A Word From The Author 

Before you read this tale, I’d like to drop you a little warning, dear reader, something to keep in mind while reading this story.  Though this little piece isn’t raunchy, disgusting, or even really controversial, I still have a few worries over what the reaction to this might be, because of the fact that I use some, shall we say, politically incorrect terminology within.  Though I give Hollywood Vampires fans all the credit in the world, as my fans are some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and corresponding with, capable of grasping most concepts with considerable ease, I still feel it necessary to make comment about some of the language used in this story, due to the fact that some idiot out there might misinterpret what is being said within and stir up a bunch of trouble that I wouldn’t have the patience to deal with.

I’ll just come out and say it . . . the word ‘nigger’ is used within “Appearances,” and I feel that I’ve used it to good effect and to make a point about certain less-tolerant types of people in our culture.  I feel that I’ve used it in good taste and with class, and that I made my point quite well . . . kinda like how the word was used in movies like Mississippi Burning and the killer American History X, and I stand by this story and what is being said within, but still, I have to confess that I worry about what kind of reaction I might get.  Quite a few people today, especially ‘concerned’ parents’ groups, ‘proper-thinking’ individuals, and the so-called ‘politically correct’ don’t bother to take things into context . . . they see a word such as ‘nigger’ or ‘Satanist’ or ‘spic’ and automatically get up in arms, ready to hang the trash-mouthed spewer of such words to the wall, either physically or metaphorically destroying them in retribution for daring to utter such hateful epithets.  I view such people as a bunch of illiterate assholes who need be shipped off to some deserted island where they can kill one another without having to bother anybody else.  Why illiterate?  Because they can’t read very much . . . the only words they know are the ‘dirty’ ones.  They’re incapable of reading the words surrounding ‘nigger’ or ‘Satan’ in the text to discover the context of what is being said, all they see is the offending word, flashing bright red like a neon sign in a porno shop window, and they pick up their swords and guns, ready to do battle for what is good and proper, completely ignorant of any of the other words in the book or story.  It’s people like that which ban books and try to tell us what to read and what to think, it’s people like that which try to erode the freedom of thought and expression that our forefathers fought and died for.  Granted, freedom of thought and expression is a bed of roses, pretty to look at but often a total bitch to deal with (thorns and whatnot), but then again, the greatest things in life don’t necessarily come easily, and once you’ve got them, they aren’t a breeze to maintain, either.  Freedom of expression is not an easy creature to contend with, and it never will be, but the pains one can suffer because of it are far outweighed by the rewards and treasures that one can obtain because it exists . . . that is my sincere belief, pure and simple.

For the record, I would like to say that I’m prejudiced.  I’m prejudiced against assholes, I hate them with a passion bordering on mania.  I hate the pricks that refuse to give someone a job because of the color of their skin, I hate the bastards that condemn someone because of what they believe in or don’t believe in, I hate the jerks that think they know everything about somebody because of their nationality, and I hate the losers who fear that which is different from them without even giving it a second thought.  Assholes come in all shapes, sizes, colors, nationalities, and languages, and I hate each and every one of them for trying to make the lives of everybody else miserable, including my own.  They can all go dig themselves a mass grave and bury themselves in it, and if they did so, they’d be doing all of us a big favor.  So, if you’re a politically-correct asshole who’s ready to put my head on an anvil because the word ‘nigger’ is used in this story, painting me as a hate-mongering, baby-devouring, cross-burning son of a bitch, you’ll probably be disappointed to find out that one of my very good friends, not to mention the official Hollywood Vampires artist, is black and he’s someone who I think very highly of, both personally and in terms of what he’s capable of doing.  In fact, some of the nicest, most thoughtful and intelligent people I’ve met have been black, and I know for a fact that several of my readers are as well, so if you’re going to try to go looking for a white hood in my closet, you’re not going to find one . . . I don’t have a problem with black people, never have and never will, so kindly go piss up a rope.  But if you want to hammer me to the wall because I’m prejudiced against assholes, you go right ahead and try, because I’m guilty as hell over that one, and I think this story will bear me out on that.

Appearances
By
Matt R. Jones, Esq.

            Of course I wasn’t deaf, not in the least, and the fact that I had come to this establishment to listen to the jazz stylings of a local band should have been obvious to the individual who was even now attempting to capture my attention.  Whoever had heard of a such a poor creature as a deaf vampire?  Not I, surely not.  I have known stupid vampires in my time, I have even killed them on occasion, when they become bothersome, and I have known empathically and telepathically dead vampires, but I have never once encountered a deaf vampire.  Perhaps all of the deaf vampires all run away to a retreat somewhere in the mountains, where they can go be deaf in peace . . . there are certainly moments when I wish I am deaf, such as when I am being confronted by the confounding ignorance of fools like the one sitting at the bar.  Being deaf would have been very nice at this moment, because then I would be blissfully unaware of said fool and would have been able to fully focus my attention on the red-haired beauty that had given me the pleasure of going out for an evening of jazz with her.  But no, alas, Screamin’ Willie was far from deaf, in fact, my senses are to be considered sharp even among vampires, which is a must in the profession I’ve made for myself, but I will relate more of that to you later on.

            “Are you going to say anything to him?” my red-haired friend asked me, looking quite irritated at the constant heckling.  She was quite the pretty one, with long, very straight hair of a fiery hue, and eyes of startling sapphire; these, coupled with a finely-boned face, full, red lips that most surely would have been good for kissing, and the traces of a French accent made her a most agreeable companion.  She was made even more agreeable by her highly-intelligent mind, which was a veritable storehouse of all manner of interesting facts and long-forgotten secrets.  Never mind that I already knew most of them, I found it to be a source of great amusement that I had another to discuss them with.  It is not often that one finds such beauty and intelligence coupled together in a single person, and I take it as my duty to cherish them when I find them.  Were it not for the fact that she was with a group of three other ladies, known as the Sisters of Fury, who crisscrossed the American continent on their motorcycles, I would have asked her to accompany me as I drove about in my car and took care of the business I have chosen as my own.  But more on that later.

            “Whether I say anything to him or not is of no consequence, because it is my firm belief that I will receive further trouble from him regardless, so I may as well mind my own business until he decides to further annoy me by bringing himself into my sphere of personal space, that is when I will acknowledge him, not a moment before,” I answered.  I was more than used to dealing with this cretin’s sort, and though it had bothered me in my early years, it had become a game more than anything else.  Something of a boring game, but a game nonetheless.  I had advantages they didn’t, and bothering me would only result in a great deal of trouble for them, but if they felt it was their duty to display their loathsome ignorance to me with their harassment, then I felt that it was my duty to display my indignation at their ignorance.  Screamin’ Willie did not suffer fools lightly.

            “Hey coon!” my tormentor called out, raising the stakes considerably.  I wondered how long it would be before he brought out the granddaddy word, the one that was a favorite of his sort.  “Why don’t you scram outta here, this ain’t no place for you!”

            I said nothing in reply, merely took a sip of my water and admired my companion.  She went by the name of Clarisse, and as far as I was able to discern from speaking with her, it was the name she was born with.  Like myself, she was also a vampire, and a most comely one at that . . . certainly more beautiful than old Screamin’ Willie could ever hope to be!  Not all of our kind kept the names we had been born with, of which I am ready evidence: what mother in their right mind would name their baby boy Screamin’ Willie?  They might name them Willie, but Screamin’ Willie?  Now wouldn’t that be a simply silly name for a child who was very quiet?  What if he were mute?  That would be as ridiculous as large men who like to call themselves Tiny.  My birthname would seem like an incomprehensible mishmash of syllables to those of you versed in standard Western speech, and I won’t waste your time relating it.  All you need to know is that I am Screamin’ Willie.  Why am I Screamin’ Willie?  Because I am fond of the name Willie and when I am given the proper instruments and a willing audience, I will scream my heart out in some of the most wild jazzy blues numbers you will ever hope to experience.  I am a crazy fellow onstage, let me assure you, and I live up to my name when the need arises.  Beyond that, I conduct myself as a gentleman, trying to compensate for the marked lack of class the rest of the world seems to have.  I blame it on people like the fool at sitting at the bar of this smoky little tavern somewhere in Georgia.  If people like him were not tolerated and were simply disposed of wholesale, the world would be a much better place, and that is my sincere belief.

            “Hey nigger!  Get on outta here before I haveta come over there!”  Ah yes, the dreaded ‘n’ word.  I sincerely wish I would have placed a wager with Clarisse over whether or not that word would have come up from the uneducated baboon, though I am of the belief that she would have been too smart of a person to have taken such a sucker bet.

            Now that the granddaddy had been flipped out into the air, I began to get annoyed, because the frown that crossed Clarisse’s face didn’t look as nice as a look of serenity, mild amusement, or happiness.  I had not seen her when she was fully angry, though before the night was over I suspected that my chances of that were quite good, but she may very well have been quite fetching in that countenance as well.  Thus far, she looked least attractive when annoyed.  Not to say that she would ever look unattractive, don’t think that at all, but out of all of the various formations I had seen her face in over the past few nights, annoyance was at the bottom of the proverbial pile in the prettiness scale.  Up until now, the heckling hadn’t bothered me, I had taken it as a matter of course due to the pigmentation of my epidermis, but now that it was disturbing my ability to admire my friend, it was starting to rub me the wrong way.  However, I still said nothing.  If he wished to discuss his problems with my heritage, then he was going to have to come over to my table and begin an actual dialogue with me, though the odds were good he couldn’t even spell dialogue, much less know what it meant.

            Linguistic skills aside, he did get up from the bar at that point and began to saunter his sluglike way across the floor of the still relatively unoccupied tavern.  The band was not scheduled to play for another hour or so, and it was still early in the evening, so most of the patrons had not arrived as of yet.  Besides Clarisse, myself, and the cretin, there were a few more good old boys sitting at the bar, cheering their companion on, the bartender, and a waitress occupying the place.  There were also a few scattered people, probably less than half a dozen, sitting around at the round tables between the small bar and stage, enjoying food, talk, or perhaps the general ambience of the establishment.  The jukebox was another occupant, though I found the country and western music that it was currently spewing forth to be a trifle grating.  I suppose that’s only natural when a person such as myself doesn’t drive a pickup truck, lament the loss of a wife or loyal dog, or start unnecessary fights.  Then there’s also the fact of my upbringing to consider . . . this is just a guess, but I am pretty sure that niggers weren’t supposed to listen to and enjoy country and western music, so it was not made to be pleasurable to those of heritage similar to my own.  It would have looked bad, after all.  Could a good ‘ol boy really enjoy country and western if he knew that somewhere, niggers were enjoying the same music as he?  By the stars, no!  Then he would have to find some other form of music, as would his friends (images have to be maintained), and thus the country and western performers would be out of a job, because why the Devil would they want to write music that appealed to niggers?  Only niggers write nigger music!  Besides, do you know what kind of a flap would occur if a respectable white man or woman were to write nigger music?  The very world would most likely come to a screaming, bloody conclusion . . . indeed, the very moon might fall out of the sky and crush everything!  When Elvis would make his appearance some two years after the events of this narrative, I would discover that I held a great deal of respect for him, because, at the risk of sounding crude, he had balls to do what he did.  But the moon didn’t fall out of the sky, not at all, and the world continued on.

            At the moment, I wished that a small moon would drop from the ceiling and crush my tormentor, who was moving across the floor towards me, with just the slightest bit of unsteadiness in his gait.  I had my back to him, but my keen ears and other senses filled in the gaps that my vision didn’t.  The way he stepped, the amount of weight he put into each movement of his feet, and the slight mismatch of the way his footfalls sounded in my ears were clues, and my thin olfactory organ could pick up the wet scent of alcohol consumed and then breathed outwards, all of which told me that he was feeling the early effects of inebriation.  Also, from the sounds his movements made as he walked, not to mention the depth of his tread, I was able to judge that he was a large fellow, though from the way he sounded when he moved, I came to the conclusion he wasn’t large as in well-built, he was large as in consuming too much alcohol and greasy food with too little quality exercise to counterbalance his self-abuse.  One can tell a great deal about an individual just using senses other than hearing, especially if one has an adept mind to be able to properly process the information the sense organs bring in.  In my line of business, one needs to have very fine senses if one is to last very long, and I prided myself on my own.

            Upon his reaching me, I noted that he smelled even worse up close than he did from afar, and from the subtle look on Clarisse’s lovely face, I was able to estimate that he didn’t make for a very pretty picture, either.  But then again, individuals who displayed blatant ignorance to the level that he did seldom looked very nice . . . after all, they had no bearing or appearance to maintain nor did they risk losing social standing with their irresponsible behavior.  Ugly people tend to take a great deal of liberties with their ugliness, I have observed.

            “Hey darky, hey boy,” the annoying individual now standing behind me snapped, much louder than was necessary for me to hear him.  Perhaps making a great deal of noise made him feel as though he were making up for inadequacies in other areas, such as intelligence, charm, and a rapier wit.  Obviously he meant to make such a nuisance of himself that I could not help but acknowledge his existence, and hopefully also acknowledge him as my superior.  Why I would ever claim inferiority to a beer-swilling, addlepated pig of a man was beyond my capacity to calculate, though many folk of this fellow’s type seemed to expect that from me because of who I was.  I knew that, surely enough, and in most cases, a person of my color in my situation would have had to call this man his superior, and then meekly slide away into the night.  But then again, I was not what you would refer to as a common person; though I shared skin color with many, many people in the United States and other places in the world, the blood that flowed through my veins set me apart from them, and while they had my utmost sympathy and compassion, I did not have to play by the same rules as they did, not at all.  Screamin’ Willie bowed to nobody.

            Clarisse met eyes with me for several long moments, and I took advantage of the time to look into the flawless jewels of her ocular organs, which were fully capable of making men and women alike swoon like fools if she so desired.  But beyond that was a warmth and compassion that one did not often see in the world, and that was a far more beautiful thing than the rest of her curvaceous and lush body and face.  In her eyes I saw a mixture of anger, anxiety, and anticipation.  She was angry at the knuckle-dragging goon standing behind me, she was anxious about what this situation would turn into, and she was anticipating how I would deal with said situation.  I saw no worry or fear for me in her eyes, and that pleased me a great deal . . . she’d learned that the only time one needs to worry about Screamin’ Willie is if Screamin’ Willie is on their tail looking for trouble of one sort or another.  I knew that she wanted to say or do something, to step in, I could tell that much even without my ability to sense the emotional currents within others, but she refrained, as she knew this was my business.  She could have demolished the disagreeable person with a single punch from her slender-fingered fists, but she stayed out of things, allowing me to deal with them on my own, and I appreciated that.  Yes, Clarisse was a fine woman, very perceptive and wise, among a great many other things, and I knew why the much larger redheaded vampiress whom Clarisse referred to as ‘big sis’ was so attached to her.  I nodded imperceptibly, and a few drops of tension drained from Clarisse, as she knew that I was about to take matters into hand now that it had become plain that my tormentor lacked the mental capacity to leave well enough alone.

            “I am not a boy, I am certainly far older than you will ever be, and there is nobody here at this table that answers to the name ‘darky,’” I said smoothly, infinite calm in my voice.  I took a sip of my water and admired Clarisse a bit more as she watched the fool in action.

            There was a rather angry-sounding grunt from behind me, and I knew that my response had not been the one he’d been looking for.  “Well, how about nigger?  Anybody here answer to that?”  He was really looking to press my buttons tonight.  A pity that he didn’t have the slightest idea where my buttons were at . . . actually, it was fortunate for him that he didn’t know, as if he actually succeeded in pressing one of my buttons, he would have had his entire arm removed from his torso even before he’d lifted his hypothetical finger free of the hypothetical button in question.

            My response was calm and even, without a trace of rage or fear in my voice.  “I’m afraid nobody here answers to that, either.”  From listening to my tone, one would think that I was discussing the weather, to use a hackneyed old phrase.  Cliché, yes, but as long as it gets the point across, it’s fine with me.

            He was not mollified, and I noted that other than Hank Williams on the jukebox, the inside of the tavern was dead silent.  “Okay then, how about nigger-loving slut?” he sneered, and I saw that the skin around Clarisse’s eyes tightened so slightly that anybody other than a vampire would not have noticed.

            I slowly stood up from my chair and turned around to face the cretin.  One could insult me all night, I cared not one bit, but it is exceedingly bad manners to insult a woman, especially when she is minding her own business and causing nobody any harm.  I could withstand the insults aimed at me, but to insult my lovely companion was not something I would readily tolerate.  Screamin’ Willie is a friend to animals, children, and women, and to see or hear of them being mistreated in any way, shape or form, physically or verbally, does not please him, not at all.

            When I had turned, I saw that my tormentor was a good six inches shorter than myself, though he made up for it in girth, which was a great contrast to my own lanky, agile frame.  He most resembled a degenerate, deformed pig that had one day decided that it was tired of its lot in life and had stood upright, put on clothes, and had taken a job at the local factory.  He was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5’5” and sported a considerable beer gut, most likely earned during long nights of drinking and smoking while playing cards with his cronies.  His greasy complexion, vaguely bloodshot eyes, and yellowed teeth seemed to confirm that idea, as did the partially-crushed pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of his filthy, snot-stained red and black checked flannel shirt, which had had the arms unceremoniously ripped off, so that he was able to show off good-sized arms that were equal parts flab and muscle.  His body was shaped mostly like that of an ill-manufactured barrel (the beer gut destroyed the integrity of his otherwise barrel shape), and his soiled and sagging jeans didn’t do a very good job of fitting onto the lower half of his body, the aforementioned gut getting in the way of them being able to comfortably fit around his waist.  His hair, which hung limply down to his ears, was dark and even greasier than his alcohol and smoke-aged flesh, and to top off the whole image, he was missing a couple of teeth.  I saw anticipation in his eyes, as well as a little fear, as perhaps he was worried that he’d provoked the nigger into a fight, and as you may well know, niggers tend to fight very dirty and will slide a shank between your ribs when all you wanted to do was beat on them with just your fists.  Niggers aren’t the most sporting fellows, or so I’ve been told.

            But I gave no indication that I was going to fight him, as I merely stood up to my full height of 6 feet, two inches, turned, and regarded him with my large brown eyes.  He wasn’t fond of the fact that I was taller than him, that much was apparent, and that must have given his friends at the bar reason to believe that I could have cleaned his clock, or at the very least, done a considerable amount of damage to said timekeeping device, as two men of similar appearances stood up from the bar when I did, ready to jump in and help their friend if the damnable nigger started up any sort of trouble.  I clasped my hands in front of me as I looked the man over, similar to a military “at-ease” position, and the fabric of my dapper (if I do say so myself) dove-grey suit jacket rustled softly in the Hank Williams-tinged silence of the bar.  After eyeing the fellow for a few seconds, in which I could tell from both body language and my empathy that he was arguing with himself to just throw a punch and get it over with or to wait for me to make a move on him, I spoke to him in the manner of a civilized human being.  “Please do not call my friend a ‘nigger-loving slut,’ I said.  “She has done nothing to you or your friends, and I do not appreciate when one such as yourself takes it upon himself to harass a lady such as her.”

            He stared at me for a good while after that, most likely due to the surprise of having a black man speak to him in an intelligent manner when he was certain everyone of color was a drooling, simpering moron, and also because of the fact that it took him a length of time to decipher what it was that I’d said.  Whenever he did manage a translation (I feared for a few moments that I would have to repeat myself in monosyllables, but he surprised me), he was even less happy with me than before.  “Don’t you be tellin’ me what to do, you fuckin’ coon,” he snarled.  “Nobody tells Clem Masterson what to do, ‘specially not no dirty nigger!”

            Dirty?  I almost took offense to that.  I may not have been done up in a three-piece suit or been clad for a royal ball, but I was a damn sight cleaner than and better-dressed than this Masterson fellow.  Beneath my suit jacket, I had on a pressed white shirt, under which was a jet-black tie that made a very striking contrast with the snowy white of my starched shirt.  My pants, dove-grey in color like my jacket and held in place with a black leather belt equipped with a genuine silver buckle, were also neatly pressed, with creases on the pantlegs sharp enough to shave with, and where my pants ended, my bright white socks peeked out before they descended into shoes that I’d shined to the point where you could have used them as mirrors while you were shaving using my creased pantlegs.  My hair, dark as night and slightly long, was sharply slicked back on my head, and my mustache, trimmed into a thin, neat line, was free of crumbs.  I had also applied a bit of aftershave before heading out after the sun had gone down, and I think that I smelled quite nice, and Clarisse had bolstered my opinion by telling me as such.  Screamin’ Willie was always the picture of neatness and class, and was only dirty when my work got a bit on the strenuous side.  But more on that later.

            “Hey hey hey, guys, settle down,” said a third voice, which was not Clarisse’s.  This was another man’s voice, and both Masterson and I turned to look at him as he approached.  He was a clean-shaven muscular young fellow dressed in blue jeans and a white tanktop, and had average-length blond hair sitting atop his well-shaped skull, and on his face was a look of concern.  He stopped just short of us, and put his hands into the air between Masterson and I, not quite touching our chests, but making the message clear that he didn’t wish to see us get into a fight.  “You don’t want to be doing this, guys,” he said in a very even and calming voice, his blue eyes looking back and forth at us in case we decided to jump him instead.  “There’s no need to fight.”

            “I am not fighting,” I said, drawing myself up even taller, making it clear that I was the tallest of the three men standing there.  Though I lacked the girth of Masterson and the obvious musculature of this newcomer, height had a tendency to be a very effective psychological tool against people, and the fact that I was the tallest gave a bit of a psychological edge in this situation.  “I was merely tending to my own business when this fellow began to act in a very uncivilized and ignant manner, which I could have tolerated well enough, if not for the fact that he took it upon himself to insult my lovely companion, which I would most certainly not stand for,” I informed this newcomer, though it was unnecessary, as I’d seen him sitting at a table by himself when Clarisse and I had come in, and he had to have seen the whole scenario play itself out.

            “You fuckin’ nigger, you think you’re so great talkin’ all your fancy nigger talk!  Well fuck you, pal!  We don’t let no niggers or nigger-lovers in here, and that’s that!” Masterson bellowed at me, and the muscular man looked as though he were about to slug the fat fellow just to get him to shut up.  Masterson’s voice was gritty and rough, eroded by years of abuse from cigarettes and alcohol, and was very grating at a high volume.  I idly wondered what his record was for the most number of times he’d been able to fit the word ‘nigger’ into a single sentence.

            “Is that true?  Are Negroes not allowed in here?” the blond man asked the portly, bearded bartender, who was busily washing a glass and trying to keep out of the whole thing.

            The bartender jumped at the question, as though he were surprised that someone was actually calling upon his expertise at this juncture in time, and then after a very long hesitation, in which he looked at me, the blond man, and Masterson several times, he said slowly, “I don’t want no trouble here.”

            “Well, is it true?” prodded the muscular blond.  “Are Negroes not allowed in this bar?  Has this man violated any rules?”

            The bartender repeated, “I don’t want no trouble here.”  He looked decidedly unhappy that people were paying attention to him when all he wanted to do was fade into the background.

            The blond-haired man let out a grunt of disgust.  “Would you please just give me a yes or no answer as to whether or not Negroes are allowed in here?”

            One of the men at the bar, not one of Masterson’s friends, cackled, “Well, Sam, that band that’s comin’ in tonight is fulla coloreds, so you ain’t gonna turn ‘em away, are ya?”

            Sam the bartender gave the other man a truly evil look, but that did nothing to stop his laughter, and Sam gained a bit of color himself: a very nice shade of embarrassed red.  “I don’t want no trouble,” he repeated for the third time.  “You boys figure things out for yourselves, just don’t break anything.”  He went back to washing the glass off, not looking at us any more, his involvement finished.

            “So get your damn darky face outta here, nigger!” Masterson said to me, his eyes getting wide with cockiness now that he’d pretty well been given carte blanche by the lily-livered bartender.

            “I don’t recall him saying anything to the effect that I wasn’t allowed in this establishment,” I said to Masterson.  “He said that we were to settle this on our own, under the condition that we were to cause him no property damage.”

            “This’ll be settled when you get your nigger ass outta here!” Masterson yelled at me, stomping his foot.  He was none too keen on the fact that I wasn’t the least bit intimidated by him, so he was turning up his boogie a few notches to try to put some fear of him into me . . . it doesn’t pay to be a big bad nigger basher when you can’t scare the nigger in question, now does it?  “You and your nigger-fucking slut!  You both get outta here!” he yelled, “Or we’ll throw you out!  And you, too, you nigger-loving fag!” he screamed at the blond man who had tried to come to my rescue.  “We’ll kick all your asses!”  At his words, his friends, sensing some potential fighting action, sauntered over to behind Masterson to illustrate that they were very interested in kicking our asses, as it were.  The blond man looked to me for a moment, as though he were waiting an order form me to charge, but I was having nothing of it.  I was going to settle this conundrum without throwing a single punch, not only because it was the gentlemanly thing to do, but also due to the fact that I didn’t want to make life difficult for any other of my color that came into this establishment.  I could have dispatched all three within moments, but that wouldn’t have proved to be the best thing in the world for any others that shared my pigmentation that came in here, as my humiliation of these three would very well have been taken out on other black folks, and that I most sincerely did not want.  I may not have needed to play by the same rules as other Negroes, but I also did not want my actions to bring cruel and unnecessary consequences upon the rest.  That would have been unfair and terribly irresponsible on my part, and I did not wish to bring trouble to those that did not deserve it.

            “One thing that puzzles me in this whole bothersome situation is why you insist upon referring to Clarisse as a ‘slut,’” I said to Masterson.  “It has been my experience that those who fall under the term ‘slut’ tend to dress verily scantily and in a very trashy manner, showing as much flesh as they can get away with, in addition to wearing far, far too much makeup, making them look more like clowns than women.  They also have a tendency to be very sexually promiscuous, and in the time that I have known Clarisse, I have not seen her do so much as kiss another person, much less engage in intercourse with them, so why do you continue to call her a ‘slut?’”

            “Look at her, she looks like a whore!  No respectable woman dresses like that!” Masterson yelled at me as though I were a slow child missing a fact that was obvious even to the family dog, who was blind, deaf, and dumb as a box of rocks.  I glanced at Clarisse, who gave me a small, secret smile, then back at Masterson.  My red-haired friend was dressed in black jeans, biker boots, a loose blue t-shirt, and a leather jacket; she wore no makeup, while her hair was combed and as in place as it could be hanging freely down to her chest . . . she was the picture of rough-and-tumble neatness and class, and I thought she appeared nothing at all like a slut.

            “She looks perfectly acceptable to me,” I said firmly, my conviction in the statement sitting in my voice like a foundation of solid steel.

            But Masterson simply couldn’t leave it alone, and fired off with, “And furthermore, no respectable woman goes out with a nigger like you!”

            I could feel an explosion of anger well up behind me like the birth of an infinitesimally small but supremely powerful sun, and I knew that Masterson had succeeded in enraging my friend, which in turn angered me a great deal . . . a woman should be allowed to go out for a night with a friend, regardless of the friend’s color or her relationship to them, and not have to worry about petty harassments such as this.  Yes, friends, Screamin’ Willie had reached the limits of his nearly bottomless well of patience, so he turned his eyes away from the well and into his bag of mischief, which he went into whenever a situation came to the point where it was unsalvageable.

            “In that case,” I said with that damnable evenness of speech of which I am capable of in even the most horrendous of situations, “That would mean that your mother is not a respectable woman in any sense of the word, seeing as how a nigger like me, this very nigger, as a matter of fact, had her screaming his name across three counties last night.”  I heard Clarisse’s jaw drop with a satisfying thud.

            Masterson looked fit to explode: his eyes bulged out of his head, his fists clenched at his sides, and the veins on his neck and forehead stood out remarkably well for a man of his condition.  When he opened his foul, cigarette-soiled mouth to scream at me, I hit him.

            Not hit him in the most common sense of the word, mind you . . . that would have killed Masterson right on the spot, and while it would have proved a great short-term solution to Screamin’ Willie’s problems, it would only have created long-term problems for any Negroes who came through this area in the future.  No this was a hit of a very special sort, one that cut far deeper than any fang or claw ever could, and one that enabled me to take care of Masterson without laying a single finger on him.

            The slavering goon had been at a mindless boiling point over me for some time, and his emotions were a swirling, roiling mass that both Clarisse and I could easily feel, and it had slowly inched up in terms of intensity when he and I had began our exchange of words.  But he hadn’t yet reached his full fury, he was holding off for that to occur . . .  He was waiting for a genuine excuse to throw a punch at me, he was waiting for me to do something antagonistic so that he could feel totally justified in making my evening a complete hell, and when I made the comment about his mother’s supposed sexual frolicking myself, that hit him and hit him very hard; I could almost hear the click of his emotional floodgate opening up as his rage took full control of him and he readied to beat the black right out of me, and quite possibly ravish my lovely companion before the night was all said and done.  But in that moment, when he’d snapped and was at the point of being most uncontrollable, he was also most vulnerable to one such as myself . . .

            I locked my eyes with his own piggish ones, and using them as a starting point, I opened up a gate between Masterson and I, a very special, intimate gateway between our minds, so that I could share my life with him.  At his moment of extreme rage, he was vulnerable to one as skilled in the art of empathy and telepathy as myself, and that enabled me to show him the heart and soul of this “dirty nigger” who now stood before him . . . but this was no mere schoolyard show and tell session, by rights, no.  This went far beyond that, this was much more of a show and feel session, one that would cut him right down to the core of his emotions.  There was far more to Screamin’ Willie than just his appearance, and that was something that Masterson found out that night, whether he liked it or not.  Life seldom gives you what you like, but it’s important to learn from what it does deign to give you, which is what I did, and perhaps Masterson had enough of a mind inside of him to be able to learn what I gave him.

            Masterson rode the ship on which my family came over to the New World, he was able to stay in the same wet, rat-infested holds that my family and I did, and he was there to share in the pain when first my father died of a broken spirit and my mother of a broken heart.  He felt the fear and helplessness of those times aboard that hateful ship, young and alone, only a child with no one to care for him.

He was able to hold my first and only child, a boy of scarcely more than two years, as he lay dying in my arms following an attack by the dog of the one who claimed to own me and my wife.  “Too bad yer boy got ‘n the way ‘o the dawg,” the master said, “Mebbe that’ll learn ya stupid pickaninnies to keep yer kids inside when ‘ol Luke’s feelin’ frisky.”  The boy had only been sitting on a stump and watching his father work on a vegetable garden 20 feet away, and the dog had simply attacked him for no reason . . . or what was claimed to be no reason.  The master’s dog was trained to attack and maul any living thing on command.

Masterson knew the pain of the loss of my wife less than a year later when the master saw fit to trade her in for two young girls that he thought would make better “breeding stock.”  He also felt the agony that I felt the day not that long afterwards when word got to me that my beloved had been raped and killed by her new master, in a drunken rage, had decided that he wanted something fun to do besides play cards.

He was with me when I ran, ran, ran through the swamps and bayous, and when that cold hand with the grip of steel shot up through the murk and grabbed my ankle, pulling me down to death and new life, he screamed along with me.

Masterson saw the faces of despair that I saw on a daily basis going across the country, he felt my helplessness at being unable to do something for every one of them, he knew that it was a greater task than any one man could ever hope to accomplish, and he shared in my aching rage at the fact that I was only a man, not legion.  He saw lean, sallow faces of the children in their shanties and on the sides of the roads, he felt the tears that flowed when I looked upon them, he knew the helplessness . . . I was immortal, endless, and forever, stronger than any ten men, and yet I couldn’t help them all.

But I didn’t show him how those same sad faces lit up with joy when the tall black man dressed up as Santa Claus came to their doors on Christmas Eve night, bearing food, clothes, and toys.  The joy of children is the most beautiful thing a person, be they mortal or immortal, can behold, even more wondrous than Clarisse, and anyone who tells you differently is a damned liar.  He never saw the looks of relief and happiness on the faces of the parents when a corrupt mayor or police officer disappeared late at night, or when a mysterious benefactor bearing food and gifts appeared at the door late at night.  He never went to the churches on cold Sunday evenings when the music was loud, the songs were strong, and the joy was a palpable thing . . . Screamin’ Willie was not a religious man by any sense, and claimed no god as his own, but he knew a damned good time when he saw one and was always game to join in.  I didn’t share with him the good times amongst the bad, I didn’t let him see the other immortals, I didn’t allow him to bear witness the wondrous events I had been privy to in my extended lifetime.  He never saw the ones whom I’d saved from captivity and death, he never felt the hugs of the children that were not my own as I carried them away to safety from certain death, he never saw the shining eyes of children and parents, brothers and sisters, or husbands and wives when they were reunited with their loved ones.  He was forever denied the gratitude of those I’d saved from being hunted down like dogs . . . he never saw any of the positive aspects of my existence.  He was so determined to look at me and see the negatives, then by damned, I was going to show him all of the negatives.  I gave him the pain and the suffering, which I formed into a glistening crystal shard that I used to slice deeply into the corroded and callous tissues of his heart.

I could feel Masterson’s friends recoil a bit as they caught a bit of what I was giving to him, and I knew Clarisse, as sensitive as she was, could feel it, too.  The blond man that had tried to put an end to the brewing fight also took a step backwards, as he was the closest to me next to Masterson, and when one was dealing with emotional currents as powerful as what I was throwing at Masterson, there was bound to be some run-off.  They may have gotten impressions of what was being passed between us, which was all well and good, but they didn’t get the full import of what I was giving to Masterson, which was fine, as this was a message that was meant for him and him alone.

I watched his eyes widen and his flesh pale as he received more and more of what was inside of me, and I pitied him not.  Why should I?  He saw fit to disturb a peaceful evening between myself and a friend, and I took it as my duty to put a little humility into him . . . it would very likely do him some good, as well as those who had to cross his path further down the road.  I smiled very faintly as Masterson began to tremble with the weight of what I was giving him and as the realization that there was much, much more to the dirty nigger in the grey suit than he had originally thought.  And if there was more to this particular one, what of the others?  What of the ones he’d wronged in the past, and the ones he had yet to run into?  I knew the questions would haunt him for days, months, years ahead, and that was fine by me . . . one cannot be belligerently ignorant for very long without having to pay a price for it.

While our minds were touching, I sensed a few things about Masterson as well, saw his angry nature, saw how easily he could be goaded into a fight, and how he’d do pretty much anything for money . . . everything I saw of him bespoke of a typical backwoods-type redneck who knew no better.  There was only one thing that was even remotely noteworthy about him, and it was something I’d already suspected from the very beginning, anyway.  No, there was nothing special about Masterson, just another small-minded, big-mouthed bigot that probably didn’t even really understand the concepts behind the words he liked to throw around.

After a few seconds it was over.

I broke the telepathic contact between our minds forever, and Masterson sagged backwards, nearly falling over as he suddenly fully fell back into himself.  I stood as I had before while Masterson shook his head back and forth, trying to clear the cobwebs, staring at me with wild eyes that now held a great deal of respect beneath their bloodshot surfaces.  “What is it, Clem?” one of Masterson’s friends asked.  “What’d he do to ya?”

“Nothin’,” Masterson mumbled, still mentally reeling.  “He didn’t do nothin’.”  Which, in a way, was true.  He’d walked through the sorrows of my mind for only a few seconds, not long enough to come away with any permanent impressions or real memories, but long enough to carry the feelings that I’d shown him around forever.  Sometimes the least tangible things are what one remembers most, and in this case, that would definitely stand true here, or at least I hoped.  As my eyes met Masterson’s, I saw that I was very likely right . . . he wouldn’t be walking out of this bar tonight the same person he’d been when he’d come in a short while before.  He’d had a brush with something bigger and beyond him, and maybe it would help him grow just a little.  Though Masterson said that I’d done nothing, he knew better, he knew I did something to him, he just wasn’t sure what, he didn’t know how to put it into words, didn’t know how to shape the feelings I’d given him into vocalizations, and it was just as well . . . if he’d been able to, that would have just given him power over them and enabled him to compartmentalize and put them to the side.  If they went on in his heart and mind as nameless, formless things that tugged at him when he least expected it, then they’d hold much more strength than they would if they were identifiable things with long, impressive-sounding names.  And speaking of names . . .

“Ain’t ‘cha gonna show that nigger what’s goin’ on, Clem?” one of Masterson’s friends asked him as they helped steady him on his feet as the emotional waves still washed over the bulky man’s mind.

“Naw, naw,” Masterson replied, sneaking a last glance at me, where I still stood at the table exactly as I had been before, the picture of class and dignity.  “I’ll just let ‘im be, I was . . . thinkin’ he was sumbuddy else.”

“Aw, are you sure—“

“That’s what I said, ‘n I’m stickin’ to it, Carl, so leave me alone,” Masterson said, then turned and slowly made his way back to the bar, taking careful, measured steps.

I watched him go, then turned to the blond man who had sought to come to my rescue.  “Thank you for your time,” I said, giving him a polite dip of my head, as seemed the proper thing to do.  The sounds of conversation slowly picked up again as the potential for commotion lessened with each passing second, and within a few moments, the inside of the tavern was noisy as it was before Masterson had begun his yelling, Hank Williams and all that.

“My pleasure,” said the blond, “Though I didn’t really do anything . . . I’m not even really sure of what it was I just saw.”  He looked rather sheepish at that, but I let it pass.  It wasn’t his place to know things such as what just happened, so there was no shame in not knowing about it.

“The fact that you attempted to intercede in and put an end to a needless, pointless fight says volumes about you, young man,” I said, “And I thank you for your time and effort on my behalf, most wouldn’t have even bothered.”

“Well, I’m not most people, either,” the blond said with a smile.

“Indeed you’re not,” I said, returning his smile warmly, then offered my hand to him.  When he took it, I smoothly reached into the right pocket of my dove-grey pants, slipped one of the small, but razor-sharp, ceramic shards I carried around in the specially-lined pocket in between my fingers.  At the first hearty pump of the handshake, in which he was moving his other hand up to give me a friend clap on the shoulder, I flipped the ceramic shard across the room so swiftly that only Clarisse’s eyes could have followed it, and it landed dead where I aimed it: the central power cord along the wall behind the bar.  This thick cord came in from the outside, went through a wall, then to a switchbox that enabled the bartender to operate all the power inside the bar with just a few buttons and levers.  However, if the cord was cut before it went into the switchbox, no power went into the bar at all, and the place would go dead . . . which it did.  Before the first pump of the handshake was finished, the inside of the bar was pitch black, and I’d yanked my hand free of the blond’s, then proceeded to cleanly snap his neck.

Before the first scream of surprise had erupted at the sudden darkness, I already had the blond man’s lifeless body slung over my shoulder and was grabbing Clarisse by the arm and pulling her to her feet.  “You son of a bitch, you let her go!” I bellowed with tremendous amount of rage in my voice as I bolted across the inside of the tavern, kicked open the door, then pulled the surprised Clarisse out into the cool Georgia night.

Taking no time to give an explanation and neatly tucking Clarisse under my arm, I leaped into the air, clearing the dust and gravel parking lot in one spring, and once my feet had hit the hard paved highway that passed the bar, I bunched up my legs and propelled us into the air again, this time taking us over a ditch and dropping us down behind a little grassy rise that would block us from the view of anybody at the tavern or on the highway.  My feet crushed the grass at the base of the rise as I brought us to a gentle landing, and I carefully set Clarisse back onto her feet, after which I dropped into  a crouch and set the body of the blond man at my side.  Without a word, I went through the pockets of his pants, searching for his car keys.  Pleasantries were over, it was time for business now, my business.

As I rooted through the dead man’s pockets, I could just see Clarisse putting her hands on her shapely hips while looking down at me with more than a little confusion, but she was far more intelligent, sensible, sensitive to things than the average person, so I didn’t have to worry about her going completely jeepers-creepers on me while I did my work.  That’s why I didn’t bother giving her any sort of explanation as to the events of the past minute or so: once she’d mentally gone over everything herself and needed gaps to be filled in, she’d ask me.  And so she did.

“Now what, precisely, was that about?” she asked, her voice holding mixed notes of lingering surprise and curiosity.  She had a good enough handle on my character and who I was to know that I didn’t do things unless I had a good reason, so the question of whether I was insane or not was left out of it.  Even if she’d made an inquiry about where all of my marbles were, I would have been able to quell it as soon as I found what I was looking for.  I removed my hand from the dead man’s pocket and held it up to Clarisse, letting her get a good look at the small gold pendant I was holding, which bore the etched image of a cross with the sun shining behind it.  On the back of the pendant was an intricate carving of a fanged skull with what appeared to be a stake through the top of it.  I let the pendant spin a few times, so that Clarisse could see both sides of the piece of shiny metal as it flashed in the bright moonlight.  “Whoa,” she said softly, reaching out to take the pendant to look at it more closely.  I smiled.  As I had previously stated, Miss Clarisse was what one would term to be a very smart cookie, and she knew what the pendant meant as soon as she laid her sapphire eyes upon it.

I checked the dead man’s hand, the one that had been about to clap me on the shoulder when I put an end to the tavern’s illumination, and smiled again when I saw the ring.  It was thick-banded ring, manufactured of a silvery metal, with a cross slightly thicker than the rest of the ring sitting atop it, so that the base of the cross was pointed in the direction of the tip of the finger, and in the center of the cross’s arms was a very small blue jewel.  All in all, it was a very aesthetically-pleasing ring, especially if one liked the looks of crosses, if a bit bulky, but what was odd about this particular ring was the fact that four tiny prongs, centered around the blue jewel, stood out from the middle of the cross.  Add that to the fact that the ring had been positioned around so that the prongs were going the same direction of the man’s palm, and you had one very suspicious ring.  I carefully removed the ring from the man’s finger, inspected it for a few moments, and then found a teeny-weeny little button on the bottom of the ring.  I pressed at it a few times with a fingernail, but nothing happened, and then, going by a guess constructed from past experience, I tapped the tiny button three times in rapid succession, and the four prongs all snapped back into place on the face of the ring, blending in perfectly with the tiny, intricate carvings on the cross that they couldn’t be seen at all unless one was looking for them.  I showed the ring to Clarisse, then gave it to her with a warning, “Don’t let the prongs even brush you, because they are tainted with a substance that would put either of us down more effectively than a barrel of the best animal tranquilizers that any safari aficionado could produce.”

She took the ring carefully and looked it over, still holding the pendant in the other hand.  “How did you know?” she asked, looking at me curiously.

“It’s my business to know a vampire hunter when I see one,” I said proudly, unable to resist the grin that stole its way across my dark features.  “Then there is also the fact that this one has been tracking me for the better part of a week now . . .”

“I had no idea,” Clarisse said, shaking her head.  “I knew that he was especially eager to get us outside, but I thought that was because he wanted to avoid a fight . . . any sort of murderous intention on his part didn’t show up at all.  Appearances can be deceiving.”

I nodded, knowing the tricks of the many different sects of vampire hunters quite well.  “A form of self-hypnosis,” I said.  “It’s all part and parcel of their training, able to block their true intentions from us, even those of us that are especially sensitive, so don’t feel that your abilities are in doubt, my dear, as I couldn’t tell either, at least not from an empathic or telepathic standpoint.  If not for intuition, instincts, and knowledge of him being on my caboose, I may very well have been fooled, as well, but as I said, it’s my business to know.  Vampire hunters are a tricky, slippery lot, but fortunately, vampire hunter hunters are even more so . . . one has to get up mightily early in the evening to put one over on ‘ol Screamin’ Willie.”

“You’re going to have to show me a few tricks,” Clarisse said, turning the ring over in her long fingers and looking at it more closely.  “Not to mention the rest of the Sisters of Fury . . . it’d make for some useful knowledge out on the road.”

I found a short knife with an ornately-carved wooden handle stuck into a sheath strapped to the man’s ankle under his pant leg, and confiscated that for myself, slipping it into one of the manner inner pockets of my jacket.  I also took his wallet and went through it with a few rapid flips of my practiced fingertips, and found over five hundred dollars cash and six different forms of identification.  This is I also put into my jacket, planning to make some donations to worthy causes with the cash . . . I knew of a few families who would be eating well tomorrow night.  “It would be my pleasure, my good lady, if you’d do me a favor in return.”

“And what might that be?” Clarisse asked, giving me such a coquettish smile that it actually made my heart race a little faster and the lecher in me whispered a few things to me before I told it to stifle itself.  As experienced and hardened a vampire hunter hunter that I was, I still wasn’t immune to the eyes and smile of a pretty woman.

“Well, you could help me bury this fellow here so that I may retrieve that him and take him elsewhere either later on this evening or tomorrow, and then accompany back into the establishment so that I could have a fetching female companion to share an evening of jazz and blues with me,” I said, and she graced me with her musical laughter.

“How could I resist the offer of such a gentleman?  And one who saved me from the menace of a foul vampire hunter?” she said, sounding like a movie damsel, which drew another chuckle from me as I pulled out the dead man’s belt and found dozens upon dozens of tiny needles lined up in small slips in the leather like bullets in a bandolier.  If I wasn’t mistaken, I’d find the miniature needle gun hidden in the hollow heel of his thick work boot.  Vampire hunters were always extremely well-armed . . . fortunately, I was armed with something far more powerful than all of their fancy weapons: the quick-witted and clever mental capacitor that lived between my ears.

“Then let’s bury this stiff and get to the music, shall we, my good lady?” 

*     *     * 

            The rest of the evening was spent in raucous contemplation of the jazz and blues stylings of a very fine band known as the Georgia River Rats, and Clarisse and I had a supremely fine time.  Before that could happen, however, the power needed to be restored to the tavern.  So we returned to the place where I had had my little “showdowns” with Masterson and the hunter, and after telling the cowardly bartender and the rest of the clientele that had gathered out in the parking lot following the Screamin’ Willie-induced blackout that the honest-looking fellow that had tried to prevent an altercation between myself and Masterson turned out to be a complete heathen scumbag that had taken my grabbed Clarisse and ran with her once the lights went out and then had dropped her when he saw that I wasn’t going to give up the pursuit of him, I offered my services in repairing whatever had gone wrong with the lights.

            The bartender was at a bit of a quandary when I did that, as he wasn’t too keen on letting a nigger into the inside of the tavern unattended, and yet at the same time he wasn’t very big on the idea of going in there by himself with a tall nigger such as myself.  I almost laughed aloud when a sheepish Masterson offered to accompany us into the tavern so that I could have a look-see at what the illumination malfunction was.  Meanwhile, several of the local men offered to help Clarisse look for her would-be captor while we worked on the lighting question, and so Clarisse had herself a little bit of fun leading a group of men slobbering down their shirts at her around the little chunk of rural Georgia outside of a small town where the tavern was situated, looking for a troublemaker that was currently cooling his heels in a makeshift grave three feet deep less than one hundred feet from the tavern itself.  As to why we didn’t look the least bit dirty after digging, well . . . that’s a vampire trade secret that you don’t get to know until you Become one of us, so you’ll just have to be content when Screamin’ Willie says don’t worry about it.

            Once inside the tavern, I poked around here and there, using my trusty, dented Zippo lighter (it saved me from getting staked back in 1947, no joke) to find my way around . . . at least in appearance, as my vampirically-blessed eyeballs could lead me around in there as though it was broad daylight.  With help from my Zippo, Sam the cowardly bartender was able to point me in the direction of the switchbox, though keeping his distance, should my nigger tendencies get the best of me and urge me to strangle him in the darkened room.  After neatly palming the ceramic shard that was still stuck in the wall between the severed ends of the cable, I set to work, and had Sam head outside so that he could shut down the power coming in from the outside, so that I didn’t get fried a darker tone than I already was during the course of my work.

            After Sam had left, Masterson cleared his throat.  “Mister?” he said tentatively, all of his earlier bluster gone.

            I turned to him, and I saw that his eyes weren’t quite meeting mine as I looked at him from across the burning Zippo sitting on top of the bar between us.  “Yes?”

            “I’m . . . uh, I’m . . . sorry ‘bout that stuff I said earlier.”  His voice was soft now, though a bit of the corroded grumble was still in it . . . when one has consumed as much alcohol and smoked as many cigarettes as Masterson assuredly had, a totally smooth voice is impossible.  “I don’t usually do stuff like that, I was . . . well, I did it because, well, uh . . . somebody was payin’ me to give you trouble.”

            I raised an eyebrow at him, giving him a sharp look, though I had already managed to glean this bit of information from the contact our minds had had earlier.  “Paying you to cause trouble for myself and my friend?  Who was paying you?” I asked, my voice warm and welcome, the tone carefully modulated to help Masterson see me as something friendly and non-judgmental.

            Masterson shrugged in the shadowy orange light of the Zippo, and though he was still an ugly, belligerent cuss of a man, I saw that his eyes looked the slightest bit wiser now.  “Didn’t tell me his name, he was some guy I’d never seen before, he met me when I got off work ‘n told me if I saw any niggers . . . coloreds, sorry, in Sam’s tonight to give ‘em a hard time and give ‘em the business.  That’s all he told me, I swear, ‘n he gave me twenty bucks, honest.  I dunno why or anything like that.  I’m really sorry, mister, I won’t give no more colored people no trouble, not for any money or anything.  You seem like a pretty nice guy, and mebbe all colored folks ain’t as bad as I thought, y’know?”

            I nodded slowly, one part of me pleased with what he had to say and the other spinning away at what his words about this ‘some guy’ he’d dealt might mean.  One thing common among all vampire hunters was that they were notorious in their planning of schemes, which was only natural, considering they had to cope with a foe that was stronger, faster, smarter, more experienced, and armed with more senses than they had, and it wasn’t unheard of at all for vampire hunters to use people to their purposes if it meant bringing down their target.  Many of the various guilds of hunters thought that there was nothing wrong with killing a few innocent people along with a vampire . . . after all, what were a few extra lives when an immortal monster was being destroyed?  Not all hunter guilds and factions were like that, but quite a few were, and the bunch that my would-be killer belonged to, the Holy Order of Nightslayers, was one that, while it considered itself pure and clean in the eyes of God, following his orders, even, wouldn’t hesitate in wiping out a whole crowd of innocent people to get to a single vampire, and it definitely wasn’t beyond them to send a dupe like Masterson into play.  The hunter was likely hoping that Masterson would antagonize me into attacking him in the bar, where he could have taken me down and been the hero, or otherwise would have created such a situation that Clarisse and I had to leave, where he would have done what he could to dispatch us outside.  What a prize that would have been, two vampires for the price of one!

I had been aware of someone following me for the last several days, but hadn’t known who, as he, like all vampire hunters, was excellent at concealment until the time is right . . . my instincts had screamed at me as soon as I’d seen him, though, and I’d seen some cues in the nimble way he’d moved and had just picked up something that didn’t seem quite right with him.  I suspect that he’d gotten a bit excited once he’d figured out that Clarisse was a vampire, as well, since he’d planned for one bloodsucker instead of two . . . members of the Holy Order of Nightslayers always traveled alone, as they considered themselves unworthy of service to God if they couldn’t handle their missions on their own.  His excitement at the prospect of bagging two vampires, as well as trepidation at the problem of facing two instead of one, had likely caused his control over his body language and movements to falter just enough for one with a trained eye such as myself to be able to detect, which tipped me off to him early.  A bit sloppy, yes, but what can you expect from someone who wasn’t even fifty years old yet?  I didn’t even begin to get as smooth as I currently am until I was well over one hundred years of age . . . true slickness takes a long time to develop, trust me.

I asked Masterson to give me a description of the fellow that had given him the money and the orders to cause me trouble, mentally filing the description away so that I could be on the lookout for such a character later, in case he was in cahoots with my dead buddy.  I needn’t have worried about it, however, as the Sisters of Fury and I found his body facedown in a creek in the woods a few nights later, not far from the town where the tavern was on the outskirts of . . . there were several puncture wounds on the body that matched the prongs of the hunter’s ring precisely, and I knew that this poor sap had simply been a pawn for the hunter, rather than a partner of any sort.  Get a nice middleman in there, so that nobody recognizes the true schemer, then kill him once he’s done his job . . . hmm.  I was willing to bet that the hunter thought that I was some sort of monster because I drank blood and had killed a tremendous number of assholes in my time, and yet he was pulling stunts like that, using people like the man in the creek and Masterson with no regard of their lives at all.  Who was truly the monster, the vampire or the vampire hunter?

My vampire senses felt the thrum of power coming in through the power cord cease, and I started to poke at the wires with my fingertips, getting them ready for the splicing I was going to have to do to them in a few minutes.  Fortunately, the trunk of my car was equipped with a full complement of tools along with vampire hunter hunting gear.  As I set to work on the wires, I said, “Apology accepted, and I can totally forget this incident ever happened if you truly do mean it about taking responsibility for yourself and not giving people grief because of the color of their skin.  After all, that fellow that grabbed Clarisse and ran with her was as white as a lily, and he caused a great deal more trouble than I did . . . it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he didn’t have something to do with the power going out, just so that he had the opportunity to kidnap himself a comely redhead.”  It was true that he had something to do with the power going out: I had to kill the lights so that I could dispatch him, so it wasn’t what one would consider to be a lie.

After taking a few moments to absorb and process what I had to say, Masterson made a grunt of agreement.  “You’re right,” he said, “’N I thought you was a bad guy because you’re colored, so it was all right to mess with you for money, but you been real nice to me even after all I said.  You just can’t tell with people.”

“Indeed not,” I said.  “Appearances can be very deceiving.”  How true, how true.