Vampire Bouncer

It was that time. The band was winding down, the last lonely hearts drunk and paired off, and last call announced. It had been a quiet night, but it was Tuesday, so what did I expect. Only Tuesday? This gig makes time crawl – only the weekends get to be even vaguely fun. Even the band was crappy.

Across the street, the biker bar was vomiting its contents onto the road. Once again, I was happy I didn’t have to drive anywhere at this time of night. There might be something for dinner there, though. A couple of hogs rattle the windows as they roll out, and I hear tires squealing up the street. Guess they didn’t get too far – booze and bikes never mix well. That other ‘B’ – brains – never got much use in that crowd.

Tonight I had this new girl wrapping herself around me, so I had to call her a cab home. The young and tender ones are always tempting and easy. They practically throw themselves at you, after all. If they vanish after people see them hanging around you, people tend to ask too many questions – no thanks. Besides, one of the biker chicks across the street passed out almost on top of my car, so dinner was looking to be easy.

Working closing time in a bar is a natural fit for a vampire. Nobody misses lost drunks most of the time. I learned not to dine too close to work a few decades ago when the police started using their brains. There was something to this scientific policing stuff. I had to study it to figure out how to keep from going hungry. Being a bouncer is no sweat for my reflexes, and it can be fun – but I still have to refill once in a while.

One of the real crazy bikers, leathers and all, came out of the biker joint. He started shooting wildly down the street and yelling. That stuff is not great for business, so I stepped out the door and threw an old beat-up baseball at him. I intended to knock him out but overdid it and cracked his skull. The baseball pealed off a flap of his scalp, then bounced conveniently into the storm drain. The cops will be scratching their heads over that one; what a pity.

After we lock down the bar and set the alarm, the boss and I run to the bank drop per normal routine. We are in a cash business, and nobody who stays in business keeps cash around in this neighborhood. Now it’s time for dinner.

The biker chick who passed out in front of my car woke up during the excitement and shooting. The cops hassled her so much they made her puke, then carted her off. Nice souvenir, thanks. So much for fast food – I didn’t need the hangover anyway.

For most people, dinner is no big deal. For a vampire, it takes some doing. You have to find your meal, locate a private place, eat, and dispose of the scraps. There are no dishes to do, but the whole process has several risks involved. The most obvious is the possibility of an interruption – there is never a good time. It’s not like I can hold polite dinner conversations. The fact that I look hideous while dining makes it hard to pretend nothing is going on when somebody walks in.

I’ve got a pretty good map of the area in my head. It doesn’t take too many years to figure out the dark alleys, the dumpsters, the unlocked doors, and broken windows. I also cruise around looking for empty or abandoned shops and apartments once in a while – those can come in very handy. This part of town has a few of those, but I have to work a wider area than I once did to avoid prying eyes.

I grab a pigeon for a snack – snap, gulp, gone – and with the little boost, decide to go airborne to hurry things along. The evening in the bar was slow enough that I was thoroughly bored. That bit at the end with the noisy biker made me hungrier, too, so what the hell, let’s catch some air. Turn left down the alley, shift, and fly – do it quick enough, and people miss it altogether, especially the sorts out this time of night. Their impairment is my ticket to ride. I buzz the drunk at the other end of the alley just for the hell of it. His eyes are as open as they ever get, and he panics and pees on himself, oops – and then I grab some altitude to start hunting.

As I cruise around, I see the usual collection of street people out. I’m hungry enough that some of them actually look appetizing, a warning that I may have waited a bit too long. I still have to be real careful that I don’t get caught. Cops don’t have silver bullets, thankfully. What they do have still hurt and use energy to repair. I am glad that silver costs too much for anybody to even think about making bullets out of it.

I spot one of the usual dealers down on the corner and decide to get him out of sight before eating. That isn’t usually too hard since, as a rule, dealers don’t carry much in the way of merchandise and have to visit their storage location frequently. I sit down on the edge of the building and watch. He’s doing enough business that I shouldn’t have to wait long.

Sure enough, 15 or 20 minutes later, he wanders off, sauntering like he hasn’t a care in the world. I’ve seen this guy before, and I have a rough idea where he is headed, so I fly down there and watch. Sure enough, it’s the same place as always. He’s been in the business too long and getting sloppy, but I don’t mind him making my life easier.

I follow him into his storage spot in the basement of an old store. The basement door looks like it’s never been used – he keeps it that way. I’ll just free up the space for the next inhabitant. He’s got a lot of drugs stored here, so I’ll have to figure out how to get the place cleaned out. The guy isn’t hyper-alert, so I slit his throat and suck the blood off as he falls over.

That’s a trick I figured out a couple of years ago. It doesn’t leave any fang marks, doesn’t turn them, and looks just like any other street killing. I didn’t drink a lot, a pint or so. I have to leave enough that the puddle under him is big enough to look right. I still get enough energy, and I take one dealer off the streets, so everybody is better off in the long run. Well, except for the cops that he was paying off. I’m sure they’ll miss the cash.

I wait until I hear somebody walk by the basement door on the sidewalk, drag the stiff up the steps, and pretend I just noticed the person walking by. A little acting – yell out and take off sprinting around the next corner – switch to flight mode, out of there, end of dinner. Somebody else does the dishes and takes out the garbage. How sweet is that?

One big advantage of cities is there are always “waste people” around, so a vampire never goes hungry. I have carried that one step further, though, and helping clean up the streets as I get my dinner. Meth and crack labs are hard to spot for most people, but their chemicals are easy to pick up with my sense of smell. Flying allows me to close in without being too noticeable, especially at night.

The chemicals also make it simple to cover my tracks. Since my feeding leaves only soft tissue damage if I am careful, I don’t have to wreck the building to make my visit undetectable completely. All I have to do is start a decent little fire. After eating and getting my shape back to human, I pour the right chemicals in the right places. Then, all I have to do is toss a lit match as I exit via the window. It makes quite a satisfying boom and singes my butt a little once in a while. The places usually burn rather nicely. I stay a few hundred feet up and make sure before leaving the scene.

So far, I have only had one tense moment in one of those labs. When I was almost ready to leave, the narcs got there to raid the place. I didn’t cover my tracks well enough to feel comfortable about it because of the hurry. I guess they didn’t look too closely at the body. They tend to look pale and skinny when I get done, and the fire didn’t have time to hide my work completely. I guess it burned enough, but I figure when the current bunch down at the coroner’s office is all gone, I will be in the clear.

I am just paranoid enough to think that one of them has this little notion that things weren’t quite right with that one. I worry that they will “notice” the next time one comes in like that. I could also drive myself crazy (batshit crazy?) that way. An insane vampire is a real problem because it makes regular humans figure out that vampires are around. They can make life really difficult for us. It has happened more than once, and it always starts all sorts of ugly stuff until it dies back down. All in all, though, a touch of paranoia keeps me from making too many mistakes.

One of the problems with being a vampire is that you’re still the original human being inside. That means you still have whatever you started with – conscience, religion, blah, blah. A lot of vampires have gone crazy because of those.

The guys who were real religious and thought that the vampire bit was the devil incarnate had an especially tough time with the change. Getting dinner is a huge problem for them. They don’t usually last long before they crash and go crazy, ending up with stakes in their hearts.

I woke up and stretched in the late afternoon. A mental note popped up in my head, reminding me that since I had used my baseball last night. I needed a new one. Easily remedied.

I grabbed a new baseball out of a box of them I kept and headed out to the local playground in the late afternoon sun. Sure enough, a bunch of the kids were out playing, and their baseball was exactly what I had in mind – beaten and battered. I had always made sure the kids liked me so that it didn’t look out of character when I walked out to the mound and pretended to steal his old baseball while slipping him the new one. All of the kids had seen the act before and laughed. I got a big round of “thank you, mister,” and everyone was happy.

Once in a while, I would bring a catcher’s mitt or a baseball bat for them, so nobody really thought about what I was trading for. The old beat-up baseballs were a perfect throwing weapon, essentially untraceable and only truly dangerous if used by someone like me with a faster-than-human pitching arm.

Now rearmed, I walked home and drove down to my work bar. It was a couple of hours before my shift, so I sat in the bar’s back corner, ate a couple of cheeseburgers, and watched a baseball game on TV. I could have pounded those wimps.

It was another slow night, or at least it started that way. The band still sucked, and the same girl, Suzanne, wrapped herself around me again. I was beginning to enjoy her company. It was a light crowd, so somebody had to stir up trouble. Always the highlight of my night.

A couple of local mob knee breakers decided to show up and stand around staring at everyone in the room. I caught the bartender and gave him the eye so that he knew to call the office and let them know trouble was here. I had to ask Suzanne to step away for a short time while I did some business. I did the usual dance with them and collected twice the cover charge anybody else paid. They wanted to talk to the boss, surprise, surprise.

I had their guns in my pocket by now, so they weren’t any real threat to anybody. I recognized one of them – he’d been here before – and raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged – he and I knew the game. These guys show up semi-regularly to demand their protection money. Every time, I have to remind them why they have yet to collect any.

After a little tough guy bluffing on their part, I took them both by the neck, one hand each, and “helped” them to the office. Of course, the new guy didn’t like my help and tried to swing at me. That didn’t work out quite as he expected. When he started to turn and swing, I dropped my hand off his neck, broke his collarbone, and put my hand back on his neck. He never even got turned around before realizing that he couldn’t hurt anybody. He turned back forward to relieve the pressure on his neck and turned even paler as he tried to move his arm. He finally got his hand into his jacket pocket to relieve some of the pain.

When we got to the office, the older guy gave the usual spiel to the boss. The younger one was in no shape to discuss anything – he was looking downright pale. The boss looked bored during the speech. When it ended, he raised an eyebrow and dismissed them with an airy wave of his hand.

Since I had never let go of their necks, turning them around and steering them back out of the office was a simple matter. Before they started turning around, the young guy reached awkwardly around with his left hand to where his empty holster was. He looked even more pained and defeated when he realized that he was missing his toy. That made my boss grin, a toothy carnivore’s grin that said more than any words could.

When we got to the bar front door, I gave the older guy a look that said that if he was going to come back, at least bring an adult with him. He shrugged again, knowing damn good and well that it would be just as embarrassing the next time. I was even halfway polite about how I showed them out the door. As soon as I let go, the kid swung a left hook while trying to kick me. The dimwit just didn’t learn. I sidestepped his kick as the punch whistled by and broke the knee he was standing on. For grins and giggles, I hit him in the jaw hard enough that he caught a little air on the way to meeting the concrete head first. I was pretty sure I broke his jaw, kinda felt the crunch. The older guy shook his head as he dragged the younger guy to the car.

I stopped at the bar and picked up a grocery bag, one of those kinds that you can partly see-through, and dropped the mugs’ guns in it. I walked the little package the half block to the mailbox and dropped it in—just my way of adding a little insult to injury.

The cops know that little game by now. I do it because it lets them know that the local knee breakers are playing at something again. It also gets them a couple of new sets of fingerprints to match up with things that happened around town. The post office guys know the neighborhood – they don’t even raise an eyebrow at my little gifts.

When I got back from my little errand, Suzanne looked at me with some awe. She had a perfect viewing angle on my little altercation, and watching me fight tends to do that to people. It may have been my imagination, but I think she clung a little tighter to me after that. I have to admit that I enjoyed the warmth, and she was actually good conversation, to boot.

After something like that, we usually managed to get a little peace from the mob boys, but good things never last long in this neighborhood.

I escorted the boss to the bank drop every night for obvious reasons. He would do the actual drop, and I would wait as backup, standing by the car. The local mob was aware of this – we can’t really disguise it. They decided that they would “teach us a lesson.” They weren’t about to collect anything with their usual tactics, so they had to try something, right?

I spotted the thugs down the block in both directions as we pulled up to the drop. I escorted the boss a bit closer this time. The mob boys started fast-walking our way as we moved, so we hurried the drop along. The boss went back to the car and drove off – I would meet him back at the bar to make sure there wasn’t a second group there.

The mob guys pulled out their ball bats and whatever other toys they had. There were three in front of me plus the lookout and three in back. To the ignorant, I looked like easy prey. I am a skinny-looking fella, no threat to anyone, and I was the only target they had left. I actually saw a couple of them grinning.

The mob must have owned whatever cop was on patrol on this beat. The goons were all confidence and no stealth. The lookout stayed back and grabbed his phone when my boss pulled out. I made him my first target by throwing a rock into his throat, taking him out of the fight. I left him five minutes and a tracheotomy away from dead. The muscles didn’t see him go down, so they ignored my throw completely – I didn’t hit any of them, so they thought I missed.

I gave them ten feet on each side of me, then moved. I had to keep my speed down to something human since I was being recorded on the bank cameras. I went through the center of the group to my left. The big guy went down and stayed that way as his head made a loud crack on the concrete. Fair chance he was already dead, but I didn’t check as I took his bat and used it on the guy to my right. His head split wide open, spreading the muscles between his ears out all over the street. The last one in this group ended up with the skinny end of the bat stuck in his chest and poking out of his back. It was right where his heart once was. I wasn’t messing around.

I was still in a hurry since I had to beat the boss back to the bar. I was pretty sure a crew would be waiting there, too, and I would have to be a lot more careful with them. I took a few quick steps up the street toward where the lookout was lying, enough to get me out of the bank’s camera range. I turned around to face the other group and grinned.

The second group didn’t have the intelligence to put together what had just happened to their fellows. I suppose they had never had the tables turned on them like this because they kept coming. I waited for them to get out of camera range, then broke two of their necks, one hand each. Finally, I smashed the jaw of the last one, leaving him out cold but alive to do the talking later. You always have to leave one to carry the message, but I didn’t want him talking too soon.

I got back to the bar area as fast as my vampire wings would carry me. I had to stay below the sound barrier – much over 600 miles per hour, and I started leaving broken windows. I had enough trouble tonight as it was. I circled the bar and a couple of blocks around it, spotted the mob crews, and saw my boss a few blocks off. I stopped on a rooftop and called him, telling him what streets to take as he approached the bar so that I had time to set the mob crew up the way I wanted them. I needed him out of the way. They weren’t expecting any company yet, since they hadn’t heard anything from the bank crew. I planned on taking advantage of that.

I decided to leave one crew to meet us at the bar, but the other crew would need to be “disabled.” I had routed my boss to pass close to the crew I wanted to meet us – he would have slipped by both crews if I hadn’t. I flew to the soon-to-be-missing crew’s area and dropped into the nearest convenient alley to switch back to human form. I casually walked out of the alley and headed for their car.

These goons were awake, anyway. One of them got out of each side of the car, guns drawn. They made it easy on me. I caught the goon on the passenger side with a vampire-quick move. I took his pistol, jumped back, and shot him and the driver. I was far enough away that there were no powder burns on them.

The guys in the back of the car were opening their doors. They were better armed. I took the first Uzi I could reach, jumped back 20 feet, and emptied it into the car. I made sure there were no survivors and plenty of bullet holes. I left the Uzi casings well away from the car and put the passenger’s pistol back in his holster. I wanted it to look like they got surprised. I took three of their pistols and put some random holes into the nearby buildings and windows. I wanted it to look like a real fight. I looked around and saw no witnesses, so I went back to the alley I came from and dumped the Uzi into a dumpster. Now I could head for my car.

I always parked my car a couple of blocks from the bar for various paranoid reasons. I used that to stage-manage my entrance. I timed it to arrive on the scene ahead of my boss and his tail. My car blocked the mob car some distance away, so my boss had time to get out of his car and into the bar.

The boss knew the script – he was running from a robbery attempt, so it was time to bring the police in, and do it so that everything was recorded. Once in the bar, he called 911 and made sure everything else was on tape and timestamped.

I made sure the bar cameras could see me as I stopped the car, then took off at a (regular human) run for the front door of the bar. I wanted to draw the thugs out of their car and maybe even get their guns out. Since they weren’t aware of how badly the evening had gone for the rest of their crews, they left the guns and brought out the baseball bats. They were still in “teach a lesson” mode. The guns were in the car, though, and the cops were going to be coming in thinking “armed robbery.” The cops would be ready for a lot more than bats.

I kept up my run to the bar front door. It was locked, so I pretended that I was out of options, turned around, and slumped down against the door until I was sitting. I watched the goons coming, and it was everything I could do not to grin at them. I had plenty of time since I stopped their car up the street. Just as they were getting into fighting range, the first police cars arrived, and the cops got out, guns drawn and ready to shoot. I put my hands in the air as my boss opened the door behind me with a loaded shotgun in hand.

The next day was a long one. At least the cops didn’t connect any of it with the gunned-down mob crew. We still had to explain the “attempted robbery” at the bank about five times and then work a long evening in the bar. The cops knew nothing about the bank crew except for what was on the cameras – the mob had picked up their survivor and the bodies. There were no questions about that, so I had delivered my message.

We embarrassed the crew that met us at the bar, The cops pinned them down pretty well, but they weren’t talking. They ended up in jail on weapons charges, and the mob had to spend a lot of money to get out of that mess. I was too tired to grin about it, but I have had a lot worse days in a police station.

By the end of all of that, I was tired, really tired, and really hungry. That is a dangerous time for a vampire because hunger makes us crazy. Usually, things will work out, though, and they did so rather quickly this time.

Being a bar in a poorer part of town, we attract the lower-level carnivores that try to grab easy pickings. Part of my job is to “police” the local neighborhood for that sort. This includes the alley next to us. Alleys and muggers seem to find each other. Since I always see the mugger-wannabes before they can do anything, these things just never work out for them. One of them even brought a car that night, so I turned him into a take-out lunch – good-sized fella, so I was full. The resulting “car wreck” and burned car was so routine that it didn’t even rate a column inch in the paper the next morning. Those bridge abutments tend to obliterate a lot of evidence. He even had a full tank of gas to help things along.

That evening in the bar ended well, too, since I suddenly had the energy to be extra charming and pleasant. My girlfriend Suzanne – by this point, there was no question she was becoming that – was wonderfully warm and sweet. I was starting to think about how to add a regular human being to my life. It is quite an exercise in logistics to keep the vampire side of life away from the human side, and most vampires don’t do it often, if ever. After thinking about it, I was beginning to see why.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish up and head straight home. I still have to pay the local protection racket a return visit. This last pile of bullshit was just too much – the mob sorts weren’t getting the point, so it was time to teach some lessons of my own. Give them enough of their own shit back and sometimes they’ll get the point. At least they comprehend it that way.

After closing time, I flew down to the hospital to check on the knee breaker that had been stupid enough to try for me in my own bar. I had no trouble finding out where he was – there were cops and mob boys everywhere. They were all glaring at each other and fingering their toys, so I decided I knew enough and moved on without any of them noticing. I saved his reminder for later.

At the club where the local mob hung out, I slipped through the cracks around the roof and hung in the rafters. I had to chuckle – the place felt tighter than Jack the Ripper’s garrote. The mob’s enforcers had gotten so angry that their girls were hiding. Even the strippers and whores had retreated to their dressing rooms – they were too scared to stay out in the bar and hustle.

Since several of the enforcers knew me professionally, I didn’t need to be subtle. I slipped back out to the alley and changed into my human form. When I strolled in the bar’s front door like I owned the place, I had to grin at the first two shocked faces I saw. Sometimes it is nice having a reputation, especially mine. Being a mob joint, a bunch of pistols instantly pointed at me. My grin got wider as I picked out who my examples would be. Some of the faces went from angry to pale as I grinned. Fear is the only kind of respect these monkeys know, and I create that.

I took two steps forward and earned more respect by disarming and dropping my “examples” into two little heaps on the floor. I didn’t break anything on them – they were pitifully defenseless to me. I couldn’t bring myself to be cruel to stupid animals without at least giving them a chance to see what they had coming. The movement also put me behind several of the thugs. Nobody could shoot at me without hitting each other.

The thugs I had crossed paths with before were moving toward the room’s edges as fast as they could. They were doing their best to act like they weren’t panicking. That was a big fail. A couple of the youngest guys pulled out knives and came my way. That was not the brightest thing they could have done. They went to both sides of me as the rest of the crowd melted away. I made sure the rest of them had plenty of time to get as far away as possible – this was MY show.

Once I had a big circle, I decided which one to take first, then turned toward the other one. That left my back open to the one behind me, so he dove at me. I sidestepped and broke his neck with my arm around it. I also relieved him of his knife as he fell past. I flipped it into the throat of the one I was looking at with just enough force to poke out the back of his neck after it went through his spine. Stepping forward, I took the knife from his nerveless fingers, then cut his belt and took the sheath as he fell. I was keeping the knife and didn’t want it to ruin my jacket. It was actually a decent weapon and razor-sharp.

I looked around, taking the temperature of the room. It was quite pleasant. “Respect” in spades. I had established the terms of the discussion in less than thirty seconds. I hadn’t said a word. The sheathed knife stayed in my pocket since nobody was around that could threaten me. The nice thing is that they realized it – the humility was a brand-new experience for a few of them. I doubted they would learn anything from it, though – not real smart, this bunch.

I pinned the boss to the bar with a look – we knew each other, so he couldn’t hide. His eyes held the same respect as his fellows – he was about ready to shit on himself. I raised an eyebrow to let him know I expected him to get my point, then turned and strolled out the same way I came in – like I owned the joint. At that moment, I did.

Stepping into the alleyway, I switched forms and flew off to my work bar, walked out the front door and locked it, set the alarm, and drove to my apartment. Even someone watching the bar would have had to have been awfully bright to figure out that I had not come straight out of the bar after finishing work. My pair of side trips took less than fifteen minutes.

After the last visit I paid them, the mob didn’t bother us for over a month. Their little attempt at “teaching us a lesson” had cost them ten bodies. On top of it, a couple of them were in jail for a few more years. I kept the knife on my belt if any of them showed up in the bar.

Suzanne and I ended up a couple. She was a loving woman, and the macho asshole that was her last boyfriend had left her heart bleeding. My romantic nature was first aid for her soul, and she stuck to me like superglue. I ended up “moving in” with her a month later.

I still kept my old place – it was where I kept my dirty little vampire secrets that I couldn’t tell her. I had to be twice as careful about getting dinner with her around. I didn’t have to change my sleeping hours since I kept my night gig. That meant I didn’t have to deal with daylight very much, something I still had trouble with.

I even started brushing my teeth after meals. That was a new experience, and it took me a while to quit gagging on the toothpaste. It wasn’t like I worried about tooth decay, after all. Mouthwash didn’t get it, though. Vampires have REALLY shitty breath.