Last time on ClubVamp:

"Shut up guys!" Tim had turned around and was glaring at his son. "I need you to be as quiet as possible as we walk through this door and into the garage."

Kerry immediately sobered. They were being held hostage in vampire territory, her mind screamed at her, why was she being so irresponsible? Sure, everyone needs a little joviality and play in their life, but she knew better than to do this now. She stared at Tim's back as he stood still, listening. She knew he was checking for heartbeats, or footsteps, or any signs that whoever they were trying to avoid was on the other side of the door. Michel had always done the pause and listen thing too. The way was apparently clear, for Tim pushed open the large metal door. The hinges groaned open and Kerry held her breath, waiting to see if anything happened. She wasn't sure if vampires could sense bombs, but she watched enough action movies to know that this point was the big climatic moment.

Club Vampyr

Chapter 4

Nothing happened. She felt foolish for thinking that anything would when Tim nonchalantly walked through the opened door, Nathaniel took cue and followed behind. Kerry, a bit too cautious than the risk-taking guys, peered left and right before walking completely through the door. They were in an underground garage, cleaner than any she had ever seen before. The cement was almost bleached white and there were no trails of leaking car fluid or tire marks to be seen. She wondered if it was new or just upper class. The lighting was white and crisp. Beside another door to her left was a red Ferrari, one of those vintage ones like in Magnum PI. She eyed it for a second, walking straight into Nathaniel who was ogling the car as he had found God.

"Sorry," she muttered, walking around him.

Nathaniel didn't move. She thought she saw his lips moving in complete and utter reverence.

"It's only a Ferrari. You see them all the time on TV."

"Gnnnah." Nathaniel replied, moaning a bit.

"Uh." She hoped that wasn't what she thought it was.

"Nathaniel," Tim warned, sounding incredibly father-like. He pointed to a blue ford, the only decrepit looking car in the lot. "Get in the car."

Nathaniel took a step towards the red Ferrari before it dawned on him that his father had meant the blue rust-bucket he was standing beside. Kerry could see his shoulders slump in disappointed. She climbed in the back of the car, leaving shotgun to her neighbor. Nathaniel hopped into his seat, hiking up his white shorts up around his hips before sitting down. Tim got into the car, quickly starting it and pulling out.

"Don't worry," Kerry said, patting Nathaniel's shoulder as if she were comforting him. Instead, she was about to rub it in. "If you're lucky, you might get to ride in one yet. Just wait until you do. Man, you wouldn't believe how smooth it is compared to this…"

"You're shitting me, right?" He turned in his seat to glance back at her. "You've never been in a Ferrari, right?"

Actually, she had. She didn't like thinking of that time in Regina's car, but it was there in her memory bank. Thinking back on it was far easier than living it. She thought about telling Nathaniel, but she didn't exactly want to give Michel away yet. He might have a father who was a vampire, but Kerry knew next to nothing about vampire politics. "Would I lie?" She ended up asking, letting him draw his own conclusions.

"Is she lying?" Nathaniel turned to his father. Tim was busy navigating the ford from the entry way to the underground garage. They managed to leave whatever building they were in with no trouble whatsoever and Kerry wondered whether there was ever any real danger. Tim had said something in the beginning about her having an appointment to see the boss tomorrow. Maybe she had just misread the situation. As they emerged from the well-lit underground and into the dispersed lighting of the street, Tim shrugged his shoulders at Nathaniel's question and turned left.

"Does she know?" The older man asked his son, flicking his eyes to the rearview mirror in order to look at Kerry. She barely noticed; she was too busy watching her surroundings, noting how they came out of the garage about a block away from Club Vampyr. She wondered if the entire underground of the area was connected through those hallways she had just walked down. It seemed like a viable vampire solution to that pesky sun problem – all they had to do was control the underground network of an entire neighbourhood (or city). Of course, maybe someone had moved them both into another building while they were unconscious.

"Know what?" Nathaniel replied to his father's question.

"You know," Tim sounded exasperated as he accelerated through a yellow light. He glanced at Kerry through the rearview mirror before shooting Nathaniel a meaningful look.

"No, I don't kno- oh!" Nathaniel frowned, looking sheepish as if he had just let out a secret. "I dunno. Kerry?"

She really should have been paying closer attention to what the two stooges were saying instead of trying to figure out vampire property rights and city zoning codes. She glanced up in confusion, trying to figure out what the original conversation had been about. She needed to think of something to say that was intelligent and witty all at once, so that they wouldn't realize her ignorance. "Wha?" Oh yeah, that was quite verbose of her.

"Should I tell her?" Nathaniel asked slowly.

"She needs to find out at some point. Especially since Nelle…" They both turned and stared at her. Kerry was feeling distinctly uncomfortable under Tim's sharp scrutiny and Nathaniel's worried frown. What could they possibly have to tell her that was such a secret Nathaniel wasn't just blurting it out?

"What is it?" She managed to keep the frustration she was feeling at how long it was taking for them to just come out and say it out of her voice, but she still mimicked their hushed frantic tones. Was Nelle dead? No, that wasn't it. Nathaniel couldn't possibly know anything about Nelle that she didn't. They were unconscious at the same time after all.

Tim pulled the car over into the empty parking lot of a closed shoe store. He flipped his wrist, turning off the engine of the car and then unbuckled himself so that he could turn in his seat to look her in the eye personally instead of through a mirror. This motion conveyed the seriousness of the conversation more than voice tones or quick glances could. "Kerry," Tim started, staring unwaveringly at her face. "You must keep this a secret."

Kerry's eyebrows knitted together in a little frown as she mentally groaned impatiently. Yet again they were still making her wait for the answers instead of just telling her. She locked her fingers together on her lap so she wouldn't tap them against anything and show what she was really feeling. "Sure," she replied flippantly, "I'll take it to my grave."

Nathaniel's face hovered over his father's shoulders. At her words, his eyebrows winged up.

"If you talk you will be," Tim threatened with a low voice. Kerry felt a shiver up her spine and rest somewhere around her heart.

"Dad's a vampire!" Nathaniel blurted out. Finally. Kerry's eyebrows winged up in disbelief. Why hadn't she realized that was the secret they thought she should know? Just because she was already aware of vampires didn't mean the vampires knew she knew. You know? Nathaniel took her shocked expression as a sign she still didn't believe in vampires and hurried on with his explanation. "It's true!"

"Natha…" Tim began to warn.

"Show her your incisor!" Nathaniel turned away from his father and began babbling. "Vampires are real, Kerry. They walk amongst us just like we do and they have a beating heart and they breathe and they don't really kill when they feed. They can kill, but they don't need that much blood. Nelle is probably one now, so she won't die of leukemia or go into a decline or whatever her next step was. And it is such a relief to tell someone about this because I was sworn to secrecy ages ago and have been dying to tell someone."

"Whoa. Slow down!" Kerry blinked, trying to absorb everything Nathaniel just said. It wasn't really anything that she hadn't known before, but Nathaniel was a native of New York and tended to live up to the stereotype of quick-talking and muttering. At least, that's how it sounded to her own ears. Father and son took the expression on her face to mean she was having trouble absorbing everything. For a vampire et co, they weren't really all that perceptive. "Didn't we just have this conversation half an hour ago?"

Nathaniel frowned, not really remembering what she was talking about.

"I guess crying like a baby purges stuff like that from your mind," Kerry told him sympathetically with only a little sarcastic bite to the words.

He gave a quick scowl and then ignored her comment. "You've always told Nelle that vampires aren't real and I hate to tell you that you're wrong, but… you're wrong." Nathaniel rubbed a hand over his temple and looked at her sheepishly.

"You always agreed with me," Kerry retorted, it finally hitting her (again) that both she and Nathaniel had been playing the same game and telling the same lies. His crying had not only caused him to forget about the conversation they had been having, but made her forget about the main issues of it as well. Like, maybe if they had known they could be honest with each other, everything wouldn't have ended up like this. "You always knew, and you lied!" Kettle calling the pot monochromatic much?

Tim started the engine of the car as they spoke. He hadn't pulled out the incisors for a demonstration, but he didn't need to. Kerry had already known. If she was anyone else, she would be focusing on the fact that vampires were real instead of Nathaniel keeping it a secret. She felt betrayed. Kerry was furious at him for lying when he knew damn well that vampires existed, for not protecting Nelle better, and for having better connections to the vampire world than she did and not arranging something for his girlfriend. Mostly, she was angry at herself as well. She had been going around with the knowledge of Michel as if it was an unwanted chip on her shoulder. She had felt left alone in a world full of people who were in the dark, as if she was set apart from everyone else. Why hadn't she realized she wasn't special? If it was that important for Michel to keep his vampirism a secret, he would have done away with her.

"I didn't lie!" Nathaniel retorted hotly. Apparently, he was feeling a bit guilty as well. "It would jeopardize my dad's life if I went around and told everyone about him. I know you've had a bad experience with vampire hunters. Imagine what would have happened if you actually were one."

Bad experience? She had spent years in therapy to deal with killing Marsala. "If I was a vampire he wouldn't have caught me." Kerry glared, raising her voice to cover the emotions and confusions still boiling within her from that incident. "That doesn't hide the fact that your girlfriend was dying and you hid important facts from her!"

"I didn't. I…" Nathaniel argued.

Kerry cut him off. "God, were you the one who put the idea of becoming a vampire into her head?"

"NO!" Nathaniel yelled, horrified at the thought that this was all his fault. Kerry could sympathize because that's how she was feeling at the moment too. "She got that from you!"

"She did not," Kerry screamed back at him, ready to unbuckle her seatbelt and throttle him from behind the chair.

"Children," Tim warned calmly in his father-voice. They both pouted petulantly for being scolded.

"Nathaniel," Kerry said, calming down enough to speak rationally. "I think anyone who knew about vampires wouldn't know what to be feeling right now. Guilty for not being able to save Nelle. Pleased because she got what she wanted and will now live forever. Guilty again because she was killed when you held the key to her becoming a vampire all along."

Nathaniel crossed his arms over his chest, huddling in the front seat as if she had broken his spirit. When he spoke, she could feel the sorrow on his voice. "It's all my fault. I don't blame you for blaming me. I blame me too," he told her in a quiet, exhausted voice.

That hadn't been what she had meant. "I failed too, you know." Kerry's anger dissipated, mirroring Nathaniel's emotions almost completely. They were alike each other far more than she had realized.

"Dad was gonna change her," Nathaniel sobbed quietly. "I worked and worked and worked at him to bend the rules this once. He was gonna do it when her quality of life started to decline." They all remained silent for a second. Nathaniel finished what he had to say, his voice almost inaudible through tears. "If only she had waited."

There was nothing to be said in response to that.

Kerry leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. The dizziness and nausea left over from being tazered crept back to the surface of her conscious. She wanted to throw up. If only life would go smoothly every now and then. She stared flatly out the window, not really seeing the streetlights as they passed by. What was going to happen with her best friend now? They had been through so much together. In third grade they had both broken an arm when the ancient tree-house they had found in the woods behind Nelle's house had collapsed. In fifth grade they had both ditched music lessons together and plotted revenge on their mothers for making them learn how to play the piano and flute. Once the eighth grade and puberty came along, they had wondered about kissing, experimented with makeup, and fought over who was allowed to have a crush on Scott Henderson. High School was when the real drama of missing mothers, bad perms, kidnapping, young love, young hate, graduation and prom, laughing, crying, telling secrets, keeping secrets, and the excitement of moving away from home began. Last year, Nelle had gotten sick.

After that, everything had changed as it remained the same.

"Kerry? Ok back there?" Tim asked from the front of the car. It took her a second to realize that they had stopped moving. It took even longer for her eyes to bring the world back into focus so she could see that they were parked outside of the apartment building. Nathaniel was already out of the car, staring at the door looking as tired and disoriented as she felt. Kerry nodded a response and opened the door to the car. The cool air bit at her skin. She rubbed at the goosebumps forming, vaguely remembering the outfit she had put on to go clubbing eons ago. Would it have hurt her to change into something Nelle approved of? Nelle might not be truly dead, but Kerry was still mourning her. Would they ever see each other again? Would vampirism change Nelle?

Feeling blank, she followed Nathaniel into the building. He turned away from the elevators and towards the stairs. Kerry hesitated, torn between following him to fulfill her need for company or allowing him to be alone like he obviously needed.

Tim put a hand on her shoulder, causing Kerry to jump. She hadn't realized he had entered the building behind them. "We'll take the elevator."

Kerry nodded. She hadn't been up to making the decision herself anyway.

"I need to talk to you," Tim explained as he pressed the button to call an elevator down to the lobby.

"About?" Kerry sighed internally. She didn't want to spend any more time talking. She could feel her strength ebbing and she wasn't sure if she would be able to stand for much longer, let alone hash over whatever Tim needed to talk about. She suspected it had something to do with keeping an eye on Nathaniel. She certainly did appear to be taking everything better than he was, but then Kerry had learned control during her short life.

"Tomorrow, the owner of the club is going to call you in and ask you about some of the things that happened in that room. Especially how quickly you grasped what was happening to Nelle," Tim leaned forward, whispering as if the lobby had a thousand eyes and ears all focused on them.

"I don't know," Kerry told him hollowly. "I just had to do something."

"Tonight in the car," he continued, as if he were the one doing the interrogation. "Why didn't you question Nathaniel about vampires more."

"Shock?" She answered his question with one of her own. All her senses were telling her not to give away Michel. Who knew what could happen to him if her story came out. Maybe nothing. That still didn't change the fact she knew very little about vampire politics or inner workings and it just felt important to her to keep her secret close to her heart. That might have something to do with her own feelings rather than a need to protect, but she didn't want to analyze that too much. "I'm sure I'll have tons to say tomorrow."

The elevator doors open, coupled with a ding of warning that they were going to close soon. Kerry took a step towards them. Tim grabbed her arm again, keeping her from dismissing him. "Kerry. Let me cut straight to the heart of the matter." His face was emotionless and yet pleasant, making him look more like a vampire as she knew them and less like a father. "Did you already know about vampires?"

She opened her mouth to tell the truth, but still couldn't say anything. She also couldn't lie. "Everything I did or said tonight was out of necessity. That's all." She pulled away from him and stepped into the elevator. "Including this conversation," she said just as the doors were closing. She didn't want to answer any more of his questions, but hopefully that gave him enough of an answer so he knew the truth, but not enough to be incriminating. Even though he was Nathaniel's father, she didn't know whether she could trust him. Though, now that she thought about it, she may have been a bit too cryptic.

The elevator took exactly the same amount of time as it ever did. Once she exited, shoulders slumped in exhaustion and looking like a girl who had partied too hard and was now dragging herself home, she immediately trudged down the hall and to her empty apartment. She didn't meet Nathaniel in the hallway, which meant that he was either quicker than the elevator and already in his place or he was still climbing the stairs. She didn't really care. Carefully, she peeled down the edge of her skirt and worked at unhooking the pin tucked into the side of the cloth without poking herself with the needle. Luckily, something went right that evening and she was able to get her apartment key out of the hiding place with no incident. She unlocked the door and was immediately depressed with the dark, lonely apartment. Locking the door behind her, she bypassed her bedroom and entered Nelle's slightly larger room. Tears were blurring her sight as she flopped on to Nelle's bed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed for her best friend, finally allowing the emotions she had been suppressing to come out full force.

Kerry cried until she fell asleep, hugging Nelle's wet pillow to her face for comfort.

©RelenaFanel.June26.2006

HAPPY SUMMER!

I don't know what to pimp first. I started a new CotN series called Encounters Before Dawn. It is basically a short story where Kerry encounters Michel before CotN, but not in a way which could compromise the book.

Secondly, I would love to get just 3 more reviews for 'To Lure a Dragon' before the next update. It would mean a lot to me if you guys could do that for me.

Finally, as always, review.

Is the story going to slow for you? Is the pace fine? Are you losing interest without Michel around?