Scary Dead Things - 02 (4 page)

We stared at each other across about ten feet of space. He staggered but managed to stay upright. He balled his fists defensively, and I raised my stake in return. A heartbeat passed, or it would have if either of us still had one. We locked eyes and prepared for the final charge. I couldn't help but think there should have been some Ennio Morricone music playing in the background, like in
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
, but sadly there's never a soundtrack when you need one.

I made my move first. I launched myself at him, and he...exploded in a cloud of flame and dust?? What the fuck? I hadn't even touched him yet. The least he could have done was wait until
after
I staked him to do that.

I was just beginning to wonder what had happened when the smoke from his explosion thinned out, and it all became crystal clear to me. Standing directly behind where Samuel had been just a moment before was Sally, her own broken two-by-four still in hand.

“What the hell!?” was all I could stammer.

“Typically, this is the point where you would say
thank you
,” she replied, smug grin etched onto her pretty face.

“I had him!” I insisted.

“Oh? Like you
had him
right before he punted your ass for a field goal?”

“You saw that?”

“Oh, I did better than that,” she answered. She pulled a
Flip
camcorder from her pocket and waved it at me. Bitch!

“And you didn't help
why
??”

“I was curious to see if you'd get back up,” she answered with an even voice. “Just for the record, I was actually impressed that you did.”

“I'm flattered, I'm sure,” I said dryly.

“Oh, don't be such a grouch. I'll give you full credit...
again
. Of course, we'll both know the truth,” she said with another little shake of her camera. “By the way, is it me, or is this starting to become a habit between us?”

“I didn't need your help this time!” I pointed out.

“Oh, really?” she countered. She bent and started rooting through Samuel's ashes. “Then why was I the one who finished him off?”

“That was a cheap shot!”

“Exactly!” she replied, picking a few things out of the ashes. “Thus proving my tactical brilliance compared to you both.” She finished by tossing my roommate's purloined silverware piece back to me. “Nice fork, by the way.”

“All in all, that went almost exactly as planned,” Sally cheerfully explained as we walked back to the main meeting room where the altercation had begun. The sounds of battle could still be heard in the building, but it sounded like things were winding down.

“Whose plan, exactly?” I asked. “
My
plan was to come here, hash out a truce with Samuel, and then go home. Last I checked,
my
plan didn't include spending the last hour trying to keep him from rearranging my face.”

She shook her head and replied, “Sorry to break it to you, but there’s no way your little cease fire would have worked.”

“It might have if you hadn't decided to bring every psycho in the coven along.”

“Like I said, all according to plan,” she pointed out with a tone one might use on a particularly dimwitted child. “We killed two birds with one stone here. With Samuel gone, the rest of his gang won't want to be within ten miles of us. As for our own side of things, I'm pretty sure we managed to purge some of the less pleasant elements of our own group. That's what we like to call a win-win.”

She had a point...maybe, at least minus the excessive mass murder part of it. Still, I was pretty pissed off, and rightfully so.

“You could have told me!” I growled as we entered the now deserted meeting room.

“You wouldn't have gone along with it.”

“Exactly!”

“Hence why I didn't tell you. Duh!” she said, rolling her eyes at me. You know, sometimes I wish I was just a little more evil. If so, I'd have been almost tempted to make sure there was one more casualty to add to the day.

* * *

We straightened up the room a little bit while Sally coached me on what to say. Once we had gotten the table and chairs set up again, she said, “OK, you can call them all back now.”

“How? This whole building is a battle zone. There's no way they'll hear me.”

“Send it out as a compulsion,” she replied.

“And that will do
what
, exactly? I can't control any of these vampires. They're all older than me, or have your forgotten?”

“God, you are dense sometimes!” she sighed. “This has nothing to do with controlling them. If you send it out as a compulsion, every vamp in the building will hear you.”

“Oh. OK, then,” I replied. Yeah, I guess that made sense. Every compulsion I had ever heard (
for lack of a better term
) had been up close. But since there was a psychic element to it, I guess that meant it could carry further than the sound of the voice making it.

“Alright, so do it then,” Sally prodded me.

I went to open my mouth, then hesitated. After a couple seconds of Sally staring quizzically at me, I smiled sheepishly back at her.

As expected, her response was another eye roll. “Don't tell me you don't know how to compel!? You were supposed to be practicing these things!” she chided.

“I know,” I stammered. “But since I haven't met any vampires I could potentially control yet...I kind of figured...what was the point?”

“And yet somehow you're still alive while a two-century old master vampire is now a pile of dust. You must have a small regiment of guardian angels looking out for you,” she sniffed.

“No shit. I need at least half of them to protect me from you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she responded. “Oh well, if you want something done...
THIS BATTLE IS OVER. SAMUEL HAS FALLEN!!
”

It wasn't the loudest compulsion I had ever heard (
or felt
), but it was apparently loud enough. The faint sounds of vampires beating the snot out of each other stopped almost immediately. As we had planned, I positioned myself at the head of the table, with Sally standing behind me as my subordinate. I put an expression of calm determination onto my face as best as I could, which was saying something since turning my back on Sally was about the furthest thing I could think of to give myself a state of calm.

One by one, the various combatants began to filter back into the former meeting room. As also discussed, I said nothing. I merely gestured to the seats as each vampire arrived, waiting for the last of the survivors. It supposedly projected an aura of smug superiority regarding my victory, not to mention it also kept me from having to repeat myself over and over again. That was a good thing, as it lessened the chances of me saying something stupid that would just start the battle up all over again.

When a few minutes had passed since the last vampire returned, I took stock of the survivors. There was no mistaking which way the tide of battle had been turning. No matter the bloodlust some of my coven members might have been feeling, there were conspicuously less survivors on my side of things than on Samuel's. That shouldn't have surprised anyone. Jeff, the former master of Village Coven, tended to pick new members based on their looks and overall frat boy mentality. Samuel's group, on the other hand, looked more like they had been recruited based on how many faces they had smashed in during their mortal life. If further
negotiations
went badly, it would be in our best interest to get the fuck out of Dodge as quickly as possible.

However, that possibility was still a major
if
. If I played my part well enough, there might be no need for that. Yeah, I know...another
if
.

As the last of the survivors took their seats, I reached into my pocket and pulled out what Sally had dug from Samuel's ashes. I tossed his fangs out onto the table as one might toss a pair of dice in a craps game. They tumbled end over end before stopping near the far edge. I glanced around and noticed all eyes were locked on them. The expressions around the table were all nearly identical, regardless of coven allegiance...abject disbelief. I expected this from the HBC vamps - but jeez, it would have been nice if even a few of my own ranks had a little faith in me. *sigh* Assholes, each and every one of them.

Oh well, this speech wasn't going to make itself. Thus, I got things started again once the silence in the room became almost oppressive. “Who is Samuel's second?” I asked in a neutral tone.

There was no immediate answer; instead, the various HBC survivors looked back and forth at each other, confusion evident on their faces. This was good. Sally had told me she had suspected as such. A vampire as old, relatively speaking, as Samuel tended to run a coven with an iron fist. A succession plan or even basic hierarchy was probably the furthest thing from his mind on a day-to-day basis. If that were the case, there would be confusion enough to distract these vampires as they sorted things out amongst themselves. It was sort of like the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. If
GI Joe
shot down
Cobra Commander
, they'd still have
Destro
and the
Baroness
to worry about. On the other hand, if
He-Man
ever took out
Skeletor
, the forces of evil would be pretty well fucked, as the rest of them were a bunch of numbnuts. We were pinning our hopes that Samuel was the Skeletor of the Queens' vamps.

My hopes were realized a moment later when a member of Samuel's contingent spoke up. “I am Samuel's second!” he said, only to be immediately shot down by another.

“The fuck you are!” the other vampire angrily spat. Almost as if on cue, the rest of Samuel's group started arguing amongst themselves. The survivors of my own coven looked to me as if seeking some direction. It was about fucking time. If they had bothered to do that at the beginning of things, we'd have a lot less dead vampires than we did.

Oh well, the time to chew them out wasn't now. I motioned with my hand in a stay calm gesture, or what I hoped they interpreted as such. Fortunately, they did. Being on the losing side of a real life game of
Mortal Kombat
tends to have a sobering effect, even on a bunch of vicious nocturnal predators.

I continued to let the HBC members argue amongst themselves for a few more moments. I knew that they wouldn't even come close to any conclusions in that time, but it made things appear more convincing. Finally, I raised my voice above them all. “ENOUGH!” I shouted. It wasn't a compulsion, but it got their attention. Being the dude who just tossed your boss's remains in front of you tends to make one rate a few notches higher on the
people to pay attention to
scale.

Once the table had again quieted down, I resumed. “Your internal politics are not my concern. Figure it out on your own time. What I care to know is whether any of you wish to continue Samuel's quarrel with my people?” Yeah, that was total bullshit. Everyone here knew that the HBC's grudge was against me and me alone; however, as the coven leader, my fight was the entire group's fight. Even I had to admit this job had a few perks.