Pro-tip for vampires #81: immortal is not the same thing as unkillable.
Beatrice owned a fucking McMansion in a Markham subdivision, square in the middle of the suburbs, among the upper-middle-class families with their mini-vans and mid-life crises, who were completely unaware that a vampire lived in their midst. The house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, perfectly situated for defence if you were expecting an attack. From the living room window, you could see right down the street for two blocks, but I wasn't interested in the view. Instead, I watched Beatrice make her way up the stairs, leaving a trail of mini-skirt, boots, and panties in her wake.
"I still don't get what's wrong with our clothes," I yelled after her. " I'm in a ten-thousand dollar suit, dammit. And you look like a fucking goddess!"
"Just shut up, and make yourself comfortable," Beatrice called out, peeling off her blouse on the stairs. "Beer's in the fridge. Remote's on the coffee table or whatever."
I meant to ask her about Louise, but she was naked by the time she hit the second floor landing and all rational thought left my mind.
I found the beer in the mini-fridge next to the couch. It was packed with about twelve bottles of Chimay Red, a beer that apparently only came in wine bottle sizes and had a ridiculously high alcohol content. I wasn't going to argue with free beer, so I popped the cork and made myself comfortable on the couch while taking a nice big mouthful of beer. I found the remote for the TV on the couch, pushed the power button and took another swig, waiting for the gigantic 108-inch screen to warm up, appreciating the luxuries of Beatrice's suburban life. She had it pretty damn good. She even had a portrait of herself hanging behind the couch that looked like Vincent Van Gogh could have painted it. Beatrice wore a strip of black cloth over one eye in the painting, looking very much like a badass pirate glaring down at me. Even when I turned around to watch the TV, I couldn't shake the feeling that 19th-century pirate Beatrice was glaring at my back.
"--only Chimay Red can do it for you!" a man's voice blasted from the television as it finally powered up and clicked on.
My mouth dropped as I realized that Sebastien was on the fucking TV, and worse yet, he posed dramatically with a bottle of Chimay Red in his hand like he was a goddamn model or something. He was still ridiculously good-looking with that cleft chin and fucking lustrous hair. Smarmy-looking motherfucker.
"What are you drinking?" Sebastien smirked from the screen, which immediately exploded as the bottle of Chimay Red that I had been previously enjoying, accidentally left my hand, flew across the room, and smashed into the TV before clunking to the floor without breaking, beer spilling out onto the carpet. The shattered screen sparked as hunks of glass fell out onto the floor. THUNK!
A large knife whooshed past my right ear and thudded into the painting behind me with tremendous force. I yelped, jumping to my feet as Beatrice stormed back into the living room, carrying a coffin-sized black equipment case.
"Goddammit, Bob. You're getting expensive. I liked that tv."
"Sebastien's face is everywhere! How can he be everywhere?"
"Yeah, yeah, you are so not impressing me right now," Beatrice muttered and dropped the case onto the couch. I stepped back, utterly embarrassed by my behaviour, as she reached up and slid the knife out of the painting. She turned to me, holding the knife up as if she was considering using it on me. "I like the painting even more. It was a gift."
I gulped. "I know a guy who could repair that--"
"No, you don't."
"You're right. Except, could you look a little less stabby holding that thing?"
Beatrice glanced at the knife as if surprised to find it in her hand and smirked. She flicked her wrist, and the blade was suddenly embedded deep in the floor between my feet. Beatrice smirked at my yelp of surprise and turned back to the case on the couch while I tried to pretend that all of this was perfectly okay, really it was. The rigid plastic clasps made hard clicking noises click, click, click, and Beatrice swung the lid open, exposing an arsenal of handguns and knives.
"Holy shitballs," I breathed.
"For where we're going tonight, we're going to need to be prepared."
"Are we robbing a bank or something? Taking on the army?"
"Oh, don't be silly," she said and offered a large knife to me, handle first. "We're committing murder."
"Oh," I replied, my heart thudding in my chest as I took the knife. "Of course, we are." I watched as Beatrice examined a large handgun, sliding things and peering closely like she was some type of goddamn expert, which she probably was. "I wish I'd had that thing earlier. Could have taken out Mister Flynn."
Beatrice made a face, barely holding back scornful laughter. "Pffft! With this thing? Mister Flynn is a lot tougher than he looks. You'd need a tank to kill him, and even then you'd better catch him asleep."
"You're telling me he can dodge bullets."
"That's stupid. Nobody can dodge bullets. You dodge people, and then you make it so they're not pointing guns at you anymore." She looked me in the eye, and I paid attention to how still and serious she appeared. "If you want to even think about exterminating the Gentlemen, you'd better nuke them from orbit and then be prepared to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. But even then, one day you'll wake up with Mister Sinnel's hot, stinky breath on your neck and Mister Flynn sipping a cup of tea. He'll even have his pinky out, just so, like a proper gentleman." I gulped, imaging the scenario quite clearly. Beatrice continued. "No, what you do is keep your head down and make sure those motherfuckers forget you exist, and then you keep it that way."
"You don't keep your head down," I helpfully pointed out.
"It's different for me," Beatrice snapped, and that shut me the fuck up. She took a deep breath, presumably to calm herself. "I used to be one of them. The Old Firm is what they called us back then. This was several lifetimes ago. We killed a lot of vampires who didn't keep their heads down, and we made sure they stayed dead. If there's a painful and interesting way to kill a vampire, we probably invented it."
That was the first time that Beatrice had come right out and said that she had killed people, but you know what? It didn't surprise me. It just confirmed that she was no stranger to violence and possibly the best choice for a mentor if I'd ever had to choose one. I'd had my suspicions, of course, but it wasn't like it was something you brought up in conversation. Unless, of course, your name happened to be Beatrice. Coupled with the admission that she had been one of the boogeymen, that sent a chill down my spine in an almost-pee-my-pants kind of way.
"What happened?" I managed to ask after clearing my suddenly dry throat.
"We broke up," Beatrice said with a tight smile. "They got Mister Sinnel to replace me, and now we try not to kill each other every chance we get. It's more civilized this way."
It was hard to reconcile the surrounding normal-looking suburban house with the tall blonde woman who stood in the middle of the living room with a caseful of guns and who had just admitted that she had murdered the shit out of a lot of people. No, wait: she killed a lot of vampires. My brain kept trying to process that information while my eyes insisted that all of this was normal, really, just go with it.
Beatrice slipped one compact handgun into her jacket, exposing the lacy red bra under her jacket for a brief moment, and I looked away, trying not to be a creeper.
"So, you only kill vampires. Not humans?" I asked, examining the rest of the living room with great interest, mainly because Beatrice and that sexy red wasn't in that part of it.
"I used to kill people. Still do if they piss me off. Or if someone pays me to kill them. But not really anymore... at least not since last week."
"But not humans, right?" I asked anxiously and peeked over my shoulder at her.
"What are you really asking me, Bobbikins?" Beatrice asked with a teasing smile. "Are you wondering when you're going to turn into a bloodthirsty monster, bathing in human blood and shit like that?"
"Well... yeah?" I admitted. The thought had been sneaking in occasionally that I hadn't even felt any urges to drink blood, and it was a big part of the vampire myth that I had not confronted. Eating regular food wasn't an issue, but it still made me a little uneasy, and it was time to get some answers. "Is that kind of thing likely to happen?"
Beatrice shrugged. "It's always a choice. You choose whether you want to be the monster or not. Just because you're a vampire, it doesn't mean you suddenly turn into an immoral killing machine. Me, I've got issues, okay? I mean, like serious issues that need some serious therapy, but you don't have to be like me."
"What about Sebastien? If there's one person I have to kill, it's him."
"Dude! You gotta kill the guy who killed you. That's like a freebie."
"I thought you said I wasn't allowed?"
"I also said we'd find a way to do it anyway. Stay on the same page with me, Bobbikins."
I struggled with that for a second and then narrowed my eyes suspiciously. "Is this you mentoring me?"
"Goddamn right, it is!" Beatrice replied. "Here's my first lesson, and it's one you need to know: immortality is a sham."
"What? But I died, and I came back," I protested. "I even had the funeral."
"Gotta have the funeral," Beatrice nodded wisely. "But yeah, there's a whole debate on the dying and coming back thing. Technically: we aren't immortal. We just get to die more than once. Sometimes a lot. And nobody tells you this, mostly because they don't know, but there's like a built-in killswitch that limits how many times you get to come back. I only know this because of how many times I've had to kill other vampires, which is a lot."
"Holy shit. You're fucking with me, aren't you."
"Not even close. Some people have come back ten times, one guy only lasted twice, but there was this one dude who made it all the way to thirty-seven times before he called it a day. Made a bet with me at the end that he was going to come back again. I won."
I sat down slowly and carefully, realizing that my hand was shaking again. Being around Beatrice was panic-inducing. I was going to need a strong drink or seventeen before too long. It was a pity that drugs no longer worked because this amount of bad news needed some hard drugs.
"First, no castle, and now, no immortality?"
"Oh, don't take it so hard. You heal fast, so you might have at least a couple dozen lives in you. Just don't go around being a bullet sponge. That shit hurts."
"Someday, I'm going to sit down and tell myself all about today, and I'm going to laugh and laugh at how fucked up it all was." I said wistfully.
Ding! I pulled my phone out thinking that maybe it was Claude finally texting me to say he was okay. I read the screen, then read it again just to be sure I wasn't hallucinating.
Louise: Still alive motherfuckers.
I whooped as if I had just won the lottery and hoisted the phone aloft in triumph, allowing the waves of relief to crash over me.
"She's okay!" I yelled and looked up to an unsurprised Beatrice. "Louise is fucking okay!" I cried out and wiped away the tears of relief that that sprung to my eyes, aware that I was grinning and that I couldn't stop, but that was okay. Louise was still alive. Fuck yeah!
I texted back: Where are you?
"I wouldn't bother texting her back," Beatrice said. "She'll text again with instructions about where to meet. It's just how she works."
"Oh," I said and deflated. "But at least she's okay."
Beatrice sighed and nodded, seemingly a little frustrated. "Of course she's okay," she said. "That's my bitch. She's good at staying alive." She grabbed her keys from the table and inclined her head in the direction of the front door. "You ready to get this show on the road?"
"Where are we going?"
"To the Hall of the Drunken King," Beatrice announced dramatically and then rolled her eyes when I didn't get it. "HTDK, Harry's club," She grumbled. "It's where all the 'cool' vampires hang out. Personally I think they're a bunch of blood-sucking assholes, but that's just me."
"Fuck yeah!" I said, following Beatrice outside. "Let's go maybe kill that lustrous-haired fuck." I thought about it for a second. "So what's the plan for that again?"
"Ahh, it's nothing, really. Just this graduation ceremony that Harry made up to make the trust fund kiddies feel special. He calls it the Rite of Magazi, and you have to bathe in human blood while everyone cheers you on."
Say whowhatnow? I stuttered to a halt, waiting for Beatrice to admit that she was joking. But she continued on her way to the Rolls. The car's engine switched on from the push of a button on her keys, the headlights flooding the short driveway.
"Did you just say human blood?" I shout-whispered, paranoid that someone in the neighbourhood might overhear.
"It's all donated. It's not like the old days where they opened some chick's artery for everyone to drink from."
"That's.... Not so bad then I guess?" As if that made me feel any better. I raced to catch-up with Beatrice at the waiting car trying to put the image of a dead girl with her throat torn open out of my mind. "So, tell me about the part where I get to kill Sebastien?"
Beatrice opened the driver's door and grinned her best evil grin.
"Oh, you're gonna love this part. You know how you don't have to drink human blood for food? Well, that's because blood is a drug!" She must have mistaken the look on my face for something else, because she gleefully continued. "You and Sebastien are both going to be high as fuck, and that's your chance to kill the shit out of him. Call it bloodlust or whatever, but either way, nobody's going to be able to blame you. Just stabbity-stabbity-stab and cut the motherfucker's throat." She spread her arms as if she had just pulled off some fantastic trick, taa-daa, and took a small bow.
I stared at Beatrice over the hood of the car and blinked slowly, trying to will this nightmare away. Nothing was happening, so I tried again. Still nothing.
"That has got to be the worst plan I have ever heard."
"I know! Right?" Beatrice exclaimed with a huge grin.
"Isn't he just going to come back to life?"
"This is the fun part. He's going to have to go to Lady Vera's to resurrect, and I've got a little bit of inside knowledge that he won't be coming back from there. She hates Sebastien even more than you."
"Really?"
"Yes: really," Beatrice insisted testily. "Don't ask okay? You get what you want, the Countess gets what she wants, and everybody's happy."
Beatrice got into the car, and I stood there for a long moment, dumbfounded and scared shitless about the one flaw in the plan: you don't trust a junkie with your carefully laid plans, especially when there are drugs involved. I had just found the one drug that worked on vampires.
Fuck.
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