Daemien is in my apartment, of course, and is quite reasonably holding out his hand in friendship; the lace on his wrists almost glowing white in the darkness. Suddenly, my mom is there with the biggest goddamn knife I have ever seen. She rears up behind Daemien, the knife going to his throat. She cuts and rips at his neck, the blood spraying everywhere, drenching her arms and face... and he just lets her do it. Nothing will stop her: nothing.

She keeps on sawing until his head separates from his body.

I realize that Damien's hand is still reaching out for me, the white lace around his wrists now drenched in blood.

My mom points the knife at me and grins--

There is blood on her teeth.

The rest of the family floods into the room, coming out of the walls like some twisted demons, knives and various sharp objects raised to kill me--

***

I woke up hanging upside down from my ankle.

This would have elicited a scream of panic from me at any other time, but from the way the night was going, this part felt just about right. I strained to see what the hell was going on. Mr. Bryce grinned down at me with teeth that would have been more at home in a shark's mouth and waggled his fingers at me. Apparently, he was holding me aloft, my ankle clamped into one of his oversized, meaty hands.

This is the part where terror takes over, the part where I know without a doubt that I'm about to die and that it's not going to be a pleasant death.

I opened my mouth to scream, and Mr. Bryce put a finger to his lips.

"Scream, and I'll rip your spleen out," Mr. Bryce said conversationally. There was no doubt that he meant it. "I'll have to find it first, but I reckon I'll find it. Eventually."

I promptly shut my damn mouth.

There is no good way to ever meet Mr. Bryce.

He is part of a trio of the scariest motherfuckers you will ever have the displeasure of meeting, a trio only known by the name of The Gentlemen. The reason that their name will strike terror into the heart of any vampire alive is simple: if they ever come for you, you are already dead. You can run all you want, but they will get you, and they will kill the everloving fuck out of you. Of course, for this kind of attention, you had to have done something terrible. This extremely short list included killing another vampire,

(oh fuck me, he knew about Damien)

or in some cases, like with my friend Louise, actually making another vampire. Louise hadn't even lasted a day before the Gentlemen had come for her.

I had never seen her again after that.

My first encounter with the Gentlemen, I had woken up with all three of them in my apartment, and it had terrified the shit out of me in a way I had never known existed. It was the kind of fear that said very plainly: do not move, no matter what happens, do not move and maybe they won't see you and eat you alive.

Mr. Bryce was the largest of the trio, easily 7' tall and was technically a walking wall of muscle in an expertly and finely tailored suit. He had the kind of muscle that was usually described as "a slab" or "solid" or even "brick-like"; It was the kind of muscle that you knew without a doubt had never seen the inside of a gym. Looking at the man, you knew that his tailor had to be some kind of goddamn genius to be able to design a suit that fit so well without making him look ridiculous.

Then there was Mr. Flynn. If there was one word to describe Mr. Flynn, who was the leader of the trio, it could only be "precise." He was slim and trim, all lean muscle, but looking into his eyes, you could tell that he wouldn't have to lift a finger to harm you, but that was only by choice. He had people for that. Terrible people. Somehow you got the feeling that if he did make the choice, it would be the most terrible thing you had ever met.

I could describe Mr. Sinnel, the final member of the trio, but I really, really don't want to. It would be like describing the boogey man and it would still be wrong. He scares me in different ways than the other two. There are many words to describe him.

Insane is one.

Sick.

Hungry.

Going entirely against all expectations, Mr. Bryce was the only one of the Gentlemen in my apartment, at least as far as I could see. We were in my bedroom, but the rest of the apartment was eerily quiet, the kind of quiet you don't get when Mr. Sinnel is around.

"Since there's only one of you, does that mean you're not going to kill me?"

"That's all going to depend on you, Bobby," another voice said. It sounded like it was coming from the speaker on an iPhone. I looked around, startled, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. Mr. Bryce pointed down, and I looked to where he was pointing. There was an iPad on the floor with Harry de Biers the Third waiting for me on FaceTime.

"Oh hi Harry," I managed, trying not to swing too much, aware that blood was rushing to my head in a very uncomfortable way.

"Why is it that you can't even go on vacation without causing any trouble? Can you tell me that Bobby?"

"It's a bad habit," I said with an awkward shrug. Shrugging upside down is a peculiar sensation. I continued: "One of the things I'm good at. Are you in a car right now?" I asked. "It's hard to see upside down, but that looks like a car."

"Yes it is a fucking car, but more than anything else, it is a fucking car that is taking me to the place I hate more than anywhere else in the whole fucking world. One guess where I'm going and it ain't Disneyland."

Fuck, that had snowballed fast.

A little background for you on Harry: he's the boss of the city. The de facto Vampire King if we actually had such titles. All of the progressive change that Toronto vampires had gone through over the past 100 years or so? That was Harry. He was the mastermind behind it all. Harry had seized on the potential for technology to change the lives of vampires everywhere. He was a wicked-smart businessman as well as a future thinker and had decided that if vampires were going to survive and thrive, but more than anything, compete against humans, then they had to adapt. Vampires had to come together. So he had started the long process of reaching out to other vampires to let them know they didn't have to be alone anymore. The telephone had brought the world closer together, and the automobile had enabled them to travel it. So he had built his kingdom in Toronto, invested in technologies to improve the lives of his vampire gang, and then devised ways to make new vampires, while being discreet about who was allowed to be made into one. The focus had been on the extremely wealthy since they were the ones who could afford the long lifetime of being a vampire. Accidentals like myself were forbidden and sometimes killed or just left to their own devices. In time, all of the vampires in Toronto owed Harry their very lives, and that was just the way he liked it.

One of his unbreakable rules was that vampires were not to kill other vampires. See where this is going?

I looked at Mr. Bryce and calculated my chances of survival at precisely zero. Deep breath, don't panic, don't scream until the killing starts...

Fuck it.

"You're going to Montreal about a dead vampire."

This kind of brutal honesty from me caught Harry by surprise.

"Good to see you're gonna be honest about this Bob. I thought I was going to have to get Mister Bryce to beat it out of you."

"I can beat him anyway," Mr. Bryce offered with a sly grin. "Who's to know the difference?"

"Now, before Mister Bryce proceeds to rip your limbs off one by one, I'd like to know something. One little... detail that's been bugging me."

I couldn't talk. I could barely breathe from the sudden rush of emotion that filled me and I just nodded instead.

"They found Daemien's body with over fifty-two knives and skewers still in it. It was floating facedown in a manure pond. Would you care you explain that?"

"The manure pond or the knives?"

"Knives Bobby! Explain why there were so many goddamn knives sticking out of this bastard."

I closed my eyes, feeling the blood pounding in my head, each thump of my heart an agony. Being upside-down sucked. I wished Mr. Bryce would just kill me, so my head could stop hurting. I still have no idea how I got out the next words. I didn't even know I intended to talk at all.

"My family," I mumbled. "Bastard went after my family. He'd been there for a year feeding on my family. On my cousins and probably my mom."

There was a moment of silence where all I could hear was the thump-thump-thump of my heart. Black spots raced across my vision and I couldn't keep my eyes open. I was sure I was about to pass out.

I was surprised when I was lifted and gently laid down onto my bed. My pounding headache began to clear up immediately. I opened my eyes to see Mr. Bryce holding the iPad up so Harry could see me.

"You broke our law, Bob. By all rights, you should be dead right now. I can't have vampires going around killing each other, but do you know why that rule is in place? It's because, at some point, we're all the family we have left in this world." Harry paused, considering his options. "You owe me your life. I'm going to let you live, but it's only because this Montreal dickwad fucked with your family."

Mr. Bryce nodded deeply. "I had a family once," he rumbled and I, for once, I didn't have anything to say.

"We could have taken his head you know," I said. "They wanted to cut his head off and bury it in a deep hole. I convinced them that he was dead enough."

"That was stupid. You should have finished the job."

"There are rules against that, remember?"

I glanced at Mr. Bryce, who only grinned evilly and made a throat-cutting gesture with his finger.

"I'm going to fix this as best I can. It's going to be messy, but this is why I'm in charge of shit. I can handle a mess." Harry sighed, resigned. "I'm sorry about your family and all they went through. Nobody's family should have to go through that. You did good this time, Bobby. Fucked up my morning, but... you did good."

The camera went dead, and Mr. Bryce tucked the iPad under his arm. He nodded at me.

"Kill you next time," he intoned gravely. "Sleep tight."

I collapsed onto my bed, wondering how I was ever going to sleep again after that. Somehow I managed.

Eventually.