Ghouls

Part One: Svetlana

The two ghouls had met socially once before, about a month back. Svetlana had joined some of her teammates on a girl's night out to Atlantic City. The four female gymnasts had spent the Friday night hopping casinos and accepting pink fruity drinks from smiling strangers with orange tans. When the girls called it a night, the other three wanted to split a hotel rather than take a cab back into New York at six a.m., so Svetlana was out-voted.

Somewhere in all of that, she tried looking for a ride home and drunk-texted Cherry, who she only knew vaguely and in passing. But there had been plenty of nights where Svetlana overheard Rusty mentioning that Cherry worked in Atlantic City as a cocktail waitress. And hooker.

When the petite red-head actually showed up at the hotel room door bright and early to pick her up, Svetlana took the chance to get away from her more-drunk friends and a quarter share of the bill to an expensive hotel room.

Breakfast in a nearby hotel hadn't been bad, and was free when it happened that Cherry knew the manager. While morning with the perky young ghoul consisted of her pining over her "boyfriend" Rusty, talking in code about her clients, and openly flirting at nine a.m. with both her waiter and a nearby elderly gentleman, Svetlana had appreciated the ride home.

And, in some strange ways, she liked Cherry. There weren't many others who Svetlana knew of with similar arrangements as she had with Miss Stevie, the vampire who had taken her on as "muscle" and assistant a few months ago. The other ghouls Svetlana knew of, she only saw when she spent time at the vampire club, Sang's: Magumbo, who was Miss Stevie's other assistant, and Kyle and Lenore, who belonged to the club's owner, Zane.

Magumbo did what he could to help Svetlana understand this peculiar world of blood and night but he was as new as she was. Kyle, while not cruel, wasn't interested in her unless Zane told him to be. And with how aloof Lenore made a habit of being, Cherry was the only girl Svetlana had to turn to.

When Stevie called Svetlana late that Sunday night, telling her to buy a lot of rubbing alcohol and get to the Javits Convention Center, she assumed it was another of Miss Stevie's wacky evening ideas. If Rusty and Zane were involved, Svetlana wondered what hapless partygoers were going to end up dead. She certainly wasn't going to provide any of her friends. Fool me once… and all that.

But Miss Stevie had clarified that Kyle was hurt. Which sounded very strange. Svetlana had been hurt before; Magumbo had been hurt. That was one of the plusses of being a vampire's assistant, wasn't it? You could heal almost anything. What could have hurt Kyle so badly? And why at Javits?

Answers were not the first thing on Miss Stevie's mind when she finally met Svetlana at the entrance. But as she had been waiting, Svetlana saw some of the regulars from Sangs and started to piece things together. A little bit at least. Enough to guess that something very big was going on inside that great glass building, an important meeting among the vampires. With that many unpredictable creatures in one place, Svetlana couldn't begin to imagine what had happened to poor Kyle.

She waited a very long time for Stevie or Rusty to come out, or anyone else she knew enough to approach with confidence that they wouldn't go straight for her throat. Finally, Svetlana saw one of the Sangs regulars heading for a cigarette. Once Svetlana had convinced the vampire that she was Stevie's and explained who Kyle was, the woman gave all the gory detail. Even though most of the community knew he wasn't responsible for this "Red Plague" that had struck at Sang's back on April 1st, Kyle's part in the loss of unlife and in jeopardizing the safety of something called The Masquerade was enough that the higher-ups saw fit to punish him. Publically. Brutally.

Half-way through the gruesome description, Svetlana stopped the vampire. She couldn't bear to hear any more of it. How could Zane stand to do something like that to his own ghoul? Why didn't he fight the judgment, tell the other vampires it was not his fault or Kyle's or anyone else at Sang's? Who said he had to listen to those other ones anyway? They weren't even from New York!

And yet, from the description, it seemed like Zane had been powerless. He didn't even try to argue. Didn't he care?

Maybe, Svetlana thought, he doesn't.

He wasn't like Miss Stevie, after all. He'd killed people before, strangers; why not hurt someone who was close to him?

With a heavy sickness in her stomach, Svetlana hailed a taxi and fled to Atlantic City.