Club Vampyr

Chapter… uh… 6?

Around eight, only a short time after sunset, she met Tim in front of the apartment. There were dark circles under her eyes from anxiety and fatigue. For confidence, she was wearing black pinstriped pants with a matching fitted vest. She looked like an accountant and felt like a fraud. She had agonized over what to do for hours that day and was no closer to a solution than she was that minute after Nathaniel left. Sure, she had come up with a few ideas, but some were even more likely to get her killed than lying would. She had fantasized about going in there and slaying the boss in true Buffy fashion. She had wondered if she could just remain silent and not answer any questions. She had come up with a game plan which was far from foolproof.

Kerry was wishing all her problems would be solved and the Boss guy would just end up being Michel.

Tim opened the passenger door of a SUV for her. It was a literal step up from the ford he had driven the night before. "Company car," he explained as if reading her mind. "Unfortunately, the Ferrari is reserved for VIP."

"I guess I'm not special enough, eh?" Kerry joked, wiping her sweating palms against her pants. "That's ok. Wouldn't want to give your son an aneurysm." Immediately after the weak joke she winced. Best not joke about erupting blood vessels with vampires. The vehicle was driving smoothly. Kerry was grateful for that; she felt as if she was going to vomit at any moment. Everything would have been easier had they just kidnapped her or something.

"This guy you're meeting," Tim struck up conversation from his position in the driver's seat. "You don't have to be so nervous. He's pretty low on the totem pole."

"Oh?" Kerry asked, slightly surprised. "I thought you said he was your boss."

"The head honcho never meets with humans himself," Nathaniel's father explained.

"Then why is he even interested in me?" She asked, her confusion growing even further. It wasn't really unexpected to know that vampires had hierarchies too. "Wait. Head honcho of what? Vampires? The club? The mafia?"

Tim didn't look like he was going to answer her for a moment. "Kind of all of the above. I'll explain it to you some time, if I can. Let's just say I work for a guy who works for THE guy. This person you're meeting works THE guy directly."

"Higher on the totem pole than you are, eh?" Kerry asked, immediately regretting the words the moment they emerged from her mouth. She was so used to the constant ribbing she and Nathaniel did, that she kept wanting to do the same to his father. "Sorry," she muttered, honestly contrite.

Tim shrugged, turning into the same garage they had exited the night before. Kerry recognized it because of the extreme white and cleanness of it. There couldn't be many garages which looked like a car had never been in it. "We're here," he proclaimed unnecessarily, parking the SUV in a reserved place.

Kerry felt her trepidation escalate. Every vampire in the building would be able to hear her heart beating quick and steady in her chest.

"Don't fear these people, Kerry. They'll only use it against you." Somehow, Tim had gotten out of his seat and opened the door next to her without her noticing. She was seriously close to hyperventilating.

"I'm gonna puke," she muttered, pushing by him and searching the parking lot for a garbage bin. Unfortunately, this wasn't a regular parking lot and there were no trash cans in sight. However, the main entrance was flanked by white marble plant urns with tall greenery spouting out of them. Good enough. Kerry rushed over, throwing herself down in front of them and bowed her head above the soil.

"Not there!" Time cried in dismay.

It was too late. She was already gagging, but nothing wanted to come up. This was the first time she had ever even came close to throwing up while nervous and stressed, and she probably would have if she had eaten anything that day. Luckily, she was too worried to do that. Sitting in the ground with ferns brushing against her head like a phantom touch, she felt as sense of calm overcome her for the first time in hours. Her emotional turmoil melted away as if someone was stripping her of it. She felt as if everything would be ok.

"I'm good," she told Tim, taking a deep breath to steady herself before moving slowly to her feet. The nausea didn't come back. "Plants are ok too," she grinned, fortifying herself more against the impending attack with every second. She had thought she had used up all her strength the night before, but now that it was starting to stream back she realized how foolish that was. She just needed to focus on getting through this instead of knowing she was going to fail. Of course, she was still terrified.

"Follow me," Tim told her, leading her through the main doors and into the underground corridors. He was suddenly all business-like, and Kerry realized they were probably now under the close scrutiny of his superiors. Every once and a while she caught sight of a camera in a corner, and she was sure they were being monitored. Instead of worrying over being watched, the idea made her feel safe. Gee, it was almost like someone had slipped her some calming drugs or something. She was sure that didn't happen, but she felt almost unnaturally at peace. Vampires couldn't do that, right? Michel had once told her, to paraphrase, that he couldn't put humans who were too wired to sleep.

"Can vampires control moods?" She asked Tim. "Because I'm feeling seriously mellow."

Tim's eyebrows scrunched together in a frown. Instead of answering, he held open a door for her. "We're here. Good luck." With a pat on the shoulder and what he probably thought was a reassuring smile, he left her alone to enter the room. She felt as if she was walking towards a pivotal point in her life.

Kerry took another fortifying breath and walked into the office. The door closed behind her ominously and she jumped. She had expected to walk into the room and find a scary-looking vampire glaring at her from behind a desk and two huge muscle-bound vampire body guards flanking him. Instead, the room was empty except for herself. Shifting her eyes back and forth, she looked for any traps and/or cameras watching her every move. Swiftly, feeling like a target standing in the doorway like she was, she moved to the opposite side of the room and sat in a large leather chair angled in front of the desk.

She waited. Her nervousness was starting to come back. Taping her fingers against the arm of the chair in a quick but undistinguishable beat, Kerry wondered what was going to happen to her. Did they just bring her here to kill her? Were they just toying with her like the executive of a large corporation might by making her wait? In class, if a prof didn't show up within fifteen minutes of the start of class, the students could leave. Did that rule apply here too?

"Hi! Sorry I'm late!" A professional female voice said with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. Kerry jumped for the second time since entering the room. The woman had managed to sneak up on her without Kerry hearing a thing. The newcomer held out a hand, urging Kerry to grasp her fingers in a courtesy shake. "I'm Rachel."

"Kerry," she replied politely, shaking Rachel's hand. Immediately, she felt that feeling of terror boiling up from the pit of her stomach again. She had forgotten about that, but it was quickly becoming a personal vampire detection system.

"I know, I've heard a lot about you. Now, I'm not supposed to tell you this," the older woman leaned forward as if she was telling Kerry a secret just between girls. "But I know what it's like to have a best friend. Nelle's change went smoothly."

Kerry immediately felt a sense of relief. She had been so worried about Nelle. Tim hadn't really told them anything.

"So tell me," Rachel switched topics with ease. "How much do you know about vampires?" The question was coupled with a friendly smile.

"Not much," Kerry replied, trying not to look alarmed. She couldn't do anything about her heart rate picking up. Warning bells were going off in her head. She knew that smile, and had been the recipient of it many times before. Michel had used it at his most frightening and manipulative. "Only what I know from TV and books and stuff."

"That's all?"

"Are you a vampire?" Kerry asked, employing the same misdirection she had unsuccessfully used on Nathaniel earlier that day. Avoiding the question posed to her was only one reason for her response. She realized that one of the worst and most telling things she could do was know or assume Rachel was a vampire.

Rachel lost the smile, her face turning into an impassive mask. "Yes."

Kerry took a page out of Rachel's book, using the strategies she had learned to use and recognize years ago. She grinned innocently and slightly embarrassed at her own ignorance and reverted to the sixteen year-old driving in a car with the strange enemy. "How do you put your makeup on so flawlessly if you can't see in a mirror?"

"Vampires have reflections." Rachel's facial expression didn't change. Kerry tried not to look overtly pleased with herself. Not only was she not sure if her ruse worked, but gloating would only give her away.

"Oh! I'm sorry," Kerry muttered. She wasn't sure how long she'd be able to keep playing this game. She never had been the type of girl who could lie and get away with it, and it seemed like all the times she was forced to, the stakes were high. She shifted on the huge chair uneasily, waiting for Rachel to ask her next question.

"So…"

The familiar bars of Michael Buble's Home jingled through the room, interrupting Rachel mid-question. Kerry dug into her pocket and quickly extracted her cell phone. "Sorry," she muttered again, flipping it open and greeting her father without looking at the caller ID. Personalized ring-tones were a great invention. She knew taking a phone call right now was extremely rude, but she had asked him to call her around this time for that exact purpose. It was part of her plan. They wouldn't kill her if they knew someone else knew where she was. Yes, her logic was convoluted like that sometimes.

"Hey dear, wassup?" Her dad asked, employing what he referred to as 'youth talk.'

"Not much. I'm at Club Vampyr at the moment." She told him.

"What! Kerry, you're still underage. You promised you'd be responsible…"

"Don't worry dad," she forced a laugh. "I'm in the back talking to the club manager."

"Owner." Rachel corrected, practically gritting her teeth.

"I mean owner." Kerry conveniently didn't mention she had used her fake identification to get into the club the night before.

"What for?" Her father asked sternly.

Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. Now she'd have to lie to her father and Rachel would be able to see first-hand what her reactions were to telling a lie. "Oh, I'm talking to a vampire about whether or not they're going to kill me tonight," she said flippantly, trying to pass it off as a joke.

"Kerry!" Her dad practically yelled. "Don't joke about vampires like that. Not after what happened to…"

"Gottogobye," Kerry quickly said into the phone, pressing the off button with her thumb at the same time. She wasn't sure if Rachel had heard her father's side of the conversation, but it was a pretty good bet. Looking into the vampire's expressionless face, Kerry wondered if cutting her dad off was the best thing to do. She hadn't wanted Rachel to know there was an incident involving vampires in her past and so she had stopped her father from speaking, but the end product was exactly the same. She had just proved her own guilt. At least she had achieved one thing and her father now knew where she was. She watched enough CSI to know that this would be the first place the cops checked for her if she went missing.

"I'm so sorry," she gushed, turning her attention back to Rachel. "He's so overprotective. Calls in every few hours or so to check on me. You were saying," Kerry prompted.

"That woman who attacked your friend was scared of you last night. Why?"

As far as questions were concerned, Kerry had not been expecting that one. She had been so focused on protecting Michel that she hadn't really analyzed every moment in that room. There had been far stranger things going on than the fact she stood up to a few vampires. She had experienced that feeling in her stomach enough times now, the most recent being just a few minutes before, but she had no idea where the extreme physical reaction of hissing had come from. Kerry had caused a vampire to look at her in fear. If that wasn't remarkable, then nothing was. She really had no idea how she had managed it. "I really don't know."

"You don't?" Rachel asked, looking at her intently.

"Not at all," Kerry said truthfully. She had the feeling that Rachel didn't believe her. It was ironic, really. She had been prepared to lie and didn't need to. Kerry was honestly flummoxed. She tried to show it through her facial expressions, but didn't quite pull it off. Her thoughts were too convoluted for her to do much more than frown and stare blankly.

Rachel grabbed a remote from her desk and pressed a button. Suddenly, the quiet office was filled with the sound of Kerry's animalistic hiss from the night before. When she had made the noise, it had been a natural instinct, but now that she heard it shivers went down her spine in fear. It definitely didn't sound human. She had reacted out of fear, feeling corned and desperate. Why did she sound like a snake or a cat or something? "Why did you hiss?"

"I don't know that either," Kerry shrugged, giving a little shake of her head. This interview was going down the drain really quickly. She started to feel her nervousness creep back to her stomach. Wiping the palms of her hands on her pants, she tried to look confident.

"You're lying." Rachel leaned forward to look Kerry in the eye. This time the move was not calculated to make her feel comfortable, but to intimidate. "You know what I think?"

"No," Kerry whispered, a little frantically. The vampire thought she was lying. She was going to die. "No."

"You know more than you're letting on." Rachel leaned back in her seat, studying Kerry with careful eyes.

That was it? The big theory was that she knew more than she was letting on? She didn't, not really. Sure, the night before she had known about vampires before she had been officially told, but now what she learned from Michel wasn't much more than what Tim and Nathaniel had told her. She hadn't realized how careful Michel had been with his secrets. But now, she didn't know the answers to anything Rachel was asking. "I don't," Kerry's voice was a little shrill from desperation. It grew louder for almost every word she uttered. "I really don't know what's going on. I don't."

"Ok." Rachel told her, more as an effort to calm her down than actual complacency.

"I mean," Kerry rambled on, the octave of her voice no longer creeping up, but she still couldn't stop the nervous need to explain her case. "So what if I sounded like a cat or something. It was probably only a fluke. Maybe that vampire is scared of cats or something."

"Vampire."

"What?" Kerry stopped speaking, that one word reminding her why silence was more necessary.

"The noise was something a vampire would make. We analyzed it to make sure." Kerry was informed. The other woman was looking at her expectantly as if she were looking forward to Kerry's response.

"But I'm not a vampire," Kerry whispered, wanting to bring her knees to her chest and curl into a ball on the seat. She was suddenly chilled.

"Which is why we want to know why and how you made it."

"I don't know," Kerry repeated herself. The conversation had come full circle. Neither of them had the answers from it they had wanted. Kerry was more confused than ever. Why was she making vampire sounds? Was it a fluke? She hadn't told them anything. Was it important enough for the vampires to find out the why of it that they wouldn't just kill her? From what she had learned from Ethan – Michel – if they thought someone was a threat, that person was immediately disposed of. Kerry was now in more danger than ever.

"You don't?" Rachel asked, standing from the chair beside Kerry and circling so she was behind her desk. The vampire woman leaned forward, her hands braced against the aged wood. She looked Kerry in the eye and repeated, "you don't know?"

"No," Kerry trembled, her eyes locked on the vampire. She couldn't look away. In vampire lore, she would have been mesmerized, but in real life she was paralyzed with fear. She needed to make herself understood and believed.

"Ok, then," Rachel told her, sitting down behind her desk like the queen of the manor and pulled some files out of a drawer.

Kerry wasn't sure, but it sounded and looked as if she was being dismissed. She stood from her seat, wearily searching the room from assassin vampire ninjas getting ready to jump from behind a curtain and kill her. "Ok, then," Kerry echoed, her voice incredibly soft. She felt a bit bewildered.

"You may leave," Rachel supplied.

Kerry nodded, not wasting any time turning and exiting the room. She was extremely relieved to be finished with the interrogation, but she couldn't help but feel that it had gone too easily. She didn't want to wish a greater punishment on herself or anything, but it seemed as if she had gotten away with the most minimal damage after her tense afternoon of expecting torture. The vampires were letting her go? Just like that?

"How was it?" Tim asked, a concerned fatherly look on his face. He appeared by her side almost immediately after she left the office. She liked the idea that he was looking out for her, but she knew that when it came right down to it, his first loyalty was to his employers. She didn't think she had trust issues, though that was entirely possible what with the deceit and betrayal she had experienced from her mom when she was in the mental growth stage of life, but it was obvious to her that she was only an inconsequential human girl somehow getting deeper into the hazardous vampire affairs than she had ever intended. This time, she didn't even have Michel by her side – with him, there was a fifty percent risk he'd kill her, but also the same amount of chance that he would find a way to save her life. Now, she only had herself to rely on. She could only hope against all reasoning that the vampire she had just met with believed her or didn't care enough to let her live.

"Fine," she muttered a response. "She just let me go."

"Of course she did," Tim responded, leading her through the white hallways and back towards the parking garage. Kerry wasn't sure, but it almost seemed as if they were taking an alternate route. Of course, all the halls looked the same, so she couldn't be certain of anything. "Did you think she was going to dispose of you in her office?"

"No," Kerry said quickly, feeling foolish for doing just that.

"If she was going to take you out, it wouldn't be here," his tone was almost joking. Kerry felt a shiver go down her spine at the warning undercurrent of his sentence. She just had this feeling that something was going to happen – very shortly at that. She hadn't been able to shake the notion that something life-changing was going to occur, and she hadn't been since walking into Club Vampyr the first time. She thought it would leave after Nelle's attack, but it had only gotten stronger. Maybe it was only left-over adrenalin and had nothing to do with what would happen in the future. For not the first time in the past 24 hours, she wished she had never agreed to walk through the doors of this club. She felt guilty for thinking such a selfish thing. Nelle may now have a future thanks to what happened.

If Tim's warning was correct, Kerry might not.

"Where would it be?" Kerry asked cautiously, looking around the hallway for someone who could possibly hear his answer, Despite the fact she didn't see a soul, that didn't mean he was open to talk either.

"Not here," he repeated.

Yeah, that was really helpful. She told him so. He merely shrugged. Kerry changed the subject. "So, do all these doors hide secret vampire quarters."

"We probably can't talk about that either," Tim told her apologetically, opening the door to the garage for her.

Kerry slipped through the opening, giving him a brief nod of thanks as well as understanding. His hands were tied, just as she thought hers were. They were both not talking out of loyalty to vampires, and both of them might just be misguided as far as others were concerned. The right thing to do was relative, and they all had choices to make. She understood that as a dying man might see the light as to why his life was over while those less deserving may get to live. "Is there anything I can ask that you have the answer to?" She asked as she opened the passenger seat to the car they arrived in before he could politely do it for you.

"I don't know," he told her honestly, starting up the SUV.

Instead of asking something about vampire politics, because she never got anywhere with those questions, or about the danger she was facing, she asked him a question which had been nagging her since she had met him. "When you and Nathaniel's mom were… dating, were you human?" She left half of the question out, because it didn't need to be said. Was he a vampire when Nathaniel was conceived? Kerry wanted to know. Vampire fertility was one of those questions Michel had never, or would ever, answer. Vampire virility, however, was an easy issue. No pun intended.

"Yes," he told her, driving out of the well-lit garage and into the yellow glow from evenly spaced streetlights.

"So vampires can't…?"

"Can't," Tim prompted.

"Reproduce."

Tim frowned, still carefully watching the road. She did not think the small change in his eyebrows and squint to his eyes was directed at his driving conditions. He didn't know how much he should tell her. "It's rare," he conceded.

But not impossible. That was interesting. She imagined that it all had to do with a few issues, such as whether the sperm was still swimming and eggs were still hatching. Maybe, the newer the vampire, the more chance there was. She didn't know. "When they do, what happens with the baby? Is it some kind of supervampire?"

Tim laughed, "you read too much."

Kerry thought it was strange that he said 'read' instead of the generational 'watch TV.' Of course, she had never found any good vampire facts off a television show or a movie, so he actually called it right. Truthfully, she had never found any good vampire facts at all. Michel discounted almost all the myths. Kerry forced a responding chuckle. "I probably do."

"You know, there has been one thing that has been bothering me about last night," Tim said conversationally, turning the corner of a street as if it were the only thing occupying his attention. If she didn't know any better, she would think he wasn't watching her for a reaction. She did know better – vampires never left their guard down.

"Only one?"

"You got me there," he said with a rueful grin. "Only one that I'll mention now, ok."

"Sure," Kerry shrugged. She wanted to know what else she did that was wrong. Maybe whatever he had to say could bring her closer to figuring out what the mysterious hiss had been about.

"You were wearing a cross."

What was suspicious about that? "Yeees," she replied wearily, drawing out the syllable of the word.

"But you didn't use it against the vampire attacking your friend." Still, he was focused on the road as if her answer meant nothing. "Vampire lore almost always gives the cross negative effects towards us. Because we're pure evil or something like that, so you should have instinctively used it as a weapon."

His point was valid. She hadn't used the cross because she knew it didn't work against vampires. It had been one of the first things she learned from the only vampire educator she had. "I didn't think of it," she replied honestly, clutching her hand to her chest where the ornament had rested 24 hours before. "Could I have saved Nelle?" Kerry whispered, hoping her quiet voice made her sound sincere. Darn Michel, she hadn't had to stretch the truth as much during her whole life as she did when he became a topic of conversation. Hopefully Tim would take the question as a sign she was ignorant and not the coverup it was.

"No," he told her, staring blankly into the dark windshield. She didn't know whether he was taking what she said at face value, or if he knew. "Crosses don't bother us."

"How about the word God?" She asked, just like she had asked Michel. The best way to sound like she didn't know anything was to recount the questions she asked when she hadn't known anything.

"No."

"Holy water?"

"No."

"Garlic?"

Tim snorted, "Definitely not. Though our noses are overly sensitive to that smell as well as others. It is unpleasant."

"Stakes through the heart?"

He remained quiet, not replying negatively immediately like he had the other occasions. "We're far harder to kill than humans. Wood doesn't have an adverse effect on us, no."

That wasn't the question she had asked, Kerry mused. When she had been with Michel, she would have been gleeful for finally getting an answer to something, and would have filed away 'stakes kill vampires' for future reference. Since she had almost seen Michel taken out with a gun, she didn't need that question answered either. Sure, Tim hadn't lied. It was more difficult to kill vampires, but it was not impossible if a bumbling, ignorant fool like Marsala could take out one, almost two, and what he thought to be three of them. "So," Kerry began, slightly changing the subject. She still wanted to grill him on vampirism, but didn't want to be obvious with these questions. "That boss woman of yours is really scary."

"She can be intimidating," he replied, "But she isn't my direct boss. You want scary, you should meet him," he smirked. "He can make your blood curdle with a single look."

No thanks, she'd pass on that one. His sentence opened up more questions that it did answers. How did the vampire chain of command work? "Sounds frightening," she agreed with him, staring out the window as they pulled up in front of her apartment building for the second time in two nights. "Thanks for the drive." She felt hollow. The moment she stepped out of this SUV, she would be exposed.

"Kerry," Tim stopped her as she reached for the door handle. With one of his hands resting on her shoulder to command attention, he fully turned to look at her for the first time since they got into the vehicle. "I mentioned him for a reason. You needn't fear Rachel's decision about the meeting; she really has no say in the end. The man I work for is one of our best assassins (look for better word. Enforcer?) and he knows you are lying."

Kerry's heart sped up.

"He said he'd give you this last chance to come forward before he took matters into his own hands. So is there something you want to tell me?"

Kerry's heart-rate accelerated, her mouth went dry, and her eyes started to water with fear. She couldn't tell, she just couldn't. She had kept the secret of Michel this far, not even knowing why she was doing it, and she couldn't give him up now. The meaning of 'I'll take his secret to my grave' was becoming a lot more serious. She didn't even know if he wanted her to do this. Did he even care whether the other vampires knew he had let her live? Would they perceive it as a weakness like she feared they would, or would he put a spin on it as he was wont to do? "No," she whispered.

"Then watch your back," Tim told her, taking his arm off her shoulder like he was revoking his support of her life.

"Why are you telling me this?" Kerry asked, the tears prominent in her eyes as her mind puzzled with new-found dread. Just what she needed, some internal vampire slayer deciding she needed to be tortured for information.

Tim smiled, both coldly and sympathetic at the same time. "He enjoys the hunt."

Kerry climbed down from the SUV, feeling numb. Was Michel worth this? Once, she may have thought so. When she first decided to protect him, it had only been because she didn't want Nathaniel to know she shared his blame, and didn't want to share a memory which was dear to her. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. Now, as she made the journey up to her bedroom, she just didn't know.

She'd never tell.

©RelenaFanel.July28.2006

Michel? Where art thou?