My Girlfriend Is a Vampire

Being shot in the head is an agonizing ordeal. The pain is excruciating and the horrific amount of blood that splatters all over your clothes is not be believed. All in all, it's a grisly experience. I do not recommend it for anybody.

Also, if you're a mere mortal a gunshot wound like this will kill you.

Of course, if you're an immortal who's survived centuries of barbarian invasions, peasant uprisings, battles, revolts, plagues, feuds, the Dark Ages, the Inquisition and too many wars to count, your ability to survive a grisly headwound is probably way above average.

I

am

one of those immortals who have survived for centuries, and I was able to survive a gunshot wound to the head.

Still, the pain was agonizing.

Of course, I lost consciousness. Having chunks of my skull and brain matter ripped from my head was a traumatic experience, and even an ancient, godlike being such as myself cannot endure that kind that of trauma as if it were a sprained ankle. My higher brain functions shut down while my body attempted to repair itself.

Did it take seconds for me to recover? Did it take minutes? I'm not sure. All I really know for certain, is that when I regained consciousness, I was covered in blood and I was still lying in that tub on the Ferris wheel. I grunted some colorful swear words and hesitantly began the arduous act of sitting up.

"You're alive?" I heard a familiar voice ask.

"Uuuughhh,"

I replied bitterly.

"You're far more resilient than I dared to hope," The familiar voice commented, "I'm actually impressed."

"

Francisco?"

I finally asked, when my short-term memory began to kick in.

"And you remember my name," he said cheerfully, "Your powers of recovery astound me! After a traumatic headwound like yours, it would be impressive if you remembered

your own

name."

"Gregorio,"

I said with a start, "He shot me! Where is he?"

"He's not going anywhere," Francisco replied.

I sat up and leaned over the edge of the tub and understood.

"Hell's teeth,"

I swore as I looked down into the tub below. There looked to be about a hundred ravens swarming all over something that was vaguely human-shaped. The recipient of their wrath looked to be dead. It occasionally spasmed or twitched as it was clawed and pecked at, but I think that was only involuntary reactions to tendons and ligaments being severed.

"Gregorio was pecked to death by birds?" I asked.

"It was like a scene from a Hitchcock movie," Francisco confirmed, "only with lots more blood."

My head was throbbing with intense pain, but I managed to form an intelligent thought.

"You did this," I said.

"I was hired to kill that guy," Francisco replied, "I get paid the same no matter what weapon I use."

"You couldn't have summoned up your army of angry birds

before

I got shot?"

"It's not that easy," Francisco replied, "I have a talent. I can bewitch ravens into doing my bidding, but it takes time and effort. And manipulating one-hundred and fifty ravens all at once takes far more time and effort than just dealing with one."

One of the ravens flew over and landed on the edge of tub, made a harsh, abrupt, croaking sound and gave me an affronted look as if to say,

"I am not some sort of pet dog to come when he calls. I am a wild creature, and he does not control me. I show up when I am damn good and ready."

Okay, maybe it was the head injury talking, but that's the substance of what I thought the bird was trying to say when it gave me that look.

"Yeah, okay, whatever," I said, and I rubbed the bridge of my nose and waited for the throbbing in my head to stop.

I don't remember getting off the Ferris wheel, but I do remember Francisco and I being on the ground, with me kneeling over Leah. She was alive, but she had been shot in the leg and she'd bled all over the place.

"How bad is it?" Leah asked as she panted and gasped in pain.

Leah was pale and wide-eyed. A large puddle of blood had pooled around her, but somebody had taken a leather belt and fashioned it into a tourniquet to reduce the bleeding.

"You'll live," I said, "I won't let you die. You owe me ten bucks."

"What?" she exclaimed incredulously, and then I placed a hand on her thigh, a few inches above her gunshot wound.

Immediately a rush of mystical energies flooded down my arm and into my hand. Leah reacted to my touch by squirming around on the ground and giving me a look of pique and suspicion, however, she didn't try to stop me from what I was doing.

"Hannah, what the fuck?"

Leah barked at me as she felt the mystical energies from my fingertips travel down her leg and towards the punctured flesh, damaged blood vessels, shredded muscle tissue and other damage that needed fixing. The energies I unleashed from my body to hers seemed almost sentient. They found damage and fixed it. There was no need for me to direct what needed to be done. The mystical energies I unleashed understood perfectly the role they were to play, and they did it perfectly every time.

"No way," Leah exclaimed when I was finally finished healing her. Gingerly, she tried to stand, and looked pleasantly surprised when she realized her leg had no problem supporting her weight.

"A healing spell?" Francisco asked from a short distance behind me.

Technically what I did wasn't a spell. I don't have much talent for learning or casting spells. What I had done was to use rúnölki energy to warp the fabric of reality. To mortals it seemed like casting a magic spell, however, it's much easier than that. It's sort of like turning back time to the point before the body was injured. It seemed almost like cheating. Humans couldn't do it, as rúnölki energy was something humans couldn't even see or feel. Their genetic makeup was all wrong. They couldn't warp reality the way gods can do.

"A healing spell," I said, not really wanting to share the truth, "I have a talent for them."

"A talent?" Leah said incredulously, "This is more than just talent! This is fucking phenomenal! Working magic directly on a human body requires a superhuman amount of power! I've never known a wizard who could do anything like this!"

"You do excellent work," said Francisco calmly, ignoring Leah's emotional outburst, "Her leg seems fine, even her color looks healthy. She looks like she hasn't lost any blood at all."

Just then we heard the shrill, droning siren of a fire truck approaching.

"I think the fire from the magician's tent has spread," Kelsey said, "The fire department will be here soon."

"And maybe the police too," Leah said, "I don't really wanna be here when they show up. Let's roll."

Kelsey pointed out the fact that both Leah and I were nearly covered in blood stains. It was mostly our own blood, still, it wasn't the sort of thing that I would enjoy trying to explain to the cops. Leah led the way and the four of us made it back to her car and fled the circus as quickly as we could without attracting attention to ourselves.

When I first met Leah, she wagered ten bucks that Kelsey and I would be dead within an hour of meeting her. As Leah drove away from the circus, I pointed out the fact that I met her an hour and twenty-seven minutes earlier and I had stubbornly refused to die. Then I nagged her incessantly until she handed over the ten dollars that she owed me.

"She got lucky" commented Francisco, "If she was human, she'd be dead right now."

"Wait, she's not human?" Leah demanded.

"She took a shot to the head that blew half her brains out and she's still alive," replied Francisco, "Does that sound human to you?"

There was a brief interval as Leah considered this, then she replied, "So, what the hell is she? Is she a Norn? A djinn?"

"She is something that is exceedingly difficult to kill," I snapped, "And she is also covered in blood! Is there someplace we can go where I can get cleaned up?"

"I'm covered in blood too," Leah replied sharply, "You don't hear me whining about it."

Despite Leah's attitude, she drove us to a nightclub on Jefferson Street. The place didn't open until 9:00 PM and the doors were all locked, but Leah pounded on the door mercilessly for several minutes and eventually from inside there was the sound of loud, stomping feet, a shout of

"we're closed"

and one of the employees unlocked the door.

A large, broad-shouldered bear of a man yanked the door open, glared at us and appeared ready to angrily berate us, but then the glare disappeared from his face, his bushy eyebrows raised up and he said, "Leah? What happened to you?"

"I cut myself shaving," Leah said tersely, "Can we come inside? We need someplace to wash up."

Apparently Leah and the massive creature at the door knew each other. He let all four of us inside and Leah showed me where the restrooms were located.

"So, who is that guy?" I asked Leah, "Boyfriend?"

"What? Josh? Oh, hell no," Leah replied, "He just works here."

"So, are you his boss? Do you own this place?"

"No," Leah replied, "Look, a couple years back, they had a ghost problem at this club, the power would go out for no reason, glasses and bottles would break for no reason, mirrors would shatter, customers would see a woman in a navy nurse's uniform at the bar, in the restroom or on the dance floor, but if anyone tried to approach her, she'd disappear without a trace."

I nodded my head, it sounded like a ghost problem.

"So, I made their ghost problem go away. Ghosts aren't that bright. Getting rid of it wasn't difficult. But now, everybody who works here thinks that I walk on water."

I stood at the sink and used paper towels, water and lots and lots of scrubbing to wash the blood off. It was on my skin, my clothes and even in my hair. I took off my shirt, filled up the sink with water and tried to soak the bloodstains out, but even if I somehow succeeded in getting the blood out, my shirt had been torn to rags by the two bullets that had gone through my chest and the wings that had burst out through my back.

"I think your shirt is history," Leah said.

She took off her own shirt and tried soaking it in the sink. She didn't have any holes in hers, however she'd been lying in a pool of blood and the back of her shirt was fairly coated with the stuff. I wasn't optimistic about either of these shirts being salvageable.

Leah marched over to the bathroom door, pushed it open and called out for Josh.

"Josh is in the manager's office," a female voice called back, "Can I help you?"

"Claire, this is Leah," Leah called back, "My friend and I have had a wardrobe malfunction. Our shirts are kind of destroyed. Do you guys sell t-shirts to the customers?"

"Yeah," Claire called back.

"Could you get one for me and my friend?"

Claire asked for our sizes and then fetched two black t-shirts with the words

Club Pandemonium

boldly emblazoned across the front. Leah handed one of them to me.

I looked at the shirt, then I looked at Leah and said, "You and your friend had a wardrobe malfunction? Are you saying that we're friends now?"

Leah turned her gaze away from me and then grudgingly replied, "Well, you did do a world-class job of fixing up my leg after I got shot. You do something nice like that for me, I'd have to be a total bitch to not be friends with you after that."

_______________________

Two days after I returned to Chicago, Kelsey got a check from Rochau for the work she did, tracking down that serial killer. The check was issued from the account of one of Rochau's shell corporations and didn't rouse any suspicions when I took Kelsey to Liberty Bank and we used the check to open up both a savings and a checking account for her.

I had also gotten a check from Rochau for acting as Kelsey's bodyguard. Kelsey's check was bigger than mine, but mine was still quite a hefty sum.

Rather than take my check to the bank, I took mine to Becky.

Rebecca Coleman (aka Becky) is my trusted associate, who handles all the church's finances. I gave her an incredibly dishonest story about where the check came from and asked her if there was a way that I could donate the check to the church's operating funds.

I don't know my way around banking law, tax laws, income reporting etc., but Becky understands all of these things and cheerfully explained my options to me.

"The church is doing quite well," she commented buoyantly, after we resolved the issue.

"What?" I asked, "Just because of that one check?"

"The check is great," Becky responded, "but more importantly donations are up. We took in about twice as much money in May and we did in April. I guess I should have expected that. Your congregation size went way up after that article in the Midwestern Arcane."

"Wait! What?" I asked, suddenly perplexed, "What article?"

Becky's mouth formed into a lopsided grin and she replied, "Seriously? You didn't know about this?"

I shook my head in negation and then Becky explained.

"One of the women in your congregation is a reporter for the Midwestern Arcane. She's sat through a lot of your sermons and seen you hear a lot of people. Several weeks back you even cured her astigmatism. She wrote an article about you immediately after. You're now something of a local celebrity."

"I am?" I asked, still feeling stunned.

"You are," Becky confirmed, "How do you not know this?"

"I've been busy," I said defensively, "In addition to my Sunday sermons, I'm doing about forty or fifty healings a week. Sometimes people come to my home, sometimes I go to their homes, once I even paid a visit to Saint Elizabeth's to heal somebody."

"The healings eat up a lot of your time," Becky said.

"Well, it turns out that free healthcare is popular," I replied, "People keep lining up to get some."

I was torn. It seemed as if the article in the Midwestern Arcane had helped me accumulate a whole fleet of new believers, however, the reporter never bothered to contact me before she ran with the story. Something about that made me feel wary and uncomfortable. By making me famous, was the reporter attempting to manipulate me in some way?

Maybe I was just being paranoid. I wanted more believers, so technically, this publicity was a good thing, but I still couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that there was something unscrupulous going on.

Becky couldn't remember the name of the reporter who wrote up the story on me, however, her name would be on file with the Midwestern Arcane. It would be easy enough to find out. I resolved to look it up when I got the chance.

However, when I stepped into my home my plans got sidetracked. Within a few seconds of entering my home I heard humans excitedly panting, groaning and gasping. The sounds seemed to be emanating from my living room, so I warily allowed my feet to take me there.

The sight in my living room was like something out of an R-rated movie. A naked, attractive, young woman was on her hands and knees on my couch, pinning a nearly naked, attractive young man on my couch. Upon closer examination, the naked, young woman was Kelsey, my teenage ward and the nearly naked young man was Thomas, Lara Raith's younger brother.

Kelsey arched her back and her hips squirmed in the air as she lowered her head to Thomas's chest and trapped one of his nipples between her teeth. Thomas moaned and panted as Kelsey licked, sucked and chewed on his captive nipple. I had been stealthily silent as I entered the room, however, Kelsey and Thomas were so feverishly engrossed in each other, I probably could have boisterously stomped into the room and they still wouldn't have noticed me.

Kelsey was utterly naked and the way she wriggled her upraised butt, her anus and bald pubes were shamelessly on display. Thomas's eyes were closed, and a look of dreamy delight was on his face. He arched his back and his eyelids fluttered as Kelsey licked and sucked upon on of Thomas's pink nipples and then proceeded to lavish attention on the other.

As a lesbian, I don't get sexually attracted to men, however, watching Thomas squirm and moan as Kelsey brushed her tongue across his moist, erect nipples, I couldn't help but think how delicious he looked. He was slender, beautiful and athletic looking, like a Greek sculpture of the god, Dionysus.

He was also a succubus of the White Court. He had supernatural abilities that allowed him to sexually attract even straight men and gay women. In much the same way, his sister Lara had the ability to draw in gay men and straight women.

I found it to be extremely disconcerting. At my age, I shouldn't have any questions about my sexuality, and yet as I looked down at Thomas, his boyishly handsome face, his smooth, naked chest, his long eyelashes, his pink, pouty lips, I couldn't help but feel a confusing stirring in my loins.

I was transfixed by Thomas's nearly naked body and his adorable good looks. I needed to break myself out of the spell I was caught up in and I proceeded to break myself out by the most direct means available.

I smacked Kelsey's bare bottom with my right hand and she let out a girlish yelp, but remained hovering over Thomas's prone form.

Then I smacked her ass again, much harder this time, leaving behind a reddish handprint.

"Aaaaaaighhhhhhhh," she yelped, her eyes opened wide and she reached a hand back to protect her vulnerable backside.

"Kelsey,"

I said admonishingly, "What do you think you're doing?"

"I was, um, well, um," Kelsey faltered, then she scrambled off of Thomas's prone form and backed away from me. She found her panties on the floor and struggled to put them back on while simultaneously backing away from me.

"When I agreed to let you live here, I did set aside a bedroom for you," I reminded Kelsey, "If you're going to tear a boy's clothes off and treat his nipples like they're sucking candies, it would seem appropriate to me that you do that in your room, and not out in a public area like the living room!"

"Sorry, Hannah," the embarrassed teenager said, "It's just, he showed up at the front door, and he was so..."

Kelsey seemed to run out of words after that. Realizing that she was incapable of finishing her sentence, Kelsey grabbed a few more items of clothing off the floor and hastily retreated to her bedroom.

"Look Hannah, in her defense," Thomas began, but I cut him off.

"And you," I snapped at Thomas, "why are you even here?"

"Lara sent me," Thomas said defensively, "There's a threat to the Raith family and she told me to come and inform you about it personally."

"And you thought the best way to inform me was to rip off the clothes off the teenage girl who lives with me?"

"It's not my fault," Thomas insisted, "She ripped her own clothes off and then she jumped on me. She was really intense."

I rolled my eyes and bit back on an angry retort. The story Thomas gave me could have very well been true. Thomas wasn't human. He was a paranormal creature that incited lust just by being in the same room with someone. He was uncommonly beautiful, and he radiated sexual desire.

"Okay, I can buy that," I admitted grudgingly, "but understand this, the girl is under my protection. I swore an oath to protect her. Do you know what that means?"

Thomas had begun to gather up his clothes, but as he pulled his tight jeans up over his hips he asked, "Is this the part where you threaten me?"

"It is," I conceded.

"Look Thomas," I said, "I like you, but you're a predator. Humans are food for you. And if you kill Kelsey, I'll have to kill you. It's better for everyone concerned that you know the rules up front instead of learning about them later."

Thomas went deathly silent, but eventually nodded and said, "Okay, that's fair."