So You Might Be a Vampire

by Rodney V. Smith

  “Marco and Frank are taking fire, but the others managed to get out the back early on. These fuckers are using flash bangs to disorient us.”

  “Who are these guys? Any why are any of you even using guns and grenades and--”

  “And Pianos?” She smiled. “Basic physics Bob. A bullet is going so fast, whatever it hits is still going to get massively fucked up. Doesn’t matter if it’s a vampire or an elephant, physics still takes over.”

  “And these guys? Who are they?”

  “Well, either Harry sent them for us or something else is going on, I don't know.”

  “Harry? What?”

  “Don’t you know Bob? We’re at war.”

  ***

  Leaving the hotel was an action movie all in itself.

  Ever had that dream where this chick is walking ahead of you killing everyone in sight, while you cower behind and try very hard to not get shot? Oh, right: I’m the only one who has that recurring nightmare, but that night was the night it started.

  Details? Fine. Here we go then.

  Louise was a killing machine. I have no idea how many men came at us as we made our way through the shattered corridors, but it seemed like the number didn’t matter, not to her, at least not at first. Louise had slapped a gun into my hand, looked me deep into the eye and said,

  “Try not to get killed Bob,” and with that, she turned on her heel, the proud owner of two new MAC-10s, the deliverer of death with a side order of a lot of pain.

  I desperately hoped to not disappoint her and ran quickly behind. We’d almost made it to the door at the end of the corridor, false hope blooming in my stupid brain, a doorway never having looked so far and inviting and not exposed… but it was not to last.

  Beatrice, blonde, vapid, day-walking vampire that she was, stepped out of the darkness, flanked by three men, two of them carrying a bloody-faced Marisa between them.

  It was the longest moment in history, especially for me as I realized what was happening. My body was in full defensive mode, and my legs went out from under me as I turned to dive out of the way and failed massively, instead just flopping to the ground. I’d already had time to see Beatrice and take in the knowledge that here was someone who was doing something that she was very good at, which as it turned out, was hurting people. Marisa was the evidence of that, one arm missing below the elbow and a huge source of most of the blood already on and flowing from her in a steady stream. I had time to wonder idly if they’d even bothered to bring the arm along, instantly followed by the thought that oh shit, Louise wasn’t going to like this. But I was already falling and rolling by that point, Beatrice and her goons barely having a chance to spot us.

  Here’s the thing I realized about Louise: at this moment in her life, now that she’d fully embraced the lifestyle, as fucked up as it was, she was all instinct. She didn’t stop to think, she just reacted, and it was what kept her alive so well. Even before I had hit the floor, she’d already taken aim, with one gun raised in one easy motion. It was amazing how fast she was and by all means that first bullet should have taken Beatrice’s head clean off, but now, I was still in slow motion, and as fast as she was, as good as she was, Louise hadn’t counted on anything like Beatrice.

  Beatrice was a creature of reaction as well, so that first bullet only grazed her cheek, as she brought all of her own speed to bear, her head whipping out of the way as the bullet sliced by, cutting through some of her hair, but only just. She rolled forward even as Louise’s bullet took out the Goon to the right of Marisa, the bullet catching him directly in the eye and spinning him around in a spray of blood. I was still rolling at this point, it was happening so damn fast, and somehow Beatrice had pulled a sword in her roll forward, its blade wavering sharply in the air as it came up—

  I could see Louise’s head turn to track Beatrice, and she may have smiled, but she sure as hell didn’t freak out or adjust her aim at all. I know if I’d been in her shoes, I most likely would have tried to shoot the threat coming right the fuck at me with an oversized knife, but then again, I would have already been dead. No, Louise had it all figured out. A twitch of her hand, and BLAM! The other Goon holding Marisa had the left side of his face disappear in a mist of blood and bone. Another twitch and BLAM! BLAM! The other goon dropped like a sack of potatoes. Marisa dropped as well, of course, and God she was so pale, why hadn’t she stopped bleeding? Why wasn’t her vampire healing taking over and stopping all of the bleeding?

  Beatrice was rising up now, her blade on the upswing, ready to take out Louise, and for a second there, just for a second I thought Louise had bitten off more than she could chew.

  Remember that part about Louise being a killing machine?

  Well, someone should have told Beatrice.

  Louise turned the gun and deflected the first blow, the sword sliding off the metal of the gun, but gouging it deeply. Beatrice tried to recover, tried to not let the sudden shock in her arm and the chink in her sword distract her. She turned her sword arm, maybe hoping to cut off some fingers, and lunged—

  So Louise raised the other MAC-10 and shot her in the eye.

  Beatrice crumpled to the ground, a sickening thud reverberating through the corridor. And just like that, it was over.

  Louise looked back at me down on the floor, and I shrugged helplessly. Like what did she expect anyway? All of that had taken less than three seconds, three fucking seconds! Who the hell has time to react to anything that fast? Well, besides Louise and Beatrice.

  “Get the sword and stay close.”

  “What about Marisa?”

  “Get the sword Bob.”

  I got the sword, trying very hard to convince myself that Beatrice wasn’t going to rise from the dead and make sashimi out of me. I ended up just kicking it out of her limp fingers, purposely not looking at her. The next part, of picking up the sword without seeing Beatrice, that part was going to be tricky--

  (eyeballohmygodtheresjustaholeohgodcantlook)

  I’m not even going to describe how much that disturbed me, seeing her eye just missing like that. I just turned away and kept looking away. Beatrice could have risen from the dead right then, making a shit-ton of noise, and I still wouldn’t have looked because that would just be the other kind of seriously fucked up. Instead, I looked over at where Louise was trying to get a very pale Marisa to her feet.

  “…garlic on the fucking sword.”

  “She did this to you?”

  “I didn’t think she would. I know her. I’ve known her for a long time Louise. I was at her first funeral…”

  “Can you walk? Marisa?”

  She nodded vigorously. Then nodded to the closest downed goon.

  “I think that one is still breathing.”

  Louise nodded and looked me in the eye. Marisa rolled the Goon over, and her fangs snapped out, longer than I had ever known they could. Holy fuck were they long… Marisa buried her fangs into the Goon and all I heard was slurping as she drank deeply.

  “Garlic has a different effect than what you’ve heard," Louise was saying and I focused on her. "You would know it if you’d read the literature, but I’ll give you the cliff notes version. You know not to eat garlic, but if you really want to fuck with a vampire, all you have to do is rub your blade in it. The cuts from a blade like that do not heal. Not until they’re cleaned properly by a medical professional. Which I am. If you don’t clean it, then you heal slowly and painfully and get some seriously fucked up scars.”

  “Why is she doing that? I thought drinking another vampire’s blood was a bad, bad thing?”

  “She needs it to heal faster. One of the benefits of vampire blood over human blood. That high you get from drinking human blood is a lot more complicated than you can guess.”

  Marisa stood up then and belched. It seemed to have caught her by surprise as much it did me, and a titter escaped from her. She grinned now, clearly drunk or very, very high.

  “One of those motherfuckers has my arm. Let’s go get i
t back!”

  Marisa charged off into the depths of the hotel. Louise looked back at me and grinned.

  “Come on Bob. Let’s go kill some vampires.”

  ***

  It was three hours before we killed them all.

  ***

  Louise found me later in a pile of vampires, and I was surprised I was still able to scream as much as I did when she pulled the wooden stake out of my chest. A flood of blood came with it, gushing out with every beat of my heart. God it hurt so much.

  “Louise—“

  “You were supposed to not die on me Bob.”

  “I was supposed to do a lot of things. I’m a fuck-up, remember?”

  “You fought well though. I’m surprised. We got all of them. Some of them a little more permanently than others.”

  I tried to look around at the general carnage in the room and failed miserably. Man it sucks to have someone impale you on a stake of wood, especially when their aim is so fucking bad! Why did they have to suck so badly just then? I coughed up blood and something that felt fleshy. Louise made a face, and I knew it was bad.

  “When you wake up tomorrow, you’re going to want to run. A lot of these guys are going to be waking up in the same mausoleum, and none of them are going to be happy with you.”

  “Can’t you just kill them all?”

  “Just enough to make a point. The rest of them will remember though. They’ll remember for a long, long time and having scared vampires is a lot more valuable than a bunch of dead vampires.”

  I coughed again and god it was painful. When I was done screaming, every bad word I had intended to unload on Louise had gone from my head.

  “Just make it quick, okay?”

  And then my friend, Louise the Vampire Slayer, killed me.

  ***

  Twenty extremely pissed off, formerly dead vampires walked down the corridor, right past the one boardroom in Madame Vera’s complex that happened to have floor-to-ceiling glass walls. This room just so happened to be the one boardroom that I was occupying with Harry in my face and Madame Vera at my shoulder. If they had only been one minute earlier, they would have found me on top of the table, scrambling to get away from Harry and then failing miserably as he dragged me bodily back across said table to take the beating that I so rightly deserved. Madame Vera had managed to insert herself in between us and had surprised me with her immense strength, when she had picked Harry up like a rag doll and flung him back against the now starred-and-cracked glass wall with one arm. The other hand dragged me back down and held on quite firmly to my shoulder while she looked deep into my eyes—

  It seemed to surprise her when she completely failed to glammer me. That gave way to a grudging respect and for the first time I felt a burst of pride… but just a quick, teeny-tiny burst.

  I wish I could say that we exchanged some witty banter, and I made some moves on Madame Vera, which were not rejected, but instead the only thing out of my mouth was a yelp of fear as I locked on to the sight of Harry launching himself across the room at me.

  “Stop it immediately Harold!”

  “Why are you protecting him? What makes this piece of shit so special? He’s nothing!”

  “Dude! I’m standing right here man! Not cool!”

  “Be quiet Robert, or I will let him have you.”

  That was the perfect moment, one I could have never designed or even dreamed. The timing was so damn perfect. There I was being menaced by one of the most powerful vampires in the city, and Madame Vera, who by all accounts seemed to be even more powerful, was my protector. I don’t know what the men saw first as they walked by on their way out of the facility, but for some, it was definitely my face, a face they recognized. They most likely didn’t have a name to go with the face, not yet, but I like to think they had nicknames for me, like “there’s that motherfucker who killed me last night”, or “what the fuck is he doing here, I’m going to kill him!’ or my personal favorite “it’s him!”. I only sort of recognized a couple of them, after all, faces tend to look different when they’re not screaming at you and you weren’t trying to empty rounds of an ineffectual gun at them. The sword had been really fucking effective even though it had gotten dull pretty quickly from all of the cutting, the misses, and general slamming into bone and arms and floor.

  Oh hey! I recognized that one guy with the blonde hair and look of promised homicide, but he looked a lot different when he wasn’t (yet) trying to kill me. The next time I saw him, he would be wearing a mask and attempting the promised homicide.

  Now here was a strange thing: the murderous look changed when he made full sense of what was happening in the room. His eyes shifted to Harry and then to Madame Vera, and then it wasn’t so much a case of “I’m so catching up with you in the parking lot when you get out of here” as much as “maybe I’ll be in that parking lot, or maybe I’ll let you off easy this time.”

  This recognition happened over and over to varying degrees with each of the men, and it was stunning to see that reaction.

  “I just want to thank you again for not leaving me in that room with those guys,” I said to Madame Vera. “They would have torn me apart.”

  “Not in my house. Never here.” Madame Vera said, and you know what? She was right. I doubt that even the most stupid and homicidal vampire would ever want to mess with Madame Vera. The way she has thrown Harry across the room was one thing, but the fact that she was the one in charge of who got to come back to life... now that was true power.

  “So on a scale of one to run, run, run… how much trouble am I in?”

  Harry was glaring after the men down the corridor at this point, and he barely turned to me.

  “You killed twenty vampires last night Bobby. Ten of them, permanently.”

  “They were trying to kill me! What was I supposed to do? Lie down and beg for them to make it quick?”

  “I want his teeth.” Harry spoke directly to Madame Vera, ignoring me completely. She just turned to him, and Harry simmered down.

  “No. Robert is correct. Those men were trying to kill him--”

  “Plus they didn’t even stay dead, so no harm done, right? Well, except the ones who will. Stay dead this is.” Shit. I should just shut up sometimes.

  Madame Vera only turned her eyes to me and succeeded in terrifying the shit out of me with such a small subtle movement.

  “Robert, you will never interrupt me again. Do I make myself clear?”

  I nodded mutely.

  “Those were some of my best men. If word of this gets out—“

  “Then Robert here will be famous, and you can’t stand to see that, can you Harold? Do you hate the accidentals that much?”

  I was still playing catch-up.

  “Um excuse me, but I can dig being famous.”

  “Of course you could.” Harry sneered at me, disgusted.

  “Does it come with a steady paycheck?”

  “Dream on Bobby-boy.”

  Couldn’t hurt to ask. I shrugged and spun myself slowly around in the office chair, trying to keep an eye on Harry at the same time. Madame Vera poured herself a drink from the bar in the corner.

  “Make him useful Harold. Louise and her associates may have some sentimental attachment to Robert. She’s becoming very skilled at repelling your attacks now you know. It’s almost a game to her. Bob here may be more useful than you think.”

  “Do I get to vote here? Because I vote no. To that plan. Or any plan with Harry in charge.”

  Harry wasn’t having it. He practically spat at me. “They left him behind Vera. Didn’t you hear him? He wasn’t even that useful to his friends. They chose to leave him for us to pick up instead of taking him with them.”

  I meant to object very strongly to that. I was on my way to objecting. Even had the perfect witty comeback, but instead I let reality wash over me. Harry was one hundred percent right on that score. Louise had left me with the other dead vampires. None of her crew had woken up here at Madame Vera’s because t
hey had all left together, some carrying their own pieces, but none of them had been left behind. I was the only one who was expendable. No matter how well I had fought or how many bullets I had taken (three in the chest), or even the fact that the grenade had torn most of my hand off along with shredding the left side of my body with shrapnel, blinding me in one eye and that I had taken that grenade to protect Louise… None of that had mattered in the end.

  I’d been left dead in the pools of blood on the floor to wait for the eventual punishment that was Harry.

  “Fuck you Harry,” I said quietly.

  “Did I hit a sore spot? You gonna cry on me Bobby-boy?”

  “Do be quiet Harold.”

  “Oh, come on Vera, don’t coddle the boy. He’s got a lot of growing up to do, and he needs to start now before somebody whacks his head off.”

  I found myself on my feet then, and I have no idea where that strength came from. Maybe I was sore that they’d fucking left me in the ruins, and I was pissed as fuck about it, maybe I was just sick of being treated like Harry’s whipping boy. Whatever it was, it got me to my feet, and again I actually felt like a vampire, feeling the blood surging through my veins, my muscles tightening, the joints in my hands and arms cracking as I stood to fight.

  “Come on Harry! You want my head then you’d better come and get it.”

  Harry sneered, and that just pissed me off more. “You fucking kidding me, right?” He turned to Madame Vera. “May I have your permission to kill him? I’ll pay his fee upfront.”

  ***

  “How long was I dead for this time?”

  “Two days, give or take a few hours.”

  “Did I at least put up a good fight? Was it epic?”

  “Oh, it was epic alright!”

  “Really?”

  “Oh wait, I’m sorry. I meant the other one. The one that isn’t epic.”

  I grinned up at Harry, and he just shook his head.

  “Put on some clothes Bobby. We’ve got a job for you.”

  ***

  The attack at the club happened the next week. Let’s just say that the jobs Harry tries to get me to do always seem to have a high chance of me dying while doing them. I’m beginning to think that this isn’t accidental.