Scary Dead Things - 02 Read Free Page B

it? Perhaps we should respond in kind,” your brain might be saying. Unfortunately, the body isn't quite so coherent. While the mind is carrying on a casual discourse, as if discussing last night’s ball game, the body is flopping about, trying to find a comfy spot on the floor to land.
     
    Unfortunately for me, I didn't even have that luxury. When a vampire like Samuel catches you dead center, you go flying. The hit was bad enough, but the old adage about falling applied here, too. Nobody dies from the fall itself, but the landing is a bitch. Same principle applies when you’re hurtling through the air as if you’ve just been shot out of a cannon.
     
    I had just enough time for my mind to register all of this when I slammed into what felt like...you guessed it...another wall. The impact was enough to scatter rational thought of the here and now and fling me into a nice, comfy little flashback regarding how I had gotten into this mess to begin with.
     
    * * *
     
    Things had definitely not been all wine and roses since I had taken over the coven from the previous leader, Jeff, AKA Night Razor. I had defeated him in fair combat, or so the story went. In actuality, another vampire, Sally, had been the one to finish him off. Sally was the vampire originally responsible for luring me to my own death and subsequent turning to the dark side ; however, soon after she had a change of heart and decided to help me out instead. After the fight with Jeff, she had given me credit for the deed and I had taken over his position.
     
    Before you start getting all soppy over this, though, let me point out that Sally isn't exactly the altruistic sort. Everything I've ever seen her do ultimately seems to be for her own benefit. So, too, was my becoming coven leader. She quickly established herself as my partner behind the scenes. Partner apparently having the same meaning in her mind as Fidel Castro telling his fellow Cubans that they were all comrades. In her mind, she was definitely first amongst equals.
     
    My troubles from the start were two-fold. Internally, I had to control a bunch of immortal killers in fashion model guise, all of whom were older than me. Originally, I had some delusions of trying to run a bloodless coven. Vampire or not, I'm not too big on treating normal people like they were snacks in a vending machine. Sadly, most of my undead brethren, Sally included, were not of the same mindset. I was instead forced to attempt to keep the killing contained as well as I could, which meant getting creative; however, even my best efforts couldn't contain all of the bloodlust, which was now partially the reason why I found myself in the middle of a vampire turf war.
     
    The second part of my troubles was the HBC. They claimed Queens as their territory, and normally there wouldn't have been an issue between our two covens; however, within a few short weeks of being turned, I found myself number one on their to-kill list. See, vampires have laws, too, just like everyone else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure there's no vampire statute against jaywalking, but there are rules set in place to keep our existence hidden from the general populace. The ruling counsel of vampires, known by their asinine nickname as the Draculas, hands these dictates down to the masses, and the rest of us are expected to follow them. In the vampire rulebook, there's no such thing as a misdemeanor. You fuck up, and you get made an example of. The HBC fucked up, and somehow I got caught up in it all.
     
    The rumor mill had said that Samuel was recruiting new vampires in numbers above the quotas set for regional covens. The vampire in charge of correcting their oversight, James, had decided to disguise the culling and give me credit for it in some misguided attempt to increase my reputation as the Freewill of vampire lore. Unfortunately, before he could do damage control and keep things from landing squarely on my head, he was called away on