It was the longest fucking day ever. I managed to pass out for an hour before the phone woke me up and I answered it in a mild panic, sure that something else was going down. It turned out to be some Indian dude trying to put on a Canadian accent telling me that I owed back taxes and the government was going to arrest me. I recognized the scam and told him to go fuck himself. I hung up on him before dragging the quilt over my head more irritated than anything.

Unfortunately, that seemed to initiate a war. It was the kind of war that resulted in the scammer calling me back every hour from a different number, usually around the time I finally got back to sleep.

After the fourth call, I gave up on any hope of getting more than twenty minutes worth of sleep and scrolled through social media while debating calling Frankie or Benjamin.

I texted Sammy.

Me: hey, everything okay?

Sammy: hell no. We got raided by the Feds. I gave everybody the rest of the week off while I figure out if we still have jobs.

I was a bunch of nerves for the rest of the day, waiting for the sun to go down. Claude had assured me that I could make calls and text from my phone and everything would be encrypted, but I had to assume everybody else was being monitored.

"But why? It's not like we're planning anything."

"It's not about what you're actually doing as much as about what it might appear to be."

When I texted Natalie, I made sure that my text was all about how she and Benjamin were doing.

Natalie: We're doing okay. Frankie is hanging out with Stanley though. We're going to make sure he's not alone.

Me: What about work? You planning on going in?

Natalie: I'm not even going to bother. This many unplanned days off does not go down well. Ben has been talking to his company all morning, but it's not looking good.

Me: There's gotta be something...

Natalie: Hey, thank God we can actually afford to have some savings, right? It's not like any of us is independently wealthy. Except for Frankie.

Me: I gotta go check in with Sammy later on.

Natalie: say hi to Sammy for me.

I spent the next thirty minutes wondering if any of what we had said could be construed as code or a conspiracy, before deciding that I was freaking myself out.

I talked to Frankie next and he filled me in on what had happened to them.

You know those scenes you see in moves and tv shows where a character is taken by surprise, black bag shoved over their head and then roughly dragged out to a vehicle where they are then escorted to an undisclosed secret location?

Yeah, that's what had happened to my friends.

I figure it was maybe thirty minutes to an hour after the fight was over and they had taken Beatrice from me. I dunno, since it was really hard to get a sense of time or even how long the attack had lasted. In any case, Agent D'mallo's agents had somehow gotten the location of Beatrice's training facility and had raided the place as aggressively as they realistically could without shooting anyone. The fact that the four of them had been at a place designated as a "training facility" didn't exactly help matters.

"Apparently, they had been expecting us to put up a fight," Frankie noted.

So, ears still ringing and possibly bleeding, bags had been shoved over each of their heads and they had been dragged, driven and then dragged some more to a cold, dark room. Bags still over their heads, they had been forced to kneel on the cold concrete until their knees were screaming in agony and the fear had turned into outright terror.

That's when the beatings had started.

No questions, just a slow methodical beating that came out of nowhere.

"That's the worst part about the bag over the head," I said dully, almost reliving the moment. "First you hear the footsteps and you think that it's finally going to be over, that they've finally realized it's all just a mistake, because you know you haven't done anything wrong, and they must know that right? But then nobody actually says anything even when you're trying to talk to them, trying to get someone to say something. And then out of nowhere: wham, right into the nose. And before you can recover from that, another one right in the ear and another and another. They just kept hitting and hitting until I lost consciousness, and not a goddamn word. That's the worst fucking part. Not a goddamn word."

"No," Frankie said, "that wasn't the worst part at all. It's that it went on for three days. We'd heal and then they would start again, but this time with the questions and statements. I had no idea what I agreed to or what I was even answering. I just wanted them to stop. And then they did."

They'd been taken back to the facility sometime in the middle of the night and none of them could look at each other. They had come looking for me.

"Why?"

"You weren't with us. We figured that either you were getting the worst of it, or that you were the cause of it. If you were, then we needed some revenge."

I nodded and then realized that Frankie couldn't see me.

"It's still my fault. If I hadn't gone with Beatrice none of this would have happened."

"Fuck that," Frankie said, "they were always coming for us, Bob. Right now it's a matter of when."

I nodded again and hung up, feeling that guilt burning deep inside and that fluttery feeling that I'm going to admit was the beginnings of panic. Frankie was right. They were coming for us, one way or another.

When the sun was finally low enough that no direct sunlight was going to burn the shit out of me, I called an Uber, hoping that my Visa card actually had money available to use. I hadn't had to think about money in the past two weeks with Beatrice and somehow my rent had been paid while I had been away, but there was always that paranoia that comes from being one paycheque away from being broke, evicted or both.

We drove in silence and for the first time, I realized that Christmas decorations were decorating the stores, bringing some bits of colour and light to the bleakness that is winter in Toronto. I realized that I didn't even know what the date was.

The store looked normal when I exited the car, but the instant I entered, my blood ran cold as I came face to face with a tall Sikh who had intense blue eyes under his yellow turban. He was dressed in what I like to call "standard Agency black" since all of Agent D'mallo's agents dressed in the exact same way: nondescript black suit, black tie, crisp white shirt, and standard earpiece. It's like they were all waiting to audition for the next Men In Black film.

"Can I help you sir," Agent the Sikh said, holding up a hand to stop me, making it very clear that he a) was not going to move, b) fuck me up if I tried to get past him, and c) enjoy fucking me up and not as a professional courtesy either. He wore an ornate gold ring on his pinky finger, definitely not standard issue.

"I work here?" I said lamely. I spotted Sammy just a few feet away and waved. The agent glanced back at her and she nodded tersely.

Sammy waited while Agent the Sikh patted me down, getting a lot more personal than was strictly necessary. She was remarkably silent, which was the kind of silence that I wasn't used to from Sammy; most of the time she was either yelling or swearing at me. This silence was palpable and thick, the kind that people talk also much about cutting through with a knife, possibly because they didn't think of a better metaphor, but more likely because that's exactly what it felt like.

Two other agents were in the back of the store, one of them observing a pair of workmen tearing a hole in the floor of booth #2. The other agent watched me over a GILF Porn magazine, his blue eyes cold and calculating, his slicked-back blonde hair making him look like a complete pervert. It was all about context really: anywhere else, he might have looked like Mister Cool Guy with the awesome hair, but here he was just another pervert with a very specific taste in fucking grey-haired old women.

Agent the Sikh finished patting me down and waved me past as if I was just wasting his time. He looked bored as if he had been there every day for the past week and was over it. He obviously had no idea that I was currently suspected vampire enemy number one, or he would have gotten out the blue rubber glove just to make my life a little more miserable.

"What the hell is going on?" I whispered to Sammy as she turned to walk with me.

"You tell me," Sammy said, "you're the one who's the goddamn vampire."

###### AUTHOR'S NOTE######

Uh oh! Sammy knows! Had to happen at some point right?

CONTNUES...