Bad, Bad Blood
Chapter I – All Colors and Heat
"Who the hell needs another vampire story?"
Faye threw her smoldering filter down to the cement floor, grinding it out with her boot heel and rolling her eyes. The bartender hardly glanced up at this – littering was as small a sin as smoking in this illegitimate bar. Music bounced off the concrete walls in an ever-mounting decibel rise, creating the telltale cacophony native only to dance clubs trying too hard to force their patrons to have a good time. A haze of tobacco and pot smoke wafted around the space with no draughts to dislodge it and a contact high was impossible to avoid. She inhaled deeply and waited for the placidity to set in.
Someone thought they could get an edge on the rave scene in New York by running a floating dance party and tonight's was in some abandoned warehouse basement. It was less a neon-paint all-night-rave and more of a place where the hipsters wanted to be in order to wear ironic tee shirts and be seen by people like Faye Donohue and her drinking buddy Julien Webster.
Julien wrote bestselling horror books and was a fervent bisexual fiend. Privately, Faye figured his being bisexual was just a pit-stop on his highway to gay, but she continued to be cordial when he insisted on flirting with her and sleeping with women he never seemed to have nice opinions of in the morning. Then again, that tended to be the inclination of many single straight men in New York City, so she reserved final judgment on him for the time being.
Unfortunately for his original career goals, Julien wrote just enough eroticism into his books that they were beloved by teenage girls and middle-aged women and therefore they were denounced by real book critics as only fitting for the young adult section. Despite his fervent arguments to the contrary, Julien was stuck in a rut and couldn't find a way out. However, he was just famous enough to be invited as a small celebrity to domestic conventions and welcomed as a guest on some of the lesser morning talk shows. He continued to churn out novels to the delight of his publisher and languish in the stagnant pool of writer's block and top-shelf vodka.
Faye had resigned herself long ago to being Julien's wing-woman. Help him out with story ideas, fix major plot holes, and he would routinely thank her in the epigraph and occasionally buy her another bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. They'd met in college and bonded over a mutual disdain for the status quo. That's why Julien was a bestselling author, and Faye managed a dusty old bookstore in the Village. Most of her extra spending money came from selling Julien's autographed copies for him.
"Seriously, Webster. The market's up to here with shitty vampire stories." She pulled out another cigarette and struck a match with her gesturing hand. "They all have the same plot – handsome mysterious vampire moves in next door, naïve teenage girl or mid-twenties woman falls in love with him, some run-of-the-mill S&M-inspired sex scenes ensue and she either has to kill him or turn into a vampire. I literally just described ninety percent of vampire literature out there."
Julien scoffed. "You think you know so much just because those Twilight books spawned a bunch of copycats and that's all that's been new so far."
"Incorrect, sir. The last ten percent is Anne Rice wannabes blathering about how tortured and lonesome they all are. It's bullshit, Julien. You're better than vampires. What new take are you going to do that will have your readers thinking you're better than the rest of the supernatural smut out there?"
He spun his dry martini slowly and frowned down at it. "I was thinking some kind of big Shyamalan twist. Like it was the girl who was the vampire the whole time."
"Way to write the ending before you write the story, rookie."
She tensed and bent over, fighting the mounting need to cough. Losing the battle, she turned around and hacked into the crook of her arm. It wasn't a dry cough – it hadn't been for a couple days now.
Julien leaned over and touched her hand. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." She turned back around and hastily wiped her mouth with a handkerchief she'd stuffed in her purse. "Just the weather getting colder. No problem."
He frowned again. "If you say so. But seriously Faye, I haven't done vampires yet. I check the forums – it seems like around sixty percent of my fan base wants to read one from me. I can't keep writing werewolves and ghosts forever. Eventually, every author in the genre gets around to vampires."
"Then do it and don't blame me when you realize there's no original storylines left. You can't even be meta and write about a writer studying vampires who meets one, because Anne Rice already beat you to it before it was cool." She sipped her Manhattan and took another drag.
The room was filling up, which was surprising. The party hadn't been that well advertised and it was a Wednesday night. Nothing cool had even happened yet to make people text all their friends to show up. Perhaps it was the out-of-the-ordinary presence of a makeshift bar that spurred the city's underage to show up in droves, or perhaps word had gotten out that the famous Drake Jackson – aka Julien Drake Webster – was in attendance. Either way, the crowd that began to push in from all sides ran the range from late teens to mid-thirties. A person could almost smell the statutory rape lawsuits waiting to happen.
"Why were you so keen on coming here tonight anyway?" Faye asked loudly over the steady thump of the music.
He grinned maliciously. "It happens to be the kickoff to the Halloween party season in New York City underground society. I brought you this in honor of the affair." He placed a rumpled mass of shiny black fabric on the table. "Happy Halloween two-thousand-nine, sugarpie."
She picked it up delicately and let it fall out, revealing that it was a nicely embroidered black and merlot-red cape that fell to the hips. Rolling her eyes, she pulled it on over her clothes and noticed the front flared obscenely and intentionally around her breasts.
"You sleaze."
"You're welcome. I thought maybe after wearing this you'd be more responsive to my vampire book idea. I myself am going to demonstrate how worn out werewolves are." He put a furry brown headband on that had big dog ears attached and popped in a pair of fitted ragged canines. "By the end of the night, I want an original storyline from each of us. Deal? Deal. Be back in a minute." With that, he disappeared to get them fresh drinks.
She sneered at his receding form and turned in her chair to watch the crowd seethe. Julien was right about it being a Halloween party; she was starting to notice less hipsters and more people in makeshift costumes. Thankfully it wasn't too slutty a crowd and there were more clever outfits than there were outright attempts at showing off skin. Must be the demographic, she thought. Any person in their right mind looking for a Halloween party would be at one of the expensive dance clubs where showing up in anything more than lingerie was grounds for being kicked out. A sane person would not choose to be half-freezing in an unfinished warehouse basement. She smirked at her own thought.
By midnight there were still a few people in attendance that either didn't get the memo or didn't care about the holiday dress code. Julien was taking his time getting back with the drinks; odds were he'd been recognized and accosted at the bar. She was used to it and continued to nurse the last of her drink as she people-watched. Her private little game was to count and watch the people who were clearly too old to be there – people past the age of about thirty-five who were trying desperately to hold onto their guilt-free youth. At a party like this, it was easy to spot them because they hadn't come prepared to dress up.
She'd been so entertained by this one poor guy who looked like he was about forty, half-balding, paunch being held back by what had to be the hardest-working vest in the contiguous United States, when she caught a guy staring in her direction from across the room. He wasn't looking specifically at her – at least, she thought and hoped he wasn't – but it was enough to make her uncomfortable. He was either Italian or black Irish and he was wearing just a black tee-shirt and jeans. Adding to the slowly mounting feeling of creepiness was that he didn't seem to blink.
"Who are you staring at? I demand to know." Julien slid back onto his seat in front of her, grinning and directly blocking her view of the guy. He spun his head around and scanned the crowd. "Please tell me not the guy dressed as Sexy Colonel KFC. That's his real moustache, and it's gross."
She smiled and took her drink. "No, I was playing Count The Fogies. Got all the way up to eleven this time."
"A new record. Let us toast the occasion." They clinked glasses and sipped.
They continued to chat for awhile, dutifully ignoring the pack of girls gyrating like pole dancers trying to get Julien's attention. Handsome men were at a premium tonight, and his combination of sleek musculature, olive skin and pale blue eyes made Julien one of the prime targets for girls seeking someone to make poor decisions with. He shot them an occasional smile but made no move to join them. Faye was used to his getting this kind of attention and though she fully expected him to eventually ditch her, she appreciated his sticking around for a bit.
"Thanks for hanging," she said, spinning her glass. "When you want to go make some more fans, I'm going to head out."
"Why would you leave? It's a good night to stick around. They say celebrities show up to these things," he laughed. "No, seriously, you can't leave until we come up with a good plot for me. And why would you want to?"
"I'm just getting the wiggins from some guys here. I don't want to stick around alone."
"Who? Who's creeping on you?" He looked around, eyebrows furrowed, looking for the culprit. "I can get him thrown out. Where is he?"
She took his arm and pulled him to face her. "It's not a big deal. I don't think any of them are even looking at me. There's just one guy; he makes me nervous. He looks like one of those guys who comes to clubs to find girls and you see on the news the next morning that he's a serial killer." She chuckled nervously.
"Oh, just that? That's half the good-looking guys in New York, babydoll. The Handsome Serial Killers Union offered me membership just last week, in fact." He laughed and nearly fell off his stool. "Woof, I'm a little further along than I thought. I'm about at the point where I should start looking for a dance partner. Still no interest?"
She frowned down at her drink. "You wouldn't want me as a dance partner, we've been over this. I'd look ridiculous."
He stood and walked around to rub her shoulders reassuringly. "You've got to get over this self-image thing. No one can tell. Nobody would care."
"No, thank you. You go on, I'm going to go catch the subway. Thanks for a fun night. I'll call you if I get any good ideas."
"As you wish." He kissed her cheek and held his arm out for her to lean on as she stood up. She winced and waited for him to wave goodbye and meld into the crowd before she moved to go, draping her coat over her left leg in order to better mask the outline of the metal brace under her jeans.