How Not to Vampire - Season 1

17. Monsters in Expensive Suits

Pro-tip for Vampires #17: Other vampires want to kill you.

Remember that dream I told you about? The one I never ever have about an unknown assailant grabbing me by the legs and dragging me from the bed and across the floor before I could properly wake up? That one? Well, I was having it again.

Don't worry, this isn't a dream sequence. It's actually something much, much stupider. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a play-by-play repeat of an earlier experience.

When the pillowcase was finally ripped from my head, I was not even slightly surprised to find the familiar faces of Tanya and Doreen sneering down at me. They'd already pulled this same attack once, so the element of surprise was gone. I had only seen them once in the past six months, and I still blame them for Jaime breaking up with me, so this wasn't the best of reunions. Especially since it was exactly like last time. In my opinion, if you're going to go around brutalizing sleeping men, you really ought to apply yourself to the task. Use some goddamn imagination.

After Tanya and Doreen were petrified by Claude's connections last time, I had honestly never expected to see them again. Julio had made some half-assed apology about some kind of fucked-up loyalty test, but I had been too fucked-up over Jaime to really give a shit.

And yet, for some reason, they had decided that terrorizing me again was a good idea.

"You know Claude is going to have to kick your asses now, right?" I asked, my nonchalant demeanor completely hiding the huge surge of relief I had felt when I realized my attackers were human.

"Don't bother looking for your friend," Tanya said. "He left ten minutes ago, so we got you all to ourselves."

"Lucky me," I replied.

"Julio sent us to offer you an invitation," Tanya smirked. "It's the kind of offer you're not allowed to say no to. He wants you to stash some product for a week."

"Please don't say no," Doreen said helpfully.

"Can I go with option B and tell you both to go fuck yourselves?" I said. "Julio and I already had this conversation two months ago. We have an agreement where we don't fuck with each other, and you assholes are supposed to pretend that I don't exist."

"Doreen, why don't you be a darling and hit him for me," Tanya said with a smile.

Doreen's fist came at my face, but time seemed to slow to a crawl, and it was as if her fist was slogging through Karo syrup. It was still coming at my face, just very, very slowly. I moved my head out of the path, really more as a means of getting a better view of this perplexing situation—

Doreen yelped as her fist smashed into the floor where my face had been only seconds earlier, and pull it back with a hiss, shaking her hand and wincing. Somewhere in the middle of all of that pain, she caught sight of something completely unexpected and turned to face it, her damaged hand seemingly forgotten for the moment. "Who the fuck are you guys?"

I can say that I half expected to hear Claude's voice, but that's just me lying to myself. Even looking back now, it's hard not to lie to myself. It's a gift.

"We have business with Mister Diego," a man's voice said, and terror sliced through me like cold daggers of doom. It was the kind of voice that you listened to and prayed that you would still be alive when it was done talking. Of course it had a British accent. "Why don't you take your friend into the bathroom and beat her to death for me?"

Doreen turned, and there was a moment where all I saw was this strange smile on her face as she turned and grabbed Tanya by the hair and punched her in the face, one, two, three times, knocking her the fuck out. That done, Doreen dragged her lover by the hair into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.