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

Chapter 9.4 - So Much for the Afterglow

It was the longest fucking day ever. I managed to pass out for an hour before the phone woke me up and I answered it in a mild panic, sure that something else was going down. It turned out to be some Indian dude trying to put on a Canadian accent telling me that I owed back taxes and the government was going to arrest me. I recognized the scam and told him to go fuck himself. I hung up on him before dragging the quilt over my head more irritated than anything.

Unfortunately, that seemed to initiate a war. It was the kind of war that resulted in the scammer calling me back every hour from a different number, usually around the time I finally got back to sleep.

After the fourth call, I gave up on any hope of getting more than twenty minutes worth of sleep and scrolled through social media while debating calling Frankie or Benjamin.

I texted Sammy.

Me: hey, everything okay?

Sammy: hell no. We got raided by the Feds. I gave everybody the rest of the week off while I figure out if we still have jobs.

I was a bunch of nerves for the rest of the day, waiting for the sun to go down. Claude had assured me that I could make calls and text from my phone and everything would be encrypted, but I had to assume everybody else was being monitored.

"But why? It's not like we're planning anything."

"It's not about what you're actually doing as much as about what it might appear to be."

When I texted Natalie, I made sure that my text was all about how she and Benjamin were doing.

Natalie: We're doing okay. Frankie is hanging out with Stanley though. We're going to make sure he's not alone.

Me: What about work? You planning on going in?

Natalie: I'm not even going to bother. This many unplanned days off does not go down well. Ben has been talking to his company all morning, but it's not looking good.

Me: There's gotta be something...

Natalie: Hey, thank God we can actually afford to have some savings, right? It's not like any of us is independently wealthy. Except for Frankie.

Me: I gotta go check in with Sammy later on.

Natalie: say hi to Sammy for me.

I spent the next thirty minutes wondering if any of what we had said could be construed as code or a conspiracy, before deciding that I was freaking myself out.

I talked to Frankie next and he filled me in on what had happened to them.

You know those scenes you see in moves and tv shows where a character is taken by surprise, black bag shoved over their head and then roughly dragged out to a vehicle where they are then escorted to an undisclosed secret location?

Yeah, that's what had happened to my friends.

I figure it was maybe thirty minutes to an hour after the fight was over and they had taken Beatrice from me. I dunno, since it was really hard to get a sense of time or even how long the attack had lasted. In any case, Agent D'mallo's agents had somehow gotten the location of Beatrice's training facility and had raided the place as aggressively as they realistically could without shooting anyone. The fact that the four of them had been at a place designated as a "training facility" didn't exactly help matters.

"Apparently, they had been expecting us to put up a fight," Frankie noted.

So, ears still ringing and possibly bleeding, bags had been shoved over each of their heads and they had been dragged, driven and then dragged some more to a cold, dark room. Bags still over their heads, they had been forced to kneel on the cold concrete until their knees were screaming in agony and the fear had turned into outright terror.