So You Used to Be Human - Book 3 (Original Version)

Interlude: Tales from the Crypt

AN INTERLUDE: TALES FROM THE CRYPT

Claude had stopped worrying about getting his throat ripped out and his blood drained after Hester had forgotten that he had even existed for the second time.

Now Hester was off in a corner mesmerized by the magic of the computer screens showing the security footage of Beatrice's apartment and that suited Claude just fine.  It had been a little disconcerting to find a three thousand year old vampire locked up in Beatrice's vault, but that had been nothing next to the momentary terror when the old corpse had opened his fanged mouth and had mushed out some declaration which utterly failed to terrify Claude in anyway whatsoever.

It turns out that talking through a mouthful of fangs was harder than it looked.  In the movies the actors would just over dub the lines anyway, so it didn't matter how much they were actually drooling their lines and spitting on everyone within range.  The reality was a hell of a lot different.

"Are you the maid?" was the first terrifying question that Hester had wanted to know, except it had been utterly garbled and Claude had been covered in foul smelling saliva.

Hester had been in an upright coffin behind a curtain at the end of the room.  It was an expensive coffin, very high tech and there were a large number of tubes leading into the coffin and ultimately into the very dry looking statue who at second glance definitely wasn't a statue.  The screens and charts on the front of the coffin offered Claude a glimpse into pretty much everything there was to know about the not-statue including his name which rather disappointingly turned out to be Hester.  And according to the charts he was one of the oldest vampires still alive.

If Claude had been in the habit of talking to himself, he would have said something like: "Beatrice, there's a lot more to your twisted mind than you're letting on."  Since Claude definitely wasn't a self-talker, it wasn't something that was said and if anyone says anything differently, they're a goddamn liar.

Claude had kept on reading, glancing over at Hester on occasion, but there didn't seem to be any threat from that quarter.  What he was determined not to do was to A) turn his back on the body, or B) do something stupid like get anywhere within an arms reach because C) he was not eager to be another stereotype in a bad horror movie.  Claude's movie was an action movie, currently an action-comedy since he was after all still locked in a vault waiting for his idiot friend to show up and somehow bungle a rescue from the very vicious looking vampires outside who were huffing and puffing as hard as they could.

Claude glanced over at the screens from the four cameras Mr Bryce had not managed to find and was disturbed to find absolute quiet.  All efforts to pry him out of the vault had stopped and the silence and lack of activity was driving him crazy.  He knew it was supposed to lull him into a false sense of security to try something stupid, and he wasn't about to fall into that particular trap.  Hell no: he had Netflix the ultimate enemy of boredom.

And now he had Hester to keep him company.

So it was in that silence that Hester had opened his eyes and Claude had heard the mangled words coming from the lips of the vampire who was three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-seven years old, and was quite possibly a Libra.  Beatrice's notes were very detailed.

Claude had turned very carefully and very deliberately, part of his brain screaming at him to run, run, you're about to die, while the other part of his brain was calculating his chances for survival via talking his way out of this and it was actually liking the odds.

"Do I look French?" he had responded, almost automatically before his brain kicked in and told him how stupid that response had been, but he hadn't cared.