"Hi Beatrice," I said, firmly establishing myself as the resident Beatrice expert in these parts. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Oh, I came for the meeting," Beatrice replied looking directly at me. "Decided to stay for the violence. Your ad seriously undersold the murder and mayhem though."

"He brought the murder with him," I jerked a thumb at the prone and now terrified Murray. "We were going to send it right back."

Beatrice looked down at Murray who on second thought seemed to be more enchanted by Beatrice rather than terrified. She considered him carefully and then shrugged.

"Delusional psycho killer who thinks he's a vampire, huh?" She looked at me and sighed deeply, as if she had expected better. "This is what happens when you accept every Tom, Dick and Stanley off the street." She winked at Stanley when she got to his name and that annoyed me for some reason. Beatrice counted us and then counted again, looking puzzled. "Where's Natalie?"

"How do you know these guys?" I finally asked, unable to take the suspense any longer.

"Oh, I made them into vampires," she said way too casually then paused as she looked at Frankie. "Except this one."

"What do you mean you made them into vampires?" I asked, the same time that Frankie responded with:

"You can't go around making random vampires!"

Murray chimed in just a second late: "Can you make me into a real vampire?"

Beatrice rolled her eyes and flicked her arm at Frankie. A knife suddenly appeared in the middle of his chest, buried up to it's shiny wooden hilt, like some macabre magic trick. Frankie stumbled back one step, trying to suck in air, something vital suddenly not working. The phone tumbled from his hand and landed facedown on the ground with a very expensive sounding thud.

"Shit," Beatrice said. "I meant to tell you to shut up, but I guess that sends a similar message."

Frankie dropped to his knees and I reached out to him, still marvelling at how fast the knife had appeared, still trying to process how things had gone south so quickly. Frankie's hands reached weakly and ineffectively for the knife.

"Oh just pull it out," Beatrice said impatiently. "The faster that it's out, the faster he will heal. In the meantime he won't be yap-yap-yapping in my ear and he certainly won't be making any more calls to Harry."

What the fuck?

"Frankie works for Harry," Benjamin said as he returned from the far end of the parking lot. "He's been reporting on the group."

"Bennie!" Beatrice said warmly. She looked back to me and winked, then said in a stage whisper. "He's my favourite!"

"How do you know any of this?" I asked him. Then turned to Beatrice. "Does everybody know but me?"

"I didn't know shit," Stanley mumbled. He leaned over the traitorous Frankie and shook his head. "Sorry buddy," he said, and in one move, yanked the knife out of Frankie's chest. I jerked back from the spray of blood from the wound, but you gotta be really fast to avoid sprays of blood and I really wasn't that fast, so half of my face got covered in Frankie's blood.

I had had enough. I wiped the blood away from my face, aware that the right side of my coat had droplets of blood everywhere and this coat was going to have to go into the trash.

"Fuck all of you guys! I'm killing this sonofabitch!"

"Why?" Beatrice asked quietly, and I glared at her.

"What do you mean why? He's a psycho killer and he killed my friend!"

"Dude, you barely even knew her. You met her at the club, fucked her and drank her blood and then ignored her after that. How do you think she ended up with this sick fuck? Downward spiral man, starting with you. You can at least be honest with yourself right now. You want to kill him because he's a sick fuck and you want to end him, then admit it, but don't go around trying to claim vengeance for someone you only now choose to call a friend when she's fucking dead. When you kill someone, it's for keeps, so you better own that shit."

I really didn't know what to say about that and felt that rage inside dying in the harsh light of the truth.

Murray nodded feverishly. "She's really got a point," he agreed.

"Don't worry, I'm definitely killing him—" Beatrice said.

"Oh goddammit!" Murray said.

"—but at least I know why I'm doing it. Plus I'm a lot better at it and we really don't need to leave a trail. None of this gets back to us. That's the rule. That's how we survive and thrive."

I looked around at the faces of my friends, and wondered just how much we had all been hiding just by not talking about it. I wanted to feel some sense of betrayal, something, anything at all, but somehow my self-righteous switch wasn't working. Unlike myself, it wasn't as if any of them were hitting the dive bars every chance they got to try to get a quick fix to get through the day and then pretending that everything was okay. So they hadn't told me that Beatrice had turned them, but it wasn't like I had ever asked specifics. The only person who had actually had any other purpose had been Frankie, and the knowledge of that betrayal still stung.

"Fine," I said. "Do your thing."

Beatrice was surprisingly gentle with me as she used a finger to raise my chin so I could look her in the eye.

"Chin up Bob. You're doing a lot better than anyone ever expected you to. You're still here and that's gotta count for something, right?"

"Really?"

SLAP! My face stung from the sudden blow.

"Of course you made me lose ten grand when you didn't off yourself last week, so thanks for that." Beatrice turned to Murray and looked him deep in the eye. "You, get up and get in the car. We're going for a drive. And yes, you are going to die."

"Yes mistress," Murray said eagerly and shuffled off to the car, following orders exactly.

Beatrice turned to our little ragtag group and winked.

"Oh yeah, Harry wants to shut down your club. You might want to ask Frankie over there for more details."

And with that, she drove the Corolla out of the alley and into the waiting night, taking Murry with her.

I looked around at the guys, the sudden absense of Beatrice and Murray bringing reality crashing back down around us. Frankie moaned pitifully, heaving huge breaths that seemed to hurt. Stanley and Benjamin looked at each other in the shy way that men who have just discovered they are brothers do, which is to say: really fucking awkwardly.

Benjamin asked the question we were all thinking.

"So what happens now?"

******** 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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