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

Chapter 11.4 - The Wicked One

I really needed to stop waking up to people waiting for me. True story.

This time it was Beatrice, but we were in her apartment, so it was almost expected. At least this time there didn't seem to be any knives involved and I wasn't bleeding.

"Holy shit, you scared me," I grumbled, trying to get my heart rate back to something resembling normal. "I was having the most fucked up dream. You were flying and wanted to kill me and we ended up have some freaky sex all over the apartment—"

I looked up at Beatrice perched on the end of the bed like some kind of psychotic gargoyle, just patiently watching me; reality firmly asserted itself. None of it had been a dream.

Beatrice had found some clothes at some point when I was still unconscious. She wore black on black and looked like she was heading into battle. Only her feet were still bare.

"Oh good," she said, "you're awake. I thought I was going to have to do something drastic to wake you up."

"Were you really flying?" I asked, that being suddenly the most pressing question I had to ask.

"No," Beatrice said with a wry smile. "That was more like floating. Actual flying is impossible."

My mind went through a series of impossible gymnastics and still failed to make sense in anything that Beatrice had just said. Flying is complicated, but we already covered that, so let's just move on, shall we?

"What is it about you, Bob?" Beatrice asked, looking at me intently, almost greedily. "I really can't figure out what it is. Maybe it's that you make me actually laugh."

I pulled myself up, looking for my clothes in the wrecked bedroom, before concluding that after the afternoon's encounter, there was very little hope that my clothes were still intact. Unfortunately, clothing lacks the ability to heal. My shoulders barely even ached from where they had been impaled, scars still thick and puckered, but definitely on the mend. My healing ability was working faster ever since my last death; in an hour you wouldn't even know that I had ever been stabbed.

"Don't worry about your clothes," Beatrice said. "I told the concierge to bring up something in your size. Preferably something not covered in blood."

"I hope you made sure to specify no holes," I half-joked, flexing my shoulder, wincing at the memory of the trauma.

"See? There you go again, making me laugh," Beatrice smiled, "I'm glad I didn't kill you."

"I'm glad you didn't kill me either," I responded. Then: "Why did you want to kill me again? Exactly?"

Beatrice shrugged and easily stepped off the bed and walked to the window where she pulled back the huge floor to ceiling curtain. She looked out at the city lights for a long moment and I wondered if she would respond.

"You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time Bobbikins. I needed to hurt someone and you were there and I'm sorry it happened." She looked like she wanted to cry, but then her face hardened. "It's probably going to happen again. Maybe worse next time, and you might not even survive it. I'd be really sorry about it too, I promise you that. I may even give your severed head a kiss, but I doubt it. In fifty years I won't even remember your name or that I murdered you just so I could feel alive again."

There is a point when all of your instincts are screaming at you to run, run and don't look back, just fucking run goddamnit. When you reach that point, make sure to listen to the other set of instincts that say very quietly: if you make a move she's going to skin you alive.

"Do you know how fucked up your memories get when you've lived for a really long time and in as many places as I have?" Her face seemed to twitch, starting from her mouth and working it's way up to her eye as if she was trying to force a memory away by scrunching her face up. "You're lucky, you know. You've only lived in two places so it's easier for you. You can still remember everyone you've ever been close to. You know, I can't even remember if Beatrice is actually my original name or one of the dozens I've adopted over the years. I like to think that it is... but do you know how fucked up you'd have to be to forget your own name?"