I strained against the chains, the rage that filled me wanting to explode and I was aware that my fangs had slid out for all of the use they were. I pulled and pulled, sure that my rage would do something, anything after all my grief was raw, and my anger was righteous, and there had to be some kind of good somewhere, right?

Have I mentioned how much real life isn't like the movies?

Sebastien just watched me and then pulled his stake out of the sand where it had fallen at an angle.

"I have no idea why my glammer didn't work on him and I really don't care. I'm going to fuck up your friend and drain the blood out of him, but first, I'm going to stab you in the dick!"

Sebastien reared up, blood streaming down his chest and stomach and I knew there was no one to save me this time.

"What the fuck dude? Is that you Sebastien?"

Sebastien paused in the act of my almost murder, stake held high in the sky. "Goddammit!" He yelled. "Can I please just stab this guy?" There was a pause as he turned to the source of the voice, and then he said quite simply. "Oh."

Beatrice stepped into my field of vision and barely threw me a glance.

Sebastien stammered, and you could see his brain going into overdrive trying to figure out how fucked he was and if he was going to get to kill me after all. I would have sighed in relief at the brief reprieve, but I had a hole in my chest that felt like it was the size of a football and I just wanted this to be over.

"You actually remembered my name?" Sebastien stammered, and then tried on a smile, just in case Beatrice somehow hadn't noticed me tied naked and spread out on the ground. "What are you doing out here?"

"Same as you actually. Getting rid of a body. It's a good spot for it. I see yours are still alive," Beatrice leaned over and waggled her fingers at me. "Hi, Bob."

I strained back to see Claude, grateful to Beatrice for pointing out that he was still alive. I couldn't see him, but I could hear his ragged and strained breathing, plus the occasional pained "fuck," "shit" and "goddamn" among others. If anything, Claude was thorough with his swearing, even in massive amounts of pain, which was way better than massive amounts of dead.

"This isn't what it looks like—" Sebastien stammered.

Beatrice grinned widely. "Oh good! That's a relief. Because what it looked like, at least to me, was you killing another vampire, and you know Harry frowns on that kind of behavior. We usually leave the killing of other vampires to the Gentlemen, and they hate being denied."

I really wished she would get to the point and save my ass from being impaled before I bled out on the beach. I swear some people have no sense of urgency at all.

"You've got to be kidding, right?" Sebastien said. "Weren't you just killing someone?"

"She's not kidding! Definitely not kidding!" I yelled. My goddamn leg had gone numb, and I couldn't feel it anymore. And was the numbness spreading?

"Oh, my guy was only human. Somebody convinced him he was a vampire you know."

Oh, fuck! I thought. She knew what Sebastien had done to Murray, and she was letting him know that she knew. I still hadn't figured out what that meant for me since I was still tied up...

"The poor bastard truly honestly believed that he was one of us, that he was immortal," Beatrice said with a sly look to Sebastien, who had slowly lowered the stake by this point and looked like he was considering using it on Beatrice. "He wasn't," She said in a stage whisper as if it wasn't obvious.

"Whatever he had to say was a goddamn lie!" Sebastien blurted out.

Beatrice nodded reassuringly, but you could see she wasn't buying it. Anybody could see she wasn't buying it.

"Of course it was," Beatrice said and patted Sebastien on his shoulder. "It will be our little secret."

Sebastien looked relieved at this.

"Really?"

"Not a chance."

In one swift move that was way too fast for me to see, Beatrice blurred just for a second and stepped away holding something fleshy and gristly in a tightly clenched fist. It was so quick that Sebastien was still smiling and hadn't realized just what had happened yet. The blood hadn't come yet, but when it did as the body got over its shock, it sprayed with every beat of his heart, that arterial blood emptying out into the early morning air and puddling briefly on the sand in pools of a wasted life.

Beatrice casually threw aside the pieces of flesh that had been the throat of the vampire formerly known as Sebastien and wiped her bloody palm on her jeans. She looked down at me and frowned.

"We really gotta stop meeting like this Bobbikins," she said.

"We've never met like this! Can you help me out here?" I groaned. "I think I'm bleeding out here and Claude needs help."

Beatrice made no move to help. She looked down at my limbs and shook her head.

"Oh hush. It's already clotting. It will heal up in an hour."

"Doesn't feel like it. So... little help here?"

"You got yourself into this mess dude. Can't expect me to go around saving your ass every time you know."

"But you just killed dude! You killed Sebastien!"

"Yeah, but that wasn't for you. That was business. Speaking of which..."

With a fluid sweeping motion, Beatrice kicked Sebastien's knife into the air and caught it with one hand. She grabbed Sebastien by the lustrous hair and with one motion, separated his head from his body with barely a sigh.

Sebastien collapsed onto the sand next to me, spurting fountains of blood into the sand and I wondered if Claude was bleeding out in the sand somewhere behind me.

"So this isn't a rescue then."

"Not even close to it."

"You know the sun is coming up right? You do know what's going to happen to me right?"

"Yeah. If you don't get yourself out of there, you're going to burn like a motherfucker."

"That does not sound so great to me."

"Me neither, so you'd better get moving. Andale Bobbikins! Arriba Arriba!"

Beatrice held Sebastien's head in both hands and then with a smirk, threw it into the air, and punted it towards the lake. There was a splash as the head entered the water. Beatrice threw up her arms in victory.

"She shoots! She scores!"

"There is something seriously wrong with you," I said.

I strained against my bonds, but there was still no give at all, nothing. I couldn't even move my arms enough to pull the skin off my hands if it came to that. There was zero wiggle room. I looked up imploring at Beatrice, the sharp taste of panic, bitter in my mouth.

"Either help me or fuck off."

Beatrice thought deeply and then grinned. "Tell ya what: you get outta this and I'll buy you lunch. Maybe show you a few tricks. But first, show me what kind of vampire you really are."

"Can you show me how to get out of chains?"

"Oh, that one is easy. First, don't let anyone put you in chains."

Bitch.

"When you do get out of this, and you tell anyone about this whole mess, make sure there's like a car chase across the desert or some shit. Make it epic."

"Fuck you, Beatrice!"

"Bye Bob!"

And with that, Beatrice was gone. I whipped my head around, looking for Beatrice, completely unable to see her, unable to see anything except the steadily brightening sky.

"Can you at least tell me if my friend is alive? Is Claude alive?"

Silence.

"You can't leave me here!" I yelled. "My legs are numb, and I don't want to die with numb legs!"

There was only the silence of an empty beach at sunrise.

"Claude?" I called.

"Fuck you, Bob," Claude gasped faintly. "Pain. Hurt. Ow."

I strained against the chains, telling myself that my vampire super-strength had to kick in some time and now would be perfect because goddammit I didn't want to die! The chains didn't break. No vampire super-strength for me.

"Fuck."

I could see the sky brightening slowly as the sun prepared to cross the horizon and banish the shadows and all creatures of the night with its arrival. It occurred to me then that I couldn't hear Claude anymore.

"Claude, I think I'm going to die, but thank you, man! Thank you for being my friend... even though I got you killed. I'm sorry I couldn't be a better friend man. I'm sorry... I'm sorry I couldn't be better, period."

I was getting hot and could feel the warmth spreading across my body as my nerve endings pricked up, aware that something was going on, aware of the heat of the direct sunlight--

"I love you, man."

And then there was only fire and pain.

I burned.

As Beatrice predicted, I burned like a motherfucker.

******** 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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