Send in the Clones 18
Chapter 18 - Waking up is hard to do.
Vicki, Coreen and Nikki were surveying their Henry’s, taking inventory and in spite of the situation, having a pretty good time. Vicki shook her head thinking, Like my life’s not complicated enough. Twenty more Henry’s plus the Evil one. Can’t wait until Henry wakes up and sees all this. Her phone rang and when she looked at caller i.d., she saw it was Mike. Damn. Opening it, she put on her fake perky voice, “Hey, Mike. How’s it going?”
“How’s it going?!?” She could see his face turning purple in her mind’s eye. “I’ll tell you how it’s going! I’ve got four dead bodies, four throats ripped out and Crowley riding my ass. And not in a good way, I might add.”
“I don't imagine Crowley riding anybody's ass would ever be considered a good thing, regardless of how it's taken. Oh, and I so didn’t need that visual, by the way, but thanks for sharing." She paused, "I’m sorry about that, Mike, but really, what could I have done? We didn’t even know about this until last night!”
She heard him sigh, “I know. I’m just so damn frustrated. Four dead bodies, Vicki. All four with their throats ripped out. The only good thing is that no one’s screaming vampire yet. They’re thinking wild dogs or something.”
“I suppose a thank you for small miracles is in order. It’s going to be sunset in a little bit. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to get over here anytime soon?”
“Not likely. I’ll get there when I can, though. Have you rounded up all of them?”
“Yup. Like I said, just waiting for the sun to set. Henry’s going to be so happy.”
She heard the grin in his voice, “I’m sure he will be. Must be hard to take, knowing there are so many ‘hims’ out there.”
“Trust me, they might look like him, but they are nothing like him.”
“Whatever. Call me later?”
“Soon as we know something.” She hung up the phone and was standing there talking quietly with Coreen and Nikki when all the Henry’s sat up, drawing in that first difficult breath of the night. The women started, but when the bedroom doors were flung open and Henry flew out of the room in full vamp mode, they really jumped.
“I could smell them the second I woke up. Especially one of them. And one of them uses entirely too much cologne. I can’t have them all here, Vicki. Get rid of them!” He threw some keys at her. “These go to the apartment down the hall, get them there and get them there now, please.” The look of Henry’s vampire face had never scared Vicki before, but this time it did.
She could tell he was serious, and when he sped back into the bedroom and closed the door, the three started getting everyone up. It was harder with the ones they’d brought in while ‘asleep’.
They were demanding answers, and between Rasta, who they could barely understand and Slob, who they could barely stand next to, it was becoming a little hectic, until Nikki climbed up on the coffee table and let out a whistle a Longshoreman would’ve been proud of. The Henrys stopped talking and turned towards her.
She smiled. “That’s better. Listen up, boys. This is what’s going on.” Nikki proceeded to explain and when she was done, the Henrys quietly followed Vicki down the hall to the other condo. When she walked in, she whistled. “Damn. This is nice!”
Nikki followed with her big plastic box and proceeded to dole out dinner to the boys. When she was done, she told them, “I’m sorry, but you need to stay here while we go find Evil Henry. He’s killed four people in one night and we’ve got to stop him before he hurts anyone else. We'll need your help later if we're going to be able to stop him.”
Rasta spoke first, “Why we gonna be helping’ you, mon? You keecked us out to fend for ourselves! Sure, you give us money and papers, but we liked it at your house. Now I’m livin’ in a hotel!” The others grumbled their agreement.
“You had to leave, you know that. You couldn’t stay with me forever, you had to learn to be independent! Maybe now that you have, we can work something out.”
Father Henry spoke. “We need to help them find E. H. gentlemen, otherwise he’s not just a threat to the human population, he’s a threat to us as well. Do you think he’ll just be happy to let all of us survive? He’ll want to be the only one left standing, his ego won’t allow him to let us live.”
Biker said, “Let him bring it. I ain’t runnin’ from nobody.” Most of the others agreed, Macho and Hyper especially. With the exceptions of Wussy, Emotional and Special (who didn’t really understand what was going on), all the Henrys were willing to go up against E. H.
Even Gay Henry was ready to rumble. “I can’t have someone with my face being evil. It’s just not done. Bad form and all. Besides, he might try to hurt my detective. I won’t allow that.”
tbc