Si Waylen (lovelikeblood) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-01-18 19:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | derek mitchell, john abbott, katherine williams, mo byrne, ~ro clark |
Is There a “Right Way” to Suck People Dry?
Who: Derek, John, Katherine, Moira, Ro
What: A Vampiric Gathering
When: Night (Duh)
Where: Rabbit Hole, Near the Arts District, Las Vegas
Warnings: Language, Sexual Innuendo
John opened the heavy doors of an independent, single-theater cinema called the Commodore. As he stepped into its lobby, he took a deep breath.
It was the sort of venue that could be dated by its rich scent. The first tickets were sold in 1936: The film was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The design was Art Deco and it had 500 seats, a small floor for dining and a glorious swath of red and gold drapery over the silver screen. Nearly a century later, it was a relic, favored by film buffs who didn’t mind the terrible audio quality. The carpet had threadbare paths leading to the auditorium and the balcony stairs. The strange thing about the theater wasn’t that it had avoided a wrecking ball. If one were to do a bit of historical research, they might find that the parcel of land it occupied hadn’t been developed until several decades later. The Commodore hadn’t simply winked into existence. It had come from someplace else and just been accepted as part of the scenery.
Inside a first-floor coat check, a uniformed employee named Maeve sat on a stool and waited for a particular sequence of events: The customer would present her with their movie ticket, make eye contact and say, “Rabbit Hole.” Maeve would move an article of clothing aside and reveal a door. On the other side of it waited a speakeasy that existed in a dimensional rift. It was neither here nor there, but someplace in the middle, so it served all sorts of people and things. The temperature inside Rabbit Hole was a few degrees cooler, like entering the cellar of an old home. The ceilings were low, the walls made of brick and the furniture of strange leathers and furs. Ambient music pumped into the series of small, connected rooms. There were a few small bars strategically placed, plus a mish-mash of tables, chairs, and lounge furniture. The vibe was uncharacteristically amicable for the type of clientele it served (i.e. supernatural ones), which had a lot to do with the venue’s only hard and fast rule: Violence would get a customer tossed back into their regular realm and the venue could be quite rude about it.
John ordered two drinks: A glass of bourbon and a shot of A negative served at 98 degrees. When in Rome and all that.
The waitress, a blonde-haired human wearing a pair of non-prescription glasses, watched him with the blood. “Ever tried that with Bloody Mary mix and a celery stalk?”
John made a face. Bad memory. “I’m afraid it’s one of those things that only works well in concept.”
The last time Derek had visited the Rabbit Hole, he had nearly come to blows with a douchebag lawyer. Now, he scanned the crowd to make sure the manscaped wonder wasn’t lurking about, smarming all over the place. The coast seemed clear. Vampiric hearing had him pricking up his ears, however, at the mention of a Bloody Mary.
The vampire wandered over casually, his gaze sweeping over patron and server. “You know what’s pretty good, actually?” He held up his drink. “Blood in one of these Moscow Mule cups.” The hammered copper caught the light. “I guess it makes it taste more bloody.” As if to demonstrate, he took a long pull.
The figure who had been seated there from the start, an undead brunette named Katherine, looked casually over one shoulder at the sudden verbal interchange. A sharp wooden toothpick was being mouthed and dull recognition was registered, glancing towards the younger of the pair.
"Never as fun without a pulse," she casually mused.
John glanced between the two of them. As heartily as he might agree with the sentiment about the pulse -- it was obvious, really -- there weren’t enough willing donors to go around, and he was hardly the sort of hardened killer to leave a trail of glazed-over eyes in his wake. “Well, if you want, we can jostle your arm while you’re swallowing,” he offered. “Wiggle your cup around. Make you chase the vein, so to speak.” The smile was proof of his jocular mood. John placed the empty shot glass on the server’s tray and settled back into a leather chair with his drink.
Derek looked at the dark red contents of his cup contemplatively. Did he miss the chase, the predatory part of it? Any time he had relished the kill, he was in his own head, angry about something. Otherwise it was functional, boring. Simply putting fuel in the tank. “I’m on the wagon,” he admitted, cutting a glance at Katherine to see if she would react to that statement. The first and last time they had spoken in person, Derek had still been hunting humans. “And I’m too new to try just feeding off someone and stopping before they run out, you know?”
The lanky vampire took it upon himself to take the empty chair adjacent to the older man.
“You’re the second vampire to tell me that this month,” John said, welcoming the proximity of another immortal. Privately, he wondered if he was becoming a relic. At least he was in the company of whatshername there with the oral fixation. “You know, it’s been suggested by modern psychologists that toothpicks are an emotional pacifier.”
Wiggle your cup around? Katherine made a face at the remark, though didn't comment on it. The mental image of trying to stimulate live prey was a perplexing one. She supposed this was how a cobra at the zoo must feel, being tricked into thinking frozen dead rats were what it really wanted. That, though, wasn't as unexpected as hearing Wren's temporary guardian declare he was on the kind of liquid diet which came without the fun.
"Also great for stabbing things with," she lazily stated with a bite of teeth around wood, casting her gaze between Derek and the stranger. She had one of those prowling hunter demeanours, like a jungle cat and, shifting her centre of gravity, swivelling to better face them.
"The fuck are you gone tea-total for?" She asked with a characteristic lack of manners complementing her narrowing of eyes. It was a choice she couldn't fathom willingly taking up, which made her, in turn, look back at the other visitor. He's met two of them? "God... Don't tell me there's an outbreak of ethics around here."
Where to begin? Derek chose to breeze through the story. “I promised an angel, like an actual angel with wings and the whole ability to smite people, that I would stop killing people if she would help my ex-wife.” He drained the contents of his copper mug and set it on a table. “And then it sort of stuck. Now me and the humans are all sympatico, which makes things a lot easier, actually.” He shrugged, tugging at the strings of his hoodie. He was aware what a vampire like Katherine must think of him.
Derek held out a hand to the stranger. “I’m Derek, by the way.”
“John.” The vampire with the dark, curly hair leaned forward and shook the other’s hand. “This might be crude, but I’m not sure I’d be so charitable towards an ex.” He remembered once having an inclination to shove an irritating one onto the rails in a New York subway because she just kept showing up, wherever he went. Ultimately he refrained, concluding that it was his own fault for sleeping with a busker.
“You… Sure that wasn’t a lawyer with a really snazzy logo?” Colour her skeptical - and she was - but the idea of an actual angel making such a deal, struck the fanged brunette as a little unbelievable. Raising brow, she exhaled in contemplation, figuring anything like that might just be enough to make someone give up the hunt. Returning a, “Katherine,” in self-identification. “Already know this one,” she thumbed. “Did me a favour.”
“Oh, well, she wasn’t my ex when I made the deal,” he explained to John amiably. “And I wouldn’t take it back. We just kind of grew apart.” Derek didn’t want to get into the whole siren eating the neighbors thing. That was a longer story. He leaned back against the comfortable chair, looking between John and Katherine. It was then that he realized he hadn’t ever really socialized with more than one vampire at once. It presented certain opportunities, questions he had always wanted to ask that Veronica would cruelly dismiss.
“She had the wings and everything,” he told Katherine. “I haven’t seen her fly, though, unless you count her being thrown into a wall, which I did witness once.”
“Huh…” John was learning new things all the time. “Well. Here’s to the angels that walk among us. And the devils.” He raised his glass to his new friends and swallowed swiftly. When he set it down, the liquid sensation in his stomach was accompanied by another boost of his spirits. “I’m glad I made it out tonight,” he added, unbuttoning and rolling up his sleeves. “The last time I was here, I got roped into a conversation with a were-eagle. That went exactly as you’d imagine. It made me long for the time before vampires and therianthropes became the supernatural embodiment of a ‘co-exist’ bumper sticker.”
When Mo wandered into the club it had been the third spot she’d been at that night. She wasn’t always like this, she was married to her job, but every once in a while she got an impulsive hair and she found herself in a speakeasy she was sure she’d been to at least once or twice. It was hard to tell with it being so dark.
Not too dark to spot that vampire she caught feeding in goddamn public. “Ah fuck.” She muttered as she made her way up to said bar. “A dry martini please.” Her Irish accent came through that thick New Jersey one, and she winked at the bartender when the drink came.
“Heyo Johnny boy, still sucking people dry in public bathrooms.” She spat with a chuckle and a small hiccup.
About to say something about more cadaverous varieties of animal forms, encountered not too long ago, Katherine looked up at a fourth member of Las Vegas' undead community's verbal interjection and... Just about covered her resulting mirthful expression. Mostly.
"Sucking folks in bathrooms, huh," she highlighted and added a diplomatic raise of glass in his direction.
John looked up from his chair and followed the sound of that distinctive voice. “Mo! We were just talking about the surge of ethical vampires in this city and here you are.” He pointed round the small group. “Katherine, Derek. Mo is a civil rights attorney and quite the expert at hunting pussy. Cats, of course. Someone has to save the world from being overrun with tabbies.”
She should have expected to be put on display the moment she walked in. As much as their interaction ended well, there was still some playful revenge he was owed at the very least. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, lady, gent. And pussy isn’t just slang for cats when it comes to me.” She offered a playful wink to Katherine, though in her drunk state she could be just about any woman and Mo wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
She gulped down her martini and looked at it, turning it upside down once it was empty, though two olives fell to the floor.
“More’s the pity,” he mused. John watched the olives bounce across the polished concrete floor. One rolled under his chair. From the looks of things, Mo was very sloppy three sheets to the wind. He made a subtle gesture towards the server to return to their cluster of seating. Apparently they had some catching up to do. He finished his drink and ordered a double for himself.
Derek sat in his chair, silently marveling how comfortable it was and wondering how much it cost, where the Rabbit Hole had purchased it, and if it would be possible to get one for his trailer when the brash redhead rolled up and called out John. He watched the display like a tennis match, then picked up his mug and took a sip before realizing that it was empty. The rim of the copper cup left a line of blood on his upper lip and he wiped it off with his sleeve in what he hoped was an inconspicuous manner.
“I’m confused about the cat thing,” the youngest vampire spoke up. “Not as innuendo, but a food source. Isn’t that a lot of effort for very little blood? I mean, they have like one pint, max? Like the little milk cartons they used to serve at school. I had to drink three of those at a time.”
Mo’s eyes shot over to Derek with a scowl. “Listen kid, not that it’s any of your business but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, I’m 5’3” and it don’t take a lot.” She rolled her eyes and snapped at the bartender to bring her over another martini. Bossiness came easy after a good night of liquor.
“And some of us had to learn how to survive with little to no resources, so why don’t ask me less snarky next time, okay?” The okay was said with an exaggerated tone, like those women who refused to ever seem angry.
Civil rights attorney? As in, the undead variety? If John had subtly introduced that to provoke the more militant one amongst them, it succeeded, because Katherine was mid-swallow and it caused the kind of reaction which required the hasty capture of a nearby paper napkin.
Jesus Christ… Vampire lawyers.
Looking rapidly between Derek and Moira, Katherine was wearing one heck of a look of disbelieving suspicion. Was this a fad? She was starting to blame it on her tendency for having zero social life and wondered, momentarily, if Wren would now be admonishing her with a typically cutting remark.
“No offence, but I’m a jugular girl, myself,” she excused, deciding to meet the proverbial gorilla in the room, instead of ignore it. “I’m not even a fan of stubble. Getting a mouthful of wet fur, every time I get hungry, I can’t even imagine. Unless you… What? Wring ‘em out in a glass, like a kitty-shaped flannel?”
John smiled. Personally he was a fan of the femoral, but that was a rarified circumstance.
When her drink came, Mo began to sip it gingerly. In her best Andrew Dice Clay impression she began her speech slowly. “W….why is this even a topic of conversation? Is that all vampires do? Talk about blood?” The truth was that all this prodding at Mo was starting to get to her. Yeah she may not have been feeding from humans but she was still vampire in her own way.
“What do the two of you do anyway? Professors like the exhibitionist over here?” She gestured to John, offering him a smirk as she did so. That was Mo’s way, she gave shit to the people she actually liked.
“And writer,” John murmured, raising a hand to collect his fresh drink from the server. “Thank you.” He settled back into his chair to listen.
At Mo’s outburst, Derek had fallen silent, confused more than anything. He wasn’t sure what he had said that was so offensive. He had been merely curious. There were so many ways to be a vampire, and having had his maker as a guide for a period of barely six months had left him feeling rudderless. In fact, he had been on the verge of asking John how he fed from humans without draining them completely, but he mentally scrapped that question.
“I sell novelty t-shirts on the strip,” he murmured. Not exactly impressive next to a professor and author, and a lawyer. And...whatever it was Katherine did. To demonstrate, he lifted his hoodie up to display a purple shirt featuring an airbrushed Vegas Vic blowing on a pair of oversized dice. “If you wanna come by some time, my manager looks the other way when I give friends my employee discount.”
Katherine, turning enough to now lean up against the bar, propped up by elbows, was beginning to shift from bemused to amused: She was now getting an angle on each of their personalities. Cogs in the machine of their social dynamics. It helped her body language express a little more of the alpha predator she was.
“I get paid to…” She paused and downed the remaining contents of the glass, flicking up money to catch the staff’s attention and barking for a replacement. Then turned back, smiling as she reinserted the sharpened toothpick between fangs. “Loosen bowels, you could say. Some problems need a fright. Others need to end. That’s me. Guilty as charged, Your Honour,” she added, giving a humoured roll of hand and mocking bow to the legal representative, hinting her activities weren’t exactly on the legal side of things.
“So,” the brunette added with a sweep of hair back over one shoulder, looking between their motley crew. “We got a writer… All cultured-like, with a dash of dark-and-mysterious. We got a…” And she narrowed eyes at Derek, contemplating. Saw him as a bit of a kid, compared to herself, though did remember hunting down his maker. “Merchandise specialist,” she elected, raising her glass. “Who might not have a pulse, but whose heart’s in the right place. Did me a favour when I needed it. So.. If either of you need someone to help out,” she observed, sweeping a finger across the group. “Derek’s your guy. And then we’ve got…”
What to make of Mo? Hmm...
“An attorney. Which, I guess, between all four of us, makes her the closest to a blood-drinker in human society.”
The sullen look on the young man’s face was apparent and since Mo did fight for the little guy she thought it best not to discourage or mock his job. “Cheer up Charlie,” was it Charlie or Derek? She couldn’t remember quite yet. “No shame in doing the dirty work no one else wants to do. Believe you me, I got plenty of it.” Mo was brash and honestly was a little less observant than she usually was.
And there went the vampire/lawyer jokes. As if she hadn’t heard them enough. She scrunched herself face up and pointed a finger at Katherine. “Next you’re gonna be telling me that a Jew vampire lawyer is the perfect stereotype. Trust me I know.”
Derek turned to Mo and plastered on his most winning grin. “Oh, don’t worry, I know all about dirty work,” he told her innocently, letting his hoodie fall and leaning forward slightly in his chair. “I beheaded my maker slowly with a pocketknife and buried her in the desert. Talk about calluses.” He held up one palm.
“Hey, actually, you kinda remind me a little of her. She couldn’t remember my name, either.”
“Well, this is heated,” John observed, and downed half of his drink. From his perspective, it was always better to be the observer to a potential barroom brawl than the center of it. If pressed, he’d side with the shirt salesman; Mo had entered the conversation with the finesse of a rhinoceros. “Come on, we’re the undead, I’m sure we can find common ground.” He leaned forward, the cushion shifting underneath him. “We share the same enemies. Hunters, sharp sticks, sunlight… Pop culture.”
Curiously, Katherine was the one who made a little, ‘Ooh,’ expression in response to Moira’s crack. So… She was a courageous type, was she? That answered the civil rights reasoning enigma. Then she raised her brow at Derek’s unusually confrontational reaction and made a noiselessly exhaling chuckle.
“OK, since half of us are in vampire rehab, how about…” She rubbed chin with one hand, then extended a finger. “The great leveller: Most embarrassing unlife moment. Like… Most un-undead thing you’ve ever done. ‘Cause I’ve probably got you all beat. I’m buddies with a hunter. Like, we’re not super-best pals or whatever, but… Close enough we can toss motorcycles at each other for CCTV.”
John raised his brows. He had seen that fight on a local news report.
Derek thought for a minute, replaying the past ten years of his unlife in his head like a fast-forwarded film. Then he perked up. “Oh, I know. I was once at this bar, and this huge fight broke out. I was standing with two friends, and this headless body came toward us. I wanted to stand underneath the fountain of his blood with my mouth open, but...I resisted.” That was something he hadn’t told anyone before. It kind of felt good to get off his chest.
“Now that I think about it… If he was already dead, it kind of fits into my current rule of no killing.”
“I’m a lawyer, isn’t that already the most un-undead thing?” When she could see by the looks on their faces that it wasn’t enough she took a sip of her martini and sighed. “I took home this woman recently and she figured out I was a vampire, I guess she was obsessed with all those crazy romance novels. Anyway, she offered to let me feed off of her and I declined.” She was tempted though, and her self control was beginning to wane these days. Must be the stress.
“Hm.” John took in those confessions with a look of genuine amusement. Now that his body had circulated enough alcohol, the effects were loosening his tongue. He took another gulp and set the glass on a low table. “Well, I once lost a bet and let a human friend stake me. For science. He assured me I wasn’t out more than,” he shrugged, “Thirty minutes or so. I’ve often wondered what he might’ve done while I was unconscious. Simon was a bit unhinged. It’s fortunate we didn’t have selfies in the 1890s.”
“Well… Damn,” came Katherine’s response to John’s contribution. The way her eyebrows went up was enough to indicate her surprise at that one. “Hell, I’m almost willing to chalk that one up to autoerotic asphyxiation for our kind!” Katherine openly laughed a little at the hubris a voluntary staking required, melting the noise into loud exhalation and took a drink. “Alright, let me see…”
Rubbing her face, Katherine cast her mind back, seeing if she could out-do all three of them. Resisting the urge to feed was bad enough. Taking wood, though… That would take some beating.
“Oh! OK, so… One time? I had to pretend I was a nun… In a convent. And they were going around the place reblessing the rooms with holy water and there’s yours truly, surrounded by these-hyper faithful types, trying not to let on it’s causing me to start hissing and smoking… In the end, I had to pretend I was hiding a cigarette and this old battle-axe of a Mother Superior chewed me out so bad for it, I thought she’d set fire to me through willpower, alone! And there’s me, running out of a convent, habit and all, apologising to Jesus… I was one hell of an embarrassment to the cause, that day.”
“Hold on.” John put up his hand. “You had to pretend you were a nun? I cannot fathom how that came to pass. Now I’m imagining you, y’know,” he waved at her, “Carrying on like you had fire ants in your pants. Sizzling away.” He smiled and rubbed at his forehead. “Now, I have gone home with someone with no clue how much of a holy roller I was dealing with. And you never know, do you, when one of them might coax you into a blindfold and come up with an imaginative use for a crucifix. One bad trip and it’s the 70s all over again.” John closed his eyes and thanked his lucky stars that Shelly’s big surprise had been a dead body.
Derek sat and listened to John, Mo, and Katherine’s various stories, and it all sort of came down to the same thing. He didn’t really fit in with other vampires, not even the feline-drinking redhead. He looked down at his empty mug, searching for something to say to add to the conversation. He was curious about the staking thing. To John, he sort of leaned against the arm of the chair and asked, “So, like...what does it feel like? Does it hurt a lot? My maker used to threaten me with staking all the time, it sort of became like a boogeyman kind of thing.”
John angled his body towards Derek. “If the person doing the staking is strong enough, you wouldn’t feel a thing. Just,” he snapped his fingers, “In it goes, and out you go. While it’s placed, you don’t feel a thing. It’s the part after that’s painful, when they pull it out and your body’s stitching itself back together.” John looked away from Derek for a moment, remembering. “Unfortunately Simon had weak arms. He had to use a mallet and pound the thing in, like an old timey miner.”
While everyone else was talking, Mo got bored and she whipped out her phone where she very slowly began texting Tasha. Funny how Katherine had mentioned being friends with a hunter while Mo was sitting there trying to holler at one. She snickered out loud at herself. Mo could type 25 words per minute on a computer keyboard but phones still confused her.
Ro had been avoiding the Rabbit Hole. That was one of Noah's haunts and after what happened on their last encounter, avoiding him seemed the best course of action. Lately though she'd been reconsidering and after careful consideration, fuck Noah. Why give him control over where she went and what she did? Ro wrapped her hand around a chocolate martini and turned away from the bar. She wasn't obviously flashy tonight, dressed in a pleated black skirt, white T-shirt with a diagonal slash of grey on the bottom third, and high top sneakers. It was just in the moment where she might have gone looking for something entertaining when she spotted Derek among a group of people she didn't recognize.
Ro walked up beside Derek, extended the hand that wasn’t holding her drink, and flicked him hard in the shell of his ear. "Just because I can," she said, only a little pointedly.
“You’re popular,” John mused, watching the short-haired woman pause by Derek’s chair. “Hello,” he said to her.
He wasn’t expecting the flick to his ear and he jumped slightly, then felt a slight twinge of embarrassment. Was he losing his vampiric reflexes? Derek looked up to spot Ro. It took him a second to remember why she would be antagonistic, but then it came to him: Penny. “Oh...hi.” He scratched behind the ear that she had touched, then his eyebrows shot up. “Wait, you can touch me now.” A smile came to his face. There was an upside to that. He was finally over his breakup.
“Everyone, this is Ro. She makes really good mille feuilles.” Derek butchered the pronunciation.
“Touch you…?” Had interjected a voice. Then its owner lifted her hand in a casual wave. “Katherine,” the raven-haired vampiress introduced. Her glance at the stranger was a little more lingering than it had been for Moira, purely because of having no idea if the newest associate was fanged, had a pulse or was something else.
“This is John, writer. Adventurously suicidal. And that’s Mo: Into civil rights and eating pussy,” she added with a wink to the redhead. “We’ve been competing for the title of worst historical embarrassment. John won. I think.”
“Not the worst thing I’ve ever won,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, Ro.” John got up from his chair, which served two purposes: he could offer the newcomer one of the better chairs, and he could use the moment to slide over to the nearest bar, drop a cash tip, and subtly ask the bartender for a book of matches. He penned the name John and his number on it, alongside a short note about having any other questions, then slipped it to Derek when no one was looking. When he returned he dropped into a different seat. “What did you mean earlier, about not being able to touch him until now? This isn’t an X-Men situation, is it?”
Ro took the preferred seat, crossing her legs at the knee. Unlike the ink crawling up her arms, the tattoos on her legs were much more infrequent. Between expanses of skin, a skull could be seen on the outside of her right thigh and one calf had a collection of cacti and succulents.
She gave Derek an encouraging smile. Fucking with him was the extent of any desire to vent at him for what happened with Penny. Relationships ended. Their lives were long, she would see Penny again. A brief moment to mess with Derek and she was over it. The smile she turned on the rest of them and it widened at Mo's hobbies. Those were the kind of things she could get behind.
"Not an X-Men thing, just a me thing. Derek used to be in love. I can't touch people who are actually in real love." She pulled a face. "It burns."
“Yeah, I have been wiped clean of love,” Derek confirmed, nodding. He supposed having a crush on Brianna meant he was still touchable. That was somewhat encouraging in a weird way. It meant he was breaking his usual pattern of becoming attached too quickly. He shot Ro a grateful look, even though she wouldn’t know why. “And I guess you can touch Penny, too.” That still caused a tiny tinge of sadness, but a tiny tinge was better than a gaping wound.
“Hey, new question. Has anyone else here ever been in love?” Derek looked around at the assembled group curiously.
John nodded in comprehension, then turned to answer Derek’s question. “In love, infatuated, enamored, obsessed. Which it was depends on the year,” he confessed. “I ought to be relieved that Ro wasn’t around! That seems like a dangerous piece of information to hold, whether or not two people are in love.”
Mo chuckled and nodded at the new acquaintance. She was beautiful yes but Mo’s mind was on other things. “Once, my maker. We were practically married for twelve years.” And then a hunter sliced off her head, bittersweet and it was still painful, even nearly forty years later.
“Not since though I know it when I see it. If there’s another woman out there I could love then I’ll know when I get to know her.” Her eyes glances around at the vampires, though this new one was hard to pinpoint.
The newcomer’s clarification of not being able to touch people in love, only succeeded in furthering Katherine’s confusion, although it at least cleared up the matter of whether she was human enough to count as prey under other circumstances. And, being a pragmatic type, Katherine was chewing her toothpick like a cat slowly destroying tissue paper, watching as the rest began to pour out their souls on the issue of love, romance and-
Miming two fingers going down the back of her throat, the militant brunette made a, “Bleargh...!” Turning to one side, as if readying to vomit.
“Yeah, sure,” she added, drowning herself in a generous swallow of alcohol. “Every time I get lashed out of my skull… My unlife’s a regular fucking dreamboat of hearts and flowers!” Hands went over her unbeaten heart as Katherine openly mocked the idea, eyelashes fluttering before the vampiress melted into soft laughter. “Romance... God, I go through orgies like a chainsaw through KY. I ain’t got time for none of that maudlin shit!”
“Ah, but not all love is maudlin,” John reasoned. “Nor does it have to be as saccharine as you’ve described. You sound a touch defensive.” He smiled but it was light, and he had engaged for the sake of conversation. “If you’re honestly going to claim you haven’t got time... Come on, Katherine. We are rich in time.”
"Nothing wrong with the orgy life for those that want it," Ro said over the rim of her glass. A good orgy was the equivalent of a buffet line for her. She sipped her drink and then added. "I've never been in love but then I'm not built for it, so." She shrugged.
“Maybe for you the question should be has anyone ever fallen in love with you? Far too many times for me.” Those damn romance books about vampires made easy prey but they were hard to get rid of by the next morning. Mo shivered at the memory, the big mistake she realized she’d made once it was a little too late. Thank god she’d moved to Vegas by that point because having a stalker like that was exhausting.
“I love love,” Derek piped in. “Ever since I was little. Do you remember Valentine’s Day in school, when everyone would make a little paper mailbox and you’d walk around delivering cards and stuff to people? That was one of my favorite days. My friends always gave me shit for it, but I didn’t care.” The vampire shrugged. He knew it could be a problem sometimes. Case in point, Veronica. Penny. Standing outside a few windows doing a ‘Say Anything’ impression.
Derek turned to Ro. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t a lust vampire,” he told her. “Then I’d never be able to fall in love. That would be sad.” He fell silent, thinking for a moment. “Or maybe I’d be in a better position than I am now. Who knows!”
Ro had looked horrified at the question of if anyone had ever been in love with her. She replied to Derek first since that was less awful. "I think it's nice if you're a romantic. I don't understand it but whatever butters your toast. And," she added, "I don't think anyone's ever been in love with me. Infatuated, sure. Obsessed. If there's anything I've learned from being able to tell who's in love it's that it only counts - it's only real - if it's reciprocated. Anything else is just masturbation."
“And there it is,” John pronounced. “The quote of the night! No truer words ever spoken.” He reached across and tapped Derek on the upper arm. “You and I have a bit in common, I think.” After all, it was only a hop and a leap from handing out excess Valentine’s cards to your peers, to writing a book of poetry under a pseudonym. Speaking of affection, there was a blonde preoccupying his thoughts more than a little. He took out his phone and sent her a quick text: ‘In a bar debating the merits of love with four vampires. How’s your evening?’ John closed out his texts and put the device in his pocket. He sensed a natural close to the conversation and took the opportunity to stand. “Katherine, Ro, Derek, it was nice meeting you. Mo, it was… on par with expectations.” He put his hands in his pockets and ducked out.
Derek smiled at John’s pronouncement that they had some things in common. He had tucked the matchbook safely in his hoodie pocket, and definitely planned to give that number a call. Maybe he could find a vampire to show him the ways of the world that didn’t involve slaughtering everyone they came across. “I have to head out, too,” he announced. “I have a party to plan. Lots of friends. You know.” He stood too, and gave Katherine, Mo, and Ro a wave goodbye.
Mo was not about to be the last one to leave so she stood, eyes back onto her phone as if to mime that something was going on and shrugged her shoulders. “Honestly, this was by far the weirdest thing to happen to me tonight and I’m going to go home before something truly awful happens. Good night.” She said simply and followed the others out of this hell hole to go back to her apartment.