So I'm a Vampire... Now What? - Book 2 (Original Version)

Chapter 9.2 - So Much For the Afterglow

"They got to us Bob," Benjamin said and there was a haunted look on in his eyes. "They said that you and Beatrice were dead."

"Well, obviously that was a goddamn lie," I noted.

"So where's Beatrice?" Frankie wanted to know. I noticed he had a similar haunted look in his eye as Benjamin. In fact, everybody except Ronnie was looking like they had been through some serious shit. She was the only one looking fresh if only a little flustered. I had so many questions, all beginning with what the fuck?

"What the fuck happened to you guys?" I asked. "Was it the agents?"

"They said they were federal agents," Benjamin muttered, "but feds don't act like that."

"They're not supposed to act like that," Stanley whispered.

"You're avoiding the question, Bob," Natalie insisted. "Where's Beatrice?"

"No idea," I admitted, "but I'm still alive, and I'm a lot easier to kill than Beatrice. She's usually the one doing the killing."

Ronnie just stared at me in shock. She'd been following the flow of the conversation with what can only be described as mild annoyance as she looked from person to person. That comment brought her attention to focus directly on me. It only just occurred to me to wonder what the hell she was doing there with the guys.

"How the fuck can you talk so casually about killing?" Ronnie wanted to know. She looked around at the group with distrust now, gripping the taser tightly. "I thought you were supposed to be the good guys."

"Ronnie, will you please chill the fuck out?" I snapped.

"Um, nobody in this room has killed anybody," Benjamin said, looking around the room for confirmation. "Right guys?"

Everybody nodded.

I raised my hand cautiously. "I tried to shoot someone. Does that count?"

"Did you try to shoot them with your teeth?" Natalie growled at me.

Ronnie rubbed her face, obviously stressed out.

"You're still talking about killing people!"

"We're talking about Beatrice killing people. Big difference," Frankie quipped and shrugged at the looks from everyone. "What? It's true: she kills everybody."

"What the hell are you even doing here?" I asked Ronnie.

"Claude sent me to get you," she said. "Which reminds me: gimme your phone, don't ask why just hand it over."

I handed it over and Ronnie set to work on it while she talked.

"I was actually supposed to reach out to all of these guys when the feds released them, but then they all showed up here. That technically makes my job easier, but it's kind of a lot freaky, you know?"

She managed to pull out the SIM card from the phone and like some weird magic trick, produced an almost identical phone from her pocket.

"What do you mean 'Claude sent you?'"

"I'm on a mission from Claude!"

"Did you just Blues Brothers me?"

"She's really your cousin?" Frankie asked, coolly appraising Ronnie as she inserted my SIM card into the new phone.

Ronnie gave him the stink-eye, the same time that I raised my eyebrow at him, almost identical expressions. If you've ever grown up in close proximity to your cousins like we had done, you end up being more like siblings who slept in different houses. There's a closeness there that a lot of people will never understand, especially how we'd be ready to fight to the death for each other, even if we'd been viciously attacking each other seconds before. Frankie got the resemblance immediately and raised his hands in surrender.