The Wrong Kiss ch. 2

Shinigaminx

Notes: Ok, let's see… First posted fic, so, of course, pleeeease review. Comments will be replied to promptly and flames will be used to toast marshmallows. Oh, and uber AU Relena, but I promise, there is a method to the madness.

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't sue me, unless you want the lint in my pockets.

The Wrong Kiss

Shinigaminx

If you ever think nothing can scare you anymore, go have a conversation with a vampire.

The first day in New Orleans I spent the afternoon sacked out on someone's bunk in the women's barracks. I really don't know who it belonged to, and since I don't particularly like plane rides, I didn't really care. Waking a few hours after sunset, I did my thing alongside girls just coming in for the night, just getting off duty. It was odd. These were actually girls in the state police academy. One or two would be hand picked, and would eventually know why there had been a strange woman sleeping in their dorms, one who left to prowl the night when they came in for bed. But most of them would never know about the things that prowl their streets while they're asleep snug in bed. With these interesting, entertaining, and oh-so-cheerful thoughts percolating in my brain, I went to meet the vampire.

If you were to go down into the sub basement of a certain government building in New Orleans, and walk about a mile of dark, dusty, damp corridor, full of twists and turns, you might eventually come to supply closet. A normal supply closet with a normal lock and normal cleaning type stuff in it. Only, there happens to be a false back to this particular closet. Behind the false back there's a wonderful door made of the strongest metal known to man. After shivering my way though the basement corridors behind a stubbornly silent janitorial type, that door shut behind me with a final sound. I walked slowly, counting doors. Behind each of these doors there was something that didn't belong on the streets, something that shouldn't exist. Damn bloodsuckers.

The 6th door on the left was my stop. I typed quickly on the key pad beside the door and it slid open with a hiss. A still form lay curled on an industrial cot. One arm was flung out, attached by a set of silver handcuffs to the bed, which, in turn, was actually part of the floor and the wall. The handcuffs themselves wouldn't stop the figure on the bed, but the door sure as hell would. The hand cuffs were wired with a circuit. The moment the electric circuit broke, ie. when the cuffs were broken open, the room is suffused with a mist of holy water. The vampire would be exceedingly unhappy, and there would be more than enough time to get people down to… deal with the situation.

As I entered the room the door hissed closed behind me. The figure on the bed shifted, stretching languidly. A pair of red eyes peeped up sleepily over a long slender arm. The arm lifted slowly and a hand passed through mussed red hair. The figure slowly resolved itself into a long, lanky girl with pale skin and a dark purple streak two inches wide running from her temple to the base of her head through her dark red hair. She unfolded from her curled up position on the bed and sat up rubbing her eyes. Folding her legs under her Indian style, the vampire girl propped her chin up on her elbow and stared at me. She looked… young. She couldn't have been more than 16 when she was turned.

"Hey."

Her voice was low, earthy, and entirely full of teenage inflections. If her eyes didn't gleam red in the dim light, if her teeth didn't flash at me when she grinned and spoke, I would never have guessed her any different from the blonde girl standing in front of the department store.

"Hello. Do you know why you aren't dead yet?"

Her eyebrow, light brown, quirked upwards. The side of her mouth hitched up in a smile that was almost unwilling. It showed one of her fangs in perfect clarity. "Of -course- I do. You think I'm too valuable to kill. I have information you must want." She rolled her eyes, the picture of teen age superiority.

"You really think so? I promise, I am fully capable of beating anything you can tell me out of any other blood sucker."

She laughed a rich, dark laughter. "Oh man, are you one deluded lady. If you name is Kitten Peacecraft, you need me more than you could possibly know." She ran her hand through her hair again and straightened her clothes as best as she could with one hand. Her movements were awkward and she kept rattling the chain the bound her to the bed. It took me a moment to reply because the only one I had -ever- told that nickname to, after I moved up north, was supposed to be dead, and dead men tell no tales. Undead, it's an entirely different story, but my partner… I moved across the room and grabbed the hand she was fidgeting with before I knew what I was doing. If I'd been holding a human they would have had bruises from my nails when we were done. The vampire girl didn't look put out in the least.

"Yes?"

"Why. Did. You. Call. Me. That?"

She laughed again, the sound bringing me back to reality. She easily pulled her hand out of my grasp and shook it. "Strong grip for a little human girl, Kitty." She made a weird half bow from her sitting position. "Detria, at you service. And if you want to know any more than that, you'll let me out of this metal coffin."

Well, teenage arrogance strikes again. And gains a point for the visiting team. The sheer complacent certainty in Detria's voice made me want to slap her. Not a good impulse under the best of circumstances, and an even worse you when the person you want to slap isn't human. I struggled, fighting my first comments down. The one about her lineage had to be beaten with a stick, but it eventually died quietly. I smiled a small cautious smile. "And, pray tell, why should I get you out of here? So you can go eat another innocent person?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Jeeze. No, you should get me out of here so I can tell you what you so desperately want to know."

I really did want to throttle her. She still had an all too human edge to her attitude. 3 maybe 4 years as a vampire, tops. "Why shouldn't I just torture you? I'm sure I could get the information out that way." I offered the suggestion casually, hoping the revulsion I felt at it didn't show.

"Ha. Yeah, right. If you were going to torture me for information, you wouldn't have come all the way down south. You would have used some flunky." She unfolded her legs and put them on the floor, resting lightly on the balls of her feet. If her arm wasn't handcuffed to the bed, we could have been just a pair of girls having a talk in a barracks dorm. An interesting, if disquieting image. I much prefer my vampires ravening and trying to kill me. That made my job so much easier. "All right, what do you want for the information? And believe me; I'm going to get it one way or another, so your offer better be good."

She broke into a wide grin. "Alright, now you're talking." She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. "Ok, you get me out of this oversized metal coffin and back into some real air, and I'll tell you everything you want to know. Then, you give me 5 seconds." Detria shrugged, a cocky air about her. "Then you can do whatever you want. If you can kill me, good for you."

Being a diplomat's kid can have its plusses. I didn't even think about it, it was just, "How do I know you're not lying? How do I know you know anything? No dice."

"Oh, come on." She flopped back against the wall, throwing her free arm up into the air. "You wouldn't be down here if you didn't think I knew something. I wouldn't be alive if you didn't think I knew something. And I wouldn't sound like a broken record, but you don't believe me." Heaving a huge, obviously fake sigh, she said, "Look, I know who the Queen is. And I know who the King is. And I know how to find both of them." She winked at me. "I might even tell you how to find them."

I gritted my teeth as I gave my answer. I -really- dislike being maneuvered into a corner. But in this case, I would make an acceptation. After all, a young vampire can't run far enough away in 5 seconds that I can't shoot her. "All right. Fine. Anything they took from you that you want to die with?"

Detria laughed. "Oh, I do like you." She pointed to the wall on my right. "Halfway up, a door comes out of the wall. They took a bunch of my stuff and the keys for these," she rattled the handcuffs, "are in there."

I walked over and banged on the wall. "Open up, I have jurisdiction. She's mine now." The speakers hidden in the room would catch me. Sure enough, a door opened in the wall and I pulled out jewelry and two sets of keys. One, the keys to the handcuffs, I kept and the other I tossed with everything else to the girl. I called for the door to open and I drew my pistol, training it on Detria's forehead. I'm not stupid. As the door hissed open, I unlocked the hand cuffs and backed away slowly. "Don't try anything dumb. I want you to talk before I kill your rotting corpse again."

Detria stood languidly, a process that seemed to take an awful long time, and shook out her long limbs. I could tell now she stood about 5'8, maybe 5'9, tall for a girl. Baggy black capris were now secured with a studded black belt. A black tank top, perfect for the balmy nights here in New Orleans, was tight and showed off the vampire girl's body to perfection. She slapped on a plastic bracelet with long points, the whole thing in the unlikely color of baby blue. It settled comfortably above a chain that I hadn't noticed her wearing. It was a chain that looked like it was supposed to be attached and holding someone down, not like a fashion accessory. Interesting thought. There aren't that many things willing or able to restrain a vampire. Several rings were donned, to grace her long fingers and a single necklace, a winged faerie wrapped around a bottle of glitter, nestled around her long neck. She hooked a pair of sunglasses into the rim of her tank top and looked at me expectantly.

Oh, dear god. Wait, forget that, there is no god. If here was a god, then the vision, (hey I'll admit, she was gorgeous) in front of me wouldn't look like a harmless 16 year old kid.

Now, I'm not that much older than 16, and I know looks can be deceiving, especially when you're that age, but she really did look like some harmless punk girl. I shook my head, trying to clear it. Motioning out the door with my gun, I followed her into the hall. We got to the top of the stairs and made our way out into the night. By now I had moved closer and taken one arm, just like we were friends going for a walk. The pistol was pressed into her side, pointing up at her heart. Her skin was cool, but not clammy, and I didn't feel the revulsion I usually did whenever I touched a vampire. We left the building and I maneuvered her across the street, into a park. There was no one here at almost midnight. Behind a screen of trees, we were hidden from view and there was a long open stretch in front of us. No where for a fleeing vampire to go. Good. I quickly distanced myself from the girl, but kept my gun trained on her chest. Like I said, I'm not stupid.

"Ok, talk."

Detria raised an eyebrow. "Wow. That's not open ended at all. What -exactly- would you like me to tell you?"

Son of a- She was going to be difficult. I could already tell. "Why don't you tell me about the King and Queen? In case you didn't know, I had the pleasure of working with the man who put the shish-kabob on the last court, and I thought he'd done a pretty good job of it."

"Yeah, he did. The last court was completely decimated, and the apparent leader was killed." She grinned, her fangs flashing. "Oh, but unfortunately, he didn't get the –real- King. Or his psycho daughter."

"So, the King and Queen are the two people Duo didn't kill? I mean my partner." I took a small step closer. "And I don't like having to pull teeth to get a full answer. You -might- try telling me all the relevant information, so I don't have to fish for it."

"But, the fishing is good for you. It challenges your mind." Detria held up her hands quickly. "Sorry, joking. No, the Queen is the daughter of the old King, as he abdicated in favor of her. She's set up her court here in New Orleans. Now, realizing that you're the do-gooder type, I'm going to warn you. You don't want to just march in and take her on. She's been collecting vampires to serve as her court and her army."

"And the King?" This was a little better.

"Ah…" Detria sighed and a dreamy looked passed quickly over her face. "His Majesty holds court in the north. The two of them… do not get along well. They have differing view on what it means to be a vampire."

"So, is there any chance they'll just kill each other and all I'll have to do is come in and mop up?" A quick shake of the head. Darn, and I was so hoping I'd get it easy. "Ok, what do you mean, they don't get along?"

And here she paused, thinking carefully. I had a feeling I was about to get an edited version of the twisted truth. "The Queen is of the old school. And I do mean old school. She's more than 800 years old. She was the first woman her father, her master, turned. She's been his pet for a very long time." Her face took on a graver cast, became a little harder. "She kills indiscriminately. Contrary to your t.v. shows, vampires do have a little cricket in their head telling them right from wrong." Detria made a face. "I think she killed hers. Only, I bet she tortured it first. His Majesty, on the other hand, most emphatically does -not-. He abhors waste."

I rolled my eyes this time. "So that means he kills on person a night, not two. Big deal. He's still unnatural." Also, would you trust the word of someone so obviously partisan? I didn't think so.

Detria looked me slowly up and down, her eye gleaming in the low light. "We're unnatural?" She paused and I had the oddest feeling, like someone walked over my grave. "What do you hunt?"

What did I hunt? Ok, that one came out of left field some where. I grinned, much more cockily than I felt. "Things that go bump in the night. What else?"

"But what, -exactly- do you hunt? Us? Don't you use witches for find us sometimes?" We did. How the hell did she know that? "Doesn't your bible say, 'Thou shall not suffer a witch to live'? So don't you -use- unnatural people?"

I shook my head. She wasn't the one asking questions here, or at least, she wasn't supposed to be. "It doesn't matter how we operate, or what you think of it. I hunt vampires. I kill vampires. End of story."

"When you get back you should ask one of the witches you work with how many other witches she knows. I'll bet she tells you she doesn't know any. You could ask her if we're the only thing she can find, or if there are others."

All of a sudden she moved forward, so fast I couldn't follow the movement with my eyes. I tried to bring the gun up and shoot her, but I couldn't. I wasn't fast enough. She grabbed on hand and pulled it way from the gun, her long fingers curling mine and pressing her palm it mine in a lover like gesture. And then it hit me. Her memories. I was caught in whirling, sinking feeling, sucked down into her mind. She was -much- older than I thought she was. 3 years old? Hah, try 300. 300 hundred years she been alive, turned by the one she called His majesty. She felt something like love towards him, but he was devoted to his new- That memory stopped abruptly. All I caught was a flash of a long chestnut braid. And then, the feelings slowed and I could breathe again. I felt blood coursing over my lips and my limbs were filled with a manic and exultant energy. I could do anything. I had fed. I waited for death to strike the person that the memories showed her feeding on, wondering dully what someone's death felt like to a vampire. It never came. An unbelievable sadness filled my heart and the human was pushed away, not dead, but like they'd had blood drawn. A young boy's face smiled up at me. Oh my god! He'd chosen to do this! Then I was drawing back, retreating to my own body, the message thundering in my brain. 300 years and one death. A death that caused much more pain than I felt whenever I killed a vampire. Her first victim. She hadn't known any better.

I was back, myself once more, but stunned into inaction. Detria was… Detria was gone. A low laugh floated at me from everywhere at once. "5 seconds, darling, 5 seconds." And then she was gone. I slowly bent down and picked up my gun. I had dropped it sometimes when I was stuck in Detria's mind. Feeling something trickle sluggishly down my chin, I touched my lip. Ow. I had bitten it hard enough to draw blood. My cheeks flamed. A memory, mine this time, of Detria licking the blood from my lip and whispering in my ear, "Ask another friendly vampire to shake hands with you. You might find it interesting."

In case you missed it, homage being paid to Pinocchio, the scariest children's movie of all time. Yay for Jiminy Cricket.