"Good evening, my fellow Kindred. My apologies...for interrupting any business or...any prior engagements…"
Someone spoke, the voice difficult to make out through the ringing in her ears. She shifted, tried to move her head, get off sore, aching knees. Nothing moved. Not her head, not her hands. As if her body and mind refused to speak. An ache rippled through her chest, lancing to where her heart was. Not her heart, that didn't race at all. She could barely fe-
Something shifted, another stab of pain, and her eyelids fluttered open, then slammed shut from the lights above. Katniss forced them open to see a mass of shapes and colors that sharpened. Blurs became people, seats, carpets and…something that jutted from her shirt.
Not her shirt; her chest.
A gloved hand wrapped around it, drew it out inch by inch. It was long, cylindrical, tapered to a sharp point at the end as it came free. There was no pain, only a tingling numbness, like when her leg fell asleep and was now waking up. Her brain rummaged around, looking for the word. There was a word for that thi-
A stake. Someone had impaled her with a stake.
"...it is unfortunate that the affair that gathers us together tonight is a troubling one..."
The voice continued, enunciating each word with a British accent. She shoved that thought aside. The voice wasn't important. The stake clattered to the floor, bounced and rolled off the edge of the stage. Not a spot of blood was on it. Her eyes tipped down to her shirt, waiting for a torrent of blood to gush out. Nothing. The shirt was torn, stained, but not with blood.
That…that wasn't right. Her brain knew what should happen. There should be pain, then blood gushing out, her body sagging to the ground as everything grew cold, her life flashing before her eyes and - whatever else happened to dying people. The first time she'd killed a deer, there had been blood. When she had yanked the arrow from its neck, it had spurted across her face and jacket.
She shouldn't feel good. Apart from a dry throat, she felt … great. Better than she had in months. Years. Ever since the funeral.
"...as Prince, I am within my rights to grant or deny the kindred of this city the privilege of siring. Many of you have to come to me seeking permission, and I have endorsed some of these requests, but the accused that sits before you tonight was not refused permission. Indeed, he never asked."
A pair of dress shoes appeared, light reflecting off polished tips into her eyes. She twisted her head away. Two rough hands wrapped around her head, twisting it back.
"Eyes front," someone hissed in her ear.
She ignored the voice, tried to bring her hands up to fight back as something cold and metallic bit into them. Handcuffs. They had handcuffed her. She struggled, the cuffs felt like they'd cut through skin to the bone and her head threatened to snap off in that vice-like grip. The floor creaked again, dress shoes leaving little imprints in the dust as the speaker resumed pacing.
The man with his back to her was covered in white. White dress pants, a white jacket, the hair on the back of his head snow white. A stark contrast to the room swathed in red. The auditorium held row after row of seats upholstered in red leather, their color faded to a dark burgundy. Balconies hovered above them, and looking down on all of it were box seats, thick purple drapes unfurling from either side, throwing shadows onto the audience.
"...chose, on his own accord, to act without the necessary sanction, transgressing one of our most cherished laws…"
Her eyes widened. There was an audience. Not a full house, maybe fifty people, most sitting alone. One row in the back was taken up by a dozen men and women wearing leather jackets, arms covered in tattoos, boots propped on the seats in front of them. One woman, with red lips and blonde hair, wearing a mini-skirt and dress shirt tied to reveal her alabaster white stomach, blew a kiss to a portly man in a box seat. He looked down at her over his gold-rimmed glasses, set off against the purple of his suit, then turned his nose up, looking back to the stage.
Others wore three piece business suits with ties a few feet away from others in outfits that would make a stripper blush. Clothing rustled as people squirmed in their chairs, lighters clinked open and sparks appeared followed by the smell of smoke and tobacco.
Katniss narrowed her eyes as the woman caught her looking, and winked. At Katniss. She must have been at least a hundred feet away, maybe more, but Katniss could pick out every freckle on her bare skin, every strand of blonde hair that escaped her pigtails. Which…which made no sense. No one could see that far. Even with perfect vision, it wasn't possible.
A deep breath and the women's perfume hit her, like flowers. Past that the smell of unwashed bodies, men's cologne - and blood.
"...caught shortly after the embrace of this childe. It pains me to…"
The last thing she remembered was getting off at the Cal State LA Bus station, going into the convenience store for a drink to wait for her Uber to arrive, to take her to the audition...and then this. Nothing in between.
Drugs. The only explanation that made any sense. They had jumped her, injected her with God knew what, then dragged her here. That's why she thought she could see these people, smell their cologne. It was her mind trying to deal with whatever was going on. No person could do this unless they were part of the X-men.
None of it was real.
Still, why would they pick her? She only had fourteen dollars and eight cents in her pocket. Unless they had taken it - in which case she was broke. Again. Plenty of credit card debt though; they could 'steal' as much of that as they wanted. It made no sense to kidnap some girl from a two-bit town in Kentucky.
Unless they wanted someone no one would miss...
The hands tightened, digging into her skull as the voice sped up, growing louder with each word.
"...considered the accused a loyal and upstanding member of our organization…"
The stage floor groaned, then groaned again, threatening to break, each one louder than the last. The sharp smell of steel pierced her nose. The Prince turned around, his eyes fixated on something behind her. The front matched the back. White dress shirt with gold-white cufflinks, white tie and a face framed by a snowy beard that made him look like someone's grandpa, the kind that wore a suit even to dinner at home. The only color rested in his shirt pocket, a spot of red.
A rose.
Her neck cracked as the hands holding it forced her to look right. There was another hostage in dirty clothing, dark hair that curled and fell around his face, obscuring it. Like her, he was handcuffed. Two men in suits and dark glasses held him by a shoulder each, though he didn't struggle. He did nothing when their grip tightened, and a third grabbed his hair, yanking it out of the way so his neck was bare. The hands holding her head tightened as a giant strode into view.
The giant cast a shadow over both of them. The overcoat he wore strained at the shoulders, leaving his chest bare, revealing metal armor underneath. A bald head and expressionless face with dark eyes that looked at the man below him with utter indifference. On his shoulder rested a sword longer than her arm, longer than her. It was shaped like a butcher's cleaver, fat and curved at the end.
"...you may know, the penalty for this transgression, is death."
The white man stepped between them, blocking her view as he leaned down towards the hostage.
"Forgive me," he whispered, then stepped back.
"Let the penalty commence."
An instant was all it took. The sword shifted. Katniss blinked and something thudded onto the floor. When her eyes opened the man's head rolled back and forth. The sword tore itself free from the ground, sending splinters everywhere. The two men holding the body let go and it slumped forward, head and neck separated by inches. Then it began to glow.
Red lines appeared across the skin of his neck and hands, like cracks. First one line, then a dozen, a thousand, each splintering apart like a river dividing into hundreds of little streams. Heat radiated from it like a fire and the red cracks turned white, glowing brighter and covering more and more skin. His clothing caught fire for a second.
Then everything dissolved into a little pile of ash.
No.
No matter how many times she closed and opened her eyes, the scene never changed. No body, no head. Just ash. Hallucinations. Whatever they had given her were causing hallucinations. Bodies did not glow red, or white and then turn into ash. People who were stabbed, bled. People who died became corpses.
"This isn't happening," she whispered to herself.
A nightmare. Except her nightmares involved empty pantries, piles of unpaid bills chasing her around the house. She would have woken up by now from her usual nightmares, at home in the bed she shared with Prim. Probably have woken up Prim too, held her while she fell back asleep, as she spent the rest of the night up worrying about overdue bills, if the water and electricity would still work in the morning.
None of them were like this. None had felt so real. The handcuffs felt real. The heat, the perfume, the creaking of wood, the splinters that stung her face. When pieces of ash drifted down to rest in her hair, that was real. If her hands weren't cuffed she could touch it, feel it crumble beneath her fingertips.
Most people would have vomited at being covered in dead person flakes.
But all she could think about was the thirst. Her throat was parched, drier than the Sahara desert, a stream parched by the summer heat. It prodded at her mind, shoving everything else aside. The man, the audience, the handcuffs, even what would happen to Prim. All of it was washed away by the yearning to drink something, to end this thirst. Someone uncorked a bottle, the overpowering scent of alcohol blotting brushing every other scent aside. She hated booze.
In that moment she would have given her left arm for a sip.
"Let tonight's proceedings serve as a reminder to our community that we must adhere to the code that binds our society, lest we endanger all of our blood. As for the childe..."
The Prince's black eyes rested on her … the same way she would look at deer in the woods. He opened his mouth-
"This is BULLSHIT."
It echoed off the walls. The hands holding her head went slack. She twisted out of their grip and searched the room. In the back row, a man with olive skin and gray eyes lunged to his feet, kept in place by a woman with buzzcut hair and a mountain-sized man with dark skin. His face was feral, teeth bared and, for a moment, it looked like he might throw them both off, leap over seats and storm the stage. The woman leaned in, whispered something in his ear. Katniss heard only fragments. Whatever she said kept the gray-eye man there and her heart sank.
Until she realized he wasn't alone. Her eyes swept the room to find at least half, more than half of the audience on their feet. The man in purple, his glasses sliding down to his nose, the woman who had flirted with him. They shouted and yelled. Voices overlapped until they were indistinguishable. She couldn't make out the words, but she didn't need to. It sure as hell wasn't a standing ovation.
Hope.
Had he done something wrong, gone off script? Maybe this wasn't how tonight's little show was supposed to go. Maybe, for once, life would give her a damn break. Or as much of a break as it ever did. Not being executed in the middle of an auditorium would go a long way to making up for the last thirteen years of her life.
"If Mister Hawthorne would let me finish," the man in white said, "I have decided to let this Kindred live."
A click and her arms fell free, wrists aching and chafed red but otherwise unharmed. The arm on her shoulder disappeared, she fell. New hands caught her, dragging her to her feet. They wore suits, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. She wrenched her arms away and nearly toppled over, legs wobbling like a newborn calf. There went any hope of running off stage.
"She will be instructed in the ways of our kind and be granted the same rights and responsibilities. Let no one say I am unsympathetic to the plights and causes of the community. I thank you all for attending these proceedings and I hope their … significance is not lost," he said.
He turned and brushed past her, heading for the back stage. She turned to watch him go. His wrist flicked towards the thick black curtains. They flew apart just long enough for him to walk through without breaking stride, then snapped shut behind. She blinked. Had tha-that actually happened?
She snorted. He probably had someone waiting for him.
"Follow the Prince," someone growled.
She turned. The executioner pointed one gloved finger towards the curtains, other hand curled around the sword handle. Three more men waited behind him, hands clasped behind their backs. The message was clear.
She followed, since the alternative was her head rolling on the floor. The floor creaked behind her with every footstep. She hit the curtains hard, shoved from behind. They blinded her, she stumbled through and crashed into a pile of mannequins. They thumped onto the floor, spilling corsets, hoop-skirted dresses, and faux eighteenth century suits across the floor while their friends gazed on in silence.
Katniss pushed herself upright, the dusty floor reminding her of an equally dry throat, saw a fake cardboard castle and its turrets to her right. On her left, a poorly drawn skyline of Paris, with a blurry Eiffel tower in the background. The horde of props covered the floor, leaving only a winding path the Prince followed. He turned and beckoned her with a finger before continuing.
"Your sire - tragic, my apologies," he said when she caught up, "but you see there is a…strict code of conduct that all of us must…must adhere to, if we wish to survive."
"Whose w- do you have anything to dri-"
A sharp cuff to the back of her head and she nearly collided with the Prince. Pain rippled down her neck. She scowled at the thug behind her, saw the sword, and turned back around. The Prince continued as if nothing had happened.
"When someone, anyone, breaks these laws, they undermine the well-worn fabric of our centuries old society. Understand my predicament Miss…" he paused, turning to her.
Katniss was caught off guard, too busy wondering just how deep the rabbit hole went with this man. She saw him wait, expectant. Turned to see the executioner nod, then waited a bit longer, until the executioner's eyes narrowed, the rasp of leather gloves tightening around the sword handle before answering.
"Everdeen."
The Prince smiled, nodded, then kept walking. The dusty mannequins and wood floors gave way to a narrow concrete hallway. They took the corner, and ahead of them a sign glowing in red read EXIT.
"Miss Everdeen. Allowing you to live makes me directly responsible for your subsequent behavior. What I am offering you is this opportunity to transcend the fate woven by your Sire."
Katniss nodded. That was safe. If they wanted to let her go, she wouldn't make them think twice. Then she could call Prim, and find something to drink. Her tongue snaked out across chapped lips. So thirsty. Maybe she would find something to drink first. Yes, that would be alright.
The door groaned, opened on its own as the Prince waved a hand at it, light spilling out into a darkened alleyway. The smell of trash and urine poured through, car horns and wailing police sirens filling whatever space was left. In the distance she heard a man and woman saying the same word over and over again, the pace quickening until their voices overlapped, the woman gasp - oh.
Still in L.A., at least if the movies were right.
"You will be brought to Santa Monica. There you will meet an agent by the name of Mercurio who will provide the details of your…labor. I have shown you great clemency. Prove it was more than a wasted gesture, fledgling."
Katniss had a million questions. What the hell were Kindred? Why did they call her a 'fledgling'? Were they all crazy, and why would they bother to grab a girl from some two bit hick town for their midnight pow-wow. She opened her mouth to ask one, or all of them, at the same time and found herself propelled through the open doorway and into the night.
"Do not come back, until you do. Good evening."
The door squealed as it slammed shut. She got to her feet, grimacing as water soaked through her jeans from a dirty, puddle that welcomed her. Hoped was water, at least. Something sticky clung to her skin and her pants, her pock-
"Shit," she hissed, hands patting her jeans. The bumps where her wallet, phone and keys should be were flat. Not satisfied, she dug into both front pockets, as if they might reappear if she reached deep enough. No luck. Her back pockets, where she kept her fourteen dollars and eight cents were empty too.
Bastards. The 'Prince's' suit was worth a fortune; why'd they need her money? They hadn't even given her anything to drink.
She strode to the door and grabbed the handle. The metal piece clicked. She yanked, and felt it shudder. Locked. She tried again with the same result, so she put a boot on the wall and pulled with both hands. The handle shrieked and she jerked back, nearly falling down the steps behind her. The handle dangled loosely from the door, kept in place only by the tips of several loose screws.
Had it been like that be- she shook her head. It didn't matter. What did matter was that they had thrown her outside into this alley straight from a bad horror film, locked her out, and left her with no money or phone. That, that was her problem. A young woman alone in L.A.?
Her mother had warned her about this sort of thing, back when she was still her mother.
"Open up," she yelled. Her fist came down on the door once. When it came back, the door was dented. Not a small dent, like you could make on cheap metal. This was big enough to put her hand into. How had she done tha-
"Well, sweetheart, looks like yer day just went to shit."
How she hadn't seen him before, she didn't know. Two feet from the steps, a man leaned against the wall, covered in shadow except for his right arm clutching a bottle. The label read Jack Daniel's. A cigarette end glowed, casting a bit of light between the two fingers holding it.
"What a scene though, man! Hoo-wee," he chuckled, the drawl telling her he came from the south too, maybe further south than her. He pushed off the wall and strode into the circle of light thrown by the lamp above the door. Blue eyes peered out from a weatherbeaten face, worn, the kind she saw those men whose lives were spent in the fields. The wind ruffled dirty blonde hair, and his lips quirked to the right as he smiled at her
He took a swig from the bottle, tattoos coiling across his arm and bare chest, covered only by a faded jacket with a red A on it's breast. "They just plopped ya out here like a naked babe in the woods, but then Prince Snow was always a little shit. No help, no nada, just you in the middle of fuckin' L.A. Real nice."
"I-uh,-"
"Name's Haymitch, though everyone round here calls me Smilin' Jack on account of this," he wiggled the bottle, a thin layer of liquid sloshing around.
"Here, try it."
She started to reach for it, took her hand back. The amber colored liquid look so refreshing, cool, but she wouldn't give in. Not like others she'd known. Not even for a sip. "N-no thanks."
"I'd say it takes the edge off but that'd be a lie. Worst part 'bout the change, nothing tastes like it used to. Still, ol' habits die hard." He downed the rest, then chucked the bottle overhead. It bounced off a dumpster and shattered on the pavement.
"Now, I know this is probably a lot for ya to take in so why, uh, why dontcha let me show ya the ropes? Whaddya say?"
She should have known. Another nutjob. Who else would hang around here?
"Ropes? I just...do you have a cell phone? I just want to call my sister and let her know where I am and that…I'm okay," she said. Then, as an afterthought, "Do you have anything else to drink?"
He shook his head.
"That's a no go, for both. Ya try and run the gorilla in, the one with the sword, why he and his buddies will just hunt ya down and do to you what he did to yer Sire. Plus, it'll be sunrise in a few hours and if yer still outside, well, let's say that'll be a view y'ain't ever gonna forget."
"I just need to call my sister," Katniss repeated.
Trash blew past her boots as the wind whipped up. She crossed her arms across her chest, tried to cover the tears in her shirt, but didn't feel cold. The last time she'd checked, it was supposed to be chilly tonight. Above her clouds were driven by the wind like a shepherd and his flock fleeing wolves. Not winter-coat cold, but cold enough that anyone without a jacket ought to feel it. Yet she stood in the alley like it was the middle of July even though it was January.
"Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Ya can't EVER talk to yer family, y'hear? As far as yer family's concerned, yer dead." Katniss took a step back but he didn't notice. "If ya try and go home, talk to them, hell email them, then that gorilla is going to go in there and kill ya, yer family, probably yer whole damn town. These people will do anythin' to keep the Kine in the dark, keep the Masquerade goin'."
"Kine, Masquerade…what the hell is going on here?"
"Ya telling me no one told ya? Shit," he snorted, crossed his arms mirroring her. "Fuckin' figures. Well, I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is y'ain't ever gonna need sunscreen again."
"Bad news?"
"Well, sweetheart, bad news is yer a Vampire."