Sebastien jerked to the left, and I wanted to cheer, wanted to believe that Claude had actually shot the sonofabitch. Claude had shot first, which is the one thing we always yelled at characters in movies to do. Shoot first and don't talk. However, the elation I had felt when I saw him with the gun had almost fizzled when he had taken the precious seconds to deliver what had been a completely badass line.

Sebastien stumbled and I opened my mouth to yell at Claude to shoot him again and don't stop until the gun was empty. I didn't get the chance.

Sebastien snapped his head up and looked Claude in the eye.

"You don't want to kill me," he said almost conversationally.

"Yes I do," Claude said and pulled the trigger.

BLAM!

Sebastien was surprised but somehow managed to dodge that bullet as well. He held out a hand to Claude forcefully and yelled, "STOP!"

For some reason I couldn't see, Claude didn't empty the gun into the smarmy motherfucker.

"SHOOT HIM!" I screamed. "What are you WAITING FOR?"

Claude looked puzzled, but he seemed unable to move.

"I'm trying! I really am! But I can't!"

"Who the fuck are you?" Sebastien growled.

Claude looked at the gun in his hand. "I'm the guy who's trying to shoot your balls off."

"Dude!" I yelled. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Shut up Bob! I can't pull the trigger!" Claude yelled back.

Sebastien had figured it out. "Right. You're Claude. The best friend. You know, I've had my Russians trying to kill you for months now. You're apparently really, really hard to kill."

"It's a gift," Claude said.

"Guess I'll have to kill you myself!"

"Claude, what the fuck man? You don't have to actually listen to this chicken-fucker!"

Sebastien smiled at me and then looked back at Claude.

"Why don't you go ahead and point the gun at your head," Sebastien said, and I watched in horror as Claude obediently pointed the gun at the right side of his head.

"What the fuck are you doing to him? Stop it!" I yelled, pulling and yanking at the ungiving chains in absolute panic, but there was not even a little bit of slack anywhere.

"You really need a mentor dude," Sebastien said. "This is what we call glammering. Humans like your friend are weak minded and we vampires have dominion over them. We always have and always will. We can control them, make them do whatever we want." Sebastien grinned evilly as something occurred to him. "You've been doing it and you didn't even know. How did you think a loser like you was suddenly getting pussy thrown your way whenever you wanted it? Walk into a bar, pick a girl you want to leave with and next thing you know, she's all hot for you. Nothing makes the panties drop so fast like a little glammer. It's like having a pocket of roofies, twenty-four seven."

The realization of what he was saying hit me hard. There was an empty spot inside my gut, icy cold, dark and filled with a sudden guilt that made me dizzy, made me want to hit something. Oh Goddammit?! I tried to clear my head, tried to ignore that taste of bile that came with the guilt, the knowledge of what I had been doing.

"I didn't know! I would never--"

"But you did!" He turned his attention back onto Claude. "Jump up and down on one foot!"

Claude complied and immediately started hopping up and down on one leg and Sebastien grinned.

"This next part is going to be fun," he said. "Just not for you."

"Don't do this!" I pleaded. I managed to put aside my guilt about the girls and tried to focus on the danger at hand. On Claude.

"Just let him go!" I yelled.

"Claude, come over here and shoot Bob in the chest."

Claude strode over quickly, closing the distance, his gun hand coming down from his head and pointing at me as he walked. I'm not ashamed to say I freaked the fuck out, straining at the chains and cursing myself for not being a better vampire, for not being a better friend; for just not being better. My friend was going to watch himself shoot me, and then Sebastien was probably going to make him watch me burn, and there was nothing he or I could do about it.

Claude pointed the gun at my chest and turned his head to me. The panic in his eyes told me everything I needed to know.

BLAM!

I heard the gunshot more than anything, thunderous in the morning air, and I wondered if Claude had missed and hadn't actually shot me. But then it came, that searing flash of pain that at once throbbed and burned as the damaged nerve endings protested loudly that there was now a fucking hole in my chest.

"Fuck," I whispered and felt the searing pain threaten to take over.

Sebastien stepped close to Claude, almost like a lover, flaunting his power, relishing his revenge.

"Shoot him again, Claude," Sebastien whispered to my friend. "This time I want you to shoot him in the dick."

"Dude, seriously?" I managed to whimper.

Claude whipped the gun up and around and pushed it into Sebastien's chest. This time, Sebastien wasn't fast enough. I don't care who says you can dodge a bullet if you're fast enough. Maybe you can if you're far away and you do your best to make sure you're not where the gun is pointing, but when a gun is point blank range, and you can't see it coming, it doesn't matter who you are: there's no dodging a bullet. Even if you're a vampire.

KABLAM! KABLAM! Claude got off two shots into Sebastien's chest, and there was that look of surprise as they ripped through him. He didn't go flying into the air, since as I explained earlier, that's not how bullets work. They rip a hole right through you, just like the holes that had appeared in Sebastien, sprays of blood misting the morning air, blood flowering around the holes in his formerly pristine white shirt.

The thing is, not everybody reacts the same way to being shot. Some people believe what they see in movies, that getting shot is a death sentence, and they just give up on the spot, since if they've been shot, that means they're dead, right? Others don't even notice that they've been shot and will fight you for hours if that's what it takes before they realize that they have a hole in them and somebody really should take a look at that.

Sebastien was one of those kinds of people.

Sebastien reacted, not even feeling the pain yet, and his fist flew out almost like it had a mind of its own and hit Claude right in the chest. There was a crack that sounded exactly how breaking bone should, and Claude crumpled like a ragdoll, even as he flew back out of sight. There was pain and shock on his face as he vanished from sight, a look that I had never seen before and that freaked me the fuck out, more than anything at all.

"CLAUDE!" I screamed, not caring if I was being dramatic, not caring about anything else but that Claude was hurt and I couldn't help him.

Sebastien poked at the holes in his chest and looked at the blood on his fingers, surprised.

"That motherfucker," he whispered.

******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********

The book is now AVAILABLE in Hardcover, Paperback and Ebooks. It's going to live here free on Wattpad, but if you love the story and want to support your awesome author (me), grab a copy from one of the lovely retailers below. Who knows: maybe it can become a bestseller with the help of you lovely WattPadders

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