Scary Dead Things - 02 (2 page)

Don't get me wrong. I'm no Chuck Norris, and this fight was a
long
ways from being in my favor; however, once you've been in one pissing match with a monster who outclasses you in nearly every way and lived (
sorta
) to talk about it, you start to get a little jaded about the whole thing. It's like when I was a little kid. I remember sitting there watching wrestling on the TV and listening to Mean Gene Okerlund talking about how any given wrestler on any given night could potentially become the new champ. It wasn't too different from what I was doing now. No matter how old the vampire, things weren't one-hundred percent settled until one of us was dust. Of course, this logic ignores the fact that wrestling is all bullshit. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have Vince McMahon off behind the scenes scripting a big upset victory. If I wanted to win this, I couldn't count on 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin running out to save my ass with a steel chair.

Fortunately, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve, one of them being I had my wits about me. Samuel might be older, but he had a major weakness that I could exploit. According to the info I had been given about him, Samuel was old enough to have been born a slave in the deep South before the days of the Civil War. He had been owned by an exceptionally cruel master and had spent the first four decades of his life enduring a mix of excruciating labor and relentless beatings. Things like that would fuck up anybody's outlook on life, and Samuel was no exception.

According to the stories, it was actually Samuel's owner that first had a chance encounter with a vampire. He was turned, then shortly afterwards he attacked and turned Samuel. Why? Who knows? Maybe he wanted to hold dominion over his slave forever, or maybe he was just thirsty. Either way, it’s safe to say this guy was a dick sandwich and a half. However, he was also stupid. Being a brand new vampire himself, Samuel’s master had no idea what he was doing. I am told that the act of turning brings out the feral nature in some people. Samuel was the perfect poster child for this. Upon awakening as a vampire, he completely snapped. He turned on his former master, who was too new to know how to control Samuel. Then, when he was done, he turned on his now former owner's family. He didn't stop there either. He slaughtered every living thing on his plantation and on the next two plantations over before his rage burned itself out.

Since by that time the Civil War was raging full force, nothing odd was thought of the carnage. After all, when you have an invading army with a scorched-earth policy rampaging about, most people aren't going to look at a few dozen dead bodies and immediately say, “Hey! It must be vampires.” Samuel was thus able to escape without much notice. If anyone ever did try to stand in his way, the archives make no mention of it; however, if they did, it's a safe bet as to what happened to them.

If you're thinking that all of this caused Samuel to spend the next century and a half nursing a massive chip on his shoulder, then bingo! Even up to the present day, it was well known in the vampire community that Samuel only accepted minorities into his coven, and even in that he was particular. Don't get me wrong, I might be just a little bit jaded, too, at the whole thing if it had happened to me; however, it also meant that it wouldn't be too hard for me, your quintessential dorky looking white guy, to push his buttons. A two-hundred-year-old vampire in a blood lusted rage was actually easier to fight than a two-hundred-year-old vampire who was thinking rationally and planning his every step. Fortunately for me, pissing people off is one of my specialties.

“Damn,
you
people
have hard heads,” I said in a condescending manner, placing heavy emphasis on the 'you people' part. I felt like a massive dick saying it, but I'd rather be a living dick than a politically correct corpse.

“What the fuck did you say!?” Samuel growled as he rose and once more began stalking me.

“Oh, I'm sorry. Forgot you don't understand proper English too well,” I said, increasing the mocking in my tone. “How's this? Yo, Nigga! You gots yourself one motherfucking hard head!” Oh yeah, I was erasing about a lifetime’s worth of good karma on this one. But it worked. Samuel came right at me with little more than an inarticulate snarl. He was pissed big time. If I didn't time this right, I was going to get a front row seat to watching my head shoved up my own ass.

As he charged me, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my secret weapon. I was glad I had decided to bring it. Considering this was supposed to be a peace conference, I almost hadn’t. Thank god for paranoia. As Samuel closed the distance, I kept the fork hidden from his view, waiting for the right time to strike.

Yes, I said
fork
! Not a cross, not a gun, and definitely not the holy hand grenade of Antioch. Trust me on this one. For starters, forget what you know. Crosses by themselves don't do shit against a vampire. If you ever find yourself cornered by vamps and you think you're going to get out of it by holding two popsicle sticks together, you are going to be in for a
major
disappointment. But maybe you'll get lucky and they'll be laughing so hard at your idiocy that you'll be able to slip away regardless. I wouldn't count on it - but hey, I'm a glass is half full kind of guy.

Anyway, Samuel crossed the distance between us almost faster than I could see. I just barely had enough time to brace myself before he hit me in the side of the head with a wild backhand swing. I went down. I have to admit that under normal circumstances the blow would have probably put me down for the count. But these weren't normal circumstances, and I'm not a normal vampire...if there even
is
such a thing.

I was already juiced up from earlier. At the start of the fight, one of Samuel's goons had come at me first. I had stepped into his punch and sunk my teeth into his arm. I managed to suck down a few mouthfuls of his blood before he could pry me off.

Now this might not seem significant to you, but in addition to movie lore, you also need to ignore the shit on your typical late night vampire erotica in which everyone is usually biting and sucking on everyone else. In reality, when a vampire bites down on another vampire, bad things happen to the biter. The effect is kind of like what you would expect if you were to drive down to Tijuana and drink your fill from the first water fountain you found, only amplified a couple dozen times. Forget fighting; most bloodsuckers wouldn't be strong enough to
stand
for several hours after drinking another vampire's blood. But not me.

I'm what the other vampires call a
Freewill
. Apparently, they're rare...as in it's been at least half a millennium since anyone has seen another one. Personally, I think a good deal of what they say about me is a load of bullshit; however, it does seem to come with some perks. For starters, I'm immune to another vampire's psychic domination, or
compulsion
as they call it (
hence the name Freewill, duh!
). That’s one of the things some of the old Dracula movies got right. Older vampires can mentally dominate younger vampires, especially those they create. They can, more or less, force them to do whatever they want. Vampire society typically uses this to keep order within their ranks. But there are plenty of my kind who just use it to fuck around with the younger vampires.

Perhaps even cooler than that power, though, is what happens if I drink another vampire's blood. Instead of puking my guts out and lying there whimpering, I get a boost like Pac-Man on a handful of power pellets. Basically what happens is I somehow temporarily add their strength to my own. How? Fucked if I know. I just know it works and that it's saved my ass on more than one occasion.

I don't know how old the vampire I bit was, but I was easily running at about two-hundred percent of my normal level. Not powerful enough to engage Samuel directly, but strong enough to allow me to take blows that would otherwise turn my head concave. Thus I was able to shake his hit off and jump back to my feet. Maybe I was a little wobblier than I would have preferred (
he hit me pretty damn hard, after all
) but standing was definitely better than lying down and letting him go all ape-shit on me.

As he once more came after me, still blinded by rage, I sidestepped and plunged the fork deep into the middle of his back. Samuel was a big guy with heavily muscled arms. Normally that's a good thing, both for attracting the ladies as well as beating the tar out of flabby shits like me; however, it's a bad thing for being flexible, as in flexible enough to be able to reach around and pull my meager little weapon out.

The fork itself didn't do much. I mean, I'm sure it stung
a little
. Getting stabbed isn't fun, no matter what the weapon. But using a kitchen utensil against a vampire is a lot like using a penknife against a grizzly bear - unless, that is, it happens to be a
special
kitchen utensil. Fortunately for me, it was. After a second or two, I could smell it. Another few, and I could see it. And I'm definitely sure Samuel
felt
it.

* * *

Two weeks ago, I had been sitting at home, sipping on a liter of refrigerated blood, just minding my own business. I was relaxing on a Monday night following a long day of coding. I work as a video game developer. I did it during my life, and I still do it during my undeath. I like my job and all, but there is a small part of my mind that likes to remind me that I'm vampire. Not only that, but I'm a legendary type of vampire, a legendary type of vampire who is also the head of his own fucking coven...and yet I was still a goddamned wage slave. I had figured that once I took over the Village Coven, it was going to be one big party after another, with maybe an orgy or two in between. But noooo. Sally, my so called
partner,
kept a tight reign on the coven’s bank books. I was lucky to score cab fare from her, much less live the life of avaricious abandon I so craved. But we'll get back to her later, as she also had a hand in the present day situation going on with Samuel.

So there I was unwinding when one of my roommates, Tom, came in the door. Both of my roommates, Tom and Ed, are human. Kind of makes us a less attractive but significantly more fucked up version of
Three’s Company
. Anyway, Tom had spent the weekend at his parents' home in New Jersey (
also home to his slightly underage hottie of a sister, which has really nothing to do with the present situation. I just like to mention it
) and had then gone straight to his job in Manhattan, from where he was now returning.

“I've got something new we can try!” he excitedly said after he tossed his sports jacket into the closet. I didn't even need to ask what he meant by that. Since being turned into a vampire some six months ago, my roommates had made it their mission in life to chart my powers and weaknesses. It was mostly the weaknesses they seemed to focus on, and thus, in addition to roommates and friends, I had to add
torturers
to the mental description I kept for both of them. Barely a week went by in which they didn't think of some new thing to stab, burn, or crush me with. My pain had become their hobby. Yeah, they both really needed to get laid.

“What now?” I asked in a bored tone, hoping it might dissuade him.

“This!” he replied, pulling an old fork out of his pocket.

“Let me guess, you misunderstood my previous instructions and are now going to go
fork
yourself?”

“Keep trying, Bill. In another century or two, you might grow a sense of humor that's actually funny,” he dryly remarked. “This here is not just a fork. It's silverware...you know, as in
silver
.”

“So? You guys already tried silver. It didn't do jack-shit.”

“Yeah, I know. But forget about that. That shitty little letter opener was just silver plated. I didn't really think it would work anyway.”

“And yet,” I added, putting an edge to my voice, “it didn't stop you from stabbing me with it...repeatedly!”

“Sorry. All in the name of science,” he continued. “But this is different, trust me. This weekend, my mom had some friends over, and she pulled out the good stuff. She inherited it from her grandmother. This is the real deal here. Pure, solid, you-could-melt-it-down-and-shoot-werewolves-with-it silver.”

“So let me get this straight: you stole your Mom's prized silverware?”