CHRIS

The "parlor" was nothing more than a glorified basement room with a lumpy couch, a chair that was falling apart and a little table covered in decks of cards and ashtrays. In one corner there was a pinball machine, one side dented in from repeated kicking. The floor was littered with scraps of clothing, bean bag chairs and the occasional body.

From the smell, he could tell that the people on the floor were mortal and unconscious. Obviously the evening meal around here.

Sonny placed a hand on his shoulder, maneuvering Chris through the door and into range for the spell that was his Hunger.

"Go ahead, Feed, I won’t watch," that velvety voice was terribly amused. It seemed to crackle along Chris’ spine like electricity, troubling yet seductive in its offer.

He could no more refuse that offer than he could file his fangs flat and take up the mortal grind. With a hiss of pleasure--the new kind of pleasure that had overtaken him since he had been given the gift of unending life, or rather, unending death--he threw himself on the still bodies in a madness of Hunger.

His fangs tore chomped, wreaking havoc on the delicate mortal flesh. One of the figures moaned, exciting him further, it was like a fire that flared along his veins--enervating, exciting, ceaseless--it filled him to brimming, then boiled over.

When he finally calmed down enough to become aware of himself again, Chris was a little surprised and disgusted at himself to find that out of ten good sized adults, only one was still alive. All of the others had somehow been sucked dry, which was amazing because nothing had the capacity to hold that much blood. Yet here he was blood-engorged and post blood-romp sleepy.

It was shocking. He had somehow managed to Feed on at least three times his own body mass and was still upright and aware. At least, that’s what he thought. He might be lying on the floor suffering from delusions of being awake and actually thinking rationally. He might even be comatose from the shock of the blood filling up his whole body to the point of his eyeballs floating in his head. He was imagining all of this to make himself feel better about his own stupidity, which had led him here and allowed him to Feed just a little too much. More like way too much.

He just had to leave Lianndra’s apartment and go off on his own. He couldn’t stay there and wait for Lianndra and Dezi to finish their "discussion." No, he had to wander off by himself and catch a bus to God knows where, and why? Because he was bored, lonely and feeling particularly difficult. He had really stepped in it this time, that was for sure.

With a little burp, he stood up and backed slowly away from the bodies, worried that the bloodlust would take him again and he would finish off the last of the mortals. That would be just what he needed--another body on his conscience.

An arm went around his shoulder and he looked up into the face of the taller vampire. There was a sad, almost thoughtful look in those cold gray eyes. The arm tightened around his shoulders. "Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us, mostly when we haven’t Fed for a long time. But for some, it happens more often than it should. Come on, let’s leave this place and let the servants clean up the mess."

He waved his hand and a door on the far wall opened and a group of about fifteen tall thin men stepped through, their faces wooden and leather collars buckled around their throats. All any of them wore were little green cloths wrapped around their waists and thighs.

As Sonny led him out of the room, Chris looked back to see those dull faced men calmly lifting the dead bodies and carrying them out through the little door they had come out of. They didn’t even seem to think that it might have been themselves that were eaten instead of those others. Situations reversed and it would have been the dead men carrying them out.

He wondered how both Lianndra and Sonny could make mortals do anything they wanted with just a look. He wondered if he could do it too. It would be fun to be in control for once, to initiate, not just to react to things around him.

He would have to watch and learn how they did these things. He would just have to pay close attention. If he had the power, he would be able to get everything he had ever wanted from everyone that he met. It would be so cool. He would never have to worry about getting money or buying clothes again--that would be taken care of by his mortal servants.

Already, even after such a short time, Chris was changing. The last bit of his mortal innocence was seeping away quickly. He was already starting to think with the predatory disdain with which hunters viewed their prey. Soon he would be a killer that killed without end and without remorse, soon he would have eyes like Lianndra or Sonny. Either frighteningly alive or coldly dead, the eyes of a wolf or the eyes of a snake. Either way, he would kill and enjoy it, not even thinking about how he was damning his soul.

That was the trick the BloodTouch played, eternity for a soul. Living forever, then burning deep and dark in the afterlife. It was a hard choice and it was already out of his hands. His Hunger had taken control and it didn’t want to give it up.

That was one of the misconceptions about vampires, that they become cold and cruel over a length of time because they are evil already--that they have the seeds of evil within them before they are Made--and some are. Really though, most vampires are corrupted by having their darkest desires fulfilled by a BloodTouch that wants to keep them Feeding forever and always.

Death is a hard thing to face, but so is immortality. How much does a person reckon their soul costs? Some souls are cheap, but a few are expensive, and those expensive ones are the ones to fear. People who sell their souls and know what they are about have nothing to stop them, not even the people they love or who love them.

After only a couple of months as a vampire, Chris was ready to give up everything that he held dear for the power the BloodTouch offered in its bony, deathsome hand. He would accept it and believe it to the very core of his being, that he had made a good deal, but the older, wiser vampires and even some mortals would know that what he had given up without a thought had been precious. The ability to feel the great, earthshaking wonder that was truelove and the willingness to die for such. The ability to look at the world through wondering eyes and know that every moment and everything in it was special and unique. The ability to dance in a summer rain at night and laugh with the moon. He was giving it up without a thought, all for something he didn’t really need and deep down didn’t even want.

Still, that was the way of the world. The grand sacrifice made only to discover that the idea life and love are sacrificed for is not worth it in the first place.

DEZI

They stood in front of the large doors for a minute or two, reorienting themselves to their bodies. Lianndra even went so far as to make them both clothes with some of the extra energy he had. It wouldn’t have been very awe inspiring if two naked vampire lords waltzed into a room filled with a bunch of fully dressed lower vampires. She doubted they would have gotten very much respect.

With a motion of his hand, Lianndra directed her to come in behind him. She nibbled her lip with one fang, but hurried to obey his silent command. He wasn’t in the mood to mess around, not on a night like this. Definitely not.

Dezi rubbed one hand down the sides of her pants, feeling the gentle rasp of jeans against her smooth, unmarked skin. She remembered the wonder she had felt when she had awoken for the first time as a vampire and had found that her skin had been smoothed of all of the roughness and mistreatment of her mortal life.

She nibbled her lip again; wishing desperately that Chris hadn’t gone off on his own. Her life would be a whole lot easier right now if she didn’t have to find him. When they got him back, she planned on having a long talk with him, a very long one.

As she had been drifting around in her own thoughts, Lianndra had glided with his graceful walk to the door and was motioning for her to catch up.

Her sneakered feet made no sound as she raced across the ground, flowing with a speed and agility that no normal living creature could have ever achieved. She slid to a stop next to him, her fangs glowing in the faint light as she smiled the smile of a hunter. He answered with one of his own, the little boy appearance suddenly disappearing. He still had the body of a child, but it was easy to see that he was not and had probably never been one.

Without any warning, his hand rose and slammed into the heavy steel door that guarded the apparently abandoned building. The metal gonged and rippled where he had hit it as if it were liquid. The ripples spread out over the metal, and by the time the sound ended the whole area near the spot he had struck was dented horribly, the metal practically bent double in the middle.

She felt a little thrill of shock. Nobody should have been able to do that, not with just one hit. And yet Lianndra had, and he wasn’t even surprised that he had been able to do it. It was as if he had known he could and wasn’t worried about failure.

With a sideways glance at him, she opened her mouth to say something, but closed it in a silent snarl as the door opened, slowly and ponderously with the dent stopping progress about midway.

Two lower vampires peered out cautiously as if they expected a huge army of torch-bearing mortals with a battering ram to be waiting, like they had probably gone through in the early years of their lives. What they saw instead was a little vampire boy and a slender vampire girl, glowing in the light of the moon that escaped between the buildings. That was all they saw as Lianndra went through them.

Dezi followed Lianndra who seemed to know what he was looking for. They walked down long hallways with spider-webs hanging high in the rafters like banners. Her lip twisted in disgust. Couldn’t they at least clean once in a while?

They finally reached a large chamber--that was the only word that could be used to describe the huge room they stepped into. The walls were white, the floor was white marble and there wasn’t a cobweb in sight. There was a large window that looked out onto some magicked view that was never to be seen in this part of the city. Near the window was a white grand piano that was so old it had actual ivory keys.

She looked around with wide eyes, staring at the paintings that hung from the walls, the delicately carved wooden furniture and the deep white couches that were arranged artfully around the chamber. In the very center of everything, set to draw attention on a raised pedestal was a large four-poster bed covered in black satin sheets.

In the middle of the bed lay Chris; his eyes were dazed and he didn’t seem to understand what was going on. Raised above him was a tall boy that had the appearance of being in his late teens. Sweat that had a faint tint of blood in it shone on his skin as he touched and fondled Chris.

Lightning fast, Dezi moved forward to hurt him horribly, but even faster, Lianndra blocked her. "Don’t, he’s too strong for you to handle alone."

The vampire boy grinned and slid off the bed, calmly pulling up his pants and zipping them closed. "Better listen, little girl, he knows what he’s talking about." His grin was mocking and cruel as he reached for his shirt.

Lianndra shot him a glance that froze him where he stood. "You better shut your mouth, Sonny, you’re just causing trouble and you know it. This is not something that I really need: the Queen’s on the move and the Blood Trackers are on our trail. And here you are trying to mess with me and make me mad so I’ll kill you once and for all."

Sonny blanched at his words. "Now, Lianndra, you know it’s against the Laws to do something like that. No vampire can kill another vampire without Challenge. It would go against the Sacrament," his words were hurried and placating. Trying to calm Lianndra down was like trying to stop the waves from reaching the shore.

Lianndra laughed, a cruel light in his eyes. "It would be in my power to do it. These are outlying circumstances and I would be well within my rights--and the Laws--if I just Challenged and killed you now."

The tall vampire slowly backed away until he bumped into the bed. He raised his hands in front of him. "Why would you want to do a thing like that Lianndra? I wasn’t doing anything against you."

Lianndra’s eyes became slits of rage. "Wasn’t doing anything against me? You were just messing around with one of my Children. Didn’t you scent my marker on him?"

Sonny’s eyes were impossibly wide. "One of yours? Lianndra, I am just so, so sorry. I didn’t recognize the scent marker. I thought it was just something in my head, a memory of all the fun we had hunting the streets. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Don’t ask me, ask Chris." Lianndra turned his back to the fearful Sonny.

Sonny turned to Chris on the bed. "Can you forgive me, Child of Lianndra?"

Chris was looking at him dazedly, his eyes wide and shocky with too much white showing. He turned to Dezi and made a mewling sound deep in his throat. Before Lianndra could stop her, Dezi swooped over to the bed and gripped Chris’ hands tightly. Her eyes roamed over him, noting the horrible scratches and bite marks that covered his bare skin.

"D-D-Dezi, I’m s-s-s-so s-s-sorry I l-l-left. P-p-please, c-c-c-can y-y-you g-g-get m-m-me out of h-h-h-here?" His eyes pleaded with her as his body shuddered and he stuttered uncontrollably.

Dezi cradled his head in her lap and wept tears of blood over him. They fell slowly from her eyes. If she wanted, she could have reached out and caught them as they fell through the air. Instead she let them fall, watching as they landed on his lips, cheeks and eyes, splashing a little bit, drops of blood-red crystal.

His tongue flicked and the blood tears on his lips disappeared. He swallowed, his mouth moving like that of a baby with milk in reach.

As she watched, the scratches disappeared into his skin, sucked in on themselves, leaving only smooth unblemished skin behind. His eyes flickered and awareness returned to him, awareness and an unmentionable horror at what had been done to him.

When he spoke his voice was disbelieving that such a thing could ever happen. "H-h-he raped me!"

Dezi smoothed his sweat and bloodstained hair back from his forehead, her other arm stretched across his chest. "Sh, it’s okay. In a few hundred years you’ll not even be able to remember this," she soothed, stroking his head.

He shuddered and pushed her away; his strength surprising him, as well as her, as she hit one of the bedposts with her back so hard that the post broke in half. She stood up, brushing the sawdust off her clothes and using the time to hide her face from his view, his and anyone else’s.

"D-d-don’t touch me," he snarled, his eyes no longer seeing her but some horrible vision supplied by his own mind.

She felt a deep upwelling of hurt. He was no longer the sweet soul of hours before. What had been done to him had changed him, possibly irreversibly. He might end up cold and bitter toward her and everyone else for the rest of his extremely long life. If such a thing happened, she wouldn’t be able to bear it because she loved him. And even if the love was to be as short lived as a mortal life, she would still be his friend for the rest of eternity and that was all that mattered, their friendship and continuing relationship. They were meant for each other, friends as well as lovers, companions and playmates.

Yet here he was hurting so bad that he was pushing her away. He probably held her responsible for what had happened to him, not just the physical rape, but the mental and emotional rape, the hurt that ran deeper than anything purely physical ever could.

Sonny had used his body in such a way that he had opened a direct link into Chris’ mind, a link of pain, degradation and fear. And through that hole he had flooded the boy’s mind with a potent combination of fear and torment. He hadn’t just raped a body. He had raped a mind.

Chris’ eyes had a shocky look about them and he kept trembling. He held himself stiffly, hugging himself as though he were cold.

LIANNDRA

Lianndra shook his head silently as he watched the two of them. Chris was sheltering his hurt within himself and Dezi was barely any better. She stood watching Chris’ face as if it was her only line to sanity, and he was ignoring her. He was trapped in his own pain and wasn’t letting anyone in to help him.

Chris would never get the kind of revenge that he wanted and needed. He was the victim of Sonny, who was known in vampiric circles as the Fang, thus the name of his gang, the Fang Walkers. Sonny Bolegro, a vampire that could kill Chris without even really trying, which meant that Chris wasn’t going to be beating him anytime soon.

Lianndra, on the other hand, would be coming back later to have a "talk" with Sonny. A talk that would go on for several hundred years if need be, about taking other peoples’ possessions.

For now, all he could do was hope that Chris came out of it before Dezi went crazy from the strain of holding in the guilt and rage she felt. He could feel the anger radiating from her all the way on the other side of the room. It was a roaring inferno that would burn her to a crisp if she weren’t careful.

Slowly he moved across the floor, keeping his hands in plain sight, ready to back away in a hurry if Chris became violent.

The younger vampire was shuddering and making sounds deep in his throat, sounds that no mortal ear would have heard but that was clear to a vampire.

"Sh, sh, it’s okay now. He can’t hurt you anymore and we’ll get you some help," Lianndra soothed, shooting Dezi a look that he knew she would quickly understand. She nodded, shifting her weight for the better balance needed for quick movement.

Chris’ face twisted angrily, his eyes shining deep brown, no longer the color of chocolate, but more the color of cherry wood, brown with a kind of red hue. It was very disconcerting and showed the amount of emotion he was feeling at the moment and barely holding in check. "You’ll protect me? You, the one that couldn’t keep Tispith away and now can’t keep me safe from a crazy vampire that wanted to ‘do’ me, right? Is this the same Lianndra that promised me safety then sucked out my blood and turned me into a vampire? I don’t think you could keep me safe if you really wanted to, and I don’t think you do. I don’t want anything to do with you, any of you. I’ll just go off by myself and leave all this craziness behi…" He was cut off when Dezi took him out with the lightning fast quickness of a born assassin.

Chris fell with a thump against the floor, his face smashing hard into the wood. There was a painful sounding crunch that signified his nose breaking and being jammed in through the hole behind his nostrils. The only things that stopped his nose from being driven farther into his skull were his cheekbones.

Lianndra winced at the sound. It was pretty graphic.

"Why did you do that to the boy?" Sonny asked disinterestedly, he was cleaning his fingernails with a switchblade.

"Is it any of your concern? Is it really, after what you have done to my Child? Do you really deserve to know where I take him?" Lianndra asked viciously, his fangs flashing a faint echo of the knife. In some ways, he had a more dangerous weapon than the older vampire.

Sonny looked up from his fingernails, his eyes wide at the tone of voice directed at him. "Really Lianndra, and I thought we were friends. Mi casa es su casa, share and share alike. Can you really be so greedy and mean-spirited as to not share with your wonderful friend who you have known for much longer than this… child?"

With slit eyes, Lianndra reached out a hand at a speed that was fast even for a vampire and caught the front of Sonny’s shirt, practically lifting him off his feet and would have if Sonny hadn’t been so much taller than he was.

Sonny’s hands rose to clench his wrist, trying to pull off the hand that gripped his shirt so tightly that his ribs rasped together. His teeth were gritted together and his knife had fallen to land somewhere where he couldn’t see or reach it.

"Are we ready for the main fight, lil’ boy? Are you ready to be beaten to the ground? Think about what you’re doin’ and realize that it could be your last decision. Do you want to do this or not?" Sonny asked, his eyes sparking.

Lianndra looked up into the thin face of the vampire that had never really been his friend, but who had been his companion for awhile. The person that he had hated so much that they had become closer than friends. He released Sonny’s shirt.

"No, not now. Later. We will fight sometime when these two aren’t with me," Lianndra said. "I will come back later to have a talk with you, a long talk."

He kept his eyes on Sonny’s face, unable and unwilling to look away. If he turned his back on Sonny, he would likely find a knife in it. There were just some people he wouldn’t even dream of completely trusting, and Sonny was one of them.

LIANNDRA

Dezi needed to get her strength up. She was having a little trouble carrying the awkwardly limp shape of Chris. Her face was paler than usual and she looked as though she was holding in tears that she refused to cry.

Lianndra knew that if he had been the one to carry him, Chris would have been as light as air, probably more so. It was just that he and Dezi were two different people and had different strengths and weaknesses.

Vampires are heavier than they look, every pound is at least twice what it was when they were mortal. Chris had been one hundred and sixty pounds. Now he was three hundred and twenty. The way he hung loosely in Dezi’s arms somehow added to the impossibility of carrying him easily.

Lianndra watched them for a moment, then hurried forward to catch Chris before he hit the pavement when Dezi tripped over a crack in the sidewalk she hadn’t been able to see over Chris’ shoulder.

"Here, allow me." Lianndra slung the body over one shoulder and walked with level, sliding steps.

"Where are we going?" Dezi asked. "We won’t be able to get him back to the apartment without a lot of people noticing."

Lianndra changed directions. "We’ll go to the Vampire Club. It’s closer than the apartment and no one would think it incredibly strange if we carried a body in there. They’d all think he’s just a prop for some macabre show."

She grinned. "That’s good. Besides, I have to talk to some people about a package I paid for, but haven’t received yet."

He looked at her. It was good that she was able to smile. It meant that she wasn’t taking what Chris had said as much to heart as he might have feared.

As long as she could smile like that, everything would be all right.

When they finally reached the Vampire Club, Lianndra directed Phang to call in some backup to help carry Chris inside. The boy was already starting to regain consciousness and he didn’t seem particularly happy with what they had done to him. He struggled feebly at first, then with rising strength. The last few blocks had been hard and Lianndra had had to ask Dezi for help carrying him. Chris was upset at the feel of hands on him and fought to be free.

"What’s happened to the young one, Master?" Phang asked in his unaccented voice. Lianndra had advised him long ago that an old Mandarin accent was not the best thing to have when you’re a vampire trying to be a bouncer. People tend to notice and taunt such personality quirks.

"I told you not to call me that where mortal ears might hear." Lianndra hissed so low that no mortal could possibly overhear.

The Chinese vampire shifted uncomfortably. "Please forgive my rudeness and know that no such word will again pass my lips when we are in mixed company. Do not be offended… Lianndra."

With a sigh, Lianndra nodded, accepting the apology for what it was worth. He couldn’t help wishing once again that the man could act a little more like the humans around him and less-like the ones he had been born amongst nearly a hundred years before.

It was hard to believe, but Phang, who had been Wu Phang Chow, had once worked for the railroad as a laborer and virtual slave. It had been the way that he had made a place for himself in America and had eventually become one of Lianndra’s mortal servants and later a vampire that served Lianndra even in his "afterlife."

Still, even if Lianndra wished that Phang were a little more like regular people, he had to be patient with the man in acknowledgment of the good service Phang had always given him. The man was worth cutting a little slack for.

Smiling faintly at the Chinese vampire, he extended a slender white hand. The vampire ring he wore shimmered and flashed under the lights hanging over their heads.

The Chinese vampire accepted his hand with an expression that could almost be called awe. Carefully, as if the small hand were fragile, he lowered his head and allowed his lips to gently press themselves on the vampire ring. The gem glowed with an inner radiance as his lips brushed the blood-red surface.

Watching him, Lianndra remembered that time so long ago when he had first received his vampire ring. It had been a very traumatic time. He had still been in shock from his transition from mortal to vampire and everything had been moving so fast.

Lianndra cleared the memories away and looked at the still bowed head of Phang. He should not be mean to his Children. He had been like them once, a long time ago.

"Come," he said, raising Phang to his feet. "Call someone to take your place and meet me inside."

Phang bowed his head in a nod. Lianndra touched the man on the arm as he passed by on his way into the Club.

Dezi wasn’t paying any attention to what happened around her. She was busy instructing several brawny servants that they better not drop Chris if they wanted to wake up tomorrow. He shook his head at the uselessness of it all.

He sat on a stool in front of the bar and waited. Within moments Phang came in.

"What happened to the boy?"

Lianndra swiveled to look at him. "He was attacked by the Fang Walkers. Because of their insolence, I have something that you can do for me. I want you to send orders to the local Pack leaders and tell them that there will be a meeting here in exactly seven months at midnight and that I want them all here for it, no excuses. Also tell them that if they decide to blow off the meeting, I will be seeing them the night after and that they won’t be happy about it."

He lifted Phang’s arm and looked down at the man’s watch. It was hard to believe, but it was only around ten. Chris had made his escape from the apartment at about five and had been in the care of Sonny for only four hours. It had been a very trying time with everything compressed into only a few hours.

He sighed. Things were moving along so quickly. Events had taken on a life of their own and sometimes he wondered if he was going to be able to handle everything that came his way.

Suddenly he went still. His head lifted and he sniffed, there was something in the air, something that wasn’t supposed to be here. A scent that was faintly familiar, something musky and strange, something like…

"Blood Trackers!" he screamed. His voice was louder than any mortal lung could have produced.

Every vampire in the room stilled, then turned as one to face the door where the hulking beasts stood, snorting and growling as they realized that they were badly outnumbered.

Lianndra leapt off the stool to land twenty feet away, in front of the leader of the pack, a gray man-thing with crazy red eyes. "You think you can come here?" he shouted. "I don’t think you know what you’ve done. You’ve come into a place forbidden to your kind. In this place I have power over everything--even you." He jabbed a finger at the beast. "Now tell me who sent you here? Who allowed you entrance into this place?"

The beast shook his head as if a great struggle were going on within his mind. Froth appeared at the corners of his mouth to run down his cheeks as his teeth ground together furiously.

The beast’s eyes lost what little sanity they might have had--all that was in them now was a horrible madness that shown clear to everyone that could see his eyes. Not a few mortals shivered in their dramatic vampire capes and wondered what it was about this costumed beast that terrified them so very much.

Finally, the beast couldn’t take the mental strain any longer. He had lost the battle of the mind that he was waging with the ever-youthful Lianndra. He fell to his knees with a snarl and a groan before collapsing completely on his face, his body convulsing with painful looking thoroughness.

When the convulsions stopped, he lay limp and unmoving on the ground. Leftover foam still flowed from his lips to pool on the expensive waxed floor.

Lianndra’s eyes widened impossibly and the unconscious body suddenly began to twitch and move around as if there were worms squirming under the surface of the skin. The little movements continued until the body lifted to its feet and the eyes opened slowly, though they were blank like the eyes of a doll.

"Tell me who sent you." More statement than question, the words were hard and grating to the ears.

The lips puffed in, then out as words were formed slowly and in a guttural voice: "The Queen of those that hunt the night, of those that fight the things of light, those that wish us all to die, those that were born of our fathers’ lies. We are same and yet are different, we are one, but no longer together, we walk the earth in deepening shadow, the shadow of each others’ hates, and yet we ignore the passage of time and live forever in body if not in mind.

"The words must end eventually, but before I cut this talk up short, I say to you, child that is not really: walk softly on the earth of those that came before, beware the fangs of your foe and do not raise the dragon’s anger for you walk, unseeing and unerring, straight into danger. When the time is right, all shall be revealed, but first you must not let yourself be Stilled."

With that the hulking body shimmered then burst into bright blue flames. The last that was seen of the beast were his eyes waking from their hypnotic stupor to widen in their usual madness. The mouth opened in a shrieking scream that went on and on and on before finally going so high-pitched that even Lianndra couldn’t hear it anymore.

The flames extinguished themselves with one last furnace-like blast that shot out to encompass the form of a rather skinny, undergrown Blood Tracker. The creature shrieked before being sucked into the center of the flames and disappearing. It sounded as if he were screaming "No, no, it’s not fair, I’m too smart to die!"

The only signs that it had happened were the remnants of heat on everyone’s faces and the burn marks etched into the floor. Burn marks in the shape of clawed feet/paws.

Lianndra turned to those that were left of the pack, his lips curling cruelly. "Care to dance?"

With a lilting laugh he leaped on the first of the Blood Trackers that came into his sight. His hands were curled into gouging claws that hooked into the beast’s eyes. She screamed horribly as he jerked his hands backward, pulling her eyeballs out of their sockets. Blood came out of the gaping holes, making her face look like the weeping visage of some kind of demon.

He giggled with the sweet innocence of a child amusing himself. He held the eyes up in front of his own and started a capering little dance around the blinded beast.

When he was back in front of her, he threw the eyeballs over his shoulder and leapt up onto his hands, his feet kicking out to slam into her stomach with a strength that sent her careening into the wall that ran alongside the door. She screamed as one of the decorative stakes arranged high up on the wall emerged through her chest to hook her there. She was unable to either pull herself off the stake or loosen it enough to allow it to come off the wall itself, what with all of the other decorations arranged around her. All she could do was writhe and scream, her eyeless sockets horrible in a face that was somehow reminiscent of a black bear.

The other vampires went wild at the sounds of her screams, attacking the Blood Trackers with a ferociousness unmatched by anything produced in nature. The Blood Trackers backed away, but it was no use. The vampires were in full frenzy and they far outnumbered the pack.

Blood stained the floor as the Blood Trackers were literally torn apart by the raging vampires. Blood splashed on healthy mortal faces as well as on the pearly white faces of the ravening vampires. Blood soaked through clothes to quickly cool to a chill temperature that left the mortals shifting uncomfortably and shivering. Blood splashed across the walls in a tattoo of horror. Blood stained smooth white hands into gloves of red.

The vampires gave one last wailing scream as the last of the Blood Trackers went down, its eyes wide with horror as it stared at its still beating heart in the hands of its killer. Fourteen Blood Trackers, the most horrible and practically indestructible beasts to ever walk the earth, were dead, their fur-covered bodies spread around the room like so much hamburger in the spaghetti sauce of life.

Lianndra stared down at his hands before wiping them on his expensive pants, not really caring about the cloth, just not wanting the blood to stain his skin. Blood quickly turns to a sticky mess that is practically impossible to clean away, especially when it’s under the fingernails or dug into the cuticles.

Finally he deigned to look up from trying to get the blood off his hands to find every mortal eye in the room trained on him in some kind of horror filled fascination. He shifted uncomfortably under the weight of those eyes. He felt as though he had been in this place of horror before. A powerful wave of déjà vu went through him.

"They’ve seen too much," he said. "Mind-fuck ‘em."

At his command, the vampires and the Initiated mortals went into quick action.

Phang brought security and medical personnel out of the backrooms and started directing them in what to do. In minutes he had them busily caring for any wounded vampires, which mostly consisted of wiping up any blood, resetting bones, or hauling them off to the trash pile. Blood Tracker blood was deadly poison to a vampire and anyone dumb enough to try and Feed off one of the beasts was already dead.

Security’s main job was to blast through the weaker wills of the mortals and make them believe that nothing untoward had happened. Meanwhile, the medical personnel checked them over for wounds that might cause memory loops later on. Both jobs involved a great deal of care and concentration because mistakes could cause terrible mental scarring in a mortal mind.

Lianndra watched the security and medical crews work in tangent to wipe away all memories of the horror from the mortals’ minds. They were skilled at what they did and he didn’t see any real problems.

Then his eyes were caught by a vampire that had gotten his stomach ripped out. He was feeling around the floor with one hand, picking up the long loops of his intestines and shoving them back into his abdominal cavity. That wasn’t what was so bad. What was, was the way he would give a glad little cry every time he stuck something back in or how, in between the glad cries, he wept tears of blood and fretted vocally about losing something important. It was attention getting and annoying; a man feeling around for the things that had fallen out of his body, the whole time trying to hold the flap of skin across his stomach closed. But even as his hand held that skin flap closed things fell out anyway, and every time something fell back out he became a little more agitatedly manic and searched a little harder for it.

Lianndra clenched his teeth, then stalked over to the vampire. Leaning down so that his mouth was next to the man’s ear, Lianndra whispered so low that it was just them: "You are traumatizing the mortals and creating mental loops that no amount of care will be able to get rid of," Lianndra said. "So you listen to me, you cretin: flip over onto your back and wait for the medical personnel to take care of you and shut up until they do it or I’ll do worse to you than that beast could have ever imagined. Do you understand?"

The vampire looked into his eyes and quickly nodded agreement.

Vampires are hard to kill, and from the look in Lianndra’s eyes, he would have enjoyed finding out how much the man could take before every bit of life was extinguished from his body. And by that time, the man would be begging for a mercy death and he would have to look into the glowing blue orbs that were Lianndra’s eyes and know that there was no mercy there.

Lianndra stood up and watched as the man gave a sudden heave of his arms and flipped over onto his back, spilling half of his insides out onto the floor. The man gritted his teeth and closed his eyes tightly, as if praying for it all to end.

Shaking his head, Lianndra moved to the middle of the dance floor and looked around.

Everything seemed to be going fine. Mortals stood in clumps around the room, their faces blank as they listened to things that he could only imagine. Several of the vampires in security were able to do multiple mortals as long as the mortals were already in thrall. So the weaker vampires wandered around bespelling mortals for others to take care of. It was good to see his people all working together.

He smiled to himself and turned to look for Dezi and Chris. He didn’t want to let that boy out of his sight. It was too nerve wracking. How could one person get in trouble with so many vampires without even trying? It was a little weird, not to mention worrisome. Some strange genetic flaw or something.