by C. T. Phipps
Yuki gave me a sad smile. “You would be sick of me within a week. Let us not ruin what we had.”
“I’m pretty sure a couple of extra tries would be fine.” I wondered if it was sick of me for asking about this with my dead friend nearby. I decided that it was something David would have approved of.
“Find someone who loves you, Peter, you deserve it,” Yukie said. “Someone living or dead.”
Yukie walked away in a somewhat less dramatic manner than her mother. I hoped those two had a chance to talk more. Mind you, I wasn’t sure what they would talk about. Neither struck me as particularly good conversationalists. Mind you, I loved my grandfather, and we exchanged all of ten words in our life. Most of them being variants of, “Want food, son?” or “You okay, son?” To which I’d usually reply in the affirmative.
Good man.
“That’s a helluva woman,” I said, watching her leave.
“You’re a hell of a guy,” Sam said, smiling. “You just need to remember you are a vampire and thus inherently cool.”
“Convenience store clerk,” I pointed out.
“Quit,” Sam said. “You have a couple of million dollars now that Thoth won’t mind you blowing. Buy a nice house, SUV, meet someone nice—”
“Are we actually trying to get me to enjoy life or become a vampire suburbanite? Because there are fates worse than death.”
Sam lowered her gaze. “I know.”
“Is it really so bad?” I asked, looking at her. “You summoned your magic back there. You had it in you all the time. Like the Force.”
“I thought the Force required midi-chlorians.”
“Please, never mention those again,” I said, shaking my head. “All I remember about those movies was Samuel L. Jackson kicking ass, Darth Maul, and the lava fight. Everything else is a nice little blur I blame on some good-hearted vampire erasing them.”
“This is like the time you told me Lando could have Leia any time he wanted to, isn’t it?”
“Because it’s true.”
Sam gave me a hug, and I was glad she was still alive. “You’re a decent creator, Peter. Though I’m going to have to ask you to command me not to kill my kids, innocents, or myself.”
“Uh, don’t do all three.”
“Thanks,” Sam said. “I consider that a big relief.”
“Being a vampire has a lot of advantages,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder tentatively. “Yeah, we’re cursed and all, but life is a curse. It’s short, ugly, messy, and it ends.”
“So does immortality,” Sam replied. “A lot of vampires died here tonight.”
“And they died saving the world,” I said, shrugging. “If that doesn’t win us any points with the Man Upstairs—”
“Woman,” Sam corrected. “Also, I’m a polytheist.”
“Whatever,” I said, continuing, “I don’t know what will.”
Sam smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck, my creator. I’ll contact you when I need to learn how to summon rats.”
“That is a very useful power,” I said, pointing at her.
I looked back at the dust of my friend and saw it had blown away.
The coins were also missing.
Epilogue
It was about a week later that I finally managed to get my shit together and left my trailer to start taking care of business. I hadn’t quit my job at the Qwik and Shop, because that money from Thoth hadn’t come yet. Still, I was able to cope with David’s death and had made arrangements for the funeral. David didn’t have a lot of friends other than me, but he had a mother, a father, two sisters, and a couple of guys he hung out with other than me. Okay, they may have been his drug dealers, but he kept his friendship with them after he no longer could use drugs and that had to mean something.
In any case, Lucinda made good on her presentation of me with a Ferrari, and it broke my heart that I had to sell the damned thing to pay for the funeral and the next year of my mom’s treatments. Still, I managed to upgrade my car to something not a complete piece of crap and get myself a shiny new three-year-old Hummer. The Hummer had been discontinued in 2010, but the good people at Schreck Industries had put out a vampire owned and produced special edition for the undead. Apparently, we creatures of the night were like drug dealers in that we liked gas-guzzling armored vehicles.
Which I just realized was making fun of myself since the thing was bright red and black with a vanity plate that read: NYTEMAN. Oh yeah, it was tacky as hell, but it was the one thing I could afford to splurge on myself when I paid all the other bills. I drove it up to the Sunshine Valley Care Center. It was a one-story square building with a Japanese garden in the center and a big bright image of the sun on the front.
“You really keep your mom there?” Mina asked, sitting in the passenger’s seat. She’d been hired as my bodyguard for the next ten years by Thoth with regular payments at a salary much-much higher than mine.
“I can’t exactly keep her in the trailer,” I said, shrugging. “This place came highly recommended and doesn’t discriminate about vampires visiting.”
“That’s because plenty of retirement communities take money from vampires to be able to feed on the elderly.”
I stared at her. “That’s messed up.”
“Please, you have not heard messed up,” Mina said, shaking her head. “One of Thoth’s necromancer acquaintances, Andrea, owns her own hospice. Feeds all she wants.”
I blinked. “That is fucked up. Thoth knew about that?”
“Yes, he said it was better than going out and murdering healthy people, and they needed her to occasionally summon zombie armies.”
“I have no idea if you’re joking.”
“I said the same thing to Thoth.”
I shook my head and parked the car before getting out. “Well, if you see any vampires feeding on my mom, you have the bellidix’s permission to stake ’em.”
I liked Mina, and she’d surprised me by sticking around the Qwik and Shop during my job. I had the feeling Thoth was planning to pawn her off on me to change at my leisure. Whatever the reason, Thoth had a serious complex about turning people. I could still feel Sam’s emotions when I concentrated and checked up on her every day, but so far, she was handling vampirism okay. Her husband’s crazy town reaction to undeath was not an indicator she was going to be that way. I would have turned her years ago. Then again, she was Dracula’s descendant, and Thoth hated that guy.
“Do you think you’re the bellidix still?” Mina asked.
“What?” I did a double take.
“Well, Ashura is still the voivode, and she only made you bellidix to please Thoth,” Mina said.
“I kind of saved the entire Council of Ancients,” I said, not entirely sure that was a good thing since it had gotten me jack squat other than new responsibilities. Also, they were a bunch of evil old bastards. “Plus, I just saved the world!”
Mina snorted, wearing a leather jacket over a Chicks Dig Fangs shirt. She also had a pair of blue jeans on. “Since when has merit ever been why someone holds a position in vampire society?”
She had a point there.
“Well, I don’t need that job anyway,” I said, worrying that I’d require some sort of vampire cultural cachet to make a difference. I knew Ashura would try to claim all of Thoth’s properties while he was away through their marriage. She didn’t dislike Thoth, they were besties as far as vampires were concerned, but we were a race of vicious territorial predators. I’d have to make alliances or simply tear the head off someone to show I wasn’t to be fucked with. I was surprisingly okay with the idea.
The interior of the Sunshine Valley Care Center was pleasant enough, with little yellow sun stickers everywhere as well as lots of plants. The staff smiled a lot, but they were forced. Initially, I thought it was because I was a vampire and only when I noticed the other family members visiting did I realize it was because of my clothes. I didn’t look like the rich businessmen who dumped their unwanted families he
re.
I wasn’t the only vampire present and saw an argument with an old woman in her seventies, yelling at a young blonde with a summer dress and wide brim hat. I didn’t catch the full nature of their discussion, but apparently, they were talking about the disposition of the man dying in the other room. The young blonde was the man’s mother and wanted to make him a vampire while the old woman was his wife. The wife apparently considered turning him to be blasphemous. There was also the accusation she just wanted his life insurance that companies generally didn’t pay out on if you rose from the dead.
In the end, the two of us visited my mother’s room that had a glass wall facing the sunrise. Well, the sunrise and the parking lot. It was very nice with lots of state-of-the-art hospital equipment. My mom rested on her bed with a breathing mask. I could smell the scent of death around her and knew it wasn’t long now. She was an old woman and each year got older. It was the natural order of things, and the natural order sucked.
“Wow, nice place. You can really afford this on fifty grand a year?” Mina asked.
“You know, it says a lot about our health care system that is a serious question.”
“Well, the undead aren’t the only vampires.”
Truth be told, I had the suspicion that I was receiving something like a 75% discount from the owner. It wasn’t necessarily Thoth, but given I was pretty sure some vampire owned the place, they were probably doing me a favor that would be called in someday. Honestly, I was okay with that and just hoped the favor wouldn’t be covering up a Rebecca Plum situation.
I walked over to my mom’s side and looked down on her. “Hey mom, this is Peter. I’ve got some bad news. David is dead.”
“David?” My mom said, opening her eyes. Theodora Stone was a lovely woman with frizzy hair, a milk chocolate complexion, and a beautiful smile that still lit up the room. “Such a nice boy.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You know he’s fancy, right?” My mom said.
“Yes, I know.”
“Just checking,” my mom said.
“Hey, Mrs. Stone,” Mina said, waving.
“Lucy? Is that Lucy Parker?” My mom asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, remembering the girl who had used to live down the street from us. She’d become a stripper, married a doctor, and moved to Yuma, Arizona. That was, by the way, the sunniest city on Earth. I can’t imagine why she’d want to go there as an alternative to living among vampires.
“I’ve come into money,” I said, thinking of all the things I could now for her. “So, I think I’m going to get you your own private care despite how nice this is. A house too. Better than the one Damien and I grew up in.”
“How is Damien, anyway?” My mom asked.
“Oh he’s fine,” I said, nodding along. “Gotten out of the gangs and everything. Carl Jackson got killed, though.”
“Good,” My mom said, showing a surprising amount of vehemence. “Such an awful man. Do you know he’s involved with vampires?”
I grimaced. “Yeah, that sucks, don’t it?”
“Don’t make fun,” my mother said. “They’re godless abominations that were sent to distract us from the Lord.”
“That they are.”
Mina grimaced, walking up beside me. “She hates vampires?”
“Who doesn’t hate vampires?” my mother asked. “They’re the whitest of the white people. Not that all white people are bad but—”
What followed was a ten-minute spiel by her about how they’d ruined the world, but there were decent ones like Bill Clinton and the weatherman. One thing I’d noticed about old age was the older you got, the more racist you tended to be. Vampires were the one exception, and even they tended to have some prejudices from their mortal days, like Thoth’s distaste for the French. I’d heard hours of ranting from Ashura about how much she hated Albanians and watched Taken religiously. Maybe she just liked Liam Neeson, but I doubted it.
“Don’t marry that Deborah Gibson woman,” my mother said, coldly. “She’ll break your heart.”
“Deborah Gibson?” Mina asked. “The singer?”
“I have no idea where she got that one.” I’d completely blocked that part of my adolescence out. It had apparently stuck with my mother since she always brought it up every visit.
“If you want to marry a singer, you should go after Janet Jackson. It won’t happen, but at least you’re aiming high.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Peter, your hand is cold as ice.”
I frowned. “Blame the air conditioning and poor blood circulation.”
My mother was already back to sleeping, though. I doubted I could wake her up if I tried. It wouldn’t be long now, so maybe my idea of moving her to a different location was just a pipe dream.
“Can’t you do something for her?” Mina asked. “Blood or even changing?”
I shook my head. “Vampire blood doesn’t heal the mind. Believe me, I asked. I don’t think turning her into a vampire would do anything for her brain either. Even if it did, she’d never forgive me for it.”
“I’m sorry,” Mina said. “Growing old sucks.”
“That it does.”
I debated whether I should contact my father, Ian, for the funeral. Ian had left my mother, Damien, and me high and dry once he’d gotten his promotion to become a full-time partner at his law firm. He’d married a younger trophy wife and specialized in real estate law to take advantage of the gentrification happening throughout the city. I’d occasionally debated visiting him to pay him back for what he did to mama, but I figured living forever was the best revenge. His trophy wife had divorced him last year and took his fortune along with his two other kids.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said, turning around and heading for the door.
“Sure,” Mina said. “Let me buy you lunch. My great grandfather gave me a million dollars and a Slavic kingdom for my sweet sixteen.”
I turned around. “I hate you.”
Mina smiled.
My cell phone buzzed. Reaching into my pocket, I picked it up and said, “Ello?”
It was Melissa. “Hey, Peter, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
Oh shit. “Oh, goddamn, I am so sorry. You would not believe the shit that has happened. The Devil showed up in town, and he had an army of feds—”
“I heard about all of that. I’m sorry about David.”
I’d had a lot of time to think about my relationship with Melissa, and I’d decided I’d screwed up by sleeping with Yukie. I wasn’t going to try to hide it and needed to confess. If she dumped me, that was fair, but I wanted to be in a relationship with her. Women like her didn’t come along every century. I needed to show how much I cared. Unlife was too long to hold onto regrets.
Yeah, everyone was sorry. “Listen, there’s something we need to talk about. I did a bad thing and—”
“Peter, you’re in danger.”
“Wait, what?”
“Ashura is dead, destroyed by parties unknown. The city is currently under the control of the Texas voivode and his cronies. They’ve got Thoth imprisoned. They’re blaming him for the deaths of Ashura and the City Council. I think they’re going to go after you next.”
I turned around and saw a hooded vampire run up to my car and throw a grenade in it before zipping away. The Hummer exploded into a million pieces, sending flaming wreckage in the air and wakening my mother from her deep sleep.
“It’s the goddamn Russians! Getcha gun, Peter!”
I fell to my knees in horror. “Not the car!”
Peter Stone will return in
VAMPIRZ4LIFE
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