by Ana Calin
Herald grabs my arm and strains to pull me up but, of course, he’s not strong enough. To him, it’s like I’m made of lead. I bring myself to my feet, still in my high heels, and still taller than him. He looks up at me with those drooping puffy eyes, his decaying face, the face of a man who’s indulged in booze, drugs and bad food for way too many years, stirring my thirst. My throat prickles. He fits the profile of my preferred prey, and I actually start to fantasize about him a bit. Fantasize about all the ways I could kill him now, and feast on his blood.
“I’ve never been with a vampire girl before, you know,” he says. I suppress a laugh. I can’t believe he’s actually trying to intimidate me, make me feel that he could take me, use me. My brain buzzes with the need to teach him a lesson. That’s what all men ever wanted from me, use me like a slave, like I don’t have a soul. I create empathy in the bastards’ hearts by mirroring that back at them.
He traces my cheek with his hand.
“You’re colder than a human, but not freezing cold like in books or movies.”
“You read a lot of vampire books?”
“I did my fair share of research after I found out about your existence.”
“Twilight and Lestat are hardly research.”
He grins a bad grin, and says, “Tell me, beautiful, if I slapped you, would it hurt?”
A memory comes to mind, the first guy who satisfied his secret fetish for slapping on me. I think I was thirteen, but I might have been younger. It was back in Russia, and he wasn’t my first. His heavy palm struck my cheek, my mud-encrusted hair flying around my face when my head snapped to the side. Luckily my skin went numb after a few slaps, making it all easier to bear. After a while I actually discovered slapping was a blessing—it saved me from sex quite often, so I came to prefer it, and actively search for clients like that.
“Why don’t you try?” I whisper to Herald, not completely in the present with him, lust for revenge rising to my throat. It starts a whirl, and my gums at the root of my fangs prickle with the urge of sticking my canines into this bastard, keep him down and tight and watch him struggle like a fish on dryland.
“Do it,” I entice him. “Slap me as hard as you can, come on.”
And he does. He slaps me so hard that his brittle wrist cracks. He howls, grabbing it and bending from his waist like he’s breaking in half.
The door tears open, and I know I should be acting vulnerable, scared, but I can’t move. Memories of the past flood me, all the bastards that abused me, then the bastard who fucked me bloody.
My first vampire. How old was I, maybe fifteen? I should probably be grateful. Had he been a normal human, a mortal Jack the Ripper, that would have been that. I would have found my end as a child prostitute at his murderous hands, and it wouldn’t have meant much in a prison town in cold, far east Russia. Nobody would have investigated the story behind the dead body lying in a frozen ditch, practically encased in dry blood.
Goons flood the cabin. Fuck, there’s too much rage and fire in the way I look at them, but luckily it’s just the human gorillas the establishment uses as bouncers. The thirst whirls harder, raising like acid from my stomach to my throat—they’re healthy, well-fed, full of high-quality blood; in their job they need to keep away from booze, drugs and junk food in order to be strong enough.
I jump on the last guy, the one who took my phone two nights ago, promising to fuck me with all his friends one of these days, keeping the when to himself just to heighten my anxiety. He gives in easily under the weight of my body. I turn him around on the floor and straddle him so that it looks like I’m about to ride him, meeting his eyes. It all happens so fast that his friends don’t even get to react, only stare at us with their hands still on Herald Gruff.
My upper lip curls over my fangs, letting the man under me understand he’s about to become food for a predator.
“Open the curtains, just open the fucking curtains,” Herald yells, but the men aren’t fast enough. I take delight in the instant that my claws come down on the big bastard, slitting his throat so that his blood comes gurgling out of it.
Ah, the scent of that thick, healthy blood. I roll my eyes, high with the knowledge that I’m going to still my thirst with it. Right at that moment one of the others reaches the window and pulls the curtains open, but I throw myself to the ground, gripping the sides of my food’s shirt and rolling him to the side so that he covers my body and doesn’t expose the fact that I’m no longer sensitive to daylight.
His blood pours over my hands. I take advantage and lick at the thick streams of blood, letting it soak my senses. The instant my fangs sink into his wounds he starts to twitch, straining to fight but only managing to gurgle, dying. God, how I enjoy his pain as I take his life, and right before he passes I manage to stop long enough to whisper in his ear, “Now think about how you promised to fuck me with all your friends.”
And so he dies, thinking of me.
“What the hell is going on here?” It’s an androgynous voice that brings to mind the male dancer with the body painting, the one I saw dancing on both nights I was at the club. The other girls said he was the boss’s favorite, and that the boss was a woman.
“Kareem,” the guy from the curtains yelps. “She just, she just...”
“Stop this, or Gee’s gonna have yo’ ass,” the dancer called Kareem says in the tone of someone who’s in charge. “Pull the curtains back shut.”
The bouncer obeys, while Herald yaps his complaints at Kareem. The male dancer helps me up, ignoring him.
“You’re gonna have to wait until Gee has seen her. She’ll decide what to do with your vampiress catch, but really now, what did you expect? That she’d let you pet her, and purr in your hands? Besides, it’s not like anyone will miss this piece of shit.” He kicks the dead body that drips blood on the clean white carpet. I can’t help but think of rose petals falling on a grave in winter, in thick snow.
Kareem leads me out of the room, his hand on my upper arm. He’s gentle, and even friendly. It hits me that he’s the first man who’s ever showed me kindness besides Dracula’s fatherly kind of affection.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t how it has to be here,” he says, his palm warm and soft on my flesh. He’s fully human, and I’m glad that I had such a good meal right before he walked in. Otherwise I might have been too thirsty, too turned on by his warm human touch to resist the urge of taking his blood.
“I didn’t really expect a bed of roses when I came here. I was perfectly aware it was a whores’ establishment.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want with you. We trade in pleasure, not in violence.”
I look at him, and he smiles. That’s a first—a human looking back at me with compassion. I don’t need to know Kareem well to know he is a great human being. He can respect people without having to fear them first, and he has a loving heart.
As we approach an office on the top floor I stop to grasp my success. I made progress from Herald Gruff to the next person in line to the Serpent Lord. The woman who runs this establishment, Lady Gee.
Irina
I SHOULDN’T REALLY be surprised to find myself face to face with such a familiar character.
“Geneva Daniel,” I greet when her swivel chair turns, revealing her identity to me. “Wife to wealthy cripple Zdrovan Daniel, and Prince Michael’s, wait, what was it—concubine, cougar playmate?”
“Labeling my relationship to Michael the Bad isn’t why you’re here,” she says, pushing herself up from the chair and approaching me. “But later you’ll have the revelation of my relationship to someone you know much more intimately.”
“That sparks my curiosity.” I’ve never been in any way intimate with the Serpent Lord, but I guess she doesn’t know that.
She inspects me up and down like I’m merchandise. Another feeling I’m familiar with, and that triggers me. I wanna bite her head off, see her blood soak her suit jacket, her mop of black hair cake with it.
Seems what happened with Lazarus last night had side-effects. The experience reactivated past pain, and irritated my murderous side. I’m filled with bloodlust because of all the loveless fuckery I endured, and it only becomes clear to me now because a man showed me kindness for the first time in forever. Kareem, the dancer with the body painting.
“I’ll leave you then,” the androgynous Kareem says, but Geneva stops him.
“No, stay. I’m going to need your help with this.”
“My help?” He sounds confused, and I’m uncomfortable with Geneva involving him. I’ve been in this crime business for too long, I know when something’s off.
Geneva takes her seat at the desk, looking like a boss, and invites me to sit down as well.
“Don’t get too comfortable, though,” she says. “You’ll find your quarters later on to be less cozy, I’m afraid.”
I feel like a wild animal facing her like this, with half my face and my claws full of blood. I can tell that the sight of me impresses her too, even though she does her best to hide it. Her poker face would fool anyone else.
“Irina Motovilova,” she begins after I’ve taken my seat, showing off that she’s well informed. “Born in Moscow, but raised in one of Russia’s coldest, most hell-like prison towns. Your father was a convict. Igor Motovilov, a serial killer.”
“He was a hit man for Moscow mobsters,” I correct her. “And their scapegoat. They sacrificed him to save their own asses.”
“Funny that you should defend him like this. Paid hit man or not, he was very cruel. His mission was to kill, not to hang old men from chandeliers by the guts of their own dogs.”
I can sense Kareem shudder behind me. I lean over to Geneva with fire in my eyes.
“That particular guy had his pitbull tear apart a maid who wouldn’t open her legs for him. The dog killed her, and he watched. The bastard never expected the maid’s lover would pay a hit man to end him in pain.”
Geneva waves her nicely manicured hand that I’d so love to snap. “Reasons don’t matter anymore. It was a chain of who has better motivation, who’s in the right, who kills whom in a crueler fashion, but these things always end in a bloodbath. Igor Motovilov was sent to prison, and his wife and daughter followed. Trouble was back then in Russia,” she explains looking at Kareem, “that these prison towns were no less deadly than the prisons they hosted. Populated by convicts’ wretched families, forsaken creatures that Mother Russia didn’t give a damn about, many children didn’t make it past fourteen. Our beautiful Irina Motovilova was one of them. Her only luck was that the man who killed her was a vampire.”
“I suggest you stop right there.”
Geneva smiles and looks down to her laptop screen, her manicured index finger crawling like a worm on the mouse pad as she scrolls.
“Lord Dracula found her soon—I won’t get into the details of why he sought her out especially, because, as you see dear Kareem, she doesn’t want us to go there. All I can tell you is that something happened between her and her first vampire that required Lord Dracula’s personal attention.”
“Stop,” I say, letting Geneva sense the danger.
“Why, luv? It’s not like Kareem is gonna go telling people, this is only—”
“Kareem is not the problem. You are. You’ve made your point, now tell me why I’m here.”
“You tell me.” She sags back in her chair, her face now serious. “Why are you sniffing around Herald Gruff? Why did Dracula send you?”
There’s no point denying Dracula’s involvement. I tell her the truth.
“So the Old Priest gave demoness Ruxandra, Dracula’s wife, a riddle to the secret of immortality, and told her he also gave it to the Serpent Lord, hoping with the riddle and the competition she’d have reason enough to keep him alive. But she killed him anyway, and now you’re out searching for the answers.”
I nod, my eyes not leaving hers.
“Well, all you need is patience until tomorrow. You’ll meet the person that the Old Priest talked to. And you’ll have one hell of a surprise.” The glint in her eye worries me a little, but not enough to break my balance. She stands and leans on her hands over the desk, her dark hair falling to both sides. She’s fully human and clearly the Devil’s Son never did anything to reverse the aging process with her. I wonder what’s keeping her in the human condition, and if she is required to remain mortal in exchange for the money and power she’s been given by the mafia of supernaturals. If they need her to stay mortal so they can hide behind her.
“Make no mistake, vampire whore,” she hisses. “By tomorrow at this hour there will be nothing left of you. Your body may still live, but your soul will be shattered. We will break you, and then send your soulless case back to Dracula. If he wants the secret to human immortality, he’ll have to come and get it. And if he wants to know what the Serpent Lord has done with it, he’ll have to ask him himself. You will get all the answers. But in the end, you’ll be too broken to tell anyone else.”
She calls her goons, and tells them to escort me down to the dungeon.
“I’m sure you’ll be good with the environment. You’ve seen worse.”
CHAPTER IV
Irina
“No,” I call at the goons, preventing them from walking into the cell with me. I can see that not all of them are human, some are serpent shifters. Geneva sure has better bodyguards than Herald Gruff.
There’s something slimy about them, like their faces are made of jelly-like flesh. I also see in their faces that they’d share me like a whore, and the only thing that’s stopping them is Geneva’s orders. “I don’t want any of you anywhere near me. Let him chain me, and you watch from where you are.” I nod my chin at Kareem.
Kareem looks back at them as if asking for permission, and when the chief-looking goon nods, he walks to me. He’s wearing torn jeans and a dark tank top that exposes his lean dancer body that’s painted over beautifully. The closer he gets, the better I sense the innate goodness oozing from him.
“She’s using you for her pleasure, isn’t she?” I say to Kareem as he fastens the silver cuffs around my wrists. I have to keep him talking so that he doesn’t notice that the silver doesn’t even start to burn my skin. The serpents would have noticed immediately, which is why I kept them away.
“It’s not like that. We... we’re close.”
“Lovers?”
“Occasionally. Mostly, we’re friends.”
“Friends don’t have friends pole dance for them every night.”
“It’s not every night.”
“No, sometimes she has you sleep with people, and she watches. If you’re friends, I wonder why you don’t refuse. You’re not even into women.”
“I’m pan.”
“Okay, but still.”
I would like to keep talking to him, know more. Under different circumstances I’d ask him to stay with me in this dungeon where daylight can’t reach me, but he’d discover my immunity to silver. Though I haven’t been on the receiving end of kindness for so long that I crave his presence like a beaten dog, I have to let him go.
My heart breaks as I watch him leave, giving me one last pity-filled look between the bars after the goons slide the heavy door shut. I find myself wondering—what is it about people like Kareem and I that attracts evil men and women. There seems to be something about us that turns killers on, gives them the nastiest ideas about how they could abuse a human being.
If I ever was as kind and pure-hearted as Kareem, I don’t remember the time. If such a time existed, it’s so long ago not even my vampire memory retains it. But I want to help this boy, save him from the claws of the supernatural mafia that will use him in every way they can, tear apart his beautiful soul and body and then toss his remains to rot in a ditch.
I tug at the chains, assessing how easy it would be for me to break them. But I have to feign weakness to silver, so I start rubbing my wrists against the metal, trying to hurt myself.
“Fuck,” I gr
owl, frustrated, because the material doesn’t have anything on me. It’s like rubbing myself against any other kind of metal, it won’t as much as scratch me.
But soon enough a loose rock in the ground starts to move. The movement is only slight at first, but then it lifts like a latch and Lazarus’ face appears, framed by his dark locks.
“Lazarus,” my whisper echoes in the stone room, betraying my enthusiasm. “How in the world did you find me?”
“I’m your Grail, remember? I sense your thoughts of me like a calling.” He slips the floor rock back into its place, without making a sound that could draw attention. I take the chance that he’s with his back to me to enjoy the view of his body, my heart filling with the strangest feeling. Though I never felt it before, I think it might be unconditional love. I hurt him terribly in the past, and yet he’s here to help me. How pure must his soul be? I’m happy that I at least got to give him the blowjob of his life.
He turns and hurries to me, inspecting the chains. It makes me smile to see him dressed in black plumber pants and a simple black T-shirt, tools around his waist.
“Don’t touch the chain, it will burn your skin like paper,” I warn, my eyes still taking him in.
He reaches behind his back and extracts a jackknife from the holster like a weapon. “I imagined I might find you restrained, so I came prepared.” He searches for the lock and uses the jack on it.
“I didn’t know university professors knew how to do that.”
“I was a peasant boy before I went to college and became a professor.”
He frees me and takes my hand, pulling me after him.
“No, Lazarus, wait.” I pull my hand from his. He turns and stares at me puzzled.
“I think I should stay.”
“What the hell do you mean? They’re going to kill you! Even if you’re now immune to what kills other vampires, if they find out they’ll find a way to—”