So I'm a Vampire... Now What? - Book 2 (Original Version)

Chapter 5.4 - Moving On pt4

Three hours.

That's how long the entire process took from start to chaotic and overly dramatic end. It only took me three minutes to tell my side of the story and then another ten minutes to answer specific questions about the attack on Daemien. I told the entire truth as I remembered it, and there was that familiar rage again, the same rage I had felt at the time that someone had dared to do this to my family.

"And what about Claude?" Madame Vera had enquired when I had stopped talking. "What was his part in all of this?"

I looked levelly at Madame Vera, wondering how much she knew about Claude's inability to be glammered. I wondered if she somehow knew about our argument, but then dismissed that thought as pure paranoia.

"What about Claude?" I asked. "I was the only one doing the killing," I lied, "and I have no regrets about that. I'm glad Claude doesn't have to share the memories and the trauma of killing another person; human or fucked-up psycho vampire."

Madame Vera simply raised an eyebrow and rested her hands on the table in front of her in an appraising manner. Even such a simple movement sent a shiver up my spine. She was elegant as always, a tall and beautiful Spanish woman of the Catherine Zeta-Jones variety. She knew exactly how beautiful she was and didn't hesitate to exploit her beauty. Even now she knew the effect she had on me. I could not lie to Madame Vera and she knew it.

Madame Vera ran what I like to call "the House of the Undead," but that was mainly just for dramatic effect on my part. It was a hospital slash morgue for vampires who had stupidly gotten themselves on the wrong side of dead. Are you a vampire who has been burned in the sun, shot in the head, or suffered from any kind of massive trauma that would incapacitate anyone according to the laws of physics and logic? Great! At Madame Vera's House of the Everloving Undead, you will have time to regenerate and put yourself back together— literally in some cases. You'll, of course, be saddled with a massive bill for services rendered, but what the hell? You're a vampire, so you can afford it! Can't afford it? Then she's going to sell your ass to the vampire mob, and you'll be working off your debt for a couple of years... just don't get yourself dead again or this time you'll end up in the human morgue, and there will be no coming back for you.

Claude and I had ended up at Madame Vera's after my fatal encounter with a psycho who had left me to burn in the sun. I had healed in about seven days, but Claude had almost had a hole punched through his chest, and that had required several weeks of very specialized treatment from Madame Vera's facility. Her staff was very skilled at reattaching limbs and putting pieces of vampire back together, but working on a human had been challenging, to say the least. Madame Vera had mused that it might have been easier just to turn Claude into a vampire. Being a vampire, of course, allowed the healing process to do the best job possible; the last thing you want is to get shot in the head and lose pieces of brain because when you heal, the brain is still going to be missing pieces and then you're going to have a seriously fucked-up vampire. Or worse. I still counted myself lucky that they had found all of the pieces when they put me back together that first time.

If you don't understand the kind of power that gave her, then I'll break it down for you: everybody at some point has to see Madame Vera. Everyone. You do not want to be on her bad side.

"That so-called 'psycho vampire' was one of us!"

This is the point where I should probably call your attention to the other ten people in the room, key among them the very emotional walking caricatures of vampiredom from Montreal.

It was a large boardroom in the middle of City Hall, of all places. The windows were all darkened with that special U.V. Glass Harry had had a hand in developing, and the ceilings were high and curved, giving it the feeling of being in a courtroom, which was mainly what it was. There were two long semi-circular curved tables that left the center of the room completely open. Anyone sitting in the middle of that circle (me) was completely surrounded by the inhabitants of the tables. I had to keep twisting in my chair just to see who was speaking.