Three hours.

That's how long the entire process took from start to chaotic and overly dramatic end. It only took me three minutes to tell my side of the story and then another ten minutes to answer specific questions about the attack on Daemien. I told the entire truth as I remembered it, and there was that familiar rage again, the same rage I had felt at the time that someone had dared to do this to my family.

"And what about Claude?" Madame Vera had enquired when I had stopped talking. "What was his part in all of this?"

I looked levelly at Madame Vera, wondering how much she knew about Claude's inability to be glammered. I wondered if she somehow knew about our argument, but then dismissed that thought as pure paranoia.

"What about Claude?" I asked. "I was the only one doing the killing," I lied, "and I have no regrets about that. I'm glad Claude doesn't have to share the memories and the trauma of killing another person; human or fucked-up psycho vampire."

Madame Vera simply raised an eyebrow and rested her hands on the table in front of her in an appraising manner. Even such a simple movement sent a shiver up my spine. She was elegant as always, a tall and beautiful Spanish woman of the Catherine Zeta-Jones variety. She knew exactly how beautiful she was and didn't hesitate to exploit her beauty. Even now she knew the effect she had on me. I could not lie to Madame Vera and she knew it.

Madame Vera ran what I like to call "the House of the Undead," but that was mainly just for dramatic effect on my part. It was a hospital slash morgue for vampires who had stupidly gotten themselves on the wrong side of dead. Are you a vampire who has been burned in the sun, shot in the head, or suffered from any kind of massive trauma that would incapacitate anyone according to the laws of physics and logic? Great! At Madame Vera's House of the Everloving Undead, you will have time to regenerate and put yourself back together— literally in some cases. You'll, of course, be saddled with a massive bill for services rendered, but what the hell? You're a vampire, so you can afford it! Can't afford it? Then she's going to sell your ass to the vampire mob, and you'll be working off your debt for a couple of years... just don't get yourself dead again or this time you'll end up in the human morgue, and there will be no coming back for you.

Claude and I had ended up at Madame Vera's after my fatal encounter with a psycho who had left me to burn in the sun. I had healed in about seven days, but Claude had almost had a hole punched through his chest, and that had required several weeks of very specialized treatment from Madame Vera's facility. Her staff was very skilled at reattaching limbs and putting pieces of vampire back together, but working on a human had been challenging, to say the least. Madame Vera had mused that it might have been easier just to turn Claude into a vampire. Being a vampire, of course, allowed the healing process to do the best job possible; the last thing you want is to get shot in the head and lose pieces of brain because when you heal, the brain is still going to be missing pieces and then you're going to have a seriously fucked-up vampire. Or worse. I still counted myself lucky that they had found all of the pieces when they put me back together that first time.

If you don't understand the kind of power that gave her, then I'll break it down for you: everybody at some point has to see Madame Vera. Everyone. You do not want to be on her bad side.

"That so-called 'psycho vampire' was one of us!"

This is the point where I should probably call your attention to the other ten people in the room, key among them the very emotional walking caricatures of vampiredom from Montreal.

It was a large boardroom in the middle of City Hall, of all places. The windows were all darkened with that special U.V. Glass Harry had had a hand in developing, and the ceilings were high and curved, giving it the feeling of being in a courtroom, which was mainly what it was. There were two long semi-circular curved tables that left the center of the room completely open. Anyone sitting in the middle of that circle (me) was completely surrounded by the inhabitants of the tables. I had to keep twisting in my chair just to see who was speaking.

Those inhabitants included on one side, Madame Vera, Harry de Biers III, and a tall Pakistani man who I had never seen before, but from all appearances had to be a very high-level vampire. He regarded the proceedings with a look of detachment. Two black-suited Agent-looking men handed out folders stuffed with what I had to assume was evidence against me. At the other table were the people from Montreal and they were extremely pissed off.

There were three of them, dressed like extras from a bad vampire movie, white stripes in their greased and slicked back hair and all. Tuxedos, frilly collars and red-lined capes if you know what I mean. There was the depressing reality that this was how they dressed every single day and that their sickly-pale skin was the combined result of living off of human blood and very little food, plus a sustained lack of sunlight.

The eldest was called Michél, and he appeared to be in his late forties. He was severe looking with angular good looks and piercing but brooding blue vampire eyes. His hair was jet black and slicked back with a widow's peak (of course). Matching streaks of grey swept back from his temples. He spoke only in French due to his hatred of the English language and his assistant/daughter/whatever translated smoothly for him.

She was dressed primly, her long black hair loose around her shoulders, her perfect white blouse buttoned all the way up to her neck. She was of course extremely attractive; smouldering eyes, pale skin and blood-red lips.

Do you know how hard it is to remember to look at the person who is being translated, rather than at the translator? It's really, really hard, and I failed every single time, so there was a moment of shock from me as the translator (Elizabeth?) yelled out that Daemien had been one of them. Credit to her though, since she put an equal passion into her translations as was communicated to her, so for a minute, I believed it had been her own thought.

"Is this how you plan on conducting negotiations with us?" she continued angrily, trailing Michél's words by mere seconds. "Reducing our numbers by condoning acts of violence by your rogue members?"

This wasn't directed to me but to Harry, who sat next to Madame Vera, looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but here. Harry just shook his head and waved to Cristian, who was standing behind me, no doubt looking as bored as possible. Cristian handed over a folder and Harry glanced inside for a moment.

"From the way Bob tells it and according to the evidence gathered by the Agency," Cristian nodded gravely to this, "Bob literally had no choice but to, and I quote 'put a stop to the motherfucker' end quote."

"This is a conspiracy—"

"No," Harry said quietly, and the translator looked nervously at Michél.

I really don't like to talk about Harry, but I guess I can't avoid it any longer. He's the one person on the planet who I honestly can say would kill me as soon as look at me, so to have him on my side in this meant a lot to me. I was now getting an idea of what he had meant about "taking care of the Daemien situation", and it was a lot more complicated than I had thought.

I've already mentioned that Harry is the head of the vampires in the Greater Toronto Area, and he runs the city so efficiently, nobody knows vampires exist. This is precisely how it should be, and his system of rules, investments in technology and influence on government policy was vital to making his vampires as successful as possible. Unfortunately, he also happened to be a sadistic bastard who took advantage of people's weaknesses and employed a trio of enforcers (cough cough the Gentlemen cough cough) who were the worst kind of vampire ever and would probably eat you alive in front of Harry just for fun. You can say a lot of good things about Harry and how he was moving vampires into the next century by making sure they were all well-trained and incredibly wealthy. Those words would be balanced with all of the bad things he was personally responsible for, starting with his absolute hatred of accidental vampires, like myself, fucking up his beautiful plans. He hated accidental vampires so much that his enforcers would track down any vampire who made a new vampire without permission and then make that first vampire disappear. I know this because he had done it to my friend Louise, leaving me to flounder on my own without any guidance.

It was cruel and spiteful. In other words, it was the true nature of Harry, and I hated him for it.

Yet here he was, standing up for me, and I knew he was already planning on how much it was going to hurt me later.

"Do you even remember your own family Michél?" Harry said impatiently. "Do you remember what you would have done if you had found one of us living among them, feeding on them? I remember my family, even after three hundred years. Personally, I would have torn him limb from limb and made sure that any other vampires around knew to never, ever enter my family's home again."

Michél was incensed and very haughty. I really didn't like the guy, and it wasn't only because he was trying to have me executed.

"How was he to know whose family it was? The boy is a mere mongrel. They aren't in the registry, so no rules have been broken."

Mongrel? You mother-

Madame Vera got there first. She slammed her palm down on the table hard, snapping everyone to attention, forcing everyone to look at her so they could see the rage in her eyes.

"Call him a mongrel again, and there will be murder."

Here's the thing: she said that in French and everybody got the message.

There was silence for a moment, even from me. My anger had been born out of the racial element of the slur of being called a mongrel. You don't grow up being half-black-anything without some bigot whipping the word out to try to hurt you. Even kids picked up on it, usually from their parents and used it in as vicious a way as possible. So while I had the racial undertones of that going on, there was also the fact that I was being called out on being an accidental vampire.

Thank you, Madame Vera.

I stood up and cleared my throat as if I had something important to say.

"I think what Madame Vera is trying to say is 'fuck you. Fuck you very much."

And with that, I gave them both barrels of the two-finger-salute, hands raised and middle fingers sending my message home.

"That will be enough of that, Robert," Madame Vera said tersely. I grinned and sheathed my middle fingers. She continued speaking to the Montreal contingent. "However, my vote will be no. I cannot in good conscience, vote for any action to be taken against Robert."

"Same here," Harry said, and I think I could have cried at that moment. "I gotta vote no. We'll take the hit and pay the fine or whatever, but we're not handing him over to you."

Michél was on his feet, and I could feel the rage coming off of him.

"There are only one hundred of my vampires. One hundred to your thousands. We feel the loss of one of ours as keenly as one misses a family member. We are one less in number because of this... 'person' and you will do nothing? This is what you call justice?"

The tall Pakistani spoke for the first time in a clear and crisp English accent.

"The law is clear on this Michél. We have all agreed to abide by the same law—"

"FUCK THE LAW!"

Michél was fast, faster than I have ever seen anyone. He jumped at me, blurring the distance between the two of us in an instant, his face contorted in rage as his fangs sprang into place, the adrenaline rushing through him. I hadn't noticed before how long his nails were: pointed and sharp, more resembling talons than anything that should belong on a person's hands. As his claws dug into my face and shoulder, I felt them tearing into my flesh, ripping into my skin with so much ease. I didn't even know what was happening yet, didn't have time to fight, to think, to do anything at all, just to watch with bemusement at how fucking big his teeth were, how sharp... how much his breath stank, and was he going to bite me? Oh, holy fuck he was going to rip my throat out, and I didn't want to be bitten by that terrible mouth, not with that stink—

Michél's mouth didn't tear into my neck. It clamped down on the forearm that snaked its way around his face, and then yanked back with force, Michél's teeth deeply embedded and forcing him to follow. I fell away then and saw D'mallo raining blows into Michél's face. Michél was still biting, and it looked like he was chewing through D'mallo's arm.

Chaos took over then, everyone yelling at each other, people moving fast, just general chaos. The only person who sat still through it all was Madame Vera, calm as ever, watching everything with a smile on her face.

I didn't see how it ended as the other two agents hustled me out of the room.