URBAN NOSGOTHIC

Chapter 10

Legacy of Kain created by Eidos Interactive, Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights.

*waves* Yes, me and Raz are back from our week's holiday...

Raziel: *whispers* Do you think they missed us?

V.A.: They might have missed you. I doubt they missed me. Anyway. On with the story...proper review responses next chapter! *blinks* Honest. Many, many thanks to all who have read so far and let me know that they're enjoying it. ^_^

It's a goth club, of course.

Kain lounges on the bar, grinning at the wannabe vamps and anorexic Brides of Dracula that still huddle in corners of the club, even at this hour in the morning. Raziel is trying to remain inconspicuous, hunched over the peanut bowl with his cowl drawn up even further than normal. He needn't worry. Under the bizarre red lights of the club, even his blue skin seems merely pale and washed-out. So long as he keeps his talons hidden below the bar, he'll pass.

Why didn't I think of this before? The same way as the great philosophers said: "the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest..." the best place to hide a vampire is in a goth club.

I take an indulgent moment's time out to look at them both. Raziel is now a comfortably alien sight to my eyes: I no longer have to control the urge to run a mile at the sight of him. And Kain?

Now I have a chance to look at him, really look at him, I can see I'm not imagining it after all, and my heart staggers in dismay.

He's changing.

The greenish, bony structure of the old vampire's face is fading like the memory of a dream. His sharp cheekbones jut up through skin now porcelain white, and his white hair is not receded as far back on his high forehead as before.

I stop in mid-step, suddenly unwilling to approach him. If I brought him here - am I somehow doing this to him, too? I half-choke, disgusted with the concept, and Kain's head flicks up alertly at the sound. He grins again - no, leers - and beckons me back to join them at the bar. Masochist, my mind scolds at me, you could have coped with him when he was more demonic…but now? Ohh, now you're in trouble, girly.

I had been overjoyed when Blood Omen 2 came out, and immersed myself for as long as I dared every day in the problems facing Meridian. Young Kain had been irresistibly arrogant, powerful...and merciless. Thinking about it now, Old Kain was by far the safest of the pair. What am I doing? Swapping a jaded but wiser old megalomaniac for a young savage...I must be crazy. My eyes, against my own better judgement, are drawn to him again and I cannot look away.

His eyes are twin hungry red glows in the dim, smoky atmosphere, and the fangs poke over his dark lower lip in a pseudo-friendly, snaggle-toothed manner.

I look at Raziel in a sudden panic. Am I going to be changing him, too, to suit my bad taste in men? But he seems unchanged, the cowl hugging his jawless skull, his ragged wings tucked in against his starvation-thin back. Maybe it's because I'm not so familiar with his vampire shape - or maybe Raziel's body itself resists such a radical change after so long.

Two passing girls, one in a Cradle of Filth T-shirt and the other swamping her acne-scarred face in white foundation, catch Kain's eye and one licks her lips. Kain purrs in his throat and seems about to move. I hold my breath, but an expertly flicked peanut smacks directly into Kain's ear. Kain looks at Raziel in wordless fury, and Raziel coolly rolls another peanut across the counter: but the intervention has come in time, and the girls have moved on.

To avoid a family scene, I pluck up my courage to rejoin them - although the temptation to abandon them was present in my mind, believe me. I know Kain is watching me, but although it makes me feel vulnerable to attack, I turn my back on him and address Raziel.

"I have to go home."

His white eyes widen.

"And so do I," he says.

Kain is suddenly very, very close to my back. I can sense him the way a rabbit senses the hawk, and my skin crawls. The mark on my neck tingles. I'm sure it must be psychosomatic.

"Go home?" he queries. "What for, Raziel? Unfinished business?"

"You are starting to bore me," says Raziel, evenly. "Rhianna, why do you want to go back to that place? The policemen will find you. Your mate will find you. You will get hurt."

"Why do you care?" Kain interrupts, rudely, and Raziel starts eyeing the peanut bowl again. "Let her get hurt if she wants to. Humans all have the brains of ticks." His hand slams down on the bar right next to mine, his arm brushing past me. I tense up for all the wrong reasons as his clawed fingers graze across mine. "Or maybe she likes to get hurt," his voice purrs from just behind my ear, soft, insinuating: then louder, "Raziel, if you have some kind of emotional attachment to this creature, why don't you let me deal with her and then together we can deal with the greater problem - the Sarafan Lord..."

Now it's Raziel's turn to double-take. "What are you talking about?" he snaps. And all in a rush he realises what I realised in the doorway - that Kain is no longer quite the vampire he used to be an hour ago. Kain is now so close that I can smell him.

Maybe she likes to get hurt...

Because of course that's me all over, isn't it, and he knows it. I never believed all the stuff you read in Anne Rice and Laurell Hamilton novels. I always believed, vampires are vampires. Yes, they may be beautiful. But even man-eating lions are beautiful.