Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked

Ballet of Blood-1

Ballet of Blood

“Have I ever told you how much I hate the ballet, Skeeter?” I muttered as I pulled my F-250 into a parking deck in downtown Charlotte. I reached down and mashed the glowing blue button, took my ticket and glared at the sign that read “Clearance 7’6””. My truck would clear, but if the yahoos that built the parking garage were off by as much as an inch I’d probably lose a fog light or two. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Yes, Bubba, you might have mentioned that about seventeen times in the last ten hours.” Skeeter’s high-pitched, whiny voice grated in my ear like knuckle bones on a chalkboard. No, not fingernails, knuckle bones. Trust me, it’s a whole different sound.

“Well, I hate parking decks, too. There ain’t never enough room to turn and I end up using two or three spaces just to pay too much money to park my truck.”

“You know this ain’t the first time you’ve said that, either.”

“I know, but some things bear repeating.”

“That ain’t one of ‘em. Come to think of it, Bubba, I can’t think of anything you’ve ever said that would bear repeating.”

“Shut yer pie hole, Skeeter, I’m trying not to run over any of these tinker-toys they call cars here in the city.” I made my way to the top of the parking deck and backed into two spaces beside a GMC 2500 that had the same idea. I got out of the truck and started loading up for a hunt, then shook my head and remembered this was a city gig. I was gonna have to do this all civilized-like.

“Skeeter,” I said, pressing the button on the Bluetooth headset I pretty much wore everywhere nowadays.

“Yeah,” came that nasally whine again. I know he’s called Skeeter, but his voice still drives me nuts. Either way, he’s my best friend, and my information center, and my primary source of income. So I reckon I’ll keep him around for a while.

“What kind of new toys did you load me up with for this shindig?”

“Open the back seat.” I did as he asked. “See that little black plastic case in the floor?”

“Yeah.” I opened it up and pulled out a couple of tiny flesh-colored plugs and a pair of the ugliest glasses anybody’s put on their face since Buddy Holly’s plane crashed.

“Put the glasses on and the earplugs in.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“They’re butt-ugly.”

“You won’t even be able to see ‘em once they’re in your ears!”

“No, jackass, I meant the glasses. They’re uglier than homemade sin and I ain’t gonna wear ‘em.”

“Bubba, you buy all your clothes at WalMart and Tractor Supply. I know you ain’t been sneaking into my America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway DVDs, so what is the problem?”

“Them glasses is ugly and I ain’t gonna wear ‘em.”

“You wear Lynyrd Skynyrd concert T-shirts and motorcycle boots to church.”

“So?”

“So you are not the fashionista of this team. Leave that to the homosexual. And put on the glasses. I need to see where you’re going.”

“Don’t be throwing the gay thing up in my face, Skeeter. Just because you’re a pillowbiter doesn’t mean you’re cooler than me.”

“Yes it does. And those frames are by Ralph Lauren, so put them on.” Well, that pretty well settled it. Ralph Lauren was the only fashion designer besides Levi Strauss that I thought wasn’t a flaming queen, so I looked on the side of the glasses, and sure enough, there was a little man on a polo horse. I put the glasses on and pushed the earplugs into place.

Skeeter’s voice came back, even more irritating now that it was that much closer to my brain. “Good. Now I can see what you see. There’s a tiny camera hidden in the middle of the glasses, and those earbuds will let us keep in contact without anybody knowing about it.

“Whatever. Do I get any new guns for this party?” There was a long pause, and I knew that I wasn’t going to like the next words out of Skeeter’s mouth. Honestly, unless they’re “we got paid extra on that last one” or “Budweiser decided to give us a lifetime supply of beer for our contributions to the human race,” I haven’t ever liked any of the things Skeeter has said. And since he’s never said those things to me, well you get the picture.

“You can’t take your guns to the theatre, Bubba.”

“Then I ain’t going to the theatre.” I thought this was a perfectly reasonable response. I didn’t even cuss.

“You gotta go. It’s the job.”

“My job is to kill monsters. I can’t do that with a box of Q-Tips and a roll of Charmin Ultra-Soft. I need my guns. And my knives. And sometimes small appliances. Explosives are nice, too.”

“But there’s security at the theatre. No weapons of any kind. I hacked into their cameras and they’re confiscating pocketknives and pocket flasks. No way Bertha is making it through.” Bertha is my Mark XIX Desert Eagle .50 caliber pistol. She’s four and a half pounds of chrome s*x appeal and large-caliber ass-whooping, and like the old credit card commercials, I don’t leave home without her. At that moment she was locked in her gun case in the back seat of the truck, all legal and stuff. I even had a seat belt on her. She’s a beautiful gun, but even I’ll admit that fourteen inches of Isreali-made gleaming death and destruction is a little hard to just tuck into a boot. Even if you wear size sixteen boots like I do.

“Alright, no Bertha. What can I take?” I said to the air, looking around to make sure I was still alone on the top of the parking deck. The last thing I needed was some rent-a-cop deciding I was crazy and taking a look around in my truck. My F-250 doesn’t look any different from every other redneck’s pride and joy from the outside, but I had things tucked into a few hidden compartments that local law enforcement might frown upon. Like enough ammo and small arms to take over a small African country. If I could drive there, that is. Not to mention I had a couple joints in the ashtray that I was planning on firing up once I dealt with whatever had Uncle Joe’s vestments in a twist about this ballet troupe.

“No guns, Bubba. No guns, no knives, nothing metal at all. You can probably put a wooden stake or two in your boots, but those are pretty vamp-specific, so I don’t see the point.”

“Do we know the bad guys ain’t vampires?”

“No, I guess we don’t.”

“Well, then the point is gonna be shoved down in my boot. And besides, Skeeter, there’s a whole lot of things other than vampires that don’t like getting pointy things shoved in where there ain’t no hole.”

“I’m trying to find something homophobic there, but I think you’re just making sense. I guess there really is a first time for everything.”

“So I’ve only got like two wooden stakes left. We mostly switched over to silver once True Blood came on. Remind me to send that Charlaine Harris woman a Christmas card and a fruitcake again.”

“Yeah, I still don’t get that.”

“It’s like this, little buddy.” Skeeter hates it when I call him little. I try to remind him that since I’m 6’5” and three hundred-forty pounds, everybody’s little compared to me, but he’s still a little touchy about it. So I do it every chance I get. I grinned at the picture in my head of Skeeter fuming in his command center, surrounded by Mountain Dew cans, computer monitors and gaming magazines, and went on. “Vampires are magical creatures, not spiritual or natural. So the laws of nature don’t apply to them. The laws of magic do. And the laws of magic state that belief is everything. So something that is commonly held as true by millions of people becomes true, whether there is any basis in fact or not. So when millions of people started watching True Blood and seeing vampires hurt and killed by silver, it didn’t take long for that to become true. So now vampires, which for centuries have only been vulnerable to a few things, namely sunlight, stakes, crosses held by true believers, fire and beheading, are also vulnerable to silver, which is way easier to find than true believers nowadays.”

“But why didn’t all vampires become able to go out in the sun after Anne Rice wrote that they could?”

“Because in her stories only really old vampires could go out in the sun. For all I know, really old vampires can go outside, I just haven’t met one yet. And that didn’t come up in the stories they made into movies. Movies is the key, Skeeter. It’s gotta get onto TV or the movies, or nobody notices it, and they don’t believe it. I mean, seriously, nobody reads books anymore.”

“But what about them sparkly vampires?”

“That’s why I stay the hell away from Washington State, Skeeter. All I need is a bunch of sparkly bloodsuckers with good hair to ruin my day. Now what else can I take?”

“Nothing. It’s pretty much just stakes.”

“Then I guess it’s time to head to the theatre.” I got out of the truck, put my ankle holster under the front seat, and took off my belt. My Leatherman went into the center console, my Buck knife went under the seat with the ankle holster, and The Judge in his holster came off the belt and went under there too. The Judge is a five-shot pistol chambered for either .45 long rounds or .410 shotgun shells. I keep it loaded with custom shells packed with silver birdshot. It’s not much good as a killing gun, but most things take a step or two back if they get a face full of silver shot. That’s usually enough for me to get a real gun out.

I flipped up one of the back seats of the truck and strapped a couple of stakes to my legs and pulled my jeans down over them. As I poked around my stash of weird spikes, knives and other poking implements, I grabbed a pair of ceramic chopsticks and stuck those in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. You never know, and I sharpened these up a while back just to see if they’d ever be useful. They hadn’t so far, but they sure weren’t going to do me any good sitting in the truck.

I leaned into the side mirror and slicked back my hair into a ponytail straightened the collar on my flannel shirt. I grabbed my leather jacket out of the back seat and started for the elevator.

“Hide the hardware, dude.” I heard in my ear as I pushed the down button.

“I ain’t carrying any, asswipe. You made me leave it all behind.”

“I meant the jewelry. It’s bad enough you look like Paul Bunyan meets Sons of Anarchy, the least you can do is take off all the bling.”

“Whatever.” I said as I took the two hoops out of my left earlobe. I dropped them in my jeans pocket and twisted and tugged the skull ring off my right ring finger. I reached around my neck and dropped my crucifix down inside my shirt. It’s not like I’m a true believer or anything, but Uncle Father Joe gave one to me and one to Skeeter when we started working for him, and I thought it was cool-looking. So I looked almost respectable as I stepped out onto the sidewalk and started walking the couple of blocks to the theatre.

There was a line of people dressed way better than me out front of the theatre, excuse me, performing arts center, so I figured I was in the right place. I got in line, handed my ticket to the usher, and went through the metal detector with all the other sheep. The security doofus didn’t even chuckle when I went “baaaaa” at him. Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.

I bellied up to the concession stand, figuring I could at least get a buzz if I had to sit through a ballet, but when I saw they wanted four dollars a piece for domestic beer I thought better of it. I made my way to my seat and stepped on or over about twenty-seven snooty audience members trying to get to my middle seat. I could hear Skeeter laughing his scrawny ass off at my stream of curses about tiny theatre seats and cheap-ass bosses who don’t spring for box seats for their star monster hunters. I managed to wedge myself into the seat without breaking anything, and didn’t even have time to think about how much my night was gonna suck before the lights went down and the show started.