"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX: The Underworld Club

 

            We all passed through a narrow, dimly-lit hallway, and I had a sense of being further… ‘investigated.’  An unlikely, unnatural breeze seemed to be blowing through the hall, ruffling my clothing (invisible stalkers, I later found out, checking for weapons and other contraband).  Then, light abounded as we entered the common room.

            And what a sight for undead eyes!  The Underworld Club was ultra-modern, not at all what I had expected, which would have been more like something out of a Dungeons & Dragons adventure.  Bellissima looked utterly gobsmacked, and I took a small measure of gratification from the fact that Spike and Adrianos appeared astounded as well.  The interior of the ‘Club could change drastically from visit to visit, maybe even from hour to hour, for all I knew.  Perhaps at the whimsy of its patrons… or, more likely, the whim of its owner.

            The bar area was predictably packed, and there wasn’t an open table in sight.  The eclectic gathering of beings made the Cantina in a certain sci-fi movie classic seem downright mundane by comparison.  There were other vampires in addition to us, but we were in the minority.  There were humans of all sizes, races, physical ages, and historical ages.  A group of people wearing 2070’s-era clothing was seated next to a rowdy barbarian horde that looked like they had wandered out of that D&D module.

            A quartet of anthropomorphic canines -- werewolves, I presumed -- glanced our way, checking out the new arrivals.  One of them growled, but then they all turned back to their meal of raw meat, and whatever scintillating topic of conversation interests lycanthropes.

            There was even a table of what appeared to be sentient squirrels, chattering away like they were the best of friends while playing some sort of card game.  Another creature pushed past us, one that vaguely resembled a walking, talking amoeba… and I started to doubt if all the beings here even called Earth ‘home.’

            As I re-tuned my attention away from the captivating cacophony of background noise, I became aware of the music that was emanating from a far-flung corner of the room.  Apparently it was ‘Guitar Hero’ night, and an old rock & roll classic was being played.  In the enduring spirit of bad karaoke, the singer wasn’t quite hitting all the high notes -- “Let them all make their own music… The Priests praise my name on this night…” -- but, personally, I appreciated the song and the effort.  I hoped that, Akem willing, I would ‘live’ to see the year 2112 myself.

            Bellissima was the first to make a move, finally, and I knew something had her undivided attention from her bowed head and the dangerous look in her narrowed eyes.  I followed the path of her white-hot gaze, and my heart sank.  A pair of vampires with extremely pale, purply-white skin and twisted, needle-like fangs were sitting at a distant table, Kindred from a clan that was all-but-extinct nowadays: Nosferatu.

            I took a heavy step in her wake, but was immediately restrained by a strong hand gripping my arm.  Highly perturbed, I turned my body, half-expecting to see the troll doorman waving a list that our names didn’t happen to be on.

            It wasn’t the troll.  It was worse.

            “Señor Nevik…  qué pasa, amigo?” Draconus asked, smiling a toothy smile that stopped well short of his golden-brown eyes.  His dark-brown hair was slicked back, and his suit was so well tailored it made Adrianos’s look like Ad had stolen it from a homeless man in Queens.  In lieu of a tie, Draconus had left the top buttons of his designer dress-shirt undone… the better to show off his Adonis-like pecs.  The fake-smile vanished as the vampire squeezed my arm a little tighter.  “What the fang are you doing here!?”

            I waved my free hand at Adrianos in a placating gesture as he turned toward us, sneering, and I jerked my head significantly in Belli’s direction as I made eye contact with Spike.  Nodding, Spike started navigating her way through the sea of crowded tables and chairs.

            “Drac…” I began, erecting my own carefully-constructed façade of a smile as I forcefully freed my forearm from his grasp, “so nice to see you again.”

            “Lies do not become us,” Draconus said.  “And she does not want to see you.”  He glanced over my shoulder at Adrianos.  “Either of you.”

            “How about we let her make up her own mind about that?” I countered.  This little pissing match was quickly growing tiresome, and I had other things to worry about.  I glanced at the table with the two Nosferatu, and Bellisima was getting ever-closer, taking a somewhat circuitous route… almost like she was stalking them.

            “Dani and I run a respectable establishment, jovencito,” Drac warned.  “You’d better not cause any trouble here.”

            I blinked at him, understanding coming slowly.  Firstly, his use of Siren’s ‘real’ name caught me off-guard (by design, no doubt).  I had only come to learn of it myself in the past year or so.  And secondly… my Spanish was horribly rusty, but if ‘jovencito’ was anything close to ‘youngling,’ I was going to introduce Drac to my inner-demon.  Quite literally.

            Instead, I backed slowly away from him, trying my damnedest to ease the escalating tension by forcing the polite, expected honorific past my lips: “Lord Draconus, believe it or not, I’m trying to prevent some very real trouble.  By your leave…”

            With that, not waiting for his ‘leave’ or permission or anything of the sort, I dissolved into black smoke and swiftly misted away.  My skewed senses executed a minor betrayal of perception… instead of crossing the tavern, it felt like the other side of the room came to me.  When I rematerialized, seconds later, I caught the gist of an intense argument, already in progress:

            “…haven’t you tormented our kind enough already!?” asked the male vampire, subconsciously wrapping his sable-colored cloak more tightly around himself as he shriveled into his chair and glared at Bellissima with beady white eyes.  “You killed our Master.  Just… leave us alone!”

            The bounty-hunter loomed just behind the female Nosferatu, the smug look on Bellissima’s face diminishing her beauty, in my eyes.  “A vampire blood-feud is forever, you Nozzie scum.  I’ll rest when I’ve personally introduced all of you to the True Death.”

            “This is neutral ground, Lady Bladedancer,” said the vampiress.  I looked at her, while Bellissima curtly acknowledged my arrival with a sideways glance.  Nosferatu were hideous to humans, bat-like and feral, and even other Kindred tended to regard them with contempt.  Yet, while the male easily fit the stereotype, the woman sat up straight in her chair, and had lovely long lavender hair.  She certainly had an air of determined dignity about her.

            A cruel grin crept across Belli’s face. “That it is… but you’ll have to leave at some point…”

            The male had heard enough.  “Come on, Murin.  Let’s go somewhere else.”  He licked his fangs, essentially sticking his tongue out at Bellissima.  “I had no idea they allowed pompous Varaco b*****s into this place…”

            I knew that insult would set off Belli like a torch to a powder-keg, so I lunged over to restrain her.  As she struggled mightily in my forcibly gentle grasp, I looked madly about the room, trying to figure out where Spike had disappeared to… but I didn’t see her.  I did see Adrianos, conversing with Draconus, and overheard snippets of their conversation.  They were speaking completely in Spanish, and the meter of their dialogue was congenial, even though I had a sneaky hunch the words themselves were not.

            The two ‘Nozzies’ attempted to recuse themselves from the brewing confrontation, collecting their meager effects as they stood up from the table.  The male, hunched over from some unseen deformity, seethed at Bellissima as he walked by.  But the female paused, turning back to Belli, a look of profound sadness on her face.

            “Daemus was my Sire,” Murin said, her voice trembling slightly.  “I… …we were close.  While Lord Daemus and your Darius were not exactly friends, they respected each other, as Elders… as Kindred.  And they had an understanding -- they would not fight unless they were the last two Scions left.

            “What I mean to say is… Daemus did not kill Lord Darius.”

            “THAT’S A LIE!!” Bellissima bellowed, thrashing in my restraining embrace like I was a vampire-shaped straitjacket.  “I’m going to kill you so hard, your childe will feel it!”  Bellissima slid her hand fruitlessly across her partially-exposed hip.  “Nevik, I need you to teach me how to form an ether pocket…!”

            I resolutely shook my head, holding Bellissima even closer, trying to ignore the wonderfully flowery smell of her… like lilies, still.  “It’s not that simple, Belli,” I tried to explain, “you have to know exactly…”

            “I don’t CARE!” Belli interrupted.  Her physical protestations began to taper off.  “I want my dagger.  It’s the only thing I have left… of him…”

            In hindsight, I should have been more alarmed by the incongruous relaxation of Belli’s trim form.  Then maybe I wouldn’t have been surprised when she broke apart into a dozen-or-so ephemeral tendrils of red mist, fleeing from me, chasing after her quarry.

            Bellissima coalesced atop a table, drawing an angry shout from the witches and warlocks seated there.  Her claws came out, and she looked ready to pounce -- to kill.

            “Don’t do it, darling,” said a voice, soft yet somehow filling up the whole room.  “I’d hate to have to throw you out into the cold, when all the fun is in here…”

            It would have been the height of hyperbole to suggest that literally everyone in the ‘Club stopped what they were doing to turn and look at the source of that sultry voice… but nearly everyone did, to be sure.

            Siren was slinking slowly and confidently across the room, an anxious-looking Spike trailing behind her.  Gorgeous light-brown hair hung down to her bare shoulders, framing her glimmering blue-green eyes.  Siren wore her little black dress so well, it was almost like she had invented the LBD.  Heh… as far as I knew, she had.  And she was wearing a candy-apple-red pair of FMP’s, with stiletto heels that turned yet another head with each sharp *click!*

            She walked in a straight line toward Bellissima, the cornered Nosferatu, and me; the crowd, the tables and chairs, all seemed to part before her.  Siren stopped at the edge of the witches’ table, and she flicked her gaze up at Belli.  “Come down from there, girl,” she said.  It wasn’t a request.

            Bellissima obeyed, bowing her head, looking very much like a Fledgling who just got caught with her hand in the bloody-chip cookie jar.  She brushed past Siren, and fell into Spike’s waiting arms.  Siren then turned her attention to the woman Nosferatu, who combed her purplish hair back and bravely held her chin high.

            “Lady Devonshire, you and your companion will always be welcome here.”  Siren touched Murin on the arm, and all the latent tension seemed to flow out of the other vampiress.  “I apologize for the… disturbance.  If you still choose to leave, go in peace.”

            Murin Devonshire and the other Nosferatu put their arms around each other, and ducked their heads as they got out while the getting was good.  They looked like refugees… which, in a sad sort of way, they were.

            Siren then looked back at me, and a half-smile that I knew (and still loved) very well came to her stunning face.  “Hello again, Nevik.  Is that an invitation?”

            At first, I wondered if she had plucked a stray thought from my racing mind… Siren was a highly skilled vampiric telepath, the best I had ever known.  But then I remembered the stupid shirt: BITE ME.

            She was upon me in the bat of a ‘lash, pushing me back onto a nearby tabletop and ripping my shirt open as her eager fangs found my chest.  They tore through my unprotected flesh, and the blood came, warm and wet.  “Das blut ist das leben,” she murmured, in her native tongue, as she supped from me.

            The couple at the table happened to be vampires as well, and their eyes glowed a bloodlusty red as they leaned in for a whiff, and perhaps a taste as well.  Siren detached from my now blood-smeared pectoral just long enough to warn them off.  “He’s MINE!” she hissed, the sea-green Glamour in her gaze beyond irresistible.

            The other vamps backed off quickly, and Siren sank her fangs in again, sucking the blood out of me, hard, taking me into her.  My vision grew blurry, and on some level it occurred to me that I should be trying to push her away… not weaving my shaking fingers into her oh-so-soft hair and holding her against me.

            She drank and drank.  The music grew faint.  I was dying.  Someone infinitely far away called her name.

            The dark claimed me.

 

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