Here is another small excerpt from my WIP: The Vampire Henry Book 2. In this excerpt Henry stakes out a vampire/goth club called Oblivion in hopes of finding a real vampire there, spurred on by info he gleaned from a girl he fed on the night before named Charlotte Weber.
There’s a girl up on a stage, painting pictures of water lilies…
With her own blood.
That’s a new one. Even for ole’ Henry.
It’s a few blistering cold days after my encounter with Goth Girl. The Human Spigot. Who has…HAD a real name, of course.
Charlotte. Her name was Charlotte Weber.
YES. NO.
GOODBYE.
I will have to say that the former Charlotte Weber was right. Her blood was the sweetest thing I have tasted in years. Maybe ever. Tasted like the Bloody Mary sitting on the table in front of me. (If memory serves.)
So tonight, I took a right instead of a left. Out on to State Route 13. To Charlotte’s home away from home. Club Oblivion.
Haven of vampires.
Back in my father’s day, it used to be an Italian restaurant I believe. Mike’s Touch of Italy or some such shit.
So much for Old World mystique…
Still, I am here. Sitting in a corner booth with that aforementioned Bloody Mary, watching some pretty young thing dip a paintbrush into a copper urn. An urn that she has squeezed a large quantity of her own blood into. Such a quantity that it is a miracle that she is still vertical, let alone dancing around and making art with it.
Funny world. Funny funny world.
Ordinarily, this would never be my scene. My place to hunt or even be. And that’s funny too because most of the patrons have done their worst (and probably do every night) to transform themselves into some comic book version of me. Species Vampiris. With the fangs and the satin-lined capes and the white makeup. I’m the real god damn thing and I feel completely like a fish out of water here. A bat in a canary cage. Something.
There is a reason I am here. Oh yes…
I think the place might be frequented by another honest-to-God vampire.
I watch the girl do her thing on the little platform stage at the other end of the club. Make brown petals on a white canvas. Swing her hips in approximate time to some thrash tune. Something that—to my classically weaned ears—sounds like a car crash being orchestrated by a screaming banshee.
I actually know a few things about this girl too. Gleaned from my short triste with Charlotte Weber. Her name is Lila. No last name. She probably never told Charlotte what it was. And Lila’s been doing this same ritual--bloodletting/painting--for six months now. And when she is finished, I know she likes to do what all good vampires do when they are a little anemic. Feed. Lots of Charlotte’s tasty hemoglobin in Lilac’s little veins. Blooming. Becoming flowers.
No more…
Lila is totally naked, save for a suede loincloth cinched around her ample hips--flaps that make her look more like a gladiator’s concubine than a vampire or artiste. Her little breasts are covered in dayglow body paint: handprints that glow like radium under the club’s blacklights. Look like some mutant tried to cop a serious feel.
If it weren’t for the devil noise rattling the club’s tower speakers this little show might be OK.
Crowding the lip of the stage are ten or twelve Lila acolytes. Most of the club’s patrons. Seemingly transfixed by her swaying hips and brush. And most of them look like they bubbled up from the same pit in hell where the dance music was manufactured. Flesh pierced and disturbed in every way imaginable. Tongues split. Baroque tattoos that probably set their victims back a second mortgage. (If they even had a first one to begin with.) Anything at all—any totem or jewel—to become more than human.
Or less so…
As Lila paints on in her little bitty loincloth, I scan the narrow room searching. Searching for another genuine bloodsucker among all these poseurs. The info that one hangs here is pretty spotty, really. Just a glimpse of a somber face. A form I saw when I was imbibing Charlotte Weber’s life lessons along with her veggie-tempered blood. Another sad download that. A father in jail for armed robbery. A mother mostly gone. Addicted to Oxy and TV ministries selling wrathful Jesus…
Sinner Sinner Sinner…
And Charlotte? Slowly retreated from those mundane horrors into her own make-believe world of horror. As I sucked at her beautiful, throbbing neck, all of that was revealed as well. A fascination with the creatures of the night. Gory books and movies. Werewolves. Revenants…
Sexy vampires…
Sexy? Hah, I say to that.
Charlotte was seventeen years old the first time she let a girlfriend of hers slice her naked back with a razor blade, put her lips to the wound.
She became as addicted to that as her mom is to drugs and hellfire.
And Club Oblivion is her church.
WAS her church, I think, sadly.
Place used to be an Italian restaurant, what? Ten years ago. With red table cloths and Chianti bottle candles.
The never-ending search for the sacred…
And crowded there, in Charlotte’s fading consciousness, among all the other images of freaks and geeks, the small corps of fellow spigots, a face bubbled up briefly. And when it did, I almost pulled away from Charlotte’s ripe neck. Because the energy, the force of will emanating from that face was as powerful as a damn bursting or something.
It WAS the face of another vampire. Pretty sure of it. A vampire. With a bald head. And a neatly trimmed Balbo.
Black Black Black eyes…
And that was it. All she wrote. No name rank or serial number attached to that flickering, sardonic face. And Charlotte cannot be prodded for more info. She is buried now under cold brittle stalks of field corn.
Little Lila finishes her flowers with an aggressive stab at the canvas. Carelessly throws the paintbrush back into its copper urn. The Oblivion patrons reward her with whistles and catcalls. Lots of devil horns thrown up into the smoky air.
The Children of the Night…How ridiculous they are…