Chapter Four

In hindsight, it was not a very good party. Probably the fourth or third to worst I have ever attended. It started out really well, though, the doorman was... well, it wasn't really a door, it was more of a rickety fence, but he was all muscular, standing there smoking with his shirt off. Usually, men I knew weren't smoking in a state of undress until at least ten minutes after I had met them. Anyway, I obviously went up and introduced myself.

"Is this where the party... I mean, is this where the astrolite is?"

"What? How do you know about that? Who the hell are you?"

"Mercury sent me."

The guy flashed a cute, boyish smile, clearly won over by my irresistible charm and classic good looks. Or it might have been a wicked, malicious grin, I was never very good at interpreting things like that, so I always just assumed the former.

"Come right in, then."

He pushed open the small gate, and he followed me as I entered the house. And of course, as usual for a person of my calibre, every head in the building turned to look at me.

"Who's the broad?"

Granted, I have had friendlier greetings, but I think they were just nervous. It's not every day you get to see someone like me.

"Mercury sent me. I am here to pick up the astrolite."

Quickly, everyone rose, and they started to surround me. It was a great big circle of admiration.

"He's got a lot of nerve sending you here. You'd better be carrying a lot of money if you want to make it out of here alive, bitch."

At this point, I realised that this was no cake trap, but a regular slow-and-agonising-death trap! How little they knew of my amazing powers. I decided to give them a chance to be spared my wrath by scaring them off with a terrifying, yet poetic, battle cry:

"I am Marie Susan Draculette, and I hope you brought nutcrackers, because I'm going to... wait, no, hold on..."

Before I could finish my snappy one-liner, their leader had drawn, and I was staring down the barrel of a gun. Unlike Bond films, though, there wasn't a tiny man at the other end, just darkness and a bullet. A bullet that wanted to introduce itself, and did, as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet drilled its way through flesh and bone into the skull, and I fell to the floor.

There I was. Lying on the floor of some dirty, ramshackle old beach house; my face, which once astounded the world with its perfect beauty and excellent fancy, was now leaking blood, soaking my hair and clothes and the creaking floorboards. Only an act of God or poor writing could save me now...

Suddenly, the wound started to repair itself, practically spitting out the bullet as the hole closed. I leapt to my feet, pausing for a split second to take an awesome pose before I leapt on the first of the horrified junkies with relentless fury. It was a slaughter. I completely forgot that a vampire was supposed to drink the blood of its victims, so busy was I in shedding it and spraying it all over the walls. I will tolerate many things, but messing up my make-up with blood and bullet-holes was not among them.

After the battle, I stepped over a pile of hands and found a small side room, wherein I found a container with 'astrolite' hastily written on the side. As I was struggling to drag it back to the house of mercury or Mercurio (I wasn't quite sure what was going on at this point, but at least that guy wasn't in any condition to try to kill me, so I decided to trust him), I wondered what had happened in the old beach house.

Then it hit me.

I had heard some of the other vampires refer to each other as things like "Ventrue" and "Toreador" and, in my case, "Malkavian", and other strange terms. I assumed these were different types or castes of vampires, and that I, too, would belong to one such. I was no Ventrue, though, nor was I Toreador or Malkavian.

I was a Vampire Protagonist.

And the power which I wield is greater than any other: the power of plot convenience.

This vampire world would be mine.