Joe Vampire

POST 34



Bo: Hunter



Vampire hunters are another element of the whole deal that I thought were only the “myth” part of the mythology – fantastic devices for storytelling as a counterpoint to the evil antics those literary Suckers of Blood were up to, but not an actual contingent prowling the night armed with stakes and crosses. By now, there aren’t many aspects of being a vampire that I haven’t considered from a real-world perspective. But the idea of people devoted to hunting them is just something that had never occurred to me.

Now I know better.

“So there’s a huge call in this area for vampire hunters? Are there vampires just running around all over the place, like sewer rats?” I know they abound, especially down by Pomme, but it hardly seemed like common knowledge. So I tried to play it cool and condescending, hoping it would throw a smoke screen over the truth. I really didn’t think it would be too hard to do with the anti-genius standing before me in my living room.

I was right. It wasn’t hard.

“I don’t know about that. I drove across town to get here. I’m mobile.” He turned so I could see that the map on the back of his shirt. Serving the greater metropolitan area. Like pizza delivery, or plumbing repair. “You’re my first kill… or you would’ve been if you hadn’t been so dang smart.”

Don’s first change, this bozo’s first kill. I’m everybody’s first. “Well, sorry you wasted your gas. No vampires here.”

Once I denied it, he became a little more attentive, like suddenly he had to prove himself right to justify having the t-shirt printed. “Really? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn vampires had fangy teeth, like yours there.”

“These? Genetic defect.”

“And your pointy ears? Are those generic too?”

“It’s genetic, not generic and… and… ” I stopped mid-lie. “You know what? Screw this.” Suddenly I didn’t feel like playing my own game anymore; it was too hard to keep the list of lies straight, even in my own head. Whether or not he would have bought the excuses, it was time for me to try a different tack. This take-down I’d gotten over on the chubby hunter told me I could pull myself out of trouble if something here went sour. I didn’t want to cause any real mayhem, but I would go totally Tasmanian Vampire on his ass if it came to that. So I told him the truth. “You’re right, dude; you caught me. I’m a vampire.”

He eyed me sideways. “Now you’re just shitting me, aren’t you? Messing with the dumb guy’s head?”

Oh my God. This was rough.

“Nope – not shitting you, not messing with your head. I am a vampire.” I hardly ever say it out loud to myself, let alone to anyone within earshot. It felt kind of liberating. “That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Hunting vampires?”

That made him even more suspicious. “Yeah, but a ‘pire’d have to be real stupid to admit it to a hunter. You don’t seem stupid.”

“Stupid or not, it’s totally true. No use denying it anymore – you found me. I am absolutely, without question, a vampire. See? Here are the teeth,” and I bared them, “and the ears,” and I showed them, “and this is where I was bitten.” I pulled down the collar of my hoodie and showed him the bite marks. “And my skin – see? It’s pale, kind of.” I almost wished I hadn’t kept up with the carrot juice. “And you can feel how cold it is. That’s how you can tell; all of those are signs that I am one of the undead. A vampire.” He just stood there, with a stunned redneck-in-the-headlights look on his face.

I think my about-face totally threw him.

He whipped a flashlight out of his pocket and shined it right on me. I hadn’t even thought about it, but my Ray Bans had come off in the tussle, and my all-black eyes were gazing right at him. The light dazzled the crap out of them. “But you don’t even sparkle. Maybe your hair, a little… not your skin, though. Nothing glittery about you at all.”

I grabbed the flashlight and threw it on the floor, hoping it had broken. “I’m a vampire, not a pole dancer.”

He stepped forward to look closer, and I threw up Judo hands to warn him off. For the record: I don’t know Judo, but if he came any closer I had no qualms about figuring it out on the fly. “And why are your eyes all black like that? Where’s the gold parts?”

“There aren’t any gold parts. This is what a vampire really looks like.”

“My old lady read the Nightfall books about a thousand times. We got the movies on DVD, too. She knows everything there is to know about ‘pires.” I don’t know why he kept calling them ‘pires. Was it really so hard to say the whole thing? “You don’t look like you’re supposed to, the way those kids do.”

“That’s a buttload of fiction.”

He looked puzzled. “I got everything but that last word.”

Really? I only said five. “It’s bullshit; make-believe. A fairy tale.”

“Fairy tale? Those movies don’t have a single fairy in them.”

Wow. “Good point. Not a fairy tale in that way; it’s just a made-up story about vampires. It’s not based on real life.”

“Sure sounds like real life to me.” This right here? This is the problem!

This, as much as This.

“What’s your name, Pire Hunter?”

“Bo.” He kicked the carpet. “Ah, dogcrap. I’m not supposed to tell you that.”

A hunter named Bo? Radical. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll probably forget it in a minute.”

“Oh. Good.”

“So Bo, you’re looking at a vampire – me; I’m a vampire. God’s honest truth.” I smiled a bit, putting on a friendly face despite my undeniably feral mouth. “Do I look like what they talk about in those books or show in the movies, aside from the fangs and sloppy hair?”

It took a little doing, but I was finally able to convince him. “No… you don’t look like those people.”

“Thank you for seeing that.” Something beyond the attack was bothering me, too. “Now… how the hell did you find out who I was and where I lived?”

I think I expected some sort of strange hillbilly answer, a backwoods yarn about the voodoo woman in the bayou sussing me out by reading chicken guts and tea leaves, or gazing half-drunk on moonshine into her crystal ball to find the numbers on my mailbox. I wasn’t even close. “Hell, I was just searching vampires on Bing for my old lady, and I found your blog. So I hacked it and traced it back to your G-mail address. Linked that to your PayPal profile and hopped to the address information from your credit card number.”

Oh. Well, then.

His Bing mojo put my Googling abilities to shame. “That’s impressive searching there, Bo. Sounds like you’ve got some mad tech skills up your sleeve.”

He blushed. “It was real easy… you got no security on your site at all. You should fix that. I can hook you up with a firewall and stuff, if you want.” Five minutes earlier he was trying to run me through with an iron stake, and now he was offering to help secure my blog devoted to Vampire Truth.

Quite a turn of events.

“I might just take you up on that. Thank you.” That felt strange. “So do I seem dangerous to you? Like I need to have my heart staked?” I hoped the answer would be self-evident.

“No… but neither do some of those Nightfall kids.” He paused a beat. “Oh, right. That’s all bullshit.”

“Right. All bullshit.”

Then it got quiet and uncomfortable. I was waiting for him to leave, sort of scoot off through my broken door and take his crowbar and his vampire killing paraphernalia with him. But he just stood there, staring at me like we were supposed to have something more to say to each other. So to signify that our exchange was unmistakably finished, I started cleaning up the living room, hoping it would prompt him to leave. Damned if Bo didn’t start cleaning up right next to me, gathering the scraps of my coffee table under his arm and putting things back together. I passed him back his belt. “Here’s your… kit.”

He took it reluctantly. “Probably don’t need that anymore.”

Didn’t need it in the first place. “So what do you think of real vampires, now that you’ve met one?”

He scrunched one eye and got a solid look at me with the other. “You just seem like a regular guy. You haven’t called the cops on me… that’s real decent of you.” Nice of him to say, despite the fact that he’d trashed my living room. “And you’re skinnier than I thought a ‘pire would be. But you sure are a strong f*cker.” He rubbed his wrists again. “Real strong.”

“Yeah… sorry about that.”

“Hey, I was trying to stab you in the heart. Guess a jacked wrist ain’t so bad. Wait till I tell my old lady about you… she’s gonna wet her panties when she finds out I met a real ‘pire. Probably be pissed that I tried to slay one, seeing as how she’s all hung up on that Fredward Mullins dude, like he’s her dream guy or something.” Aha… so had he gone through with it, this would have been a crime of passion, of sorts. I knew there had to be more to the story than just mobile ghoul extermination. “She’ll be totally bummed that you don’t sparkle like him.”

“Uh, Bo? About telling her about me?” I explained to him that the reason for the “Joe Anyone” feel of the blog was that I wasn’t big on having people know about the real Joe behind the vampire. As blabby as this blog might get, I’m still a mystery to the world as far as the where and the why are concerned – except for Bo. Hopefully. “I’d really like it if you’d keep the fact that you know who I am and where I live – and that I’m even a vampire – a secret. Just between us dudes. Would you do that for me?”

I was surprised when he stopped to consider it. “Sort of like a blood brother pact or something?”

“Something like that.” Nothing like that actually, but whatever. As long as it kept him from spreading the word.

“You got it, Joe Vampire.” We shook on it – just a regular handshake, no fist pounds or knuckle bumps or anything extra added to the original recipe.

Much easier that way.

And suddenly we were just two dudes who had scuffled over a misunderstanding, not a reluctant vampire and the would-be vampire hunter who broke into his home to kill him out of jealousy for the crush the hunter’s wife harbored over a fictional character. Even with a complicated description like that, the danger was over at that point. “I can fix your doorknob. I’ve got tools in my truck. Shouldn’t take me too long.” He started for the door in kind of a shuffling heavy guy run.

Uh oh. Maybe I spoke too soon.

This could have been the start of round two, where he grabs his rifle from his gun rack, downs a swig of spiked Mountain Dew from his 52 ounce Bubba Keg, and tries to take me out in a hail of silver bullets.

No, wait. That’s for werewolves.

No sense in wondering if I should trust this goofball when I could just look into his head and see what his real intentions were. “Well, I’ve got beer in the fridge. I’d be willing to make a trade.” It was a test; his next thought would be a big indicator of the truth, sort of like using my vampire mind meld as a lie detector. So I tuned into him… and was thoroughly relieved to find that the only thought in there was of him drinking the beer and fixing my doorknob. At the same time.

Seriously – that’s all there was.

So, I let him do it. I figured it the least he could do after causing all the damage was to put it back the way he found it. And boy, did he ever put it back.

Better than it was when I left.

Bo may be a dim star, for sure, but he’s an honest, well-meaning dim star from what I can tell. And he was friendly as hell once I got to know him a little. Also, he does a fine job of fixing a broken door. Yes, I know: it was Bo who broke it in the first place. But since it all came to a slaying-less ending, I’m choosing to look at the upside on this one.

And I’m hoping for a lot more upside-looking from here on out.