When Beatrice charged through the security door into the underground parking lot that was currently filled with all manner of very expensive cars, I followed without a second thought. She was one of those people that sometimes just you had to follow and hope for the best, knowing that she had everything under control, but more importantly that she was the most dangerous person in any room.

The garage was surprisingly empty, nobody waiting to attack us.

The other guard was slumped over in a chair, his shirt soaked red with his life's blood in a way that still surprised me. The still spreading pool of blood on the concrete floor beneath him was equally disturbing. I mean, this was a vampire, right? And yet, there he was, dead, just like a regular person.

I guess when you're a vampire fighting another vampire, you might as well be human.

There was a white BMW convertible idling in front of the door, no doubt belonging to the now headless vampire inside. From the little that I knew of the dead woman, having her outfit match the colour of her car would have been perfectly on-brand.

Beatrice scanned the garage carefully, looking or listening for something.

"Did you know her?" I blurted out, finally asking the question I had been holding back. "That woman seemed to know who you were."

"Everyone knows who I am," Beatrice said with a wry smile. She continued to scan the garage. "She really should have known better, and now she's dead, boo-hoo. But her friends are still missing, and that annoys me."

"Friends?"

"Of course. People like her don't work alone. She's not some random psycho slicing up some guards you know. The guy with the bomb was obviously supposed to be a distraction, a martyr to the cause, but now they're forced to improvise."

"Holy shit," I said as the realization hit me. "She was clearing the exit."

Beatrice glanced at me, bemused. "You have a mind like a criminal."

"Damn skippy," I agreed. I looked at the BMW. "There's no way that was the escape vehicle."

Beatrice tossed a key-fob to me, and I caught it. I watched as she

"Go get the car and be ready for me. We might have to leave here in a hurry so I really hope you can drive."

"You're letting me drive your James Bond Spy car?" Holy shit! I greedily looked for it in the parking lot and spotted it two rows over as I pushed the unlock button. It blinked its lights at me, that lurking demon, seemingly always ready to go. And I was going to be driving it. Wait a minute...

"Where are you going?"

"If she was clearing the exit, that means someone is still coming out, and they're definitely not going to be expecting me." Beatrice grinned, clearly looking forward to the fight.

I looked at my girlfriend standing there in her fancy red gown and her new acquired sword, and she was fucking gorgeous in ways she had never been before. If I could have taken a photo of that moment, I would have, that's how perfect it was. It encapsulated all that Beatrice was, all of her deadly beauty and how much she truly loved life.

I think it was the first time that I felt I could actually fall in love with this woman.

"Get the car ready Bob!" Beatrice grinned and disappeared into the corridor. The door slammed shut behind her, leaving me alone with the dead guard.

I turned and ran for the car, heart pounding. The guys were never going to believe how the evening had turned out, especially when I told them that I got to drive this monster of a car.

My phone buzzed as I opened the car door and I fished it out, guiltily remembering that Sammy was still upstairs. She was with the King and. He would protect her much better than I ever could, right?

A text from Claude: Something's going down. You need to get out now.

Me: I saw you on the loading dock. Are you being attacked? Like right now?

Claude: dude get the fuck out of here

I glanced back at the door we had exited, imagining for a second that I could hear the clash of swords and distant gunfire, but that couldn't be happening, right?

I slid into the driver's seat and started the engine, aware of how hard my heart was pounding in my chest, in my goddamn ears.

I texted Sammy.

Me: You need to go home. I'll explain later, but something bad is happening.

Sammy: the fuck you say.

Me: Is anything unusual going on right now?

Sammy: Just a bunch of drunk rich people dancing. Dancing badly. I'm trying to video this shit and you're texting me nonsense.

Me: Claude was right Sammy. Please get out of there.

BOOM!

I looked up at the sound, something that wasn't an explosion but really fucking loud and scary at the same time. The door was still closed, but I could imagine it was shaking. If this was a movie, this is where they would do that Alfred Hitchcock shot, the camera pushing in on the door and zooming out at the same time. You know the one I mean.

BOOM!

The door exploded. It wasn't the force of a fireball that had torn the hinges out of the concrete; an extremely large and equally extremely dead Pakastani man flew through the air with the remains of the doors. He was broken and smushed beyond recognition, having been slammed into the door at great speed. The door slammed into the idling BMW, knocking it violent to the side, and then spun once on a corner and slowly toppled to the round with a resounding crash. It was a great wobble and fall but totally wasted in its sense of drama since nobody was actually paying attention. See, what the door had revealed in the corridor was enough to grab all of my attention.

Beatrice was in the middle of an epic battle with someone I instantly recognized from the previous night.

Trenchcoat had returned.

"Holy shit," I said, but that didn't accurately represent how I felt watching this battle, so let me try to describe it for you.

I have no idea what combination of martial arts she was using, but Beatrice was a force of whirling arms and legs, punches, blocks and kicks being produced at high speed to counter the attack of Trenchcoat. Apparently, Trenchcoat was some kind of kung-fu master, pressing her attack with a combination of knives, fists and legs. It was the Matrix level of fighting, Beatrice first gaining the advantage with well-placed blows, and then Trenchcoat landing a few blows to drive her back. The landed blows didn't seem to faze either of them; they just continued the fight even harder.

Beatrice whirled through a complicated series of blows and then just like a scene from an action movie, Trenchcoat was kicked hard in the chest and went flying back through the air with great speed.

Right into the windshield of the Aston Martin. You know: the same Aston Martin I was sitting in.

Trenchcoat landed ass-first into the windshield, almost shattering it. The windshield starred and cracked and bent around the general shape of Trenchcoat, but it held together somehow.

With a pained groan, Trenchcoat managed to pull herself off the glass and rolled onto the ground, hand on her injured back.

I got out of the car cautiously, and Trenchcoat turned to look at me. She was wearing a ski-mask, and all I could see were her very surprised looking eyes--

"BOB! GET BACK!" Beatrice roared.

There was the roar of onrushing sound, and I looked up to see Beatrice run and launch herself into the air, in an epic fighter pose from a movie or a video game, the sword back in her hand. She was the avenging angel of death and Trenchcoat was about to be royally fucked up.

Honestly, it gave me some major chub to see her like that. It was scary and sexy at the same time, okay? Don't blame me for what I find hot.

Anyway, back to Beatrice.

She flew through the air like a bonafide kung-fu badass who brought her own slow motion with her--

WHAM!

A white panel van slammed into Beatrice, sending her crashing into and over a row of parked cars, her sword clattering ineffectually onto the ground.

It turns out that onrushing sound had been coming from the speeding van which now skidded to a halt, the side door sliding open. A tall dreadlocked black vampire with a heavy belt-fed machine gun stepped out and trained his gun at where Beatrice had vanished behind the cars. A wiry Asian dude with way too many tattoos on his arms and neck popped out next and quickly made his way over to where Trenchcoat lay on the ground just in front of the Aston Martin.

"Oh, we got her good this time!" Dreadlocks laughed.

I ducked down back into the car, my heart pounding, panic kicking my ass in ways that I had never predicted. They had taken out Beatrice with a moving vehicle, probably the only way they could manage it.

I was on my own.

Fuck! I was going to have to be the goddamn cavalry.