-9-
"I'm not drinking that,"Jaime said. "That's the same shit you gave to Bob when you cut his liver out."
Jesus had produced a whole box of seemingly random items including a collection of candles, some animal skulls that looked very old, a box of salt and of course his old favourite a bottle of the blueish coloured balche. Jesus looked to me for a rescue.
"Is she always this stubborn?"
I checked the time on my phone and glanced outside at the still dark sky. Time was running out.
"Yeah, it's part of her charm. How long is this going to take?"
"Just about twenty minutes to at least start the process. After that it's out of my hands, but according to my notes just under a week. Roughly." He turned back to Jaime and offered the bottle of balche again. "It's just a narcotic. A very powerful one. But with you vampires, powerful is the only thing that works. It's either this or drinking blood to get you stoned. Stoned equals relaxed and open to suggestion and I need you relaxed."
Jaime tried to look relaxed and failed. Jesus smirked. "Has anyone every told you how tense you are?"
"I'll make sure nothing happens to you, okay?" I volunteered and Jaime just rolled her eyes at me.
"How do you plan to do that when you can't even resist his mind control?"
"She does have a point Bob. One suggestion from me and you'll be out killing kittens. Please don't kill any kittens."
I paused, my hand raised towards the door. Whoa, when had I turned to exit?
"See? I can't help myself. But you Jaime... how are you able to resist me when very few can? It is beginning to bother me."
Jaime looked like she was going to keep holding out just to torture Jesus, but then she shrugged and shook her head.
"I honestly don't have a clue. I'm new to being a vampire and Bob hasn't explained everything, so I really have no idea what my limitations are. But that's not going to matter anyway because you're going to fix me, right?"
Jesus grinned wickedly. "Not if you don't drink the balche."
Jaime growled and snatched the bottle. "Okay, fine. Now you wanna walk me through this?"
Jesus turned to me as he lit a couple of the candles.
"Well I'm going to be doing something that looks a lot like magic, mainly because that's what it is, but I'm going to need some blood from Bob..."
"Sure. What do you need my blood for?"
"Well you did turn her into a vampire, right?"
Uh oh. Stall... what could I do to stall? Fuck, they were looking at me expecting an answer and I didn't have any that didn't make me sound like a complete idiot.
"No..." I tried to draw out my reply as long as possible. "That was kind of... complicated."
"So you didn't use your own blood?"
"No, I had to call in some help. It was the first time I was trying to turn anyone and I kinda freaked out--"
Jaime was out of patience. She was practically pulling her hair out from the stress of dealing with my current fuck-up. So much for being the hero and getting her out of this jam. She was supposed to be thanking me by this point, not finding new swearwords to use on me
"Bob, if it wasn't you who turned me, who the hell was it?"
I froze, panicked. What the hell was I was supposed to say. Fuck it.
"It was Beatrice."
"Fuuuuuuuuck!" Jaime was about to lose it. She went off on a whole litany of repeated "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" while I tried to explain.
"I called Beatrice and she showed me how to do it."
Jesus wasn't getting it. He was confused, obviously never having met Beatrice. Lucky guy. Although Beatrice might be a bit of a challenge for Jesus to take on, it wasn't a match-up I think I wanted to see. Beatrice under Jesus' control was a scary proposition since they were both very powerful psychopaths.
"Bob, did you actually use your blood or was it Beatrice's?"
"I don't know! I was kind of out of it at the time." I appealed to Jaime who only looked like she wanted to rip my heart out now. She looked close to tears. "You were dying and I was freaking the fuck out. There was a whole operation going on, something about them not wanting you coming back all fucked up since you'd been shot in the head... but I remember blood, lots of blood. She had like six bags of blood for you."
Jaime sunk down onto the couch deliberately not looking at me. Jesus looked perturbed, but just a little bit.
"So not her blood either. Then whose blood was it?"
I shrugged, all out of answers. Just when we were so damn close too. "Fucked if I know."
"Well this complicates things..." Jesus said, still thinking.
Jaime smirked and just shook her head. "Of course it complicates ting... it's Bob. It's always complicated with Bob."
My phone binged as a message came in and I glanced at it wondering if it was Claude, but no, it was Sammy. A rapping on the door to my right distracted me before I could read it. Glad for the distraction and the escape from feeling like a complete fuck-up, I went to answer the door before anybody could lob any harder questions my way.
An extremely nervous Sammy was waiting for me.
"I just got your text. What's up?"
Sammy was extremely agitated, and carried the shotgun in both hands as if ready to shoulder it at any moment. "We gotta get out of here right now. I'm seeing a lot of people coming out of the trailers and they're all packing. Like two and three guns each, lots of ammo."
What the fuck? Seriously? I looked out into the darkness, my night vision easily picking out several armed people walking away from us.
"Aren't they coming here?"
"No. That's the scary part. They're all looking out towards the road as if they're expecting a raid. Something is going on and I don't think we should be here when it happens. I'll meet you in the car."
Sammy turned and marched back to the car, scanning the darkness for trouble.
"Jaime!" I called back into the trailer. I ducked back inside and Jaime had her head thrown back, grimacing as she chugged down the balche. I could already see the lack of tension in her shoulders as the balche took effect very quickly. It was a good narcotic that way. It got you properly fucked up and fast.
"We have to leave now. Something's going on outside."
Jesus looked up at me expectantly and calmly.
"That's probably the Gentlemen coming for you."
I'd like to say I was surprised, but truthfully I'd expected some kind of fucked up double-cross from Jesus. The sucker-punch that came wasn't because it was unexpected, but rather that it was to Mr Flynn and his cohorts that we'd been sold out to. That was the source of my instant terror, the suddenly rubbery legs and the panic that took a hold of me.
Jesus gestured at a chair. "Might as well sit and wait Bob. Smoke a bowl with me and chill out until they get here."
I shook my head. "No," I said, and pushed past a confused Jesus to try to deal with a very stoned Jaime. "Come on Jaime. We have to get out of her, now."
Jesus was about to throw a shitfit. "What do you mean 'no'? You're not supposed to be able to resist me!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I actually meant to tell you to go fuck yourself." I triggered my fangs and they clicked into place so easily that I was glad I had been unable to stop flicking at it during the ride. A little practice makes perfect. That boost of adrenaline kicked in as endorphins flooded my system, and I swear I would have hissed at Jesus if it hadn't been so damned vampire-typical.
Jesus was about to have a meltdown and I could feel the light tickle on the top of my head as he tried to use his glammer on me, but I easily shrugged it off and could see from his face that he'd felt my rejection properly this time.
I kicked off the ground moving forward toward him, closing the distance in a second and enjoying the feeling, the rush of being a vampire and the abilities that I had ignored for so long. I still needed an in-depth tutorial, and for a moment I wondered if there was anything up on YouTube.
I enjoyed the shock on his face and realized that he had probably forgotten what fear was like. He had spent so much time being able to control everything and everyone around him, he'd even begun to believe his own press.
"I was letting you do it earlier, but you can't control me anymore. Might be something about how many times I've died or maybe I'm just older, but you can't fuck with my head anymore."
"Let go of me!" he commanded, and there was that tickle again. I shrugged it off, more pissed off than anything and really, really feeling the urge to bit someone.
"DO IT AGAIN AND I'LL THROW YOU THROUGH A WALL!"
"You can't touch me," Jesus said. "I'm a god."
I made good on my promise. I threw that annoying little shit through the door with all of my might. He would have gone further if I had actually opened the door first, but it was still satisfying to see him fly through the air and take the door off at the hinges, he and the door flipping end over end as they tumbled to the ground several feet away.
It only occurred to me after, that I had missed the opportunity to say some badass line like "I've always wondered what the blood of a god tastes like," and then bitten that little motherfucker before chucking him through the door, but that's just typical. Those lines never occur to you when they're useful.
"Hey Bob, whatcha doin'?" Jaime slurred from the couch.
Oh fuck me, Jaime was stoned and we had to get the fuck out of Dodge, like yesterday. Yes, that sound you hear, the sound a hundred million fuck-ups being searched for, is me freaking the fuck out.
I rushed back to Jaime and checked her eyes, seeing how dilated her pupils were, and just how fucking relaxed she was, and I knew my day was about to get ten times more interesting.
"Can you walk?"
"You're kinda cute Bob, that's what I've always liked about you." Jaime slurred and tried to wink at me, very, very badly. It looked more like her eyelid had caught a spasm than anything else. It occurred to me then as Jaime's hand slapped against the front of my pants, just enough to ding the bare edge of my left testicle and caused a minor sliver of pain to go shooting through me, that a) holy shit, that hurt and b) balche makes you really fucking horny.
Jaime leaned against me and threw an arm around my shoulder. I could feel her nipples, rock hard underneath her clothes and burning like two hot coals trying to poke holes in my chest. Her hand slid down into my pants and I grabbed it and pulled it back out in one motion.
"I hate you sometimes, but right now I just want to fuck you so bad," she whispered and grabbed the front of my shirt hard, taking a fistful of chesthair as she did.
"It's the balche talking," I said. "You can fight it."
"I don't wanna fight. I wanna fuck."
Beep-beep from outside as Sammy's patience ran out. In the distance there was a quick bust of pops as if fireworks were going off. I made up my mind then and picked up Jaime, determined to carry her the hell out of there.
"Yeah that's right," Jaime said. "You know what I like Bobby."
I did my best to ignore her, and rushed to the doorway, trying not to trip over anything. I looked outside, half expecting Jesus to be rushing back with some followers in tow, but he was nowhere to be seen, just like in a bad horror movie,
Sammy had pulled the car up as close to the door as she could; her hand was already in motion to hit the horn again when she saw me. Relief spread across her face as I jumped down with Jaime in my arms. I was still fighting to avoid Jaime's attempts to make me have sex with her right there on the ground. In the distance I could hear the pop pop of gunfire and the occasional scream.
If it was the Gentlemen, they were cutting through Jesus's people like they weren't even there, which was more or less to be expected.
"Let's go!" Sammy yelled and I hurried to the backseat, ready to throw Jaime in--
A blur from my left and I was sent flying, Jaime falling out of my arms and laughing giddily as she tumbled to the ground. I hit the dirt with my face and slid a hell of a lot less gracefully than I would have liked. I tried to recover quickly, pulling myself up, ready for a fight--
The King was at Sammy's door, holding it shut as Sammy fought to open it. He looked around to me and smiled.
"Don't fight it Bob. Just sit down and wait for them. If you run they will keep coming after you no matter what. It's what they do."
"You brought them here?"
"Mister Flynn was very persuasive. He's guaranteed Sammy's safety and that's perfect cuz I don't want to see her getting hurt because of you."
"No, hurting her is your job, am I right?" This was from a remarkably lucid Jaime. It lost some of it's sting due to the fact that she was pinching her nipples through her shirt though.
"What's wrong with her?"
"Jesus gave her a drink. It's like liquid viagra," I said, praying that Jaime wasn't about to try rubbing one out while we were talking. "Listen, can you guarantee Jaime's safety as well? Is there anything you can do?"
"Bob, I'm just here for Sammy. You know what Mister Flynn is like. He offers the deal and you take it."
The passenger door popped open and Sammy jumped out, pissed as hell. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"He's being all romantic," I said. "Doing the Prince Charming thing."
"Bob, you can't run. They have your buddy. The gentlemen have Jimmy."
Jaime said it best for me, Sammy and herself: "Who the fuck is Jimmy?"
A scream cut through the night air now and we all turned to look in the direction. My heart was pounding in my chest as the possibility that the Gentlemen had somehow gotten hold of Claude and he had given them a false name, occurred to me, and I prayed desperately that it wasn't Claude in Mr Bryce's overly large hands.
It wasn't.
Jimmy was a slim scrap of a man with dark hair and the kind of thin reedy moustache you wouldn't even find in a porn movie. He had the kind of face that was instantly forgettable even though you had seen it just moments before, a face that had been made more interesting via the careful administration of buts, scrapes and bruises by Mr Bryce.
I had never seen him before in my life.
"Thought that would get your attention," Mr Bryce said and pulled out the finger he had shoved deep into Jimmy's shoulder. Blood spurted and Jimmy squirmed, unable to get away from Mr Bryce. "Now, come with us or he dies first."
Seriously, the only one of us who even looked concerned was the King. Jaime had run over to me at the sight of Mr Bryce and was standing behind me slowly grinding against my leg, but even that was distracted.
"I tried to hold out Bob, but they tortured me!" Jimmy called out and he was exhausted but I could tell that he thought he was safe now.
"It's okay Jimmy," I said as assuring as I could. Without breaking my desperate grin, I looked at mr Bryce. "Might as well let him go. I don't know this man."
Mr Bryce was surprised at my gambit. He grinned and lifted poor Jimmy up into the air.
"I thought you were better than this Bob!"
And Mister Bryce ripped Jimmy's arm off. It was like he was taking the wings off a fly, thats how easily and disinterested he was in the act. It meant nothing to him and everything to Jimmy who suddenly didn't have an arm and it was taking a few seconds to occur to him to scream. It actually didn't even kick in until Mr Bryce chucked Jimmy's arm down into the dirt, and Jimmy saw the arm. That must have triggered something because then the blood came all at once, huge spurts and some arterial spray as the blood realized it had nowhere else to go except out side the body. Jimmy started to scream then as the pain hit him hard, and he turned in agony even as Mr Bryce pushed his own face into the spray of blood, filling his mouth and gulping it down, his eyes never leaving mine.
His face and body soaking with Jimmy's blood, his eyes dilated from the blood high, Mr Bryce threw Jimmy down onto the ground. Jimmy reached out to me with the other arm.
"Avenge me Bob..."
"Sure thing buddy. Who the fuck are you again?"
Jimmy looked deeply hurt. "I'm Jimmy," he whispered, and then Jimmy died.
"Can we start over? Cuz I seriously don't have a clue who that was."
Mr Flynn walked out of the darkness, closely followed by the well dressed Mr Sinnel. Mr Sinnel had filed his teeth to points and was currently dripping in blood.
It occurred to me that I could no longer hear gunfire or screams and Mr Sinnel was no doubt the cause of that.
"Here are the terms Robert," Mr Flynn said. "You come with us."
"Will you let Jaime and Sammy leave?"
"Mister The King here has already brokered the release of his human. As for your girlfriend, it seems that she is not wanted. She will be unharmed as long as you come peacefully."
I nodded in acceptance. My heart was pounding in my ears as I looked for some way to escape, but like Claude said, sometimes there was just no way out of an impossible situation. Even with a drugged up horny ex-girlfriend dry humping your leg. I looked at Jaime and she stuck her tongue out at me as she ground against me, hot on my leg.
"King, take her please. Make sure she gets home safe. Do me a favor and teach her for me. Don't let her be like me."
Something broke through to Jaime and she blinked, trying to get a bearing. "What are we doing? I thought we were fighting them. I can take them Bob. Come on, you and me."
"I think it's safe to say that I'm never going to love anybody like I've loved you Jaime."
Jaime reached out to touch my lips, so gentle. I stroked the side of her face, the touch that she'd always loved so much and suddenly it was too much and I didn't want to go, didn't want to say goodbye.
"I loved you best when you were you," she whispered and leaned in to kiss me softly on the lips. There it was, that smell of her that haunted me everywhere, and more than anything, that taste of her mouth that was so sweet and electric all at the same time, a taste that I had only forgotten to remember and was now my whole world.
Then I pulled away and walked towards Mr Bryce.
I almost made it all the way too.
I made the motherfuckers chase me.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay seriously, who the fuck was Jimmy? Where did that guy even COME from, right? Okay, so this obviously isn't the end of the story, but I'd love to hear what you guys are thinking. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Does anyone want to see Jesus Vs Beatrice? Gimme words, so COMMENT, VOTE and SHARE!