So You Might Be a Vampire

by Rodney V. Smith

  I made the stairs and hit the bannister, envisioning myself as some suave and totally cool action hero, willing myself to be that guy just this once, and I almost made it.

  Unfortunately, physics had other ideas in mind. I was going way too fast as I hit the first curve, my poor jeans already heating up and I could practically feel the threads melting as I slid, but it was already too late. I rounded the curve, failed to hold on and instead flew through the air over the stairs in a perfect demonstration of the laws of gravity. The ability to fly or at least look cool while falling would have come in very useful at that point, but instead all I had was my heightened sense of observation to make notes to myself never to do that again. Oh, and was that Louise pulling a Kate Beckinsdale, and looking super-fucking cool as she did it, vaulting and leaping over the top balcony down to the ground below? Yep: it was. I’d definitely have to ask her for some style points, because that was really fucking cool how she was doing that... oh and look, here're the stairs before the floor, so yeah, landing was about to hurt--

  Yeah, it hurt like a sonofabitch. I crashed and tumbled, more like a ragdoll than the powerful vampire I’d been feeling like just seconds before. I hadn’t even had time to get my feet under me to try to stick the landing, so I landed on my back and right arm, somehow managing to slide down the 10 remaining stairs while doing a half tumble. So yeah, pain and lots of it.

  Louise had no problem sticking her landing, slamming into the ground mere seconds after I’d hit the bottom, and of course, she continued to make it look cool. I swear some people are born with the cool gene that had somehow eluded me. Every move they made was awesomely cool.

  “Are you going to keep running?”

  “Can’t. Pain. Ow. Ow. Misery.”

  “Oh, stop being such a big pussy, Bob. Shake it off. You’ll be fine in a few minutes.” Louise walked over and extended her hand down to help me up. I hesitated but then reached out and accepted the help. If she was going to kill me, why bother helping me up, right?

  “I’m not going to hurt you Bob. I’m the last person you ever need to be afraid of. Why the hell were you even running anyway?”

  “My feet do that thing sometimes. Keeps me out of trouble.”

  “You mean keeps you alive. You’re always in trouble.”

  “Fair enough. Same difference.”

  “Do you trust me Bob?”

  “Are you going to glammer me again?”

  “I can’t. It only works the one time on most vampires. You’re kind of expecting it now so I’d have to fight you. Easier to just hit you.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Probably not though, at least not until late in the game. I’m that way sometimes: only remember crucial information when it’s absolutely necessary instead of when it’s useful and can save a certain degree of pain. I considered just coming out with it and asking her what the hell was going on, but she kind of beat me to the punch.

  “You don’t actually need the blood you know. Not all the time like you’ve been craving it. That’s just your natural inclination to addiction talking.”

  “Is there anything about me that you don’t know?”

  “Oh, stop that. I had to keep an eye on you. You had me worried for a bit but then Claude stepped in, and you seemed to be doing so much better.”

  “Yeah, we were doing okay for a bit but it’s not like it’s something I can just turn off. I’m a fucking addict Louise. You don’t just wake up one day and decide that you’re not going to use anymore. At least I don’t. I’m not built that way.”

  “You’re not some kind of monster Bob. If you were, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Marisa would have ended you somewhere between here and the city.”

  Everything I thought I knew ended at that moment.

  The world works in fucked up ways. People you thought you knew, well, just how well do you really know them? Your neighbor - that old man who likes to examine his face in the elevators every night as if he’s looking for zits that just aren’t there - how well do you even know him beyond saying hello and hearing him bang away and stumble around next door? Hell, even your family or your best friends. You aren’t with them all of the time; you don’t know the intricacies of their lives, the dramas, the little victories and the soul-crushing defeats that they go through every day and yet still manage to pick themselves up and do it again the next day. You have no idea of what goes on in their lives, not even if they tell you because what you get is the bullshit watered down version where they are the heroes, and everything is seen from their perspective.

  So they lie to either make themselves feel just a little better or to make the situation so much worse so you can get an idea of how much it really affected them. But just trying to tell the story isn’t about the words, it’s about how they felt. So they lie so you can feel for them, but to you it’s just stuff and you’re not really interested in the minutiae unless you’re there with them.

  I could tell you about the petty things that Claude did to piss me off during the time we spent together. He was struggling to keep me human, keep me from becoming what I feared I would become (a junkie monster who didn’t want to help himself) but you’d just skip over it looking for the next humorous anecdote or interesting bit of action. Just like I realized that I didn’t know Louise and didn’t completely understand her.

  I knew I liked her, and that was usually enough, but sometimes it isn’t… especially when that person was asking you to trust them with your life. She hadn’t asked yet, but I knew it was coming. It was just that kind of night.

  Louise had introduced me to Jaime and for that she was a lifelong friend. For Louise, I’d take a bullet, or even a rampaging horde of wolves, but looking at the tapestry behind her that had suddenly come into focus during my rant, I had the realization that something like that might not be necessary.

  Everything finally connected, finally clicked, and I finally got it.

  “Is that you up there? In that tapestry?”

  “Yeah. We spent a bit of time in Spain and--”

  “That’s a lot of red. Did the artist forget he had other colors?”

  “Well, things did get out of hand--”

  The light of arriving cars washed over the tapestry, but I didn’t move, didn’t take my eyes from the fascinating and informative piece of artwork, not for a second. I no longer cared who was coming for us because they didn’t stand a chance.

  “So this is what makes you guys different than the other vampires huh? You guys kill vampires.”

  Louise shrugged, caught. She looked amused by me for some reason. I looked to her and smiled.

  “No wonder you look so cool doing the jumping and the standing and stuff: You’re a fucking vampire slayer.”

  ***

  I have no idea what to say at this point. The rest of the night was a blur.

  A blur filled with red.

  So much red.

  I look back at that night and try to make some sense of it, and even just writing it down still makes me go “what the fuck?”. I swear that is the only night in my entire life and my entire time as a vampire that I was actually surrounded with the history and could feel the age of the vampires around me. It was almost too much like what you see in the movies and read in the books and to tell you the truth even when I read what I’ve written, it feels a lot like I’m making it up.

  I wrote quite a bit about that night, mostly to get it off of my chest, and there was a lot there after I realized that Louise was some kind of vampire slayer. See? Even now it just sounds fucking stupid, like it should be in a movie or something. It sounds a lot like I was on some major drugs, and even though I didn’t make any of it up, it doesn’t even feel real anymore. People say that things happened fast, so fast that you could only live through it and go with the flow, but that doesn’t even begin to get close to it.

  I’m not sure I even believe me anymore.

  So I burned those pages, and no one will ever head them.

 
But I will tell you this: when I woke up in Madame Vera’s vault, Harry was waiting for me and for the first time he looked at me like I was more than just a complete fuck-up.

  After the Hotel Astoria things began to change for me.

  I could have gone with Louise you know. She would have trained me. After all, she made me.

  But to tell you the truth, after seeing what she could do, it scared the shit out of me.

  So much blood…

  I told Harry almost everything, but he already knew most of it. I think he was just testing to see if I was going to lie to him. So I didn’t, mainly to fuck with him, and that seemed to satisfy him.

  When he said he had a job for me, I accepted without a second thought. At the time, I really didn’t give a damn.

  I’m a goddamn liar. We all know this.

  I am the worst kind of narrator: the one who fucking lies to your face, and you know it. Here I am giving you middle fingers all the way, and you already know it. All you have to do is actually go back and look at what I’ve written (yes I know you already have, and you’re ready to tell me I’m contradicting myself, but you know what? Fuck you and your contradictions. It’s my story, and I can lie if I want to.)

  Okay?

  Fine.

  …

  I really don’t want to talk about this. I have no fucking idea why I even started in the first place, but yet here we are. And it’s not even the worst part of the whole damn fucked up story that my life has become.

  A lot of things I can handle. Most of them I’ll most likely run away from, but that’s handling them in a different kind of way. Others I can take head on and try my damnedest to talk my way out of without getting too fucked up. And this is the human side of me talking here. I’m much better at being human because I’ve had so much practice at it. Not the best of humans, but dammit, I knew where I stood. Those instincts are still with me and sometimes those very human instincts stick around to save the ever loving shit out of me.

  Yes, there was blood at the Hotel Astoria, there was a lot of it and I almost lived through it.

  In the end, it was Louise who gave me my second death, and I hate her for it for all of the wrong reasons.

  That’s what hurts so much, and I’d rather not talk about it, but no, you want details, all the gory bits displayed for your entertainment. Fuck you very much for making me actually go through with the telling of it.

  ***

  When they entered through the main doors, they came in a hail of gunfire and concussion grenades that shook the walls, and blasted out the huge panes of expensive glass from the very old and even more expensive windows. Louise shoved me back behind the Grand Piano as the first explosion hit and the glass shattered into a million pieces. The look on her face said everything. It told me that it was okay, I didn’t have to be the hero since I wasn’t so good at it anyway, she was going to go and take care of these jokers, and oh boy were they going to pay. For some reason as I fell against the solid and oddly comforting wood of the stairs which had only moments ago been the source of a lot of pain, my pride chose that moment to make a stand for itself in the stupidest way. Fuck the grand piano and fuck hiding! I was a vampire, Goddamnit! The rest of me wanted nothing to do with the argument Pride was making, especially my body, which vehemently disagreed with this sudden coup from Pride. After all, it was my body which was going to take the brunt, or indeed all of the pain, damage and humiliation that was sure to come; Pride would be just fine off sulking in a corner while the body healed. But no, the coup was underway, and as two masked men stormed the blasted open windows, guns raised and ready to fire, pride had me on my stupid feet, ready to play hero.

  Fuck you, Pride. Fuck you rotten and next time come packing a machine gun.

  I saw Louise already halfway down the corridor, her back to me as she was engaging in some more awesome Kate Beckinsdale style awesomeness, and I realized at that moment that my hero act might be coming at the worst possible time for me. This was, of course, only a split second before the two men had spotted me popping up from behind the piano like some demented and clueless Jack-in-the-box and yes, guns were already turning—

  I threw the piano at them.

  Okay, maybe not “threw," so much as “shoved”, but it flew through the air and smashed into the two men even as bullets ripped though the wood in a savage rain of lead, splinters of wood, ivory and sproingy wire. But you know what they say, right? Bullets are no match for an old thousand-pound piano crashing down on you. If no one has made that a saying, someone should, because I can tell you it’s absolutely true and a little poetic in its simplicity. From the men’s perspectives it must have been like, “oh there he is, shoot him! Shoot him -- wait is that a piano? Shoot it! Shoot it -- argh!”

  That’s what I like to imagine anyway. At the time I was more stunned at the fact that I’d somehow managed to send that piano flying across the room like that, so much so that I stood there frozen as bullets flew around me (did I mention the men were holding submachine guns? I think I skipped over that part, but yes actual submachine guns, actual Uzis or Mach10s or whatever the fuck they’re called, and yes with actual real bullets that explode in a hail of lead that will definitely kill a dude.) The piano shielded me from the bullets, which is a good thing, since I wasn’t bothering to duck or make myself a smaller target in any way whatsoever. I just stood there with that stupid look on my face going “whoa” as the piano smashed into the two men who were trying very deliberately to kill me.

  I might have stayed frozen like that, still wondering if any other vampire powers were suddenly going to manifest themselves, but another explosion went off down the hallway, followed by a chatter of submachine gun fire… and then a lot of strange sounds and screaming.

  When the piano heaved and shifted, nobody was as surprised as I was. I may have jumped a few feet, but since no one was there, I’m not going to admit to anything. I’ll just say that I was startled, since it hadn’t quite sunken in that I might have just killed two dudes who were definitely out to kill me, so it wasn’t exactly murder, more like self-defense, right? Those connections and blame and a little bit of pride had just started to co-mingle, so the piano moving was one hell of a surprise. Now I don’t know about you, but what I would do if a dude was trapped under a piano and was trying to get out, is exactly what I did just then: I went to see if I could help the dude. It was a really stupid thing to do, considering that I had put the damn piano on him in the first place, but my mind as I’ve pointed out wasn’t in the best of places.

  “Hey! You okay?”

  That was me as I ran over, praying that dude was still alive, and as I came around the side of the piano, I noticed that his mask had come off at some point and wait a minute—

  “You’re a vampire?”

  “You threw a piano at me, you fuck!”

  “You were shooting at me! What did you expect?”

  “You gonna help me or stand around like a fucking idiot?”

  I’d grabbed the piano by that point, more out of shock than anything else. What I was doing hadn’t quite occurred to me yet.

  I dropped the piano, and he screamed.

  “What the fuck man? It’s heavy!”

  “You really gotta be nicer to the guy who’s about to pull this goddamn piano off of you.”

  Then it occurred to me. My brain caught up, and I dropped the piano again.

  “What the fuck?”

  “I think… I think I’m going to leave you there,” I said as I spotted the MAC-10 on the floor.

  Another explosion down the hall, then a man screamed.

  “You really don’t want to meet my friend Louise. She’s a total badass. She would fuck you up.”

  “Is she about five-seven, reddish hair, cute and walking right toward us?”

  I turned. Louise was walking toward us, and she looked pissed.

  “Louise—”

  Louise was carrying a huge hand cannon. She didn’t even hesitate.

  B
LAM!

  The back of piano dude’s head disappeared in a mist of bone and blood and lots of brain. Way too much brain. The hole in between his eyes was tiny in comparison to the huge explosion at the back, just a neat little hole that just popped into existence like it was nothing. I would have preferred just to keep looking at that tiny hole, but it’s the explosion that keeps playing over and over again in my head. Blip and boom and splat, a lot of mess just behind this dude, all over everything, so much fucking blood.

  I looked from dude to Louise and back again, the words still forming in my mouth, and I knew what I was going to say but the words just weren’t coming out because there was still that look in his eyes, quiet desperation and still a look that said "fuck you buddy, I’m so going to fuck you up," but that was a lie now. Nobody was going to be getting fucked up, not by him, not anymore.

  Louise slapped the gun into my hand and took the MAC-10 from me. She examined it professionally.

  “You know he was a vampire right?”

  “I kill vampires. What’s your point?”

  “Is he dead? Like dead, dead?”

  “Hollow point bullet Bob. Tiny hole, big splat. Very effective against vampires. If there is no brain, there ain’t no coming back.”

  “I did though. I did it. I came back after I got shot in the head.”

  Louise gave me a long look and seemed oddly impressed.

  “Then you got lucky Bob.”

  Louise spotted the other vampire under the piano and grinned.

  “Wow, you took out two of them all on your own! Nice!”

  “Yes—“

  BLAM! BLAM!

  “Will you stop shooting people? It’s very distracting!”

  BLAM!

  That one she did looking directly at me. It was very deliberate and very much a fuck you. I wondered if this was all just some really fucked up test but threw that out of my mind as soon as it arrived. No tests. Louise isn’t the kind to do tests. And that dude was very much dead.

  That one got me.

  When I was done puking, Louise had taken up position at the corner, MAC-10 in one hand, phone in the next one, texting to her team.