn't want to become a twisted version of Daemien. That way led to the Gentlemen or worse: Claude knowing what I'd done.
The thought occurred to me that maybe he'd even followed me, was watching somewhere, waiting for me to fuck-up either out of trying or frustration, and I turned, stumbling, sure I would spot him lurking in the shadows.
But no, there was no Claude. Apparently he'd taken my yell to fuck off and die very seriously. Or he was better at hiding than I was at finding.
I could have laughed at myself then, entertaining such useless thoughts of Claude following and watching me like some vengeful Santa Claus. He had better things to do than follow my stupid ass around. And as for me, I had some blood to score and Harry was going to let me in this time, he had to--
SCREEEEECH!
The middle of the street is the worst place to have an epiphany, make up your mind, change said mind, and then change direction. The Mercedes Benz that screeched to a halt just inches further than where I wish it had stopped (that is, two feet away instead of where it did stop, which happened to be about a foot past where I had previously been standing) was a nice one. It was well kept, undamaged, and from my vantage point, which happened to be about six feet in the air above the soon-to-be-previously-undamaged hood, it looked to be driven by a very attractive and vaguely familiar woman. I had a moment to wonder just when my reflexes had become so sharp, and had I always been able to jump this high, or was this a vampire thing... and then reality and gravity noticed me and decided to assert themselves very solidly, firmly and expensively.
I dropped onto the hood of the car, trying to stick a dramatic landing a la Kate Beckinsdale, but she must have had a hell of a lot more practice at looking cool. I just landed
, my feet went flying into the air from under me, and down I went, my head connecting with the hood a second time on my way down.
I popped right back up, determined to not look like a complete dork to this very attractive woman in this very expensive car who might just fall under my alluring vampire spell and be my sugar-lady for a while...
Oh damn. Vampire.
So there went that Sugar Momma fantasy.
She was looking out the window at me, more bemused than annoyed.
“You trying to get yourself killed there?”
“Nope, once was expensive enough for me.”
The girl was definitely looking familiar, and it was taking me a second to place her. It was beginning to bug the shit out of me. I glanced at the hood of the car, noticed the damage, and my traitor face betrayed my distress at the huge dents now in the hood of the Mercedes Benz. Then I remembered that she was the one at fault. How many drinks was I going to be able to score out of this? Let's see how big I can smile--
“I remember you,” she said and my grin faltered as I searched frantically in my mind for where I knew her from, and was I innocent? I hope I was, because I probably wasn't and she was smiling so maybe it wasn't that bad, right? She smiled and it was infectious.
“You remember me, right? I'm Marisa. I was at your funeral.”
I could have slapped myself silly. How could I possibly have forgotten? Oh yeah, the trauma of the $10K bill and following shenanigans could have had something to do with it.
“How could I forget? You gave me your number.”
“Sorry about almost running you over just then. I really didn't see you.”
“Hey, it's cool. I shoulda been looking where I was going. You going to the club tonight?”
She wrinkled her nose, like she had smelled something bad, and shook her head. “No, I'm not,” she said. “I don't like it there so much. Personally I've got much better things to do with myself than hangout with a bunch of party hungry brats in suits.”
I was curious. Everyone else seemed so convinced that this was the place to be. It hadn't quite occurred to me that other vampires might be doing something completely different.
“Like what?”
Marisa smiled then and nodded to me.
“Why don't you come along with me and find out? It'll be healthy for you to get away from that atmosphere.”
How could I resist? A beautiful woman was offering to take me for a drive in her pretty car, and I was going to turn it down? Not on your life. Besides, real curiosity about what other vampires did with their own lives was gnawing at me. And maybe there might be something to drink at the end of the road.
The realization that it was all so fake had been stuck deeply in my mind and this offered a distraction, a different view into someone else's idea of fun. Besides, if Marisa had another party to go to, maybe there was another supply of easy blood that Harry didn't control.
I grinned as charmingly as I could and jumped into Marisa's pretty car. I wondered again if Claude was following me and considered giving him the finger. I was going to do what the hell I wanted, Claude and Jaime be damned.
Stupid, stupid me.
***
There is something to be said for the stupidity of optimists and junkies, but I think the stupidity of the horny, vampire junkie under the lure of a beautiful woman, beats it hands down every time. For some reason, I had the song “Hey Pretty” stuck in my head as Marisa drove the car through the night, heading up the highway away from the city, driving way too fast, but doing it so gracefully. This was a woman who enjoyed driving and it was amazingly sexy just watching her. When I started to sing out loud without realizing it, she just smiled and kept on driving, fully aware of the effect she was having on me.
“I'm not going to screw you Bob,” she said at one point.
“That's a bloody shame,” I replied, and it was. “You have a sister?”
I almost got a laugh out of her that time.
“Where are we going anyway?”
“This place I know. Hotel Astoria. There are some people there I'd like you to meet.”
I like to look back and think that I had a sense of what was to come later that night, that somehow a sixth sense tingled somewhere in the back of my head, but the truth is it didn't. There was no weird Spidey-vampire-sense, no warning bells, no point of recognition. This is all hindsight, and you know what they say about hindsight, right?
Besides who could have known the Hotel Astoria would go down the way it did?
If I had known, I would never have gotten into that car with Marisa.
***
The Hotel Astoria was a grand old hotel 30 miles north of town. It sat out the outskirts of everything, completely on its own down the end of the dusty highway that led to it. There was a single light on in the front window as we drove up to it and for an instant I found myself singing the chorus of Hotel California.
Marisa smiled at me and nodded.
"Good song," she said and a chill ran up my spine for all of the wrong reasons. "It's such a lovely place isn't it?"
"Now you're just messing with me aren't you?"
"Of course I am. Don't worry Bobby. I'm not your wise old elf and nobody is going to try to keep you here. It's just an old hotel where a few of us like to meet from time to time."
This was entirely an understatement.
A raucous cheer went up from the bar as we entered. There were nine other vampires there, and they were the most awesome vampires I had ever seen. They weren't your movie vampires with their flawless skin and pretty faces, nor were they the spoiled trust fund kiddies that served as the population of the Hall of the Drunken King.
No, these guys were cut from a different cloth.
They looked like they had gone all around the world and really lived life to the fullest and were still enjoying the hell out of it. Maybe it was the way they dressed or carried themselves in the manner that they owned the room by virtue of being there, but they were not going to be dicks about it, in fact come on over and buy me a beer and we'll talk about it more, was the message they sent. Charisma and experience poured from them in waves. The most interesting man in the world had nothing on these guys, these vampires. And all at once I really got it, understood what it was that was so cool about being a vampire: the wanting to enjoy living forever because life was such a great thing.
I could go on and on about how awesome they were and how they welcomed me and instantly made me feel like a rock star that I could be one of them if I wanted, but I won't do that. There was blood coming and a price was to be paid.
Carlos was the one who ordered me my first beer and introduced me to everyone else like he had known me forever. Marisa just watched approvingly, and I grinned at her like a bloody idiot.
"Welcome to the brotherhood Roberto!" He said to a raised glass of some really good ale whose name I can’t quite remember. "If you can keep up with us, we may even drag you along with us to Costa Rica where las chicas are muy bonitas and the blood runs hotter than el sol."
"Not on my salary, but thanks for the thought."
"In the brotherhood, no man is left behind. Fuck Harry and his elitist prick vampires. Here we are men--"
"And women!" This from Marisa and Beth, the only two women in the room. Beth was a gorgeous well built red-head with a wild mane of hair, and she was hanging out with Sergei and Oscar at the other end of the bar. Sergei was a willowy Russian and Oscar was the polar opposite, a tall slab of muscle from Barbados (not African-American, just black, according to him).
"And women!" Carlos agreed, not missing a beat. "Who bear no allegiance to family or crest, only to each other!"
"So what you're saying," I said slowly, as I worked it out in my head, "is that drinks are on you?"
This was greeted by a roar of laughter and approval and not for the first time, I wondered if I'd fallen in with a band of pirates. This was too unreal. It felt kind of like an out of body experience, one where I wasn't really in contr
ol of anything I was doing and could only smile bemusedly while waiting for reality to come back and kick me in the nuts.
Something was bugging me.
"What makes you any different than Harry's trust fund squad?"
"Trust fund squad?” Marisa’s eyes sparkled gleefully. “Can I use that?"
Marisa was watching me intently. It made me kind of nervous since it was the first time she was really paying attention to me. Sure we'd talked in the car, but Marisa kept her distance and since I'd been friend-zoned very early on, even casual flirting was pointless. Somewhere in the past six months or so I'd completely lost the ability to talk to any attractive woman without A) trying to get said woman into bed, and B) trying to drink their blood. Options A and B usually happened to coincide quite nicely, but with Marisa it became evident pretty quickly that I was going to have to come up with options C through H pretty damn quickly.
"Use it all you want, just make sure I get my royalties and we're all good."
"Why do you think we're the same?" Marisa asked and everyone quieted down, attention on us. I considered just laughing it off and downing my beer so I could move on to the next one, but something made me not do that. Something made me put the beer down instead and plunge ahead with what had been bugging me.
"I give shitty speeches so please don't let me turn this into one. But here's the thing from a complete outsider point of view: we vampires are completely fucked up. You guys can live on the outside of vampire society all you want, living by your own rules, your bohemian lifestyle, touring the world and just being really fucking awesome. And that's great! It fucking rocks to be you. I'm sure you've got men and women all over the place wanting to suck your cock and give you all of the blood you need to keep yourselves going, but on top of it all you're still top dog. King of the pile, emperors of the heap, whatever you want to call it. You still rule and have things done your way. And you get together on occasion to pat yourselves on the back and remind yourself and everyone else of just how fucking awesome you are. How original.
So You Might Be a Vampire Page 21