I opened the door and caught her in the act of running towards the door. She froze, and I grinned, a wave of emotion coming over me all at once.
“And with that, now I can leave, “ I grinned.
It was the best hug of my entire life.
***
“You know your plan sucks, right? You’re going to end up dead or married to this insane chick—“
“Beatrice isn’t the marrying kind.”
“—Okay, then dead it is. And according to you, only after she’s played with you for a while, put you through hell, made you pay for it and then made you think it was all your fault. She sounds like an ex-wife waiting to happen.”
I grinned at Claude, more out of relief that he had actually shown up. It would have sucked to be heading into certain death all by myself. A little company or moral support would have been good, but let’s face it: Claude was the actual brains of the outfit. Without him, this chapter would have been my farewell note and really fucking depressing. As shitty as things had been recently, I still wanted to live, goddammit, even if it meant tracking down and killing my psycho killer ex-sometime-girlfriend.
Claude looked around the diner and waved the waitress over.
“Can we get this food to go? We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
***
I wish I could tell you that we got out of town easily. I wish I could lie to you and say we hit the road, and I never looked back.
I wish for so many things.
Before we left town, I just had to do one more thing. It was part of the reason I’d managed to wheedle twenty thousand dollars out of Harry’s hands. I know money can’t close any wounds or repair any damage, but it was at least a good start, and it was a substantial amount of money, so it was worth a shot.
I wish I had listened to Claude.
Instead, I went to see Jaime.
***
So yeah… Texas.
This is where I am now, finishing up these notes in my ruined room that the stupid twins had trashed just out of spite. Claude has gone chasing after them to see where they lead him to, since they weren't very subtle, and he’s my ace in the hole. With Claude on your team, you’re always one step ahead of everybody else and Beatrice is definitely not expecting Claude. He’s like the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! (it’s from Monty Python, go Google it, and you’ll get it.)
She’s probably expecting me to show up with Sammy or Louise and her gang. As far as I know, Sammy is safe, installed in one of Harry’s townhouses and just living it up while she can, and Louise still isn’t taking my calls. She still may be a little pissed off about that entire fuck-up in Houston, but that was not my fault in any way shape or form.
There is so much I could tell you, so much I want to say about the road trip and maybe eventually I’ll get around to telling you about the fucked up week with Jaime (we didn’t leave town for a few more days okay?). I’ll even be brutally honest about it and tell the absolute truth because it was a fucked up situation, and I’m sorry it happened, but right now I’m running out of time.
When Claude gets back, we're going to go hit Beatrice hard before she knows we’re there.
Speak of the Devil that was the phone, and yes it was Claude.
“Get your gear, we gotta go now.”
“Did she show up?”
“Not quite, but she’s close. Something weird is going on over by where these guys went. I almost called the cops, it was that shady.”
“Did you see anyone else with them? We have to be absolutely sure man. Beatrice does the whole day tripping thing, so she could be anywhere.”
“Not without looking like a freak, Dude. There’s a reason we chose Texas, remember? All of this heat and sun is bad for vampires. Makes you guys easier to spot.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Get suited up for day tripping, Dude. Meet me by the elevator in ten minutes.”
I suck at being an action hero, so who knows how this is going to go. In my experience, I may even survive it. I promise you this though, if I do make it out of this alive, I’ll tell you everything.
When I make it back, I’ll tell you about Jaime and about the road trip from hell, but right now I may be on the way to my death. I’m okay with that though, really I am. If I die tomorrow, the only regret I’ll have is not seeing that blow coming and for definitely not ducking fast enough.
Whatever happens is going to be explosive and bloody, and vampires might even make the front page news and then you will know the truth. For those of you that followed along, you’ll be able to spot the signs and know exactly what went down.
For those that didn’t, oh well: fuck ‘em all.
THE END
AFTERWORD
Thanks for reading and following along with Bob’s adventures.
Bob first came to life six years ago during a NaNoWriMo when MySpace was still a thing and I still lived in Georgia. I spent the month and churned out my first 50,000 words, reached the part where I could say, “yeah that feels right” especially since I could work the title in there ever so subtly, (it was called Chasing the Sun originally.) But I wasn’t done with the story. You can actually tell where I was in my life by what I wrote about. As you can tell, the interlude was written during Christmas and was meant to be an epilogue. Once I found myself asking the question “what about vampire society?” I dove into The Hall of the Drunken King and it just continued from there. Bob’s antics, his fuckups and addictions proved too entertaining to let go of so easily, so I never found a good place again to say goodbye to Bob.
Initially the story was formed as a way to explore a character I had developed for a movie I’d been working on just about forever. It was initially called “The God Stones” and was a road trip about a lesser god walking the earth in mortal form. Over time I found the concept to be too high brow and scaled it back a lot, and asked myself what would still make it interesting and cool.
So I asked myself, what other supernatural being would work in the context of the story? Vampire was the only option, and once I did that, then everything… just… clicked. So I got to writing and I swear I have never written as fast as I have with that screenplay, because I knew the story, I knew how everything played out. It was fast and exciting and hit all of the right beats. It wasn’t until I was writing this huge fight that was the crux of the entire screenplay where Jaime was pretty much kicking Bob’s ass and he was just a miserable fuckup who just loved her so much and wanted to do the right thing… that was when I realized that I knew almost nothing about Bob. I’d had all of these adventures lined up for them, places to visit, people to see, kind of this tour of Bob’s vampire life, but I still didn’t know who and how these places came to be. And most of all, I didn’t fully know how the other vampires either know Bob or had heard of Bob because of the Hotel Astoria. And that had a lot of weight.
So NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month) came about and at the urging of my friend Andrew (Claude is based on him) I jumped in with both feet to explore Bob’s character, his background and his adventures.
This novel, So You Might Be a Vampire (formerly Chasing the Sun) answers all of those questions and I’m grateful for having been able to look into that world. It’s been one hell of an enjoyable character study, but I meant what I said in the final chapter: I’ll be back to tell the story of Jaime and Bob (I’m thinking “So You Might Not Be Human” is a good title) and the road trip to Texas.
The initial plan was to have them at the end of this novel, but truthfully those are slightly different stories and I think they need a little room to breathe on their own.
-Rodney V. Smith
Toronto, ON April 14, 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rodney V. Smith is the Barbados born director/producer of over 20 short films and has been actively involved in the web series movement for the past several years, starting with his series "DOMINION". Smith has been the writer and cinematographer on all
of his projects, as well as on a number of other films including the critically acclaimed "CASTERS" (Dir: Erin Gould), "MANIPULATION" (Dir: Mario Corry) and his most recent web series project "OUT OF TIME" (Dir: Shailene Garnett & Rodney. V. Smith). Smith's cinematic vision has resulted in a visual style that is constantly being refined, but has been described as "moody cinema-verite", "a dark mirror…".
SO YOU MIGHT BE A VAMPIRE is his first novel and the first in the Chasing the Sun series.
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR
Website: www.flyinmonkey.com
Twitter @RodneyVSmith
CHASING THE SUN SERIES
So You Might Be a Vampire
So You Might Not Be Human – Coming Soon
www.chasingthesunseries.com
www.bobthevampire.com
www.flyinmonkey.com/bobthevampire
Twitter @bob_the_vampire
WEBSERIES
Out of Time
www.facebook.com/outoftimeseries
www.outoftimeseries.com
Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr @OutOfTimeSeries
The Other Room
www.facebook.com/otherroomseries
www.otherroomseries.com
Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr @OtherRoomSeries
Dominion – A Scifi Detective Noir Series
www.facebook.com/DominionSeries
Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr @DominionSeries
So You Might Be a Vampire Page 30