The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

by Drew Hayes

  “NOW!” Freddy yelled, startling everyone in the room with a sentient mind. Well, everyone we’d all known about.

  “Ectorim Novendum, Bicradalio!” The words were familiar, though not so much that I could place them. The voice, on the other hand, I knew in an instant. Neil’s spell echoed through the church, the force in his voice so strong I thought it was going to knock the dust from the rafters. I felt a soft pulse of magic from nearby, again familiar in a way I couldn’t quite place. As the words faded, I realized the world had gone silent again, but this time it was different.

  This time the world had frozen. The ghouls stood, still as fucked-up wax figures and at least twice as ugly. Quinn was unmoving, which made the look of surprise on his face all the more appropriate. Beauregard was stuck as well, his head halfway up as he twisted his eyes to find the source of the voice. I followed his eyes to find a small figure climbing out of the back of the truck, chunking an enormous blanket back into the vehicle’s depths.

  “Neil?”

  “Hey, Krystal,” he called, giving me a wave. For a young man surrounded by ghouls, he seemed extraordinarily unconcerned.

  I noticed one more area of movement, this one far more relevant to my situation. Freddy had peeled off the frozen form of Beauregard and was approaching my spot near the altar. His eyes still glowed with that strange red light, but there was something different in the way he was moving.

  “Freddy? You okay in there?”

  He reached down and pulled apart my chains with a small grunt of effort.

  “No I’m not okay,” he said, his voice even and normal despite the strange glowing eyes and crazy-ass antics. “I was halfway here when I realized that in all the chaos I forgot to take the roast out of the oven. It’s going to be ruined by the time we get back.”

  I grabbed that wuss by the shirt collar, pulled him close, and gave him a kiss that would make the dead stand up in their graves.

  Sex pun absofuckinglutely intended.

  5.

  Author’s Note: Here, since I was on the scene once more, it only seems appropriate that I resume the duty of recounting the incident.

  When Krystal finally let me go, which I was both happy and sad to have happen, the joy of seeing me not a monster was at last overcome with her need to understand just what the hell was going on. I could hardly blame her for that. It was a trait that likely made her successful in her career. Still, it was nice to, for once, know something she didn’t, and I was half-tempted to savor the moment. Then I noticed the sternness in her eyes and remembered that I was not only helping my girlfriend to her feet, but I was also helping an Agent. In this situation, I had no doubt which trumped the other.

  “Spill,” Krystal said, once she was standing. “What the hell was all that? And why aren’t you some crazy, blood-hungry monster?”

  “Neil proposed a spell that would have amplified my vampiric abilities by several fold, but we ultimately decided against it. Even though he said it would have made me strong enough to stand against them, I had to raise the point that I would still be . . . well . . . me. I’m not good at conflict, definitely not good enough to overcome two men who seem to relish it, even with a strength boost. He suggested altering the ritual to dull my human sensibilities, but when he and Amy looked it over to see if that was even viable, they realized that a big component of the spell was already mind altering. From there, Amy put together the working theory that Quinn had known I had a necromancer as a friend and was counting on us utilizing the spell to come save you.”

  Krystal rubbed her ankles where she’s been bound, then stood up to her full height. She surveyed the room carefully, checking for threats. There were none she could discern, or at least none I could discern her discerning. Still, she walked over to Quinn and began to test his paralysis, or at least that was what I presumed she was doing by thumping him in the eye.

  “So you didn’t use Mortis Invictus. Then what was all of . . . ” she paused pestering Quinn to gesture at the wrecked church and the frozen ghouls, “ . . . this?”

  “Once we knew what they were expecting, it seemed like we might be able to use it to our advantage. Amy cast a spell to give me the scary eyes. A little creative tailoring and some blood from my fridge completed the image of a magically-altered brute.”

  “Uh huh, but why?”

  I held up my wrist to show her a tiny metal charm. “Amy taught Neil about talismans sometime back. She removed his collar, so he was able to use it to cast that undead freezing spell he used at the LARP from wherever the talisman was located. Evidently, with stronger vampires, you need proximity to be effective. Good thing the ghouls were weak enough to be taken at a distance. We didn’t know they’d be here.”

  “That’s great, but what about—”

  “All the dodging?” I said, gushing over her question. It was poor etiquette, but I was excited. I’d never really gotten to do the big reveal before. “Amy gave me a potion that enhanced my speed, perception, and dodging. She calls it ‘cat’s dexterity,’ or something like that. Turns out she makes more than just drugs for dragons.”

  “Fred,” she said, taking in a long sigh that told me she was trying not to let her frustration get the better of her. I could have told just from her choice of words she was serious. I couldn’t remember the last time she called me something other than “Freddy.” “You aren’t getting it. My question is not how you all managed this little coup—it is why you bothered in the first place.” She turned away from Quinn, evidently satisfied he was truly held. His eyes lingered on her, somehow still managing to convey a sense of fury despite their unmoving status.

  “I told you not to come,” she said. “I mouthed it at you when they were pulling me away.”

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  “Fine, but you still should have known not to bother. I’m an Agent, damnit, and I know you’re still learning what that means, but I’d hoped you’d have figured out by now that it’s a title given to people who can take care of themselves. Yes, I have some limitations that let me get captured more easily than others. I’ve been doing this for a long time, though. I survived just fine without someone riding in to play cowboy and save me from the train tracks.”

  “I think you sort of mixed genres there. Dudley Do Right did the train-track thing.” I knew it wouldn’t help un-rile her. I just wasn’t sure what else to say. Krystal was the Type B Personality in our relationship. I so rarely saw her serious, even in dangerous situations, that I wasn’t used to calming her down.

  “It doesn’t matter.” She thrust a finger in Quinn’s face, her exposed flesh mere inches from his mouth. “This is not a threat to me. He is an inconvenience. He is a dinner-plan wrecker. He is an apartment smasher. But that’s all. He’s an annoyance to me. To the rest of you, he is a very deadly opponent. You should have let me handle my own business.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I . . . I just didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  We were interrupted by sounds from the front of the church. A glance over showed us Amy, Bubba, and Albert had arrived and were trying to extricate Bubba’s truck from the pews smashed beneath it. They’d followed at a distance during the front-door-smashing bit. Neil was only along so he could cast his spell, and Amy had only consented to letting her apprentice do that much after laying several protection spells atop him. Between the magic and the armored blanket, an item none of us wanted to ask Bubba why he kept on hand, the amateur necromancer was probably safer than I was during the drive.

  “You brought the rest of the crew?”

  “They insisted. We care about you, Krystal. None of us was comfortable with sitting around while two vampires did who-knows-what to you. When we first met, you even told me that vampires were only assigned to really powerful agents, and you’ve never mentioned dealing with one.”

  “That isn’t because they can kill me. It’s just because subduing them isn’t my specialty.”

  “I didn’t know that. Neither did th
ey. We were worried about you, and no matter how mad you get, I’m afraid none of us is going to tell you we regret what we did tonight because you’re standing here safe and sound. Maybe we were wrong, but we were the sort of wrong that ends with getting our friend back, and I think I speak for everyone when I say we can make peace with that.” Despite my brave words, I took a slight step back and braced tentatively. Krystal was a passionate woman; I was prepared to receive a emotional, if not violent, response.

  She let out a long breath and ran her fingers through her hair. After a moment, she walked back over to me and placed her arms around my shoulders. “I know, Freddy. I realize it was well intentioned. This is just a touchy topic for me. I’m a little prone to overreaction.” She leaned in and gave me a kiss, not one like she had when she saw me, but one that still would have taken my breath away if I’d had any. Once she parted, she continued talking.

  “I’m serious about this, though. You and the Scooby Doo crew have to rein in any cavalry impulses when my safety is all that’s on the line. Trust that I can handle myself in situations like this, especially against pissants like Qui—”

  Later on, I’d be able to reconstruct the memory, noticing what my vampire eyes had seen and distracted brain had missed. The hot spray of her blood splashed across my face as her throat disappeared. It had happened in an instant, a pale hand reaching around from behind her, clutching her too-tan-for-the-season throat, and ripping it out. That would come down the line. In that moment all I felt was the sticky spurt of blood strike my face. All I heard was the moist gurgling of her next words oozing out of her now-exposed throat. All I saw was her fall sideways and flop to the ground, lifeless save only for an occasional twitch.

  Once she was gone, I got a great view of Quinn, movements clearly unhindered and right hand coated in blood.

  “I told you to stop talking,” he said, eyes on her body as the intermittent jerking began to slow, “but, like all women, you just didn’t know when to shut up.”

  6.

  Before the last reverberations of his words had finished bouncing off the church’s wall, Quinn had closed the meager gap between us and hurled me back several feet. I was able to land on my feet thanks to Amy’s potion, but they’d no sooner touched the ground than Quinn was there, delivering a quick blow that knocked me to the ground and shattered the bones in my shoulder.

  “Did you think the curse of some apprentice was going to be enough to hold me? I once commanded the magical forces with my own will. The first thing I did upon turning was set up precautions against such manipulations.” He reached down and plucked me from the ground, holding me with the hand still caked in Krystal’s blood. The smell was nauseating, which was strange in itself. Even if I loved the woman it came from, blood should still smell like blood. If Quinn noticed, he didn’t seem to care.

  A jerk of his wrist smashed me into the solid, wooden wall behind me. His grip tightened, though it was more symbolic than painful. I wasn’t going to be suffocated anytime soon. Under different circumstances, I might have been thankful for that fact. I kicked futilely. He didn’t even seem to register the impacts against his torso. Switching tactics, I clawed at the wrist pinning me to the wall, but even my undead nails couldn’t so much as scratch his flesh. If Beauregard had been dense, then Quinn was like living dark matter.

  “You couldn’t even make yourself useful at the end,” Quinn lectured. Over his shoulder, I saw a sight that gave me the barest flicker of hope. Bubba had shifted, and now a large pony was barreling down at us, followed some distance behind by Amy, Albert, and Neil. Maybe together, the four of us could—

  “Beauregard,” Quinn commanded. “Kill the rest of them.” As he spoke, a strange symbol flickered across his throat, too complex and too brief for me to make it out clearly. Whatever it was, it evidently gave his words more weight than Neil’s spell, since the larger vampire rose at the floor and turned to meet the impending mini-steed. The two collided with a sonorous crash, and then Bubba was airborne as Beauregard hurled him away with, apparently, little effort.

  My struggling grew more frantic. I tried every move I could remember from a life of being bullied and held down. Wriggling, kicking, scratching, even trying to poke him in the eyes. None of it loosened his grip in the slightest.

  “No, Fred, no happy escape or quick death for you. It’s clear I made a mistake in turning you . . . I’ll own that failure. But you must be punished for disappointing me. So, before I tear your head from your body and leave it out for daylight to char, you’re going to watch me turn all your precious friends into bloody chunks. Just like I did to your girlfriend.”

  If I could have begged, or pleaded, or whimpered, I’ll freely admit that I would have. Sadly, even the undead, or at least my type of undead, need vocal cords to make coherent sound. Instead, I was forced to flounder silently as Beauregard turned his attention to my more vulnerable friends. There was nothing I could do. I was stuck. We were all going to die. And just when life, in a general sense rather than referring to being alive, had stopped being so lonely.

  That was when history repeated itself.

  One moment I was stuck there, watching death, shaped like a roided-up vampire, draw inevitably closer to my friends. The next, I was falling to the ground. I surprised myself by landing on my feet, then remembered Amy’s potion was still in effect. I had all of a half-second to appreciate the sense of freedom before Quinn’s bloodcurdling screams began crashing against my ears.

  He was hollering in pain, the likes of which I hope I die (the permanent kind) long before experiencing. The stump at this shoulder where his right arm had been was leaking blood at a rapid pace, though substantially slower than a living heart would be causing it to spurt out. I cast my eyes about for the missing appendage, finding it with little difficulty. For one thing, it was on fire, turning to ash at an astonishing rate.

  For another thing, it was clutched in Krystal’s hands. Well, sort of. Her hands were now about half-claw, dark twisting things that extended from her middle knuckle and stretched much further than her normal digits. Her skin seemed to be shifting, like something beneath it was rearranging itself. The blonde hair I’d come to know so well turned blood red midway down its length, before ending with a fire red at the tips. That last part isn’t creative description; the tips of her hair were literally burning. It was a strange effect, but at least it matched the mini-infernos blazing where her eyes used to be.

  “Awww, does the big, bad vampire miss his arm?” Her voice was still partly hers, yet there was another tone coming out in concert with it. The second voice sounded like the screams of a thousand children waking from nightmares, only to find their families slaughtered around them. If I were still capable of bowel movements, I’m certain I would have pissed my pants upon hearing it.

  She blurred for a moment. Then she was next to Quinn, her movements so fast not even my eyes could track them. Casually, she held up the flaming remains of his arm. A wide—too wide in fact—smile drew across her face, revealing teeth serrated and sharp, and too many rows deep. There was a slight surge, and the arm crumbled to the ground, nothing more than flakes of ash.

  “I told you I would tear off your limbs. Did you think I was bluffing? Did you imagine it was really that easy to kill an Agent?” Krystal ran a claw along his face. Quinn was either too terrified or too much in pain to react. Where it touched, his seemingly invincible skin split open with a faint sizzling and puff of smoke. “You tried to kill me, which means I’m well within my rights to take you apart in any way I see fit. You also tried to kill my friends, which means I’m going to get a tremendous amount of joy from doing just that.”

  “Krystal? Is that . . . what’s going on?”

  “Sorry, honey,” she said. She didn’t move her head, but she might have been looking at me. With the blazes in her sockets, it was hard to track her vision. “I guess I have some explaining to do, but it will have to wait until after.”

  I didn’t need to ask what �
��after” meant, and I am certain Quinn didn’t either. He was finally getting a grip on himself, marshaling some control over the pain he was gripped by, but that seemed to be getting replaced by a rapidly rising sense of panic. Fortunately, for him, in the chaos we’d all forgotten that he wasn’t here all by himself.

  Beauregard leapt on Krystal’s back from ten feet away, no doubt expecting to send the slender-framed woman sprawling as he had the rest of us. In that regard, he was in for a very unpleasant surprise. Krystal barely twitched at the impact, reaching up and behind her at an angle that should have been impossible for even the most lithe gymnast, and sank her claws into his exposed flesh. She ripped him off and spun around, her free hand running across his torso and shredding his skin like wet toilet paper.

  “I appreciate your dedication, but it would have been wiser to learn how to pick your battles when you had the chance. Still, you were just under orders, so I guess there’s no need to be cruel about this.”

  With a single swipe of her hand-claw, Beauregard’s head toppled from his shoulder, beginning the burn before it thumped off the dirty carpet. His body was starting to smolder as well, so Krystal released her grip on it and let it tumble away. The lackey finished, she turned her attention back to the true subject of her wrath.

  Only it was nowhere to be found. In the ten seconds Beauregard had diverted our attention, Quinn had somehow managed to scramble away. I sniffed the air, thinking perhaps I could pick up the scent of his blood since he was injured. The smell was thick in the air all right, but it didn’t extend beyond us. Whatever Quinn had used to vanish, it had somehow covered his tracks very effectively.