Чарли Андерс: Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

After that, the fight consisted of Gilbert punching Sebastian, a lot. “Stupid vampire,” Gilbert grunted. “You’re not the first bloodsucker I’ve swatted.”

By this point, Sebastian’s jaw was looking dislocated. Those expressive eyebrows were twisted with pain. “I’m not… your average… vampire,” he hissed. Gilbert brought his sledge-hammer fist down onto Sebastian’s skull.

Sebastian fell to the ground, in an ungainly pile of bones. And he smiled. “The more beat up I get… the harder to kill… I get,” he rasped. And then he stood on jerky legs, his flesh peeling away.

Sebastian’s smile turned slack and distended. Instead of his usual witticisms, he said but one word: “Braiiiiiinnsss…”

Gilbert kept punching at Sebastian, but it did no good. Nothing even slowed him down. Sebastian thrashed back at Gilbert with a hideous force, and finally he hit a weak point, where Gilbert’s head met his neck—and Gilbert’s head fell, rolling to land at my feet.

Gilbert’s severed head looked up at me. “Tell Antonia… my love for her was true.” And then the head turned to stone. And so did the rest of his body, which fell into several pieces in the middle of the dark walkway.

Sebastian looked at me, and the couple other regulars who were watching. He snarled, with what remained of his mouth, “Braaaaaaaiiiiiinnsss!”

The nearest patron was Jerry Dorfenglock, who’d been coming to Rachel’s for 20 years. He had a really nice smooth bald head, which he’d experimented with combing over and then with shaving all the way, Kojak-style, before deciding to just let it be what it was, two wings of fluffy gray hair flanking a serene dome. That noble scalp, Sebastian tore open, along with the skull beneath. Sebastian reached with both hands to scoop out poor Jerry’s gray matter, then stopped at the last moment. Instead, he leaned further down and sunk his top teeth into Jerry’s neck, draining all the blood from his body in one gulp.

A moment later, Sebastian looked away from the husk of Jerry’s body, looking more like his normal self already. “If I—” he paused wipe his mouth. “If I eat the brains, I become more irrevocably the zombie. But if I drink the blood, I return to my magnificent vampiric self. It’s always hard to remind myself. Think of it as the blood-brain barrier between handsome rogue… and shambling fiend.” The other patron who’d been watching the fight, Lou, tried to make a break for it, but Sebastian was too fast.

I looked at the bloodless husks of my two best customers, plus the chalky pieces of poor Gilbert, then back at Sebastian—who now looked as though nothing had ever happened, except for the stains on his natty suit. I decided being casual was my best hope of coming out of this alive.

“So you’re a half-vampire, half-zombie,” I said as if I was discussing a Seinfeld rerun. “That’s something you don’t see every day, I guess.”

“It is an amusing story,” Sebastian said. “When I was a mortal, I loved a mysterious dark beauty, who grew more mysterious with every passing hour. My heart felt close to bursting for the love of her. At last, she revealed she was an ancient vampire, and offered me the chance to be her consort. She fed me her blood, and told me that if I died within twelve hours, I would become a vampire and I could join her. If I did not die, I could return to my mortal life. She left me to decide for myself. I went out to my favorite spot on the edge of Stoneflower Lake, to ponder my decision and savor my last day on Earth—for I already knew what choice I would make. But just then, a zombie climbed out of the lake bottom, where it had been terrorizing the bass, and bit me in the face. I died then and there, but as the vampire blood began to transform me into an eternal swain of darkness, so too did the zombie bite work its own magic. Now, I remain a vampire, only as long as I have a steady diet of restoring blood.”

“That’s quite a story,” I said. I was already trying to figure out what I would do with Lou and Jerry’s bodies, since I had a feeling Sebastian would regard corpse cleanup as woman’s work. “You should sell the TV movie rights.”

“Thanks for the advice.” Sebastian looked into my eyes, and his gaze held me fast. “You will not speak to anyone of what you have seen and heard tonight.” As he spoke, the words became an unbreakable law to me. Then Sebastian sauntered away, leaving me—what did I tell you?—to bury the bodies. At least with Gilbert, it was just a matter of lugging the pieces to the Ruined Statue Garden a couple of streets away.

By the time I got done, my hands were a mess and I was sweating and shaking and maybe even crying a little. I went back to the bar and poured myself some Wild Turkey, and then some more, and then a bit more after that. I wished I could talk to someone about this. But of course, I was under a vampiric mind-spell thingy, and I could never speak a word.

Good thing I’ve got a Hotmail account.

I put the whole thing as plain as I could in a long email to Antonia, including the whole confusing “vampire who’s also a zombie” thing. I ended by saying: “Here’s the thing, sweetie, Sebastian is gonna think you don’t know any of this, and with Gilbert out of the way, he’ll be making his move. Definitely do NOT marry him, the half-zombie thing is a dealbreaker , but don’t try to fight him either. He’s got the thing where the more you hurt him, the more zombie he gets and then you can’t win, he’s got you beat either way. And not to mention, the full moon is over as of tomorrow morning, so you got no more wolf on your side. Just keep yourself safe okay because it would just about ruin me to see anything happen to you—I mean you bring in the paying customers, don’t worry, I’m not getting soppy on you. Your boss, Rachel.”

She came in the next day, clutching Gilbert’s head. Her eyes were puffy and the cords on her neck stood out as she heaved a sob. I handed her a glass of absinthe without saying anything, and she drained it right away. I made her another, with the sugar cube and everything.

I wasn’t sure if Sebastian’s mind control would keep me from saying I was sorry, but it didn’t. Antonia shrugged and collapsed onto my shoulder, weeping into my big flannel shirt, Gilbert’s forehead pressing into my stomach.

“Gilbert really loved me,” she said when she got her breath back and sat down on her usual music-playing stool. “He loved me more than I deserved. I was… I was finally ready to surrender, and give my heart away. I made up my mind, while I was out running with the wolves.”

“You were going to go out with Gilbert?” I had to sit down too.

“No. I was going to let Gilbert down easy, and then date Sebastian. Because he made me laugh.” She opened her guitar case, revealing a bright sword, made of tempered Sylvanian steel with the crest of Thuiron the Resolver on the hilt, instead of a guitar. “Now I have to kill him.”

“Hey hey hey,” I said. “There are some good reasons not to do that, which I cannot speak of, but hang on, let me get a notepad and a pen and I’ll be happy to explain—”

“You already explained.” She put her left hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for your kindness, Rachel.”

“I don’t—” What could I say? What was I allowed to say? “I don’t want you to die.”

“I won’t.” She smiled with at least part of her face.

“Are you starting your set early tonight? I have a request.” Sebastian said from the doorway at the top of the short staircase leading into the bar, framed by the ebbing daylight. “I really want to hear some Van Morrison for once, instead of that—”

Antonia threw Gilbert’s head at Sebastian. His eyes widened as he realized what it was, and what it meant. He almost ducked, then opted to catch it with one hand instead, to show he was still on top of the situation. While he was distracted, though, Rachel was already running with her sword out, making a whoosh as it tore through the air.