I groaned as I rolled over, and my stomach lurched. Maybe moving was a bad idea. My shirt felt crusty and my hair was matted to my head. I was a wreck. I’d never felt this bad after a night of partying. Meridian and M.A.D. didn’t fuck around... if I was going to be partying with them, I’d need to keep my cool. I never wanted to feel like this ever again.
I rubbed my eyes and forced myself onto my side. My stomach slid to the left, whatever was left in there threatening to rise. I gritted my teeth and sat up, trying to breathe through it all. Where the fuck am I?
The room was empty, paint peeling from crumbling concrete walls, and flickering fluorescent lights that just made my headache worse. I was sitting on a bare mattress on the concrete floor, and the sight of the stains on it made me jump up in a hurry. The room spun as my brain tried to catch up with the rest of my body and I staggered and braced myself against the wall to stay upright. My stomach lurched again and I bent over, fighting the urge to throw up.
Enough of that shit. Mind over... stomach. I hated throwing up more than anything in the world. More than how I felt right now.
Hello, Rock Bottom. Rolling Stone is going to love this story.
Sid Vicious had been out of jail for one day before they found him dead... that was a little too close to home. I could see the bodega headlines now: The Future of Punk Rock, Found Dead in a Wet Basement – Eli Maddern Dead at 21.
“Fuck that,” I whispered, rubbing the back of my hand across my mouth.
There was a shattered mirror on the wall across from me, and I could see myself in the broken reflection. Multiple Eli’s with messy hair plastered to the side of his head and a white t-shirt covered in... oh, fuck.
Covered in blood.
I staggered over to the mirror. I’d seen myself looking like utter shit before this, but I’d never looked this bad. My hair was matted to my head with blood and something else, but I couldn’t see a wound. I touched my shirt tentatively, the blood was dark and dry and flaked under my fingertips. My eyes looked funny in the light... a strange shine. It had to be the fluorescents making me look sicker than I actually was. I leaned closer to get a better look.
What the fuck...
The sound of a metal door slamming made me jerk back from the mirror, almost tripping over my own feet as I tried to get my balance.
“Eli!” Meridian appeared at the top of a set of stairs I hadn’t seen. His long leather trench coat flared out behind him as he bounded down the metal staircase towards me. Riah, wearing a low cut black dress came behind him and Lux, M.A.D.’s drummer waited above, tapping his fingers nervously on the rusted metal railing.
“What the fuck happened...”
“Glad to see you on your feet,” Meridian said with a grin. The sight of his teeth, white and sharp, made me wince.
“Don’t be shy, darling,” Riah purred, draping her arms over Meridian’s shoulders. “He looks like shit,” she said to Meridian, he just smiled wider.
“They always look like shit in the first 24 hours. You weren’t so cute when I came to collect you, you know,” he said, tapping the tip of her nose with his finger. She frowned cutely, as though remembering something she didn’t really want to. Meridian shrugged and looked back at me. “Sometimes it takes, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, we find them in a pool of their own blood when the sun goes down. He seems like a hardy type.”
Riah smiled. “If you say so...”
“What the fuck is going on, where the fuck am I and what the hell happened last night?” Was that really the way my voice sounded? What the hell.
Meridian spread his hands and walked towards me, but I stumbled backwards, suddenly feeling unsteady on my feet. “It was a crazy party, man. Girls, drugs, booze... you were a mess. We couldn’t revive you...”
“Revive me?”
What? WHAT.
“Riah called an ambulance, but I knew that by the time they got there you’d be done for... so you had to be turned.”
Meridian’s voice was calm, his eyes never leaving mine.
“You had to what?” My reply was barely a whisper.
“Turn you,” Riah said sharply. “You’re one of us now. One of his.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
My brain was screaming at me to run, to get out of there, but there was only one door, past Meridian, up the stairs and behind Lux.
“I don’t suggest running,” Meridian said, examining his fingernails. “It’s still daylight, and you won’t like what happens when you do that. But, by all means, if you don’t believe me, you can always leave through that door.” He pointed towards Lux. “We won’t stop you.”
I looked frantically towards the doorway. I had to get out, get outside, get some fresh air, drink from a puddle, I didn’t care, and I just wanted to get away from the sickly green light and the peeling paint and that heinous mattress and my reflection in the mirror...
“You wanted to be Sid Vicious… now you can be. Just better. This is what we had planned for him, but he wasn’t as willing to ignore the fine print.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered through gritted teeth. I pushed past him, knocking against his shoulder as I headed for the stairs. I heard Riah’s sharp intake of breath as I grabbed the railing and started to haul myself up the metal staircase. My legs were unsteady, my arms shaking and cold sweat ran down my spine. Lux stood at the top of the stairs, blocking my path.
I would fight him if I had to, but it was going to suck.
“Meridian!” Riah hissed, shaking him roughly. He pushed her away.
“Lux, let him pass,” he called out, and the sickly looking punk with the bad Mohawk moved out of my way.
The door was so close, and I stumbled towards it, my hands outstretched for the metal bar. If I could just get outside, everything would be all right, this was all just some hangover hallucination. They were crazy, it was all crazy. Impossible. They were talking nonsense anyway. Turned? Who talked that way?
The door slammed open, the bar moving sharply under my weight as I fell against it. Sunlight poured through the open door, and I heard Lux cry out, but didn’t hear what he said.
I stood in the doorway for a moment before taking a few unsteady steps . I took my first full breath of fresh air. My heart was pounding, my head was throbbing, but at least I could feel the warmth of the sunshine on my skin.
But it wasn’t warm.
It was hot.
Too hot for February.
“Eli! Get back inside!” Lux was shouting at me, reaching for me from the doorway.
My face stung, as though a thousand bees were stabbing their stingers into my flesh. Everything hurt. Everything.
Lux’s hand finally connected with my elbow as I doubled over in pain, and he dragged me back inside the warehouse and slammed the door behind us.
“That was fucking stupid,” he gasped, leaning against the door and staring down at me, his chest heaving.
I crawled towards the edge of the stairs and looked down at Meridian and Riah. Riah’s arms were crossed over her chest and she stared up at me defiantly. Meridian just smiled.
“Now, you have to stay here until nightfall. I’ll be back to collect you and we can talk more about your contract,” he said briskly. “Try not to go outside until then.”
Lux scrambled over me and bounded down the stairs towards the pair.
“What are you?” I gasped, finally able to breathe as the pain subsided.
“We,” Riah corrected me. “What are we.” She smiled broadly, revealing her sharp teeth. “We’re vampires, idiot. And now you are too. It’s time to come to terms with the rest of your afterlife.”
Meridian chuckled and Riah linked her arm through his as they walked towards a door I hadn’t seen. He opened it with a set of jangling keys and held it for Riah to walk through. She trailed a fingertip across his chest as she walked past him and he smiled indulgently at her.
The hallway beyond was dark, and must lead deeper into the warehouse
. Riah and Lux disappeared into the darkness and I wrapped my arms around the metal railing.
“Sweet dreams, Maddern,” Meridian said with a wink, and then he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.
I was in a prison cell. A cell with only one unlocked door. I could wait for him to come back and collect me, or I could rush into the sunlight and end it all right now.
“You wanted to be Sid Vicious… now you can be. Just better. This is what we had planned for him, but he wasn’t as willing to ignore the fine print.”
Meridan’s sharpened words echoed in my head and I leaned my face against the cold metal.
“You fucking idiot.”
4
I waited for hours. My blood-crusted shirt was crumpled in a ball on the far side of the room, and I’d pulled the shards of the broken mirror off the wall with my fingers.
The cuts on my fingers healed while I stared at them.
I opened the door that led to the great outdoors a few times. On the third time, I took a deep breath and stepped out into the light and got rewarded with a familiar stinging, burning pain for my efforts.
When Meridian came back to get me, I was sitting on the thin mattress, the chill from the concrete floor settling into my bones.
So this is what it was like to be dead.
But I didn’t feel dead. My heart was still beating. I still felt pain. They had to be full of shit. I picked up one of the pieces of the broken mirror and slid the edge along my palm. I grimaced as blood ran down my arm and dripped over the floor. The wound healed almost instantly as I stared at it.
“Careful, that’s the good stuff.” Meridian’s voice echoed in the empty room and I turned around to see him standing at the top of the stairs. “You shouldn’t be so cavalier with these kinds of things,” he said. The heels of his boots struck the stairs almost musically. The steel stairs vibrated with every step he took. “Now that you’ve been through the first, critical, hours of the change you’ll be feeling a little better.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Define better,” I replied.
“Less like vomiting everywhere?”
“That’s a plus at least.”
I laid the mirror shard against my thigh, covering it with my hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “We’ll help you. Riah and the others. You’re one of us now. I know you have a lot of questions.” He stopped at the edge of the mattress and stretched out his hand towards me.
I hesitated for a moment, and then took it and allowed him to pull me to my feet.
“You’re damn right I do. But first, I have to do something,” I said.
I moved fast, my hand tightened around the piece of mirror I’d hidden from sight and I shoved it hard into Meridian’s chest, up and under his ribcage. The shard was long enough to reach his heart and I pulled him closer, relishing in his grimace of pain and his wet gasp as the edge of the mirror blade found its mark.
I let go of the blade and backed away from him, watching as the redness of his blood blossomed and spread across the white shirt that he wore.
“What did you do that for?” Meridian gasped. He grasped the wide end of the mirror that protruded from his chest. He pulled it free of his body, the blade followed by a gout of dark blood that splashed onto the floor. The mirror shard tumbled from his fingers and fell to the concrete, shattering.
Meridian stared at me with disbelief on his face.
“You killed me. So I killed you,” I grated out.
Meridian’s expression changed and he began to laugh. He pulled open his shirt to reveal the wound I’d made, and I watched with wide eyes as it healed seamlessly. He poked at the spot with a finger and grinned at me.
“You’ve been watching too many vampire movies, kid. Stakes to the heart? What’s next, you’ll make me a roasted garlic pizza?” He shook his head and waved a scolding finger at me. “That kind of shit doesn’t work on us.” He looked me up and down and then pulled out the keys that unlocked the door behind him. “You stink, let’s get you showered and fed... Bishop will want to see you.”
He opened the door and pointed down the hallway. “After you, Mr. Maddern,” he said, the smile never leaving his face. “I’ll make it simple. You need to feed to flush out the last of your human blood. If you stay here, you’ll die. A second time. And trust me, the second time is always worse than the first.”
My stomach growled, but the hunger pangs that had gripped me a few hours ago had felt different. More like a kick in the gut than anything.
When I didn’t move, Meridian shrugged and walked through the door, pulling it closed behind him.
“No!”
Fuck.
“Wait. Wait, I’m coming.”
The door opened and Meridian’s smiling face appeared. He beckoned for me to follow him, and this time I didn’t hesitate.
“I really liked this shirt, you know,” he said as he disappeared into the darkness ahead of us. I didn’t reply, and the silence of the building enveloped us as I followed him.
I was too tired to fight anymore.
Does he do this a lot?”
“Do what?”
“Pass out randomly… he’s heavy.”
My head was pounding again, and the voices I heard were coming from very far away. Was I back in that goddamned basement again? I was moving, but I wasn’t walking. I was being carried, slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of really angry potatoes.
Oh, fuck no.
I struggled, kicking at whoever was carrying me. One of my feet struck something solid.
“Ow, what the hell!”
I was dropped unceremoniously and landed hard on my hip and elbow. The smooth black tile that covered the floor was cold and I realized that I was naked except for a towel wrapped around my hips.
“What the fuck is going on?” I gasped, and then it all came back to me… Meridian leading me down a hallway and into a bathroom that was bigger than any hotel facility I’d ever seen. All clean marble and chrome.
Riah’s smugly smiling face peered down at me, her eyes raking over my torso before meeting my glare. “You passed out in the shower Grim had to carry you out. You might owe him one for that,” she said, jerking a thumb at a hulking guy with a shaved head who looked none too pleased that he’d had to collect me off the bathroom floor.
“Sure,” I mumbled.
“A less than ceremonious introduction than I’d planned, but it will have to do!” Meridian swept into the room, his bloodstained shirt had been replaced by a dark t-shirt with a deep V that showed off his lithe torso. Riah went to his side and wound herself around him. “Get up off the floor, Eli. You have to meet everyone.”
I looked around self-consciously, hyper-aware of the fact that the room was full of people. They lounged on leather couches, hung from banisters and staircases, and leaned against a bar that took up the far wall of the room.
The room itself was enough to look at, exposed brick, abstract paintings, graffiti, and a wall made entirely of windows flanked by heavy velvet curtains to keep out the sunlight. The space was lit with candles in gothic candelabras and lamps draped with colored scarves. Whoever was in charge of decorating couldn’t seem to decide what the hell was going on in here… Hammer horror film, teenage rebellion, or modern expression… everything clashed but still seemed to reflect everyone sitting, lounging or leaning in the space. Goth kids in black lace, fishnets and velvet, punk kids in leather, and one or two in tailored khakis… they all had a lean and hungry look to them.
Most wouldn’t make eye contact, but the ones that did, their silver-shined eyes glittered at me in the moonlight that poured through the wall of windows. The same shine I’d seen at the club.
What the hell was going on?
“I know what you’re thinking, Eli,” Meridian said, a smile on his angular face. “What in the high holy fuck could any of you have in common?” He gestured around the room. “Aside from the obvious, the answer is simple. Me.”
&nb
sp; I stared at him, holding the towel around my waist tight in my fist.
“Meridian turned us, we’re his blood children, his krŭvni detsa,” Riah said, her voice low and thick. Her eyes shimmered at me, reflecting the crescent moon outside.
Meridian smiled indulgently. He gripped Riah’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and placed a kiss on her dark lips. “That’s right, and you are all precious to me. Riah was the first, but you are all brothers and sisters here. My Blood Outlaws.”
I choked on a laugh. “What?”
Riah stepped forward. “Do you have a problem?”
“No, no… just… I don’t have to call myself that in public, do I?”
Riah bared her teeth and glared at me. “You don’t understand how we live. The Laudans spurn us… we are nodevējs, traitors. They say our blood is thin… but they don’t know how powerful we can be.”
I raised a hand and started to back away, but I slipped in a puddle of water that had dripped off me while I stood there listening to all of this bullshit. I stumbled and fell against one of the punk kids standing nearby, he shoved me back towards Riah and I caught myself before I fell.
“Fine, I get it. Can I get some pants?”
Riah made an unladylike noise and threw up her hands. “I don’t have time for this right now. We have to make an appearance at Spiral and report to Bishop on your… status. Lux will bring you later so you can feed.” She stepped closer to me, planting one of her sharpened fingernails in the middle of my chest. She stared into my eyes with her silver-shined ones, her voice low and threatening. “The rules are very simple. Do what I tell you, keep your mouth shut around Bishop, and stay the fuck out of my way.” She pushed me back and turned sharply, her long ponytail slapping me across the face. She strode back to Meridian and took his hand. They were leaving, no questions, no protests, nothing.
Vampire Punk Page 3