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It starts professionally enough, as these things often do: with stray comments here and there about how Persian Frank Zappa seems to be especially fond of Gizmo the Vampire Slayer in spite of all of the, um, oppression and eternal servitude, and this is something they should try to discuss with the two of them in the next round of interviews. For purely ethnographic reasons, of course. This is duly noted in a series of meetings that could’ve been emails; interview questions are drawn up (“would you say your relationship with Guillermo is typical of a master and familiar?” “how has your relationship changed over time?” “would you say you’re fond of Nandor as a person? er…vampire?”); and the camera operators pay a bit of extra attention to the interactions between those two. After all, they’re trying to do justice to the nuanced emotional worlds of their subjects.
And that’s the end of that, at least for a while. Sure, there’s plenty of winking and nudging and the occasional drunken speculation in the group chat—especially when Nandor and Guillermo dodge all attempts to make them discuss their feelings for one another. (Well, Guillermo dodges. Nandor may just be oblivious). The thing is, though, the production crew been following these dumbasses around for the better part of a year. To say that they’ve gotten attached wouldn’t be strictly true; it’s more like they’ve been sucked into a supernatural fever dream from whence there is no escape. No one has seen sunlight in weeks, the gore is off the charts, Health & Safety is breathing down their necks for probably very legitimate reasons, and it’s really fucking cold outside. Plus, your sound technician getting eaten tends to give you a certain perspective on life, namely that it is worth living with gusto. In this case, ‘living with gusto’ just happens to mean 'becoming wildly overinvested in the fact that the subjects of your documentary just need to bone already.'
*
A major con of this whole ‘chase vampires around the boroughs all night’ deal (aside from the sound-tech-eating thing) is the fact that by the time the crew has checked themselves for puncture wounds and/or stray vampire jizz and piled back into the van to head back to Brooklyn (of course they’re based in Brooklyn, who are we kidding here), rush-hour traffic is in full swing. This means that over the course of the shoot, they’ve spent lots and lots of time sitting in the van with nothing to do but speculate.
“Seriously, you could’ve cut the sexual tension with a knife,” murmurs Cecil one morning, lolling his head back against the headrest of the passenger seat. “I did nothing but pan back and forth between socially-awkward bedroom eyes and repressed sniping all damn night. Except for the part where Nadja ripped that Crossfitter’s head off. And that shit was nasty. It squelched.” Most of the production crew is already passed out, bathed in the pink light of the rising sun and drooling gently. A half-eaten bagel serenely rises and falls with the movement of Tanya the producer’s chest as she slumbers.
“They just need to get it on already,” agrees Ana. She’s the replacement sound technician; the fact that she also happens to be very experienced in a number of obscure martial arts is not a coincidence. “The first unit said that Nandor moped all the way through Pottery Barn when Guillermo told him that the glittery unicorn pillow was tacky as shit. Ah, fuck.” She downshifts the van abruptly and slams on the brakes; as one, all of their gear bashes itself against the rear doors. “Fucking bridge. Bagel me.”
Cecil loads a bagel up with cream cheese and presses it into her hand. “Do you think they will, though? I mean, Guillermo seems a nanosecond away from just throwing in the towel, staking them all, and going back to Panera Bread.” He looks at the half-eaten bagel in his hand. “Do you think he’d give us a discount if he did?”
“Honey,” says Ana with her mouth full. “Did you see how they were looking at each other during Laszlo’s séance fart jokes last night? They’ve got it bad, even if their laundry lists of internalized shit prevent them from seeing it. I guarantee you that Nandor the Relentless wants nothing more in the world than a relentless reaming from a certain vampire slayer.” She lays on the horn conversationally as some asshole in a Mini Cooper swerves into her lane.
“There’s no way it’s going to happen. They’re both too chickenshit.”
“Are you calling a vampire and a vampire slayer chickenshit?”
“When it comes to feelings? I most certainly am. They’re emotionally illiterate, and you heard it here first. Guillermo will get fed up with the fact that his 13th-century dreamboat will neither nail him nor turn him into a vampire, and he’ll leave.”
“Wanna bet?”
Cecil casts a glance back at the snoring crew. “You know what? I do.”
*
As usual, dusk finds them unloading the van in the frigid alley behind the vampires’ house. The gear is mostly unscathed, save for a half-bagel glued to the boom mic with cream cheese.
“One other rule,” whispers Cecil, handing Ana a bag of headphones.
“What’s that?”
“No interference.”
“You seriously think I’d compromise my journalistic integrity—”
“To see some sexy men with supernatural abilities swoon into each other’s arms? Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Ana shoves the entire camera into his chest with more force than strictly necessary. “I hate you. Go set up.”
*
It turns out that they’re a lot less stealthy than they think they are. Less than an hour into the shoot, Guillermo and Nandor try to walk through the same door at the same time and promptly die of embarrassment (or re-die, in Nandor’s case) and flee in opposite directions. Ana and Cecil's meaningful eye contact is intercepted at once. Granted, that meaningful eye contact also involves Cecil pumping his fist jubilantly and Ana flipping him off.
“Sorry, sorry,” pacifies Ana, hands up. “It’s just a stupid bet about whether they get together. Twenty bucks and a song composed in the victor’s honor. That’s all.”
“Guys,” sighs Tanya, the producer. They’ve wedged themselves behind the draperies in the fancy room so that Tanya can tell them off without having to shout over Nadja and Laszlo professing their undying randiness for one another. “I know that they’ve got the hots for each other. We all know that they’ve got the hots for each other, and we’re all mature enough to only speculate within the comfort of our own brains. Please try to keep it together. It’s unprofessional to…” She trails off and leans out from behind the curtain. Guillermo is lovingly carding his fingers through Nandor’s hair while Nandor stares fixedly at the Camera One and speaks. Very. Very. Slowly.
“Okay. Fine. I want in.”
*
Once Tanya knows something, everybody knows something. Four hours later, they’ve barely clambered into the van with the morning’s supply of bagels (the bodega guy thinks that they’re filming a documentary about bats, which is not untrue) when Cecil turns around in the passenger seat and whips his notepad out.
“Okay. I’m in charge of the betting pool.”
“Why you?” whines Tanya.
“Because my guidance counselor’s bookie taught me how to do it when I was in first grade.”
Ringing silence. “Yes. I have depths. Moving on.”
“I refuse to participate. I have a set of personal and professional ethics to uphold,” declares Rosario, the director.
“Come onnnnnnn, mom,” wheedles Ana, peeling out into traffic.
“Absolutely not.”
“You were fine with Doug getting eaten on the job, but this is where you draw the line?” Ana badgers, laying on the horn as some guy in a Prius cuts her off.
“It’s unprofessional!”
“You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to,” placates Cecil, holding on for dear life as Ana takes the onramp. “No unforeseen riches for you, though.”
“Isn’t the point of a betting pool that you foresee the riches?”
“Shut up, Tanya.”
*
By the time they’re over the fucking bridge, Cecil and Ana have learned a few things. One is that their coworkers have given this issue a lot of thought over the last year. The other is that their coworkers are complete and utter perverts.
“Um, I respect everyone’s opinion, but I don’t really think we’ll be able to confirm or deny whether they engage in…” Cecil squints at his own handwriting. “Painplay? Or which one of them tops. Or whether Guillermo’s a virgin.”
“I don’t know, man, they were going to let us film their orgy…” Ana points out.
“But Nandor’s more private than the rest of them. He’s sensitive,” Tanya rebuts.
“Sensitive? The man’s whole career was a 13th-century joyride of toxic masculinity and mass death.”
“That’s why he’s sensitive,” pipes up one of the interns from where the three of them are shoehorned in the very back of the van. “No feelings allowed when you pillage the village. He had no choice but to stay macho and repress his feelings, and he’s consequently never learned to experience them properly.”
Cecil squints back at her and frowns at his notepad. “Did I get your bet, McKenzie?”
“Should’ve been ‘coffin cuddles followed by breathplay and verbal humiliation followed by more coffin cuddles.’ And then Guillermo has hatesex with Laszlo while Nandor watches.”
“Ah. Yes. How could I forget?”
*
“Remember,” Ana cautions them all as she backs the van into the alley that night. “No interference. These vampires may have left us scarred for life and oddly horny, but we have journalistic standards to uphold. A little betting pool never hurt anybody.”
Rosario makes a noise best described as 'skeptical vuvuzela.' It’s probably justified given that the debate on the drive over about whether the vampire/vampire slayer romance was just a little too star-crossed to succeed had resulted in two shouting matches, one wedgie, one Chapstick-to-the-face, and a lot of swearing.
“Come on, Rosario. We’re all professionals here.”
“And other lies we tell ourselves,” mumbles Rosario as they all pile out into the snow.
“For a weird artsy hipster, you’re pretty bitter about missing the Super Bowl,” Cecil points out.
“I’m not missing it, I’m just watching it while babysitting a bunch of bloodthirsty idiots in capes,” Rosario snarks back.
It turns out that Guillermo will not be accompanying the rest of the gang to the Superb Owl party. Ana, Cecil, and Rosario lose nose-goes to the first unit, so they trudge off through the snow after Guillermo in search of virgins while the rest of the crew toddles into Sean’s warm, snack-filled house. Whatever.
And that’s how they find out that Guillermo is almost certainly a born vampire slayer who attracts his kind to him like a moth to flame. Granted, in this case “his kind” consists of a bunch of very earnest nerds with very poor aim, but the point still stands. After the mosquito collectors wrap up their meeting, Guillermo trudges out of the warehouse in silence, Ana, Rosario, and Cecil tripping over all their cables in their haste to follow.
“Anything else you want to say?” asks Cecil, pausing to untangle himself.
“No, I’m good. I just have to do some thinking,” Guillermo says, and it’s so soft and wistful that Cecil wants to hug him and make him some tea, non-interference clause (and Nandor) be damned.
“About whether you can stay with Nandor even though you’re a vampire slayer and might be endangering him?” Ana asks, extremely unhelpfully.
Guillermo sighs. “Yes.”
There is a moment of extremely awkward silence.
“Need a lift anywhere?” asks Ana.
“No, thanks. I’m going to walk home. Clear my head. See you guys soon.” With that, Guillermo disappears into the swirling snow.
“Homeboy’s got it bad,” Rosario says into the silence in his wake. “Cecil, I want in on the pool. Put me down for ‘Nadja and Laszlo finally get sick of their shit and yell at them to just do the horizontal tango already because they’re killing the vibe.’ I’ll Venmo you.”
*
The next few weeks are a sleep-deprived blur. They chase the gang down sewers and through lofts and repeatedly walk in on Nadja and Laszlo having sex because apparently their response to a knock on the door is “Enter!” no matter what’s happening within. Cecil is Tiger Balming his camera shoulder every chance he gets; he swears that Ana’s right bicep is now substantially bigger than her left from holding up the microphone. The vampires snipe at each other about cleaning and toxic masculinity and god knows what else; Nandor gesticulates wildly while discussing various 13th-century battles and Guillermo looks progressively more and more Sick of This Shit.
The crew huddle around Cecil’s battered notebook in the back alley, whispering aggressively over each other and jabbing their fingers at the relevant entries. In the office, they pore over footage, lingering on looks and gestures for a bit longer than is strictly necessarily. The Wikipedia page on Van Helsing gets printed out and pinned to the office corkboard, with ever-growing commentary scribbled on it. There are many, many debates about what constitutes homoeroticism.
And they scheme.
“I mean, one of the basic principles of documentary filmmaking is that there’s no such thing as being unbiased,” Ana points out one afternoon, leaning back in her chair and squeezing her stress ball reflectively. “It’s entirely possible that our very presence is influencing Guillermo and Nandor’s feelings one way or another. Hopefully for the better, since we’re forcing them to articulate their relationship.” Two desks over, Tanya and McKenzie are debating the merits of getting Guillermo within Nandor’s supernaturally-enhanced earshot and then loudly recommending he try Tinder. (Not for sourcing virgins, obviously). Demetrius (a.k.a. Camera One) may or may not be drawing fan art that he claims is for the end credits. Rick the editor is sulking because he’s just been shouted down for suggesting that they lock Nandor and Guillermo in a closet and let them sort their shit out in there.
“For all we know, Guillermo’s gonna stake them all and then scram,” says Rosario morosely. “And even if he doesn’t finally crack, there’s the tiny little fact that he might just be predestined to murder Nandor anyway.”
“Those are big words from someone who’s literally playing back year-old footage at one-quarter speed to determine whether Guillermo is checking out Nandor’s twenty-three-inch strap-on.”
“That is entirely beside the point--get OFF of me I do NOT want your hugs you ASSHOLE…”
*
There are, however, minor victories.
“Guillermo? Guillermo, come over here and put your neck in my mouth,” slurs Nandor, aged and drained by Colin Robinson’s newfound power. Tanya grabs Rosario’s arm in excitement; the boom mic jiggles ever-so-subtly as Ana struggles to hold her shit together.
“No, you have to get up and do it ‘cause I can’t get up,” Guillermo retorts lazily.
And then Nandor lolls his head back and makes direct eye contact with Cecil through the camera. “Camera Two, get over here and put your neck in my mouth.”
Sometimes these minor victories turn quickly into minor defeats.
*
“Come on, you were at least a little bit turned on,” Ana wheedles from the driver’s seat. She’s personally bought Cecil a doughnut to congratulate him on being certified by Nandor the Relentless as the most delicious human in the room. “We all saw the footage stutter.”
“It was just the hypnosis,” Cecil mumbles around his Boston Crème.
“Dude. We all know that Nandor is a shit hypnotist. The swooping-around-in-capes thing makes us all a little wobbly at the knees. You can admit it, Cecil.”
*
Gradually, the betting pool expands to encompass a huge and ever-evolving number of scenarios. It’s a sort of cosmic, horny Bingo game with an elaborate points system that no one actually understands. Nightly, they scrutinize their subjects for awkward eye contact (two points to McKenzie), secret giggling (one point to Rick the editor), Nandor springing to Guillermo’s defense (five points to Demetrius), erotic hair-brushing (two points to the mechanic who fixed the van’s radiator), and any of the myriad of scenarios spilling over the margins of Cecil’s notebook. It is totally out of control and they love it. The dawn conversations as they sit in traffic on the fucking bridge become more and more ludicrously adult in nature, and they can all feel the non-interference policy slipping away night by night.
In one such instance, Cecil accidentally teaches Nandor what the young people mean when they refer to someone as a “snack” and Nandor responds by pointing directly at his familiar and deadpanning, “Would you consider Guillermo to be…a snack?” And Cecil, after briefly offering up prayers to a deity he does not actually believe in, leans in close and whispers, “I think that most people would consider him a particularly delicious snack.” He turns on his heel and departs, leaving Nandor to chew on that one.
*
The victories continue, but they become increasingly pyrrhic. When Guillermo slays Carol and nearly stakes a dewy-eyed Nandor in the aftermath, the crew screams at each other loudly enough to seriously rattle the tollbooth attendant on the fucking bridge. Cecil finally gives up on his poor battered notebook and makes a color-coded spreadsheet. (It has formulas and everything). There’s an ever-growing folder on the office’s cloud server that is simply titled “EVIDENCE” and includes screenshots and clips of every single moment that could conceivably signal romantic feelings between master and familiar. Rosario asks Guillermo pointed questions about precisely how involved he is in Nandor’s personal grooming. Tanya “accidentally” locks Nandor and Guillermo in the fancy room one evening. (It does not work). It feels like everything teetering on a precipice and no one knows which way they’ll fall.
*
One evening a mere week later, Cecil has just drawn himself a bath and is daydreaming about what to do with an entire night off from supernatural feelings bullshit when his phone goes off. Cursing quietly and half-in the tub already, he picks it up and reads. Two seconds later, he dials.
“What do you mean, THEY BROKE UP?” he demands the instant Ana picks up.
“I don’t know, dude, Guillermo apparently got a better offer from someone named Celeste and he’s leaving,” babbles Ana. “He cried and everything! and Nandor did the whole ‘well you’re being stupid but whatever, I never needed you anyway’ garbage. And now Guillermo’s gone, and apparently will be a vampire within eight months. Just like that.”
“Motherfucker,” Cecil hisses, reaching for his bathrobe. Judging by the din in the background, the rest of the crew is having roughly the same response.
“Wait, aren’t you happy about this?” Ana hisses. “Doesn’t it mean you won? You didn’t think it was going to happen.”
Cecil stands in silence, dripping on the bath mat. And then, at length: “Well, either way we’ve got to be professionals about it. Looks like we’re splitting up the crew for a minute so we can follow both sides.”
Ana pauses and says with uncharacteristic delicacy, “You feel something for Guillermo, don’t you?”
“I mean.” Cecil swallows. “I want him to be happy.”
“Cecil.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say! There’s nothing going on. He and Nandor clearly love each other, in a twisted and hilarious way.”
“Just…let me know, all right? If you need anything.”
Cecil sighs, gazing at his own reflection in the mirror. “I will.”
*
Cecil and Ana are having a mercifully chill evening shooting with Guillermo at Celeste’s loft a few nights later when their phones buzz in unison. It’s a text from Demetrius.
On our way up the stairs with N. Sorry for the late notice.
“What’s up?” Guillermo asks, catching sight of Cecil’s frown.
“First unit’s coming,” he mutters distractedly, chewing a hangnail. Ana slaps his hand away from his face.
“If the first unit’s coming,” Guillermo says slowly, “That means…”
“Guillermo, you’ve got a visitor!” chirps Karen the perpetually-horny familiar from the doorway. She moves aside to reveal the most awkward tableau Cecil has seen in a while. Nandor is shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, grimacing a bit, and looking everywhere but Guillermo. He’s flanked by Demetrius and Kara, who look as if they desperately want to be anywhere but here. Even the boom mic looks saggy.
“Hello, Nandor,” says Guillermo coolly. “I presume this is a social call?”
Nandor opens and shuts his mouth a few times, but no sound comes out.
“Hey Karen,” says Demetrius in a sudden fit of inspiration. “How about you, me, and Kara here go downstairs and do an interview?”
“Motherfucker,” groans Ana under her breath as the three of them vanish.
*
“Watching that felt…kinda dirty,” Ana mutters as they shove their gear into the trunk of her Subaru.
“You think?” says Cecil, sounding ever-so-slightly hysterical even to his own ears.
“That was a textbook case of ‘we broke up, but I’m trying pathetically to win you back.’ Did you see how Guillermo was lounging? Slick bastard. He definitely won the breakup.” Ana shakes herself. “Of course you saw the lounging, what am I thinking? Shit was downright sensual, although that cardigan was a nightmare.”
“It was a perfectly normal cardigan,” Cecil says defensively. He’s spent the majority of the evening trying to squelch a tiny little flicker of hope, and it’s making him feel a little sick to his stomach.
“How did Nandor decide to gallivant over here, anyway? Doesn’t seem particularly like him to come crawling after his recently-departed almost-paramour.”
Kara coughs delicately from the backseat.
“Do you have something to share with the class?” asks Ana in a tone of voice that Cecil has come to recognize as highly dangerous.
“We didn’t interfere,” Demetrius begins, holding the shotgun mic up as if he’s going to fend her off with it. Cecil buries his face in his hands and decides that the best course of action is to remain absolutely silent.
“I severely doubt that. But I’ll entertain the notion for a moment. How, precisely, did you ‘not interfere?’”
“I mean, you know how it is. They ask you questions about modern human stuff, and you can’t just not answer…it’s a two-way street, sometimes.”
“What did he ask you?”
“He said he didn’t understand how Guillermo could leave him.”
“That doesn’t sound like a question.”
“It was! And the answer was that the authority on Guillermo’s decision to leave is...well, Guillermo. And that his current environment would probably provide clues as to what was lacking in his previous environment.”
“Well done, Kara. Non-interference, my ass.”
“Hey, at least we got some high-quality pining on film.”
“Oh, right, because that shit was in such short supply around here.” Ana slams the trunk shut. “Unbelievable.”
*
The following evening, Cecil finds himself standing in a space-age, pink-lit loft with Ana and Rosario, hearing the phrase “Prepare to orgy!” for the very first time in his existence. He is also questioning most of his life choices, which is probably not a coincidence. Guillermo seems to be just as uneasy. Considering that the man is still wearing his turtleneck under his standard-issue orgy bathrobe, Cecil thinks they might have a fighting chance of convincing Guillermo to just go out for a burger and karaoke instead.
Two seconds later, blood is spraying everywhere and they’re crashing down the back stairwell with Guillermo and Sam as tween vampires lay waste to all the erstwhile orgy participants. The four of them (five if you include the cat) burst out the door and go dashing through the snow. For the record, dashing through the snow is not nearly as glamorous as the song makes it sound. Everyone is covered in blood and yelling; the cold is searing Cecil’s lungs; the weight of the camera threatens to tip him over at any moment. Suddenly, Ana grabs him and points; it’s a moment before he sees the bat, framed in the light of the streetlamp.
“Guillermo!” roars Nandor the second he de-bats.
“It was—the orgy, and—everyone’s dead--” Guillermo babbles, still hyperventilating.
“I don’t want to know about that. Stop gloating! This is very difficult for me to say, so just let me get this out. I know how happy you are with this Celeste, but I have been very unhappy since you left. I just want to know what I can do to bring you back home.” Cecil catches Rosario opening the betting pool spreadsheet on her phone and scrolling intently.
“Oh. Well.” They can see the gears turning in Guillermo’s brain. “I want to feel more respected and appreciated. And I want a day off.”
“What, like every year?” Nandor is mildly aghast.
“Nooo.” Guillermo throws a glance to Cecil through the camera, which makes him think his own non-interference has not been going so hot. “Celeste would give us a day off each week.”
“What? She dresses herself that day? Like some cave pig?” He considers. “Yeesh. Okay. Fine. Once a week.”
“And better snacks.”
“Ice chips are not a snack!” This is substantiated by the fact that Ana always carries snacks in her audio bag for the express purpose of sustaining Guillermo.
“Disagree, but I’m not much of a snacker.”
“Am I not a good familiar to you?” bursts out Guillermo.
Nandor takes deep breath. “You’re a great familiar.” Rosario is furiously tapping cells on the spreadsheet and typing.
“Thank you. So, you’ll make me into a vampire.”
“Did I promise that?”
“You did, eleven years ago.”
“That’s a long time.”
“You know, maybe Celeste would—” Guillermo makes to head back the way he came. You brilliant bastard, thinks Cecil.
“Okay, okay, I promise,” Nandor babbles, clearly panicking.
Guillermo shoots Cecil a satisfied glance through the camera, which is really Not Good for Cecil’s poor confused heart.
“I can’t say when, but. I will, okay?” Nandor pauses, seemingly to fortify himself. “Do you want to come back or not?”
Guillermo goes in for a hug; Rosario’s thumb hovers excitedly over the spreadsheet.
“That’s not necessary.”
Both Guillermo and Rosario’s thumb retreat.
Nandor produces a plastic shopping bag from under his cloak and holds it out. Ana has her (blood-smeared) hand over her mouth, watching in awe.
“I got you this. It’s for beating-off purposes,” Nandor explains. Rosario’s back to furiously scrolling through the spreadsheet again. Cecil tries to remember whether he’d gone in on ‘gift-giving as a love language.’
“Wow…” Guillermo breathes, clutching the pillow and grinning directly at Cecil through the viewfinder, which, again. Not fair.
“Come now, Guillermo. Assume the position.”
And up they fly, the pillow dropping behind them onto the snow.
“I’m not going back for that,” Nandor booms from above, and they disappear into the darkness.
*
The crew races back to the vampires’ house; for once, no one begrudges Ana her flagrant disregard for traffic laws. Cecil and Rosario are tucking and rolling out of the van before Ana has even put it into park; Ana is a nanosecond behind them, hissing at all of them to be careful even though she’s just finished flouting every traffic law known to Staten Island, plus several that haven’t even been dreamed up yet.
They hop the wall into the back garden, crunching softly over the snow and darting from vulva topiary to vulva topiary. The sky has just begun to turn purple, and the snow is drifting softly down on them as they lurk. The candles are lit in Nandor’s room and, miracle of miracles, the curtains are open.
The three of them watch, rapt, as the shadows playing over the bedroom wall draw nearer. There are two of them—they’re very, very close together, and they don’t seem to be moving.
“Are they...” begins Cecil, but everyone shushes him at once, craning their necks to see.
And then a shadow separates itself and draws closer to the window.
“SHIT!” hisses Ana and the three of them dive behind the nearest vulva. Peering through the bush’s bush (not a typo), they watch Guillermo appear at the window, gaze out at the snow for a long, pensive moment, and then twitch the curtains shut.
“Um, we have a problem,” says Ana from behind Nadja’s vulva.
“What makes you say that?” says Rosario, still squinting at the window to try and catch a glimpse.
“We’re not even rolling, you perverts.” She points at the camera dangling in Cecil’s grip.
“Says the pervert hiding behind topiaries right here with us.”
They call it a night there, drive back to the office in silence that positively vibrates, and, once they’re there, proceed to raid the Christmas party booze and get utterly shitfaced.
“This is weird. This is too weird. We’re in too deep,” mumbles Ana from somewhere under her desk, cradling a glass of wine. “And poor Cecil…”
Cecil tries to shush her, but he’s too drunk and it ends up just being a slurred, “Yeah. Weird.”
And it only gets weirder from there.
*
“Well I’ll be damned,” Colin Robinson muses, looking skyward. “Witches.”
“I’ll get the keys,” sighs Guillermo. The crew stares at each other in horror for a moment, then Rosario is shoving Cecil towards the vampires’ retreating backs. “Go, go, go! Use the shotgun mic, it’ll be fine. We’ll be right behind you.” So Cecil scrambles into the backseat behind Colin Robinson (feeling his soul leave his body just the tiniest bit as he does), his phone vibrating nonstop with texts to the effect of “GO WITH GOD” and “GET IT, SON” and “BRING US RECEIPTS.” He hears the van peel out behind them and off they go towards the fucking bridge to Brooklyn, witches swooping overhead. Cecil hasn’t been scared this shitless since Nandor, Laszlo, and Nadja were summoned before the Vampiric Council. His heart is in his mouth as he creeps after Guillermo into Satchel Serafina; the van’s tires squeal behind him as they pull up to Nadja and Colin.
“You guys stay back,” cautions Guillermo.
Things are a bit of a blur after that; first Cecil is in a room of infinite doors with Guillermo, Nadja, and Colin, and then they’re hustling down a short hallway into a vaulted pink-lit chamber full of swaying, incense-swinging witches, two very pronounced vampire boners, and the very horny/terrified first unit. The incense and the swaying and the boners make it really hard to think.
“Nandor has long hair and an accent! Have you slept with him?” demands Nadja. Cecil has sort of lost the plot (he’s blaming it on the incense), but he snaps back to it real fast when Nandor and Guillermo make helpless noises and Nadja throws an appalled glance into Demetrius’s camera.
Cecil’s gaze whips over to Guillermo, still hovering back by the door. His face is impossible to read, and Cecil isn’t sure whether that’s better or worse than him having a visible breakdown.
Things get very confusing after that, but the general gist seems to be that Guillermo is going to harvest Nandor and Laszlo’s semen in mason jars and bring it to Brooklyn. Which, good on him for being entrepreneurial, but holy shit.
(“Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to get that PG-13 rating anymore,” mutters Tanya as they shuffle out the door).
Finally, the boner-filled fever dream is over and they prepare to decamp Brooklyn.
“Well, my dude, I think you need to finish what you started,” says Ana. Before Cecil can blink, the rest of the crew has clambered into the van and peeled out, leaving him standing there with the vampires and Guillermo.
And that’s how Cecil finds himself and his gear wedged in the backseat of the car between Colin Robinson, Nandor, and Nandor’s raging hard-on. Cecil had briefly considered trying to jockey Guillermo and Nandor (and the aforementioned hard-on) into sitting next to each other, but one glimpse of the look on Guillermo’s face in the sharp relief of a street lamp told him that this was a Very Bad Idea.
(“You can fly home, you bastard!” Nadja had hissed to a still-very-erect Laszlo.
Nandor peeked out from behind Guillermo and raised an inquisitive finger. “Am I flying home, Nadja?”
Nadja stared despairingly at him for a moment. “Get in the car, you stupid bloody donkey.”)
If Cecil were thinking straight (i.e. not trying resolutely not to stare at Nandor’s lap while processing a Whole Lot of Shit), he would’ve asked Guillermo to just drop him at the office. But he wasn’t, and as they drive back over the fucking bridge in utter silence with Colin’s eyes glowing neon blue in the darkness, he desperately tries to reconcile what he knows about vampires’ sexual openness with what he suspects about the frailty of Nandor and Guillermo’s hearts.
The second they pull up to the house, Cecil bolts. “Hey guys, I’ll meet you inside—let me just grab the rest of the crew—be right there--” He scrambles over Nandor on his way out of the car and he definitely, definitely does not brush Nandor’s erection with his thigh. Absolutely not.
The van is idling in the alley, and the second Cecil rounds the corner the door is flung open and hands reach out to pull him in.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Ana chants as McKenzie the intern relieves Cecil of the camera.
“Nandor and Laszlo!” Tanya practically shrieks. “Did anyone call that?”
With shaking hands, Cecil fishes out his phone from the inner pocket of his jacket and scrolls through it.
“Um, we had a few guesses for a threesome, or a consensual voyeurism situation, but…nope, no one called that. And no one noticed that, for that matter. The whole time we’ve been here, and…” he trails off. “Have they been doing it the whole time we’ve been here? Ugh. I guess that explains why Guillermo has so much cleaning to do all the time.”
“So what, it’s just…over? The betting pool? And the…uh, non-interference?” asks Demetrius from the shadows.
“Not necessarily,” says Rosario. “these are the people that hosted a fucking orgy, remember? They’re very open about these things. Let’s just get a move on and finish up the shoot. We can freak out later.”
“Okay, well, I guess Kara and I will shoot a talking head with Guillermo if you and Cecil want to take a break for a minute and then check in on the Boner Bros?” offers Demetrius.
Cecil nods gratefully. Every time he shuts his eyes, all he can see is a parade of vampire erections doing a very spirited conga, and it's rather off-putting.
*
Break over, Cecil and Ana ascend the spiral staircase slowly in the dim, predawn house. Down below, they can hear the last few murmurs of Guillermo wrapping up explaining his new bodily-fluid-filled business venture to Demetrius and Kara. He’s just about to open his mouth to tell Ana that Nandor may already be asleep when a long shadow flits across the landing, then turns around and retreats the way it came. Cecil zooms the camera all the way in and starts rolling just as Laszlo emerges onto the landing.
“What are you up to?”
“Oh, nothing much. You?”
“Relegated to the coffin in the basement.”
“Ah. Tough break.”
“You still, uh…”
“Terribly. You?”
“Full blazes.”
“Look, I was thinking that…”
“That we should finish each other off and tell no one?”
“Well, I’m game if you are.”
The last thing Cecil and Ana see before the door closes is Nandor holding his hands enthusiastically at the ready. They stand staring at the door for a few moments until a long, low moan breaks their reverie and they silently, mutually decide to skedaddle immediately.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Cecil nearly faceplants as he clatters down the stairs. He hasn’t turned the camera off and it’s nearly dragging him down; he catches snatches of the view through the loupe and the kaleidoscope of wild lens flare glinting off the chandelier nearly blinds him.
“Cecil? Ana?”
He stops dead, halfway down the stairs.
“Are you guys okay?” Guillermo cocks his head, squinting up at the two of them. Ana pushes her headphones down around her neck and lowers the mic, stalling for time.
“Yep,” Cecil says at present. He’s going for ‘suave and casual’ but lands somewhere around ‘strangled and high-pitched.’
“Just, um. Headed out,” Ana says, waggling the boom mic to illustrate her point.
“Okay.” Guillermo pauses for a moment and panic crashes over Cecil—he knows, he knows, he knows. But then Guillermo squares his shoulders and says very softly, “This stuff can be a lot. For, y’know, humans. To witness and go through and everything.”
Cecil opens his mouth, then shuts it again. The blood is pounding so hard in his ears that he has no idea whether there are any sounds escaping from upstairs.
“…are you okay, Guillermo?” asks Ana.
“I’m fine,” Guillermo says, but it seems to be addressed more to himself than to them. Silence reigns.
“Hey, man,” says Ana tentatively. “When we wrap this shoot up, how about you come out for a drink with us? Hang out with the crew. Be around people who can actually, y’know, eat nachos. We all think you’re pretty neat.”
Guillermo takes a long breath that shudders ever-so-slightly at the end. “Yeah, sure. That’d be nice.” A look of confusion crosses his face. “Have you seen Nandor?”
Cecil and Ana exchange a brief look of pure, unadulterated panic.
“I think he’s put himself to coffin already,” says Ana at last. “Long night, you know. For him and his semen.”
Cecil steps on her foot. Hard. “I think you can probably get some rest, Guillermo. Nandor has himself sorted.”
Guillermo still looks doubtful, but after he sees Ana and Cecil out the front door, his wavery outline in the glass seems to move in the direction of his room under the stairs.
*
Dawn is just breaking when they pull up to the office. Ana and Cecil have debriefed the rest of the crew as they glided over the fucking bridge at the speed limit for once.
“So do we think this is, like, a regular thing? A semi-regular thing? An unrequited-feelings thing?” McKenzie asks from the back. Ana changes lanes without signaling and for once Cecil doesn’t have the heart to tell her off for it.
“Well, we know it’s happened before,” said Ana glumly. “At least once, but, I mean, let’s be real. These guys take horniness to a whole new level.”
“What’s our next move?” asks Tanya. “Clearly we’ve picked sides, and clearly we’ve intervened.”
“Listen. Guillermo’s a grown man. Nandor’s a…well, a 700-year-old toddler warlord. I think we need to let go and do our jobs.” Under the pretense of shifting gears, Ana reaches over and squeezes Cecil’s thigh comfortingly.
*
They follow up with Guillermo a few days later as he makes a semen delivery to the witches. They’ve asked Guillermo to text them when he gets close so they can meet him at Satchel Serafina, and his cheeky “I’m coming. there’s about to be semen everywhere ;)” message to Cecil sends the entire office into a tailspin.
“But what does it all mean?” Kara bemoans as Cecil, Ana, and Rosario put their coats on and grab their gear.
“Don’t know. I’ll ask him and get back to you,” says Rosario, shoving a beanie onto Ana’s head even though Ana has told her a million times that she can’t wear a beanie and headphones simultaneously.
“And bring us back donuts too,” says Kara sweetly.
*
Cecil tries really, really hard not to be That Guy, but the second they stop rolling on Guillermo (and the damn talking goat, who will never not freak Cecil out), his will breaks, Serious Conversation Time be damned. “Dude, that is a TON of semen.”
Guillermo laughs. “Oh, you have no idea.”
“Seriously, though. Is that…normal? For vampires? To just…” At a loss for words, he mimes a huge explosion with his hands.
“You know, I’ve never really asked.”
“Hmm, can’t imagine why not,” Ana snarks, setting off another round of giggles.
Silence falls.
“All right, I’m going to address the elephant in the room here, if no one else is going to,” says Rosario. “How exactly are you harvesting the semen?”
The three of them goggle at her: Ana looks impressed, Guillermo looks stunned, and Cecil can’t be sure exactly what his own face is doing but he’s willing to bet that he’s not looking cool as a cucumber.
“Coffee?” Ana asks, jerking her head at the hipster café across the street.
Guillermo shrugs in a faintly-amused sort of way, and the four of them troop over.
The barista recognizes them instantly, partially because of their tendency to run purely on caffeine but partially because they’re usually really loud. “The usual?” they ask, already pulling out the extra-giant mugs.
“Yeah, thanks,” says Ana. “And whatever this guy wants,” she said, waving her hand at Guillermo.
“Hey, you,” says the barista, sizing Guillermo up. “New hire?”
“Uh, no,” says Guillermo, suddenly shy.
“He’s an outside researcher who we have on contract,” says Rosario quickly in an attempt to save Guillermo from the clusterfuck that is explaining his profession.
“Oh, what are you researching?” asks the barista, ducking into a cloud of milk steam.
“Vampire lore,” says Guillermo blithely.
“Sweet!” enthuses the barista, and mercifully doesn’t ask anything else before Ana steers them all to the table in the back corner.
“So. Semen,” demands Rosario. Guillermo nearly chokes on his tea.
“I’m afraid that it’s not all that scandalous,” he says once he’s stopped hacking up a lung. “I just give them the jars, and they give them back full. It’s not like there’s a shortage of masturbation in that house, and this just means that I’m not on jizz-mopping duty any more, which is a fucking relief.”
“So you don’t ever have to…help?” asks Rosario, because apparently the soup of the day is ‘going straight for the jugular.’ (No vampiric pun intended). Cecil realizes he’s quietly hyperventilating when Ana breaks her cookie in half and shoves the bigger half at him.
“Rosario,” warns Ana.
“No, no, it’s fine,” says Guillermo, worrying at the tag on his teabag. “I try not to ask questions, to be honest. I mean, it’s hard to miss Laszlo sneaking in and out of Nandor’s room…” Ana inhales sharply. Guillermo looks sideways at her before continuing. “It’s fine. It’s all fine. And 3% of the profits is a surprisingly large amount of money, actually. Vampire semen is apparently a hot commodity in the supernatural world. We were sitting on a goldmine this whole time. Sometimes literally, unfortunately.”
“Sure, sure.” Cecil shifts uncomfortably and takes a huge sip of his latte to cover up the fact that he has no idea where he’s going with this. “Have you given any more thought to the whole, um…potentially quitting thing?”
Guillermo suddenly becomes very interested in his tea. “Constantly.”
“I’m sorry, man.”
Guillermo looks around at them thoughtfully. “Okay, real talk,” he says. “Since you just made me tell you about vampire, uh, seed...I’m going to make you tell me about something. If we were just people who knew each other—friends, or colleagues, or something—what would you tell me to do?”
“Guillermo, you know that we can’t do that. This is an ethical minefield for us. We can’t get involved,” Rosario half-begs.
“I think it’s been an ethical minefield for you all from the start, you’ve just been in denial about it,” Guillermo rejoins. “You’ve watched people die in all sorts of ways. You’ve seen some truly disturbing sex stuff. You yourselves have been in danger. If you go through that without developing some sort of feeling about it, you’re a psychopath.”
“But having a feeling is different from acting on that feeling,” Ana argues.
“Haven’t you yourself said that it is impossible to be objective in documentary filmmaking? You’ve made choices, whether you’re aware of it or not.” Guillermo sips his tea demurely, fully aware that he’s hit a nerve. Cecil feels Ana shift guiltily next to him. “Like when you didn’t film anything on the drive back from Nandor and Laszlo’s abduction, Cecil.”
Or when we were lurking in your back garden, Cecil thinks, hoping his shame doesn’t show on his face.
“So please,” says Guillermo. “Tell me what you think. I so rarely get to talk to humans, and I’m trying not to waste the opportunity.”
“Guillermo, you have powers that are beyond our comprehension. You live in an entire world that’s beyond our comprehension. Any advice that we can give you might be moot in that regard.”
“That’s kind of the point, though, isn’t it? That I’m too close to all of this, and you might be able to provide some clarity because this isn’t your life.”
It kind of is now, Cecil thinks. He sighs. “Okay, listen. All I’m going to say is this: I’m very, very far from perfect. But when I’m not sure what to do, I always think of the Hippocratic Oath, even though I’m not a doctor and hospitals in fact freak me the fuck out.”
Guillermo cocks his head in confusion.
“Do no harm,” supplies Ana.
“Do no harm,” Guillermo repeats faintly, and Cecil does not like the look on his face at all.
*
They have a break from shooting for a bit, which is a godsend. As much as they hate to admit it, they’re worn out, overinvested, backlogged, and possibly frostbitten. Cecil hasn’t washed his sheets in an embarrassingly long time, and Ana texts him a picture of the row of extremely dead plants in her windowsill next to her overflowing hamper. When they return to the office one afternoon to prepare for the first night shoot since they’ve been back, it feels better. Weird, but better. Sun is slanting through the windows as they all putter around on email and check the camera gear and eat the cupcakes Rick the editor brought in.
The landline rings. Cecil plops down on the exercise ball sitting next to it and picks up.
“Hello, Jemaine Media. How can I help you?” he says around his mouthful of cupcake.
“Hey, Cecil. It’s Guillermo.” He sounds like he’s outside; Cecil can hear faint city noises in the background.
“Oh hey! What’s up, man?” asks Cecil, bouncing on the ball with a little more force than necessary. Tanya eyes him.
“Um. Listen. You don’t need a second unit tonight.”
“Why not? Are you okay?”
Everyone’s heads swivel around to stare at Cecil. On the other end of the line, Guillermo swallows heavily.
“I’m fine. I’ve just…had to leave for a while. Well, actually. Probably forever.”
“Jesus, Guillermo. Are you all right? Can we help you with anything? Do you need a place to stay, or a lift anywhere?”
Guillermo makes a sound that might just be a cut-off sob. “No, I’m fine. I’m going to stay with family. Just…” He takes a breath. “Don’t say anything to Nandor, okay? I left a note.”
“I promise,” says Cecil. He has stopped bouncing altogether and is death-gripping the edge of the desk. “Guillermo, do you—”
Guillermo hangs up.
*
It’s just Cecil and Ana at the Staten Island house that evening. Usually, Guillermo lets them in, but tonight they enter through the side door that will open if jiggled at a certain angle and with enough force. They ascend the stairs quietly, painfully aware that the last time they did this, Laszlo and Nandor were a few short moments away from getting freaky.
They have been dreading this in a sort of abstract sense, but watching Nandor awaken to find Guillermo gone and having to feign surprise is gut-wrenching. They follow him silently through the house as he searches, increasingly distressed, until he rips aside the curtain to Guillermo’s barren room under the stairs to reveal the note.
He picks it up and shows it to the camera, and Cecil hears Ana breathe the word out along with Nandor. “Sorry.”
Fuck it, they’ll remove it in post.
*
“Serious question,” says Cecil on the way home, because apparently being on the fucking bridge removes all of his filters in one fell swoop.
“What’s up?” says Ana, holding out her hand for more donut holes. (The bodega guy had said they looked like someone had died (not strictly untrue) and handed them the box, gratis). Cecil obliges her. And then waits until her mouth is full before asking, delicately, “So, ethically speaking, is there any universe in which it would be okay for me to ask Guillermo out? And if so, how long should I wait?”
Ana sprays donut bits all over the windshield.
*
So it comes to pass that the gang splits up once again. Kara and Demetrius go up to the Bronx and drown their sorrows in Guillermo’s mom’s cooking, since Ana has decided that Cecil is currently not permitted to be in the same borough as Guillermo. Cecil and Ana therefore find themselves on vampire duty, which means stumbling around the fetid, body-strewn house with their shirts pulled up over their noses. Kara and Demetrius periodically text them photos of all the delicious food being foisted upon them, which doesn’t help. Even the fact that Nandor is wearing his pillaging boots with a basketball uniform and a frilly blouse does nothing to lighten the mood.
Nadja is swanning around as if nothing is the matter. “You know, having a human familiar is great, but to rely on one? I mean, even if they don’t quit, how long will a human familiar live? Hundred, two hundred years?” She looks at Cecil, considering. “How old are you, ninety?”
Cecil swallows, feeling the stench of rot in his lungs. “Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six? Do you have long left, do you think?”
He doesn’t dignify that one with an answer.
*
On their way out the door near dawn, Nandor stops them. More accurately, he tries to stop them, but slips in some blood and then trips over a body and faceplants on the doormat, nearly taking Ana down with him.
“What’s up?” asks Ana, visibly trying not to retch from the smell coming off his basketball jersey. Nandor scrambles to his feet, a leopard-print sock stuck to his cheek with blood.
“Do you know where Guillermo is?” he asks, and his eyes burn in a way that for a brief moment reminds them that he is, in fact, a former warlord and current vampire and could very easily obliterate them and everything they love.
Ana and Cecil glance at each other in a moment of panic: they never did get their story straight. On the one hand, Cecil doesn’t want to lie to Nandor—he likes the guy, in a weird way that is apparently reserved for tall, eldritch toddlers with Middle Eastern accents. On the other hand, they can’t violate Guillermo’s privacy, and Cecil has a sneaking suspicion that admitting to having this information but refusing to share it with Nandor would result in a pretty thorough limb-ripping.
“Nope,” said Cecil. “Sorry, mate. See you soon. Good luck with your laundry.”
They decamp in a bit of a hurry.
*
A few nights later, Ana and Cecil are shouldering their way down a back alley behind the vampires by the light of Colin Robinson’s sparkly shoes. The evening of Nouveau Theatre des Vampires is upon them. Cecil has made a minor concession to fashion and worn a tie; Ana has evidently had a rummage in the thrift store that resides in the lowest pit of hell and come up with the world’s ugliest cardigan. It has poorly-knitted zoo animals on it.
They all bunch up at the door; Nandor is showing the tickets to the ushers, all of whom have terrifying, melted-looking faces. They size Cecil and Ana up.
“Here are your media passes. Make sure you keep them on you at all times.” Usher #1 says it with unexpected gravitas, dangling them in front of the camera.
Cecil nervously hangs his around his neck and Ana does the same. (On the plus side, Ana’s pass covers up a particularly nightmarish zebra). They shuffle nervously into the theatre behind the vampires, who are prattling and hooting about the prestige and the celebrity. When he can’t take it anymore, Cecil pans the camera around the theatre, ultimately landing back on Nandor, who grins and jerks his chin forward as if to say, “Pretty cool, huh?” as if he wasn’t just a heartbroken trainwreck. The vampires take their seats and Cecil and Ana flutter nervously on the aisles, dodging ushers with scary faces and trying not to think about the fact that every single being in this room would gladly drain them dry. Eating tamales with a sad Guillermo while making small talk with his mom suddenly sounds like paradise.
As the house lights lower, Cecil’s phone vibrates in his pocket. It’s a text from Tanya.
It’s a trap. Get out now. We’re on our way with G.
His heart in his mouth, Cecil touches Ana lightly on the shoulder and tilts his head towards the exit.
It’s too late. He feels supernaturally-strong hands grasp the backs of his arms; a voice hisses in his ear, “You’re not going anywhere. Record the play, human. And then we will eat you.” A few feet away, Ana is similarly imprisoned by an usher; he’s ripped a gash right through the part of her cardigan containing a creature that's either a goat or a lemur (it’s hard to tell). A spotlight strikes Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, and Colin Robinson as another set of goons pounces on them, tying them up with silver rope.
If they survive, Cecil is going to watch this footage back a million times, because this shit is an absolute trip. Poorly-cast actors bumble around the stage, pretending to kill vampires—first the Baron, then the string of assassins, and then—if this wasn’t so dire he would’ve snorted—the entire disco cult.
For a wild moment, he thinks he should speak up: sitting on hard drives in Brooklyn (and in the most private recesses of Cecil’s heart) is the incontrovertible evidence of exactly who is responsible for all the vampire killings. God knows Cecil has gotten inappropriately turned on enough times at the sight of Guillermo going into full BAMF mode and staking an assassin.
He realizes, though, that at best no one is going to believe them. And at worst, they’re going to get eaten prematurely.
As Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, and Colin are hustled up to the stage, Cecil and Ana’s handlers prod them to follow. “Get nice and close,” Cecil’s goon hisses wetly in his ear. Hands shaking, Cecil presses his eye to the loupe and zooms in on the four spotlit vampires.
And then he notices something—a flash of a familiar face in the rigging above the stage.
It’s Guillermo, and by the looks of it, he’s armed to the teeth. There’s absolutely no way he can take on a room full of vampires, but it certainly seems as if he’s going to try. Meanwhile, Nandor is trying to wheedle his way out of being executed, with what looks like little success.
"If you want to know who killed the Baron--we know who killed the Baron, don’t we, guys?” says Nandor desperately. He takes a deep breath (that, given his lack of a need to breathe, seems to be purely for the theatrics of it) and intones, “The Baron was killed by…a chap named…Guillermo.”
“Motherfucker,” hisses Ana from darkness beside Cecil. It’s entirely possible that if the vampires somehow fail to murder Nandor, Ana will finish the job herself.
“Wait,” breathes Cecil. “I think…”
“Guillermo…Guillermo who?”
The vampires start babbling about what Guillermo’s last name might be. Guillermo Buillermo, seriously? Take a long hard look at your fucking choices, Guillermo. Up in the rigging, Cecil sees Guillermo’s mouth moving. He’s saying something. Unfortunately, Cecil’s crap at reading lips.
Ana nudges him suddenly; he turns to see her clutching her headphones and staring from her field mixer to Guillermo in shock. Somehow, she can hear what he’s saying.
The smooth bastard mic’d himself up.
“He was my familiar!” rages Nandor. “And when I found out that my own familiar was killing vampires all over the place, I was so angry with him. So angry, so…I killed him with my bare hands!”
Cecil has to admit, he didn’t think the guy was this smart. Ana’s eyebrows have just about hit the ceiling in shock.
“And just for the record, it had nothing to do with the fact that he may have walked out on me after ten years. You know, when you care about someone and they just walk out the door. “Oh, I’ve had enough of you.”” Nandor has apparently decided that this is the time to pour out hundreds of years of repressed feelings. Ana and Cecil shrug at each other.
“Okay, you’re getting into some of your personal issues now,” cautions the ringmaster. A flash of triumph crosses Ana’s face; Cecil mentally summons the betting pool spreadsheet and realizes that Ana had indeed put her money on a heartfelt, dramatic confession of love from Nandor at a very awkward time.
There’s a flash of movement from up in the rigging and Cecil’s stomach does what feels like a full flip. Then Guillermo himself does what looks like a full flip onto the stage, trenchcoat whipping around him, and starts slaying vampires. Casually.
“Move, move!” Ana hisses; Cecil has been so fixated on Guillermo he hadn’t realized that their captors have fled. The two of them rush after Guillermo through the clouds of steam and geysers of blood, tripping over bodies and swearing profusely.
“He’s killing vampires,” states Laszlo baldly.
“Is Laszlo seriously turned on right now?” hisses Ana as Guillermo stakes two vampires at once.
“Probably,” replies Cecil, ducking a jet of holy water and following Guillermo further into the melee. Presently, he realizes that Ana has abandoned all pretense of journalistic objectivity and is bludgeoning the nearest vampire with the back end of the boom mic. He sighs and starts kicking at the backs of knees as he cuts back and forth between Guillermo’s killing spree and the four vampires bound on stage. Nandor has apparently taken it upon himself to become Guillermo’s personal backseat driver/cheerleading squad. It would’ve been kind of cute, if Guillermo wasn’t actively fighting for all of their lives.
“Behind you! Get him too!” Nandor yells; Guillermo whips around and advances on a cluster of vampires, cross drawn. The vampires shriek and flee and in the confusion, something strikes Cecil from behind. He goes down into darkness.
*
When he comes to, it’s eerily quiet. The smell of burnt flesh and fresh blood is enough to make him gag. He realizes he’s underneath the body of a dead vampire and slowly begins inching his way out, spluttering a little on her feather boa.
A bloody hand reaches down into his field of view, and his eyes snap up. It’s Ana. He grabs her hand and rises slowly, quietly to his feet. Fortunately, the two of them are shrouded in darkness at the edge of the theatre.
The camera seems undamaged, so Cecil raises it to his shoulder and begins rolling. The theatre is strewn with the bodies of vampires, steam rising off of them. In their midst stands Guillermo—blood-soaked, somber, and in his own fucking spotlight, because of course he’s in his own fucking spotlight.
Nandor, Nadja, Laszlo, and Colin are still bound on the stage.
“Is there something you weren’t telling us?” asks Nandor mildly.
“My name is Guillermo de la Cruz,” says Guillermo, slowly and with great power.
“Ahhh,” intones Nadja, a lightbulb going on over her head.
“We don’t give a shit what your name is! We had to do our own laundry,” Nandor wails.
“Balls,” hisses Ana. Everyone whips around to look at her and Cecil. “Oops,” she says softly.
“Jesus, you two look like you’ve been through a meat grinder,” says Colin conversationally.
“Vampire-and-vampire-slayer ONLY moment of reckoning, guys,” Nandor yells.
“Go,” says Guillermo, locking eyes with Cecil and pointing to the exit with a bloody stake.
They go.
*
The rest of the crew is waiting for them outside.
“Well, shit,” says Rosario as they come into view. Tanya swats her.
“Hi, nice to see you too,” grumbles Cecil, setting down the blood-spattered camera.
“I take it Guillermo won?” asks Demetrius.
“Like a BAMF.”
“And they’re all still in there?”
“Yup.”
“And they sent you out?”
“Yup.”
“And now what?”
Against all odds, Cecil finds himself grinning. He looks over to Ana, who looks as blood-crusted and shell-shocked as he feels, and realizes she’s smiling back at him.
“Who knows?” He shoulders the camera and starts trudging towards the waiting van.
The fucking bridge awaits.