So I nodded mutely, glad to be given some kind of direction.
Harry smiled his shark-toothed grin, and I wondered exactly how much more I was fucking myself.
“You’re going to be bait, Bobby boy.”
***
In case you can’t tell by now, the plan had been to use me as bait to draw Beatrice out and as far away from the city as possible, and you saw how well that went.
Harry could no longer afford to fuck around with his vampires either screaming at him to do something or straight up leaving the city in droves. It was a fucked up situation all around, and they weren’t getting anywhere with finding the psychopath who was hunting us all. Beatrice was smarter and crazier than the people looking for her and apparently she knew how to wait.
“How is she even managing to convince other vampires to work for her? That’s what I don’t understand.” Harry was pissed, pacing back and forth in his office. “She’s clearly insane. Anyone can see that after spending five minutes in a room with her, so how is she doing this?”
“She’s very earnest you know,” I said. “Did you see her after the Hotel Astoria?” I hadn’t seen her in the crowd of pissed of vamps who clearly wanted me dead.
“No. She wasn’t one of the bodies we took out of there.”
“She got shot in the eye you know. Louise did it.”
“Fucking Louise. That’s now two fucking degenerates that slipped under my radar. I need to tighten up on security. Maybe hire some fucking humans. Vampires are too complacent, too sure of our own superiority to be good at security.”
“Even Mister Flynn?”
Harry sneered and shook his head.
“Mister Flynn isn’t security.”
The vampires Beatrice had somehow seduced were, of course, now lying low, either with Beatrice or dead. Nobody was showing their faces, just waiting for me to make a move. Harry was tired of waiting.
I would no longer be allowed out in public in vampire clubs. Sammy now had a new co-worker who creeped her the fuck out, but apparently he was a highly trained killer, and the shop had become his personal arsenal.
And of course, there was Jaime.
***
“I just need to make sure she’s okay.”
We were in the alley across from Jaime’s store again. When I say again, I mean more for myself since I had been there hundreds of times. It was Sammy’s first trip to my stalking ground, and she was cussing at me all the way.
“I’m calling bullshit. Beatrice has no idea about Jaime unless you told her.”
I shook my head ruefully. “We didn’t have much of a ‘talking’ relationship. And even when we did talk, it wasn’t about anything personal. I ended up listening more than talking.”
“And yet you don’t know a thing about this girl.”
It’s funny how you can spend so much time listening to someone you really didn’t give a shit about personally and how little you actually soaked in. I’d been content just to lie there and recover for the next round of sex, and Beatrice had just talked like it was nothing. It was better when she had stopped cutting her eyeball out, but I still hadn’t really listened to her. Stupid me. She could have been telling me her entire life story, social security number, address, the works, and I would have just gone “uh huh” while wondering if I was going to have enough time to get something to drink before she jumped on my dick again.
I shrugged at Sammy, more embarrassed than anything.
“Sorry. I suck. Now get over it.”
“Why the hell am I even in the alley with you? This is so fucking stupid.”
“Well, Claude still isn’t picking up, and tonight’s your night off, so—“
“Fuck my life.” Sammy stomped off down the alley. “I wish I hadn’t quit smoking. I could really use a cigarette right about now.”
There was silence for a moment. I concentrated on the store for a while, mentally willing Jaime to appear in the window and wishing that there was a defined list of vampire powers somewhere. Oh, wait a minute—
“Sammy, did those pamphlets say anything about vampire psychic abilities?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Well? What did they say?”
“That you don’t have them. Except for that glammering thing, whatever that is.”
“You don’t wanna know.”
I considered for a second, just a tiny second, being the bad guy and glammering Sammy to stop having such a rage boner for me. She was still pissed at me, despite coming with me on my mission to check on Jaime, and no matter how many times I was going to say sorry and mean it, I think she was determined to hold onto it for a while. The last thing you want is to be hated by possibly your only friend in the world. So the temptation was there, but the alternative, the knowing what I had done… could I live with that? Would it be worth it?
I turned around then, not knowing if I was going to try, but the temptation was so damn strong. To be honest, I might have tried it, damn the consequences, and if you want me to be 100% honest… I was wondering if it would work on Jaime. After all, she was right there…
Beatrice was also right there.
“Hello Bob.”
She had somehow snuck up on us and how held a struggling Sammy in the air by the neck; her examination of Sammy was of curiosity as if Sammy was some kind of bug, just ready to be squished.
I made to move towards them, ready to attack Beatrice, but she barely even looked at me.
No, what she did was a lot simpler. She just raised her hand and with a lazy almost contemptuous flick, her huge knife spun through the air and buried itself hilt deep in my sternum.
I choked, unable to breathe, unable to move, just fascinated with the knife that had appeared in my chest like magic. The pain was there, excruciating and screaming for attention, but my brain was busy with the magic trick of the appearing knife and didn’t have time to deal with the realities of pain yet.
I looked up at Beatrice, meaning to tell her about this amazing trick, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was a huge flood of blood. And then there I was, collapsing like a sack of wet laundry to the dirty ground of the alley.
Beatrice was looking at me now, and she was smiling, her one good eye so full of psychotic joy and glee and I wondered if she’d gotten the joke, seen the amazing trick with the astonishing, amazing knife in my chest.
“I’m not going to kill her Bob. Not yet. But I want you both to know that I can kill you anytime I want.”
Sammy was clawing at Beatrice’s arm through all of this, kicking and hitting and generally trying very hard not to die. It was futile and may have been more like slapping a rock from the way Beatrice failed to acknowledge Sammy’s struggle.
“Stop that, meat bag,” Beatrice hissed at Sammy, and she turned to look her in the eye. Sammy’s struggles ceased, and I would have giggled if I could, but it wasn’t a good laugh coming from me. It was pain and poison, and it hurt so fucking bad and why couldn’t I move? Here was Sammy finding out first hand the exact definition of glammering, and I couldn’t help her.
“You’re not a very good vampire Bob. I would have been feeding off this little bitch a long time ago if I were you. I bet she’s delicious.”
Beatrice bared her fangs, and I knew it was already too late. There was nothing at all that anyone could do, especially me. There was not going to be a miraculous rescue, no surge of strength from me to save my friend. It doesn’t work that way. Vampire or not, sometimes bad things just happen, and sometimes that bad thing is named Beatrice.
Beatrice pulled a suddenly pliable Sammy close to her and smiled. She knew what I was thinking, what I knew, and she was enjoying it. And then, she sank her fangs into Sammy’s neck and drank deeply, and the worst part was how Sammy moved her neck to make more room for Beatrice to drink.
It only lasted maybe twenty seconds, but it felt like an eternity.
I think I may have passed out because the next thing I knew, I was screaming as pain expl
oded through me, hammering at my brain and overloading my senses. There was a boot on my chest, and Beatrice was slowly pulling her oversized knife from my chest. It had lodged in the bone from the force of the throw, so she was rocking it back and forth to loosen it, and completely ignored my screaming and the spurting blood from my chest.
The knife finally came loose, and it was such a relief to have it out - a very familiar feeling from my time with Beatrice, one that always made me throw-up as my flesh tried desperately to knit itself, stop the damage and make this vampire whole again.
“You’re right Bob: I do enjoy hurting you, but it’s all your fault you know. You made me do this. All you had to do was love me. Is that too much to ask?”
I caught sight of Sammy sitting on the ground, hand on her neck and for a minute I was glad she was still alive, but I wanted to scream to her to run dammit, just run. Beatrice must have known what I was thinking. She just laughed and kicked me in the ribs harder than was necessary. So much for love.
“I’m not going to kill her. But she’s mine now Bob. She’s going to do whatever I tell her to do. She’s going to come to me and beg me to drink her blood, and I will Bob. She’s going to enjoy every second of it, and when I get bored of her, I’ll drain her and she will let me.”
Beatrice straddled me now, pain flaring up from my poor damaged body. “See Bob, this is what we really do. This is what our relationship with people is supposed to be like. We are the hunters, and they are just meat, there for the taking. You get it Bob. You understand it. I can see it inside you, just wanting to break free, but you need a little push, a reminder of what you are.”
“I’m nothing like you,” was what I wanted to say, but the blood in my mouth choked me and the extreme pain from the crazy bitch sitting on top of me trying to look me in the eye, made it come out as a liquid burble-scream thing.
“Come with me, Bob, and make it easy. If you don’t, I will destroy everything you love, and I will enjoy every minute of it. And in the end you will join me. And you will love me.”
Beatrice sat up and looked at the knife in her hand.
“Maybe if I cut out one of your eyes, you’ll have a change in perception.”
BLAM!
The first bullet tore a hole through Beatrice’s face, punching through her cheek in an explosion of teeth and flesh before she even knew what had happened.
BLAM!
The second bullet blew her hair as it streaked by, barely missing taking out a chunk of her head and brains.
BLAM!
The third bullet apparently wanted nothing to do with Beatrice and slammed into my thigh adding more pain to my already miserable existence. For the second time in less than five minutes, I found myself wishing that the legends of vampires were true and that I had attained some level of imperviousness to bullets, knives and all things pointy that could kill me and or seriously fuck me up.
For all of her superior vampire abilities, Beatrice still hadn’t mastered the whole invulnerability thing. She stumbled to her feet in a rage, apparently ready to fight. I could see Sammy standing in the alley, the huge .45 Colt that she’d been carrying around in her purse, now held unsteadily in her hand.
“You bleed just like we do.” Sammy managed to say.
You have got to admire Sammy for one thing: she doesn’t fuck around. She didn’t wait for Beatrice to make a comeback or anything. She just aimed as best as she could and pulled the trigger until the gun was empty.
It’s a pity that her aim sucked from losing so much blood and that an alert Beatrice was super fast. The rain of bullets came, and Beatrice vanished in a blur of speed.
In the distance, I could hear police sirens closing in on our location.
Sammy dropped the gun and stumbled over to me. She stopped when she saw how fucked up I’d gotten.
“You really gotta pick better girlfriends, Bob.”
***
As much as I hate Harry, his system works.
You don’t even notice how much it works, how easily vampire society fits in with ordinary human society. It’s only when something breaks that you would notice. Personally, it wasn’t until I left the city that I noticed how much we had been spoiled to think that our lives were normal and that it wouldn’t be different anywhere else. It’s that kind of thinking which can get you killed in a hurry, but while you were there in the city, life was good or organized because that was how Harry wanted it. His whole Trust Fund Society may have had its share of problems, but damn it was efficient.
Harry had integrated almost seamlessly with the city, working out some arrangements for medical, police, security, and especially on the corporate level, to take care of his people. The fact that so many of his vampires were massively invested in large corporations that were critical to the functional aspect of the city, that was just the piece de resistance, a big part of Harry’s plan. If a vampire got himself killed or seriously fucked up, when the EMTs showed up, there were certain procedures they had to run, which really shows the amount of thought Harry and his people had put into the preservation of vampires in the city.
Since I was massively fucked up, I had a chance to see these procedures first hand. I still couldn’t move, especially with the cops looming over me and Sammy wondering which one of us they were going to arrest. I could hear one of the officers arguing with the dispatcher about some detail, but my immediate concern was the gaping wound in my chest. I could feel the wound trying to heal and could feel it failing every time, and that was somehow intensifying the pain.
The EMTs pushed their way past the cops, and I tried to talk, but once again I was just sucking air and blowing bubbles.
“Just relax,” the cute blonde one was saying and I tried to nod and look as much like not-a-vampire as possible. “We’ll take care of you.”
One of the largest manufacturers of medical equipment in the city was run by a family of vampires. They made equipment used by the EMTs and Police Department, as well as in the Emergency Rooms at all area hospitals. This equipment was designed to scan for vampires, and it did its job well. The EMTs, for instance, were essential to the system and were closely monitored. No non-standard equipment was to be used, ever.
Here’s where the training and the equipment come in. They check for vital signs in the usual ways, nothing weird about that, but one extra step they use for all fatalities in the city is the one that stops a vampire from going to the morgue for regular people. Most vampires (call it 99.9% of them) would not survive the autopsy. It doesn’t matter if you’re 5000 years old or two weeks old. When someone cuts open your chest cavity and removes all of your organs, and puts them in plastic bags before putting them back inside, you’re not surviving that. Remember, part of that process is to cut open the fucking head and take out the brain.
Look me in the eye and tell me that you’re immortal, and you’ll survive that.
Really.
The Scanner is used by the EMTs first to scan the retinas of the deceased and then to take a photo of the face. They don’t think of it beyond that, but the rules state that this must be done before the body or patient leaves the scene. That was the same Scanner the cute EMT was currently using on me, but I could tell by the look on her face that she already knew what I was.
“I’m just going to scan you, so if you could please look right here—“
A blinking red light was all I saw flashed across my retina, but there was a hell of a lot more going on at the other end of the signal. All part of Harry’s plan, but by the time I was in the ambulance, the response team already knew a vampire was coming in and that it was me. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess the main thing was that they already had a system in place, and more than anything, they instantly knew if it was one of their vampires. Think about that for a bit. It will be relevant later.
My EMT didn’t even wait for the results to come back. She pulled out a plastic red bracelet and placed it around my wrist. The other EMT had gotten busy i
mmediately on my wound, trying to stop the blood loss, and now cute EMT turned to help.
“Somebody was out to fuck this guy up.”
“What do you mean? Apart from the big hole where his chest is supposed to be?”
“There was garlic on the blade of whatever they stuck into him. It’s slowing down coagulation.”
Fact check time! Yes, we know that garlic doesn’t work in the more sensational method of warding off a vampire, but there is a reason it’s part of the legend. This is all true, so you can google it or whatever, but for years now garlic has been used to treat high-blood pressure and hardening of the arteries in humans. It’s also supposed to work against certain bites from ticks and maybe if you have a high-garlic diet complete with garlic breath, you can ward off vampires (and any humans) within breathing range. Nobody likes garlic breath, even self-confessed garlic lovers. Thing is garlic also prevents clotting of blood. It slows it right down to the point where the blood flows longer and more freely. This is just the effect on humans. Take a blade and rub it with garlic and cut someone, and it’s going to take a lot longer to heal. Now magnify that effect by ten, and you have a pretty good idea why garlic has a negative effect on vampires. Stab a vampire (me) with a huge fucking knife which has had its blade lovingly rubbed in garlic oil and that vampire (me again) is going to have all the benefits of vampire healing slowed right the fuck down. And it’s going to hurt like a bitch. Granted, having a blade in your chest would probably kill most humans, but the human body is a miraculous thing and can survive huge amounts of damage. Most times it will shut down out of shock and go comatose while trying to heal, but if you’re a vampire, apparently you don’t have that option.
Cute EMT rolled her eyes, obviously pissed. She glanced at me, throwing some major side-eye my way. She waved to one of the officers talking to Sammy.
“Hey Tom. It’s a code Sixty-Dee-Five,” she said. Officer Tom slumped on hearing the news, immediately pissed. Sammy just looked a little out of it, and if it wasn’t for the gaping hole in my chest which was refusing to heal, I might have felt a little more concern for her.
So You Might Be a Vampire Page 28