(11.4) Drunk and Disorderly

Chapter 11, Part 4

The slap she aimed at my face would have been hard enough to make my head spin. Unfortunately for her, I learn from repeated beatings and she put enough force behind it to make her spin around and fall flat on her ass when I ducked.

“See what I mean? I’m so out of it I can’t even hit you.” She said, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

“Whoa, okay.” I said, kneeling next to her. “I’ll show you some techniques that Mr. B taught me.”

“Mr. B?”

“Yeah, he got me started on the magic thing. His ’domain’ was full of all sorts of things that had nothing better to do than project their pain on you. So he taught me a few things to keep them out and my sanity in.

“It won’t help with your physical senses mind you, that you’ll just have to work out on your own. But it should keep someone else’s thoughts and emotions out of your head until you want them there.”

She sat there, staring up at me for what seemed like an eternity. “Our files were wrong about you,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“Files? What kind of files?”

“The usual. Dossiers, background information, known contacts, personality profile, that sort of thing.”

“What do they say about me?” I asked suddenly intrigued.

“That you are a cold-blooded killer who’ll do anything if the price is right. But I know better. You have a soft and caring side. You’re like a candy bar, hard and crunchy on the outside, with a soft, creamy nougaty center. Ooh, I could go for a candy bar now. Do you have any candy bars James?”

She had started to ramble, a sure sign that whatever alcohol she had had was starting to take full effect. “Okay Angel, I think you need to lay down for a little while before we start with this,” I told her, trying not to dwell on my apparent nougaty-ness

“But I want a candy bar!” She protested as I lead her to the bed. It had been a while since I’d last dealt with a drunk, but I remembered all too well how difficult it was to change one’s mind. So I decided to strike a bargain.

“I’ll go get you a candy bar in the morning.”

“I want one now!”

“How about this, I’ll go get you a candy bar if you promise to get in bed and stay there till I get back.”

“Okay,” she said, climbing under the covers as I left the room.

It struck me as odd that she went from mildly tipsy to smashed in such a short time. I thought about possible reasons for this on my way to the lobby, realizing that the sun had started to come up during our conversation.

A few hundred years ago, I realized that the vampire body is pretty hardy when it comes to the consumption of mass quantities of alcohol. What I hadn’t been aware of, however, was that when the sun eventually came up, if the alcohol hadn’t left your system it had pretty much the same effect as if you were a regular person with a shitload of booze in your stomach.

But I digress. It turned out that the hotel had a little gift shop attached to the lobby. Picking out something with a soft nougaty center, and yes, paying for it, I headed back up to the room.

What I found when I opened the door was a passed out Angel snug under the covers. The problem here, was that my room now had every stitch of clothing she had been wearing strewn hap-hazardly around and on the bed.

“Well,” I said, sighing. “Looks like I’ve got the couch.”