Scarlet Night (Limited Edition) (4 page)

Maybe it's all the stars held within its gaze.

Or maybe
—just God damned maybe—it's that she's the ONLY bitch I give a damn enough about to stumble into time-and-time-and-time again.

The first
touch of night air is refreshing, and I let out a heavy breath and work to dispell the energy that’s still burning under my cursed tattoos. Finally, with far more effort than I usually have to invest, they go black once again, leaving a slight itch as a reminder of their threat.

Daring another glance, I watch as the string of bizarre symbols hugging the top of my forearm just below my elbow
—what I'm sure-as-shit is the
source
for the wretched things' power—go from a dull orange light to a shade darker than the night. I growl at the sight; even in
darkness
I can't ignore the fucking things!

Behind me I can hear the din of the patrons begin to rise as their gossip closes in on the subject of their combined interest and the hollow assurances to themselves and others that I'm somehow lucky I didn't stick around. Stepping out of the parking lot, I bring the stein to my lips and do my best not to spill
all
the beer on myself as I blindly navigate down the sidewalk.

For the most part, I fail miserably.

Something I've grown increasingly used to.

Failure to Gregori.

Failure to his clan.

Failure to my duties.

And, as usual, a fucking failure to myself.

Draining the contents of the stein and gulping down the booze that I'm not already wearing all over my shirt, I decide that the only direction worth heading now is the one I've absentmindedly set myself in, figuring that it's easier than turning and more-than-likely every bit as pointless as any other location. Though every step I take puts me that much further from the bar, I cling to the barren glass stein
—several lingering traces of fluid escaping the rim and gracing the pavement in my wake—and worship it as a memory of what was probably the only place I could go that made sense.

Besides, after losing everything else in my life I wasn't about to let the only thing left that meant something slip from my fingers.

And so, with my once faithful source of purpose growing cold and forgotten, I made my way deeper into the bowels of the city. Through the haze of my stupor a fragment of realization dawns upon me as I cross the street and find myself by the old theater. Though the place is probably older than time itself, it's been kept standing by the constant need for humans to reinforce a sense of dignity and fashion by abandoning Michael Bay's latest two-hour explosion and immerse themselves in the tasteful brilliance of a whiney douchebag that's willing to die for an underage piece of tail he's known all-but three days.

Ah, the theater! So classy!

Though, as the kids are saying, “still a better love story than
Twilight
”.

I glance back at the tribal patterns on my arm and scowl with the realization that I'm actually
thankful
that they glow.

Any self-respecting vampire that sparkles should give the nearest handgun a blowjob and save themselves the torture of The Council making an example out of them for making our kind a joke.

The dull and muted sound of the theater's audience picks up, and the rise of their applause is met with the setting of my ass as I take a seat on the sidewalk, setting the stein on my knee, and lean against the building. Trying to relax, I lean my head back and knock it against the bottom of a case displaying a poster for
Les Misérables
—the doe-eyed twat with Technicolor dreadlocks behind the glass gazing judgmentally down at me—and, though it's uncomfortable and awkward, I don't feel up to shifting the three feet to the left to free myself of the burden.

“
Guess we'll just be miserable together, bitch!” I mumble, bringing the stein down on my knee with greater-and-greater force with every other word.

The sound of the theater doors bursting open and the chorus of the crowd's combined banter make me jump and knock my skull against the case again, this time with enough force for something to break. As I examine the top of my head, hoping that perhaps it
wasn't
the display case, a group of older women—well over their fifties but still wearing enough youth for me to forgive that fact—pause to look me over and squawk

I begin to wonder if my inadvertent begging might earn me enough for one of the cheaper hookers by the docks as a lingering couple cast a collective sneer in my direction before dropping a ten-spot in the glass. There's a swell of anger and I feel the cursed ink in my neck begin to draw from the rage as I eyeball the money and realize what it represents. The old birds stroll off, squawking and clucking at their generosity, and I'm tempted to stand to my full height and let it be known that I'm neither a beggar nor am I in need of their charity; that I've got more money than the four of them and three of their future generations combined. The temptation rocks me, and I feel the muscles in my legs spring to attention with the hope that they'll be called upon rather than rotting beneath the wasted torso of a lost cause, but
—still looking at the bill in the stein and the ever-darkening corner that's eagerly soaking in the residual fluid that, like me, can't get out—I'm unable to take any pride in my Swiss account and the hundreds of millions of dollars that working for Gregori and The Clan of Vail has earned me.

S
o I sit.

I sit, a
nd I stare.

I stare—staring
into the bottom of an empty beer stein holding a crisp ten dollar bill—and I see within the vacant depths, past the meager currency, what I have become.

I was
once a proud and revered warrior for a mythos clan that hunted and executed worthless, non-human wretches. Non-human wretches that threatened the secrecy of our kind and preyed on the lives of humans; non-human wretches that occupied space and air that they didn't deserve and had no intention of earning!

Non-human wretches like me…

As another clot of the theater-goers emerged, more-and-more of their charity found its way into my stein.

Every dollar added to the glass steals
from me what little pride I had left. That I've found myself in a position of such humiliation as to be accepting the scraps of these upper-class fuckers reflects back at me like a mirror I can't turn away from. A mirror that shows the filthy and worthless stain I've become.

A mirror that shows me
exactly
what I've become…

And I can't bring myself to care.

Can't bring myself to defend an honor I once cherished that I now see no merit or worth in.

Eventually the c
rowd thins out and dies away. When the last of them have gone the lights in front of the theater vanish with them, and I find myself staring into the partially back-lit poster of the condescending girl housed within the cracked glass case and clutching a stolen glass filled with over a hundred bucks worth of donated money that assaults my nostrils with the pungent stench of shame.

“
God-fucking-dammit, Gregori!” I growl at the stein, “What the hell did you see me doing? Where the hell did you see me going?” The money filled glass offers no response and I slam my head against the glass case again.

And again.

And again.

I
top off my self-destructive hat trick by bringing my free hand over my head and putting it through the tortured glass, letting the fragmented shards rain down on me and clatter on the pavement around me.

“
You must find my daughter…” I mutter, mocking Gregori's dying wish, watching as my lacerated hand begins to pucker and reject the lingering shards and close behind them, leaving several small trails of blood with no source. The old vampire—the leader of the closest thing I had to a family—had expected me to honor his memory by
replacing
him?

He actually
expected
me to disregard the years of respect he had earned from me in taking me in and training me and helping me find myself and overcome
everything
that had happened to me.

He actually
expected
me to move on by shrugging off his death as a minor hiccup in my life and turning to his daughter—some arrogant little air-headed bitch that had
abandoned
him
and
the clan years before I'd even been graced by their generosity—as the
new
leader?

I shake
my head, growling at the stein and slamming it against my knee again, “I'd sooner see your legacy die with you than
rot
in the clutches of some ungrateful cunt!”

“
Yo! Hobo fuck-tard! Who you fuckin' talkin' to? Havin' a lovers' quarrel with yer right hand?”

I scowl, only now noticing the mass that's looming over me. I don't linger on the momentary curiosity pertaining to how
long
the asshole's been standing there, but the fact that he's not moving. Unable to drag my eyes away from the stein—my makeshift Gregori and current recipient of my lingering qualms—I simply nod.

“
Only 'cuz it still stinks of your mother, jerkoff! Now keep walking!”

There's a deep, hollow growl and I watch the shadowy figure solidify his stance over me,
“The
fuck
did y'just say to me?”

I sigh and shake my head, “Which part? Me telling you to move along”—I can't help but smirk to myself—”or me telling you that your first apartment smells like a hooker's asshole exploded in a landfill?” I hold up my beer stein and shake it for effect, “Now either feed the need or piss-the-fuck-off 'for something bad happens to you!”

The sound of the stranger's growing rage intensifies and starts to turn inhuman and I feel my forehead crease as my brow quirks.

This might
actually
be interesting!

Forgetting all about my precious mock-Gregori, I glance up for the first time to take in my visitor. At first it's hard to make out any details, but as I focus my superhuman gaze the features begin to come in. The first thing I notice is that a great deal of the darkness I was struggling to see past isn't just shadow, and with the details coming in clearer I find myself staring up at a very irate and very large black man. Judging from the surrounding landmarks, I guess that my new friend is no less than six and a half feet and
has enough truck-flipping muscle stuffed inside an overworked wife-beater to weigh as much as three of me. Then I caught a whiff of him…

Make that three of me riding atop a sick, wet dog.

The fucker
reeks
like the piss-corner of a kennel!

Fuck me sideways! Not one of
these
guys!

I stifle my impulse to gag and cup my right arm around my nose and mouth as I hold out the stein to him. “Look! There's about a hundred—maybe a hundred-fifty—in here! Take it and get out of here!” He growls again and starts to flex and takes a few steps towards me. Jesus-fuck-me-in-the-ass-Christ! I so do
not
need this! Fucking therions! “Hey, dog face, you hear me? See the money? Take it! It's
yours
if you go away! Maybe you can nuzzle it while pissing on a hydrant!”

The mutt's lips part to expose a set of still-human teeth and advances another step, “Yer not getting' off that easy!”

“Yea, I know! 'Cuz I'm
giving
you my hooker fund! Now take the glass or I'll change my mind and go play Madame Nut-Stomper!” I offer an agitated growl of my own, “I've got enough shit on my plate already! I don't need some mongrel squatting a fresh steamer on top of it!” I shake it again, harder than before to get his attention as another step is taken, lining the crotch of his ratty-ass jeans with my face and providing me with enough of a view to pray he's not looking for love from me. I make with another shake, “Now
take it
! I
know
you need it more than me! You can buy yourself a new chew toy! All for you if you just get lost and get cock-zilla out of my fucking face!”

“Tha
's a funny one”—he condescends with a chuckle—” 'specially since ya ain't seen me in all my glory yet!”

I roll my eyes and scoff as my tattoos start to spark to life. “You know what's
really
funny?” I sigh with the realization that I'm going to have to stand up and pinch the bridge of my nose, “I was going to say the
same
goddam thing!”

The smug and confident eyes of the therion begin to melt into something closer to concern as he sees my tattoos beginning to glow. Though he tries to keep his composure, I can already see a glimmer of doubt blossoming inside him.

And the tattoos only grow brighter as I pull myself to my feet, the puddle of broken glass that was my shattered halo a moment ago crunching beneath my boots. I take in a deep breath, drawing in more oxygen to stoke the once-dormant embers of my curse and making the tattoos flare bright enough to be seen through my beer stained and tattered shirt.