Okay, flashback's over. You now know everything about my fucked up life, or at least as much as I'm willing to admit to.

So yeah, that's me, the bastard Bob, the same guy I was telling you about earlier who hangs out at your local dive and somehow always manages to leave with whatever chick you happen to be checking out. However, you never get too suspicious about me, since you will see that girl again sometime, so it wasn't like I'm some psycho killer, right?

See, there's a reason Harry has the rules and that his vampires actually follow them. There are people just like you out there watching for people just like me, some of them actively looking for us. You just happen to be looking at us in exactly the wrong way.

I had a whole series of awkward conversations about my new adopted lifestyle, the first one being with Claude, but that was a conversation that had been a long time coming, especially with him being gone for so long and me being left to my own devices.

"Are you killing people?"

"What? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Let me ask again just so we're on the same page. Have you killed anyone?"

"Hell no! What the hell do you think I am anyway?"

Claude looked me deep in the eye and nodded. He pulled back from me and sat in the chair at the side of the bed, still carefully watching me. His pulling away was a relief, since he had been right in my face yelling at me and I was desperately conscious that my morning breath tasted like it was about to be condemned by the UN as a weapon of gross destruction. My teeth were feeling all mossy and I knew for sure I hadn't brushed in at least a day, and I could taste it, that rank garbage taste that was a combination of everything I'd eaten over the past forty-eight hours.

"Did you just get back into town?" I asked Claude. "You're three weeks late. I started thinking that you were dead."

Claude grimaced. "What's my number one rule?"

"Don't drink anything from the top shelf?"

"That's a good rule, but that's not rule number one anymore. Rule number one is now 'never work with Russians', a rule which I thought I was following, but somebody pulled a bait and switch on me, and now of course the Russians want me dead, because that's the way these motherfuckers do business."

"Is this going to be a thing now? The Russians?" I asked.

"Only for as long as they're trying to kill me," Claude said, and stood up. "Come on, I grabbed us some McDonald's breakfast sandwiches."

"What time is it anyway?"

"Time to figure out what the hell is going on with you," Claude sighed.

As he walked away from me, I noticed a small detail, something I had never seen with Claude before. There was a bulge at the back of his waist and he was compensating his body movements ever so slightly, the way someone does when they're wearing a gun.

I chased after Claude, jumping into my jeans, glad that I hadn't gone to bed naked like I usually do. I had been going to bed naked more often over the past three weeks and it had become kind of a default state.

"Since when do you carry a gun?" Something occurred to me. "Is that because of me?"

Claude scoffed and rolled his eyes. He tossed me a yellow paper wrapped sandwich from the counter and I caught it easily enough.

"I scoff at the implication that you could hurt me. This is me scoffing." He scoffed and I pretended to be impressed. "Dude, haven't you been following the conversation? We have a Russian problem. Now sit and fill me in on everything that's been going on with you. Starting with what the hell happened with Jaime."

"How the hell do you know about that?"

"She called me and left a very long and very detailed voicemail. Almost as good as texting. Try it sometime."

"Well since you already know what happened, why do you need me to tell you?"

"Because what she says happened and what you think happened are two completely different things. And I need to hear it from you so I know how fucked up you are."

So I told him. I kind of avoided telling all of the truth about my newly acquired habit of hitting the dive bars on my nights off work. Somehow I couldn't let him know the complete truth, but I think he saw right through me anyway. To his credit, he let me get away with it, possibly reassured that I wasn't even allowed back into HTDK and that Harry wasn't actively trying to have me killed, at least as far as I knew.

I was still alive, so that had to count for something.

***

"How you holding up bro?" the King had wanted to know one night. Sammy had vanished into the Boss' office to go change, so we had a few minutes to ourselves.

I had sighed and put down my brand new copy of "Giant Days", my study in British slang put on hold for a second to deal with this traitorous bastard.

"I'm still alive. I hope you put down long odds for me in the deadpool."

"I heard something about that. That's harsh man."

"How much you got riding on me?"

"Nothing! I've been avoiding the club. There are much better places out there to be one of us you know. I mean, we got the whole damn city to work with. Harry's club barely scratches the surface."

"Gee, I wish I had a mentor or somebody to show me around," I deadpanned. For extra flourish, I whipped the open comic book back up to simultaneously cover my face and my view of the King.

There was silence for a long moment. When I inched the comic book back down to sneak a peek, the King was still there. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"You're seriously going to hold this against me? Me not being your mentor?"

"Damn skippy!"

"You're not going to tell Sammy about me, right?"

I considered this for a moment and let him stew.

"Mentor me."

"No."

"Be my mentor!"

"No!"

"Be my mentor... please?"

"Still no."

"Fuck you then. I'm so telling Sammy when she gets back out."

He called my bluff. I didn't tell Sammy anything, but things changed after that and you could tell. Sammy was really angry for about a week and barely spoke to me, so I assumed that she and the King had broken up or something.

"I hate men," Sammy had snapped at me one day and I had given her an awkward sideways hug. She had retaliated by whacking me with a rolled-up magazine and then ended up chasing me around the store with the magazine since I really didn't want any fresh bruises. After that, we were okay and settled into a new groove, a new rhythm, and life carried on.

***

Most days I tried not to think about Jaime. Some days I was actually successful.

The thing is that pregnant women suddenly seemed to be everywhere I went, their bellies big and round and inescapable like silent accusations. I tried to remind myself how much I actually hated little kids, especially babies. I was the last person on earth who should ever be entrusted with the care of a small child even by virtue of biology and shared chromosomes. I knew it was a bad idea, and Jaime had definitely rejected that idea completely, but still, there I was surrounded by pregnant women on the bus, at the store and even at work.

Do you know that some pregnant women get especially horny as the hormones course through them? I had no idea of that fact either until a very aggressive pregnant woman cornered me in the store and gave me the details.

"I feel like you want me to ask you how horny you get and I'm really not comfortable with that line of questioning."

I really wasn't either. There was something maddening about the smell of her blood and it was driving me crazy. I never thought I could actually smell hormones, but surprise! You learn something new everyday.

"Ask me," the pregnant lady had insisted. "Cuz I'm going to tell you anyway. In great detail."

She did. In great detail. It kind of explained why in the course of the next nine days I sold vibrators and dildos of varying sizes to obviously pregnant women of varying sizes.

Sometimes the universe can't help but shove your pain right into your face.

***

Days went by where I didn't even think about being a vampire, beyond avoiding the sunlight and bitching about the ever lengthening days of the coming summer. And of course there was my new found hobby of picketing the club at least once a week. By the end of May it was getting ridiculous to even think about leaving the house before 8PM and it was only going to get worse. Claude took pity on me and started driving me to work, since he was around a hell of a lot more after his excursion with the Russians. Sure I'd have to make sure every inch of me was covered before I ran out to the car, but it was better than having to travel on the bus dressed like that. I think he was a little worried about my bouts of depression that popped up from time to time and he gave me the space and the time I needed, but made sure that I knew he was there for me. Just as long as I wasn't inviting any Russians over to hang out.

I thought about Beatrice and wondered just how exactly she pulled off the whole "daytripping" thing, before remembering just how much of a fuck she didn't have to give about much of anything.

I spent a lot of time finding new dive bars I hadn't been to yet. A lot of the time was spent with Google Maps just figuring out distances and travel times. I even got an app on my phone to track where I had visited and to take a note of which girl I had picked up that night. It was almost obsessive on my part and I wondered sometimes if the other vampires did something similar. Some level of organization had to be at play, otherwise vampires would have made the Nightly News a long time ago. Since I had time at work and I had no intention of being arrested or being the target of some dude's overactive but accurate imagination, I indulged my obsession and tried to plan accordingly.

Anyone following my activities at the bars would have just thought that I was some kind of man-slut who got laid regularly and reliably at least once a week. Lots of guys don't have that kind of average, having to strike out every now and again, but for me, that was a thing of the past.

The bodies hit the bed and the blood flowed.

For a while, I was the king of my own reality.

When I formed the group and actual members started showing up, that's when everything changed.

******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********

The book is now AVAILABLE in Hardcover, Paperback and Ebooks. It's going to live here free on Wattpad, but if you love the story and want to support your awesome author (me), grab a copy from one of the lovely retailers below. Who knows: maybe it can become a bestseller with the help of you lovely WattPadders

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