Pro-tip for Vampires #12: Dying isn't permanent, but damn, it still hurts like a sonofabitch.
Death was a lot like floating in a warm weightless cocoon with the most expensive drugs flooding my system and keeping me very happy. It was a permanent state of bliss and even included the pleasant voice of a woman talking to me, saying soothing things like:
"—no reason to panic. You are safe here, receiving the finest care from our team of trained professionals. Remember: as a vampire, death is something that happens to other people."
I never wanted it to end.
So when the drugs started to wear off, and I realized I wasn't in my cocoon anymore, and that the nice lady had stopped murmuring pleasant and reaffirming vampire thoughts to me, I was a little bit annoyed, but not too much because those were still some damn good drugs man.
It was the slap across the face that brought me back to reality, and my eyes tried to flutter open in protest. It was almost like being born, except the slap was across my face instead of my ass. I had intended to tell off the asshole who was rudely smacking the shit out of me, after all, there was no need for that, plenty of drugs for everybody, just lay back and relax and, by the way: put me back in the cocoon--
SMACK!
My eyes flew open this time, a surge of adrenaline totally ruining my buzz, and goddamn it was annoying. But then I saw Claude's beautiful scruffy and, most of all, familiar face, and I forgot all about being angry. I suppose I should have been shocked as shit to see my best friend of over twenty-years leaning over me, his rugged and heroic face creased with concern. He had the kind of prince charming good looks that made most women reconsider their marriage vows, and the personality and charm to go with it, but at that moment, he just looked worried about me.
"Hey, buddy," I said, aware that I sounded as high as I felt and smiled loopily. "I think I was dead," I confided in him, then whispered loudly: "Are you here to rescue me? Am I a princess?" I found this hilarious, but Claude wasn't laughing with me.
"It's okay, dude," Claude said as he extracted the rubber breathing apparatus from my nostrils. "Please don't try to talk right now... they pumped you full of drugs to help with your recovery, and you're only going to be spouting nonsense that I will have to tease you about mercilessly in the future--"
I realized that I was naked. "Welp, that does it. I can't be a princess," I nodded philosophically. "I don't even have a gown."
"See what I mean?" Claude sighed deeply. "Come on, let's get you out of there--"
"Nononono, I like it here," I complained, feebly reaching for the breathing apparatus which Claude held out of reach. Bastard. I smiled and offered a perfectly reasonable compromise. "Tell ya what? Let me go back under, and you can rescue me in an hour, okay?" Holy shit, I sounded drunk, but it was a good drunk, right? My head finally cleared enough for me to notice that Claude seemed to be dressed in white, like some kind of lab technician. "Why are you dressed like a lab geek-nerd-type dude guy?"
"Funny story," Claude said, acting very much like the highly-trained lab tech as he pushed some buttons on a panel. Did he even know what he was doing? "We're gonna laugh about this later, but I'm actually here on a job." He held up a very official-looking ID Badge that hung on the lanyard around his neck. It even had his photo on it. "I'm a lab tech on assignment from New York," he said intently, "and this is the first time you and I are meeting. You can call me John."
I peered at the embroidered name tag on his lab coat that read 'JOHN P. SMITH,' thought about asking, decided that I wasn't going to ask, and then forgot what I was going to ask him. Damn good drugs. I grinned and gave "John" a sloppy wink and the thumbs up.
"You got it 'John,'" I said with an obvious wink that failed when I couldn't get my eyelids to behave themselves.
Claude continued, ignoring my idiocy. "Guess who they asked me to get out of the tank not fifteen minutes ago. Hint: looks like you, sounds just like you, is totally you. And you are not part of the job, so please don't blow my cover. We've got two minutes before I'm supposed to hand you over to the Countess."
My euphoria was fading, and now that I was standing, I realized I was wickedly thirsty, oh, and I was still naked and slick with the pod-goo. Claude threw a towel at me, which I almost dropped in my stupor, still trying to get my bearings.
A fine metal mesh grating covered the floor, and the walls were lined with metal bands and black glass, with the occasional sign of technology either projected onto them or built-in. I got the sense that behind each glass panel, there were a lot more pods like mine. It was like a high-tech morgue with an identity crisis. About twenty feet up on the back wall was a coat of arms that looked like the de Biers Company logo, the wolf and the bat prominently displayed. There was a motto emblazoned beneath, in Latin, of course.
EN CRUOREM NOS PARTIR
Claude saw me looking. "In Blood We Share," he translated for me. "Appropriate for a place run by vampires, right? Welcome to the Wellness Centre, or as everyone who works here calls it: 'Countessa Vera's House of the Dead.' Classy, right?"
An extended workbench dominated the center of the room, well-lit by a series of overhead lights, an array of technology and medical equipment taking up most of the surface. Only one part of the table was pristine, empty except for a slim, shiny black laptop computer.
"You're going to feel a little groggy for a few minutes," Claude said and pushed a button on the wall. There was a click as machinery hummed to life in the walls. "That gel they had you floating in is a powerful narcotic, so the sooner you wipe it off, the more awake you'll be."
I stopped drying myself off, perking up at the mention of "narcotic" and looked longingly back at the pod Claude had rescued me from. Never had a man-shaped plastic mould looked so inviting. Electrodes lined the entire interior and had no doubt been attached to me, disconnected before I fully woke up. The mould itself stuck out of the sleek black metal and glass wall with a complicated pneumatic looking arm holding it at an angle. The pod now hummed to life, and it now slid upward on the arm, turned horizontal, and disappeared into the wall, the glass closing behind it with a barely audible click. There went any hope of returning to the powerful narcotics. So close... so damn close.
"Am I going to have to slap you again?" Claude threatened, surely recognizing the longing look on my face for what it was, and I sighed regretfully.
"I am so confused," I admitted. "Is that really you? I'm so confused." I repeated. "I think I may be losing my mind." I looked around the strange room and felt so lost. "Either that or this is a dream sequence, and I really hate those."
"You and me both, buddy. Right now, it feels too much like the universe is fucking with us."
I beamed and grabbed his shoulders with barely contained joy. Finally, someone saw my lifelong problem for themselves."This is what it feels like for me every day," I enthused, then faltered as I remembered where we were. "So, what is this place? It looks like a cross between Star Wars and Alien. And speak real slow. Maybe some of it will seep in."
"It's the vampire morgue. It's where they bring vampires after they've been killed, instead of the regular morgue. Here you can heal and return from the dead... instead of having your organs extracted and placed into bags like they do in a real morgue. For some reason, having the brain scooped out and weighed makes it really, really hard to return from the dead. There's a whole system in place that's been there for years to make sure vampires don't end up permanently dead. Which is where you come in."
"Fuck me running," I said wonderingly and realized my hand had wandered up to my forehead, but there was nothing but baby-smooth skin. "I think I remember--"
The memories hit all at once, fast, vicious and unrelenting. Sebastien shoots at me, missing with every shot... he raises the gun to my face... BLAM! Pain blossoms and fades as death claims me. There are no tunnels of white blinding lights and certainly no angels with harps or even a solitary demon and a single match with which to torture me. There is a sense of waiting and knowing that I am dead, and now... I'm not anymore. I'm just... waiting. There is life after death, and it's your own... but only if you're a vampire. Everybody else is fucked.
I fixed on one clear memory of Sebastien pulling the trigger, and I felt the rage that had been there all along tear its way out.
"Sebastien shot me in the fucking face!" I hissed at Claude.
To his credit, Claude barely paused as he processed this new information, and then he nodded, lips pursed as he handed me a sharply ironed white dress shirt from a rack of clothes. "Jaime's new boyfriend. That Sebastien?"
I nodded as I pulled on the shirt and missed a couple of buttons as I angrily buttoned up. "That lustrous-haired drug-dealing girlfriend-stealing sheep fucker is a fucking psycho, man. And get this: he's going to be turned into a vampire in seven days. I'm fucking worried about what he'll do to Jaime when that happens."
I caught the socks and underwear that Claude threw at me, and I gratefully pulled them on. At least I wouldn't be raw-dogging it for the rest of the day.
Claude pulled up an iPad and frowned. "According to your chart, they had to do reconstructive surgery on your head so you could heal properly. You've been in the tank for seven days."
My head swam for a moment as panic almost took hold of me. I steadied myself.
"I'm too late then. Sebastien might already be a vampire," I said. "Fuck! And Jaime isn't even speaking to me. This is so fucked up!" Something crossed my mind and I turned to glare suspiciously at Claude. "Why are they even letting you know all this?"
"Oh they did this weird eye thing with all of the techs before we even stepped foot in this place. I don't think it worked on me, though, so I just kinda went along with it."
"It's called glammering," I responded. "Total Jedi mind-trick where you do anything they tell you to. It's really fucked up, man."
Claude handed me a pair of grey slacks and nodded, deep in thought, as I put them on. He frowned. "If I hadn't been immune, this entire job would be impossible. I can't even talk to the other techs about it offsite. It's like their eyes just glaze over, and they change the subject. And please don't ask about the job."
I paused, my mouth hanging open as I looked at my friend, concerned that he might be in over his head this time. He was right: I had been about to ask about the job that had brought him here deep inside the world of vampires. The timing of it was just so fucked up, especially since, until seven days ago, neither of us had known about the existence of vampires. This was more than just the universe fucking with us.
A camera high in the corner of the room caught my eye, and I turned slowly, trying to be subtle as I counted, one, two, three, four, five cameras in this one room alone—the same room they had sent a highly trained professional thief on his own.
"Has it occurred to you that this might be a huge set-up?" I asked.
"Oh, it's one hundred percent a set-up. Which is why I'm going to get you presentable and take you to the Countess as planned."
"So no big action piece where we make a run for it and break out of the highly secure vampire morgue against impossible odds?"
"There won't even be a car chase."
"Dammit, I was looking forward to that."
Claude handed me a tie and stood by with a jacket in his hand. "If it's any consolation, you would have at least looked great in the security footage. All of this is custom made for you, even the shoes."
I paused to appreciate the clothes but was too nervous to do more than notice the lack of tags, a real sign that nothing was store-bought. I slipped my feet into the shoes, and that almost got me. Damn, they were the most excellent shoes I had ever met. It's funny how people always focused on the cars and the houses of rich people and missed the small details that made the difference, like custom-made shoes and shirts that fit like an angel hugging you.
"What's all this for anyway? Who is this Countess you're taking me to meet?"
The door at the far end of the room opened with a hiss, and Catherine Zeta-Jones entered, stunning in her beauty, her pale blue vampire eyes intense but kind. It wasn't the actual Catherine Zeta-Jones, of course, but it might have been her slightly taller vampire twin. Do I have to describe her? Okay, here goes: homina-homina-homina.
When I had picked my chin up off the floor, I let Claude slide the jacket up my arms and onto my shoulders as I watched the most beautiful woman in the world walk towards me. I was sure there was a goofy-fucking grin on my face, but goddammit, I couldn't help myself.
"Ahh, Roberto, so glad you could join us," Countessa Vera said. "Thank you... John," she said with a slight smile at Claude, and I had the panicked thought that she knew everything, that she was onto Claude... and that it amused her.
Claude bowed and exited the room, but I only had eyes for the Countess.
Countessa Vera reached out to take my face in her hand and scrutinized me as if I were a delicate piece of china. "Oh good, you're healed just in time, and there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage. Your healing ability is quite remarkable." She looked me deep in the eye, and I almost melted. "How's your memory?"
There was the flash of memory again, Sebastien pointing the gun at me and squeezing the trigger.
"I think I remember everything," I whispered hoarsely.
"Do you remember who killed you?" Countess Vera asked seductively, and I nodded, completely enraptured.
"Sebastien killed me," I said, and Madame Vera smiled.
"You will have your revenge Roberto," Countess Vera said, "but first, we must attend a funeral."
That threw me off completely. I blinked rapidly, trying to keep up. "A funeral? Whose?"
The Countess laughed. "Why yours, of course!"
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