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

Chapter 20: In Repair

-3-

A funny thing happens when you have a full pitched battle going on on the side of a major thoroughfare, even if its in the dark that normal people can't see. Cars had kept on going by through all of the running and the chaos, much in the nature of how traffic has a tendency to just flow, but of course there had been a few people who got too nosey for their own good. The dead body with the sword through the head might have had a lot to do with it, but don't quote me on that.

Two cars had stopped and their occupants were peering into our former car at poor Paolo; one of them was busy on the phone, possibly to 911 and he was scared shitless. He looked up in shock and then confusion as Jaime and I emerged from the darkness.

"Oh my god! Miss are you hurt?"

"Whats the plan here Bob?" Jaime whispered to me. I had been hoping rather desperately that this particular question wasn't going to come up, especially after I'd put her down so she could walk. Jaime thought more when she walked and right now she was thinking a lot about what she had done in the last ten minutes. Seeing the broken bodies of the vampires as we passed them just made her think even more, and that thinking was leading to panic as reality asserted itself in the form of the stopped passers-by.

"I don't have a plan yet. I was planning on stealing Blondie's car and getting the hell out of here first. This was not in the plan."

"Well can't you do the glammer thing on these people or something?"

I was mildly panicked and tried not to show it. "It doesn't work on everyone! Kinda hit and miss."

We had reached the first two of Jaime's attackers. The one with the sucking chest wound had rolled into the bush at the side of the road and was breathing raggedly. The other one had stopped moving, hands buried in his steaming guts. I considered it a miracle that he hadn't been spotted yet as well as the other bodies in the field until the obvious solution occurred to me.

We could see in the dark. It was more like movie night than anything else, so subtle that I had never even noticed. For a second I wondered just how large my pupils had gotten, but we were closing in on this stupid bystander and I still needed a plan.

"I need you to help us," I said and proceeded to glammer the fuck out him the instant he began to nod. It took me back how easy it was, because I had felt an initial resistance stemming from his suspicion, but the instant he decided he wanted to be helpful, it had so much easier to slip right in.

He hung up the phone and smiled.

"Sure thing! What do you need me to do?"

***

Let me just say that getting away from the scene of a possible crime on the side of a somewhat busy road is harder than you think. Four minutes later we were heading away down Highway 7 in the back of Owen's minivan. Six cop cars with sirens blaring blasted past us, on the way to the scene and I found myself more worried about them than about Beatrice.

"She's going to rip them to shreds, isn;t she?" Jaime asked and I didn;t know how to answer.

"This is the first time I'm ever seeing anything like this. This doesn't usually happen. Harry... Harry is usually good at keeping a lid on any incidents."

"Who's Harry? The big bad vampire boss?"

"In a word, yes."

"I thought that was Madame Vera. She's scary as hell enough to do the job."

"I think Harry is better at bullying people. He gets off on it."

Jaime pulled back, emotions going across her face, and she began to shake as sobs wracked her body. Owen glanced back at me being frozen on the seat next to her and rolled his eyes at me. I carefully put my arms around Jaime, feeling how sticky she was, the coppery scent of blood invading my nostrils; she didn't resist, instead turning her body towards mine and proceeded to bawl her eyes out on my shoulder. The sad thing is that even as Jaime poured out all of her frustration and fear and whatever else she had been keeping inside her over the events of the last week, she just let it all out, the only thing I could think of was getting her to a safe place where she could take a shower, because she was beginning to stink.

In the movies you always see your heroes go through some traumatic even that leaves them drenched in blood, even if it's not their own, and it's always amazed me that they never have the same reaction I always have if something icky gets on me. That reaction is usually to get it off me as quickly as possible and there usually follows a lot of dancing around and flinging or arms followed by abuse of paper towels. Someone else's bodily fluids all over you isn't something you want outside of sex, so I would expect there to be showers going on or at the very least a lot of wiping and potential abuse of of the closes roll of paper towels.

Jaime had gone through an ordeal and had in her mind committed several acts of almost murder that would be on constant replay in her head for a while. It didn't matter that it was in self-defense and that she had somehow murdered the hell out of a bunch of vampires in ways that had impressed even Beatrice. This expression of grief and pain right on my shoulder wasn't so much about what she had done, but more about what innocence, what humanity she had lost. At some point she had stopped caring that she was covered in other people's blood and that in itself showed just how much she had been holding in.

"You're going to be okay," I said as reassuringly as I could. "It will probably cost an arm and leg in therapy, but you'll be okay."

"You're an asshole Bob," she said and I knew she was going to be okay.

I held her as best as I could and wondered if it was going to be enough.

***

Owen was extremely helpful with getting Jaime cleaned up, at least enough to walk out of the car without attracting too much attention. He was the one who came up with the idea of using babywipes to help give her a faux-bath, getting rid of most of the blood from her face, arms and torso. The baby-wipes he had to pull from the huge box in the back he had picked up earlier for his own babies at home, but he was right about using them.

"I know it feels all weird, " he had said. "But they do a great job for cleaning up a lot of messes. If they can deal with poop, they can deal with blood."

"You know you just said poop, right?" I just had to point out to him. Owen shrugged helplessly,

"Don't judge me. I don't get to swear as much as I'd like around my eighteen-month-old."

He gave Jaime his coat with barely a second thought and she looked so shocked and touched that I just had to ruin the illusion.

"You know he's compelled to help us, right? He'd probably be the first to turn us in to the cops if he had a chance."

Owen was nodding in agreement.

"He's totally right. Ever since I had kids I've turned into a real moralistic prick. I think my wife hates me now."

I shook his hand. "You take care Owen. The cops are going to come looking for you. Just tell them we kidnapped you. I was a skinny hipster with a stupid beard and a love for guns and Jaime is a blonde ex-stripper who claims she's killed people all over the state. We held a gun to your head the whole way and you dropped us off at the mall. As soon as they talk to you, this will be the truth, do you understand?"

"You guys take care," Owen said, and drove away. Amazingly enough, he managed to get away from us and nobody tried to kill him.

Jaime looked up at the condominium high-rise behind us.

"So this is the guy who's going to turn me back into a human?"

"I think so. He's going to at least know someone."

"Well let's get it over with before I kill anyone else."

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