Thirty-three minutes.

"Are you trying to get us all slaughtered on a Google Hangout? I know you might be desperate for subscribers and everything, but from my point of view this is definitely not the way to go."

Chris and Paul could only stare numbly at Claude, who was now sitting in the booth with them, Paul's iPhone in his hands. From the camera's POV all we could see was Claude's chin.

You know, the best part about watching the video on YouTube, apart from seeing the whole room of vampires and people just sitting there watching Hester and Claude argue like a bad sitcom, was watching Claude's reaction as he realized that he was being filmed. It was a casual thing at first, since Claude has a habit of actively scanning his environment for threats or/and escape routes, but you can see the moment when his eyes flickered over to Chris and Paul for just a moment and then he actively looked back to Hester, a big grin on his face. What really gave it away for me though was noticing how he carefully placed all of the items on the table back into the shoulder bag he had dug up from somewhere and started to pay more attention to his cellphone.

It took Claude approximately fifteen seconds to find the livestream from Paul's YouTube channel. The diner was streaming live to a Google Hangout session.

He looked up directly to Paul and Chris, right to the camera, excused himself to Hester and walked directly over to the booth.

"What do you mean?" Paul asked nervously, and for a moment, Claude had his full attention, but then his eyes slid back over to look at Hester and seconds later, the rest of his head followed.

Claude snapped his fingers in front of both of their eyes.

"Focus gentlemen. Hester over there is putting off some kind of idiot field that makes it extremely hard to think for yourself when he's around. For some reason I'm immune to it and this amuses him, so it's probably the only thing keeping me alive. At some point he's going to run out of bacon and then, according to everything he's said so far, he's going to start killing everyone in the city, starting with this diner."

"Can you stop him? Can you do something?" Chris wanted to know. He blinked rapidly, fighting hard to keep his focus on Claude.

"Possibly. It all depends on how long I can keep him entertained. But the one thing I really don't want, is for this to be all over YouTube." Claude placed the iPhone into the middle of the table. "Unlock it and turn it off. Then get the hell out of here as fast as you can."

"How? How can we do that?" Paul whispered and he sounded scared shitless.

"Just don't look at him—" Claude rolled his eyes and slapped Paul across the face.

Paul blinked rapidly, tearing his gaze away from Hester. He nudged Chris but there was no response.

"I'm actually going to enjoy this," Paul said and reached over to slap Chris right between the eyes. Chris jumped into consciousness.

Claude looked around at the pair of vampires in the next booth who were looking at them and decided to ignore them. He pushed the phone to Paul.

"Do the phone thing now. I'm going to have to be all heroic and shit and I really don't want any evidence of that. It will ruin my reputation."

"What is he?" Chris asked as Paul fumbled with the phone. "Is he really a vampire?"

"Vampire, vampyr, blood-sucking bastard, or if you like, the Goddamned King. Whatever you want to call him. Just don't call him Susan. He really hates that."

The video stops then as Paul finally figures out how to work modern technology again. The rest of the world and all twelve of Paul's subscribers never got to see what happened in the diner and instead had to piece it together from all of the news reports that came out in the days following. The next thirty-two minutes will be forever a mystery to everyone... unless of course someone with an inside connection (like me) happens to fill you in on the rest of the details. Claude purposely left out a few things so I'm just going to make shit up, but you'll never know the difference, just know that it's Claude's fault: he really should know better by now.

Twenty-nine minutes.

Claude hated being the hero. He had decided a long time ago that heroing was way too much work and a lot less fun than just doing whatever the hell he wanted. Crime was something that had come easily to him, almost as if he was born to it; by the time he was eight he had learned how to pick pockets, not out of maliciousness or even to steal as such, just more to see if it was something that he could do. When he encountered his first safe it was as if he had found his true purpose in life, and when he had discovered that he could use computers to make breaking into places a lot easier and safer, it was like finding the love of his life.

I could go on and on about how cool Claude is, but I don't want to give him too much credit. I'm already very much aware than whenever he is around, all of a sudden, I automatically take on the role of sidekick. What I want to do here instead is to point out that Claude had figured out a long time ago that he was going to be a bad guy... just not the murderous asshole kind of bad guy. The profit return on that kind of crime did not add up and it was the kind of career that usually ended with a pile of dead bodies and a shallow grave somewhere.

"I don't want to be the guy whose face is in the paper all the time," he had told me once. "That guy, that hero will always be recognized wherever he goes and it's hard to commit a crime when everybody knows your name. I wanna be the guy no one notices until it's way too late and even when presented with evidence, they still have a hard time believing I had anything to do with the crime. That guy always gets away."

The thing is, sometimes fate has a plan to make a hero out of the guy who's always running from it.

Claude still didn't want to be a hero, but he knew the signs and he was making plans. If he ended up saving a bunch of people while executing his escape plan, then it would not becasue he was being a hero. Hell no. They would just be collateral, along for the ride as it were.

Some people couldn't be saved though and try as he might to put it out of his mind, the memory of Nick and Nora was still fresh in his mind.

Nora's throat had been ripped out and the look of surprise on her face had told Claude all he had needed to know about how she had died, which had been quite possibly in the middle of trying to seduce some vampire with the power of the pheremone spray she was wearing. Imagine her surprise when said vampire had given in to all of the urges that I myself had fought so valiantly. Apparently ripping out her throat had only been the start of her assault and her skirt and shirt had been pulled up around her armpits, revealing her naked body had also had several chunks taken out of it. She was facedown on the couch in the next room and Claude might have walked right by her without noticing, since his main goal in life at that moment had suddenly become very clear to him, and that was to stop Hester, no matter what the cost. It was was a thought that was suspiciously hero-like and he was had already decided that he would take care of business and push the nearest person into the limelight while he made his escape.

It was the sound of Nick sobbing that had caught Claude's attention and he had taken one look inside and saw all that he had needed to know.

It wasn't funny. Nothing about it is even going to invite any snark from me, so don't expect it.

Nora, as horrible as a person as she had been, was dead and her death had not been a nice one.

Part of her face had been chewed off.

Nick was huddled at her side, a small pathetic ball of a man whose biggest failure in life had been to fall in love with the doomed and abusive Nora. From the way he clung to her cold, pale hand, he had been there to watch Nora's death and something inside him had broken badly beyond repair.

Nick held up a vial of a clear liquid as he recognized Claude; his hand shook violently, either from shock or the shock of the terror and tragedy that now coursed through his veins.

"She just wanted to be one of them—" Nick whispered.

Claude moved fast and grabbed the vial from him while trying to shush him from saying another word. Nick looked up to him in terror and then towards the door as if he felt some horror drawing near—

There was a slight creak on the floor as Hester all but glided back to see what had caught Claude's attention.

"So young she was," Hester said behind him and in his mind at the same time. "Did you know her well?"

"I only met her tonight."

"And the boy? Do you know him well? I have a thirst."

"He's scrawny and stupid. Hardly worth your time."

Hester drew close to Claude.

"Will you beg for his life Claude?"

"You're kidding me right?"

"What kind of man are you Claude? Your mind is so unlike the others, it is difficult to see what drives you. I assume that you're an honourable man, so this beggars the question. Will you let me kill this man or will you plead for his life?"

Nick pulled out a gun from under the couch and aimed it at Hester with extremely shaky hands. At least he tried to aim, but he was trembling too much to do anything but have the barrel of the gun draw wild patterns in the air, putting Claude at serious risk of accidental perforation.

"F-fuck you man. Whatever the fuck you are."

Claude turned to look at Hester and a wash of horrible halitosis made him gag and cover his mouth. Hester drew back, suddenly self-conscious.

"Do you always manipulate people just to see what they will do?"

Hester grinned horribly.

"People always do what I want them to do. Meat always obeys. Now beg for his life."

"Fuck you, but no."

Nick sobbed and laughed from the floor, a desperate sound that just broke Claude's heart.

"You heard what he said you disgusting fuck! Get the fuck out of here."

"I WILL TEAR THE FLESH FROM YOUR BONES HUMAN—"

Nick pulled the gun under his chin and squeezed his eyes shut.

BLAM! Nick's brains exploded all over the room, the suddenness of it shutting the hell out of Hester.

"Do you still want me to beg for his life?" Claude asked numbly.

"That will not be necessary," Hester conceded.

"We're going to have to come to an agreement if I'm going to get you your bacon," Claude said and turned away from the bodies of Nick and Nora, but the memory of Nick's head exploding was still fresh and on constant playback in his head. It angered him more than anything, especially as he looked at the monster in front of him, and he used that to focus himself. "Threaten to kill me, I tell you to go fuck yourself. Try to force me to do anything, you go fuck yourself. Pull that shit again and try to control me and you can go fuck yourself."

"I don't need you Claude. I should kill you now."

"Go fuck yourself Hester. Come and try."

There was a long moment where Claude swore Hester would rip him to pieces, where he knew he had pushed his luck too far, but then there was a glimmer of something in the ancient vampire's face that Claude eventually realized was a smile.

"I"m glad you're not the maid, Mister Claude. You will be a formidable one to break."

Hester glided out of the room and Claude had stayed frozen for a long moment, his hand still deep in his shoulder bag. After a long stunned moment, Claude turned and walked numbly out of the room, clutching his bag close to his chest, desperately losing hope that he wasn't going to have to use the grenades inside the bag.

Twenty-six minutes.

That had been over an hour ago and now Claude still hadn't come up with a proper plan but he was more convinced than ever that he was going to have to be the hero.

Claude rummaged around in his bag for a moment and pulled out a prescription bottle filled with capsules. He shook two of them out and handed them to Chris and Paul.

"Swallow this. It's a garlic pill. I have no idea what it does, but Beatrice had it for a reason. You guys get to be my guinea pigs."

Chris closed his eyes and downed the pill with a glass of water. After a moment's hesitation Paul did the same.

"Anything?" Claude asked.

"I can actually look at him now without getting lost," Paul said. Then: "Damn he's ugly."

Claude grinned. "Well that's an improvement. You guys wanna be the heroes of the 14th Street Diner?"

Paul and Chris exchanged a look that was equal parts scared shitless and borderline excited.

"What do we have to do?" Chris wanted to know.

*******************

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Yes it cuts off in the middle of the action but if i wrote to the true end of this chapter you;d have to wait for about 12,000-15,000 words instead of just 2000.  More tomorrow, I promise. I;m just going to take it in chunks... in the printed version all of these countdown chapters will be all under ONE huge chapter.