Blood Martinis: The Gypsy Vampire's Curse

Ch. 12 ... Al Fresco

“You're going to eat a dog?”Christian asked, disgusted.

“I'm going to try,”Kate said.“I mean, it's better than eating a person, isn't it?”

“Is it?”he asked, unsure.

“We'll see,”she said, then added,“I'm really hungry.”As she pet the bull terrier, she used her other hand to uncap the vodka and offer him the bottle.“Here you go, boy.”It began to greedily lap up the pouring alcohol. After about a pint it decided it had enough of that, so she switched it out for the vermouth. After a few gulps of that, he became uninterested in it too.“Here comes the hard part,”she said, readying herself. With one hand moving to clamp the dog's jaw shut, and the other pulling its neck into her mouth, she sank her teeth in. Blood began to spurt from its carotid artery into her mouth, as the dog yelped and then growled. After a few moments, after the blood lust quelled and she regained her ability to taste, she pulled away with a start.“Ew, gross… ew, gross,”she repeated, while spitting onto the ground. A few pints of its blood must have gone into her already, but still the dog took off like a shot as soon as she released it.

“Um, do you want me to go get him back,”he asked.

“No, ugh. Absolutely not,”she said, revolted with her life choices at that moment.

“Do you feel any better?”he asked.

“Maybe? Yeah, I think I do. At least a little,”she said.

“Maybe you're different,”he mused. She didn't believe him.“What now?”

“Now we go back?”she questioned.

“It's your money,”he said.

Bennet was getting antsy. It had been two nights now of riding in the jeep with Dylan and Kilian, and while he was happy to have his brothers back together again, he was ready for a proper bed and shower. Roughing it was just not his style.

“Can we park it for the night?”Bennet asked.

“Not yet,”Kilian insisted.“That prostitute in Dundalk could or could not have been them, but if they headed this way they'd be in Dublin. It's Kate's home, so it makes sense she'd go here.”

“I don't know,”Dylan chimed in.“Her apartment looked the same as we left it. Maybe they kept going.”

“Or maybe you should let me out and I'll get a taxi back to hers while the two of you continue to comb the streets,”Bennet said.“You know, in case she returns there.”

“We shouldn't split up,”Kilian said.“There are two of them now. Kate may only be new, but she'll be frenzied by now if she hasn't eaten. He'll have more cunning. The older ones tend to. It's a dangerous combination. It could be hard for one of us to handle on our own.”

“I don't want her killed,”Dylan said.

“I don't think we have a choice,”Kilian said.“We can't hardly risk driving her all the way home tied up in the jeep. Someone could see it and call the gards.”

“She took the town car,”Dylan pointed out.“We could just take it back and stick her in the trunk.”

“Maybe,”Kilian conceded.

“I'd prefer to ride in the town car, myself,”said Bennet.

Brianna finally worked up the courage to return to and feed the vampires in the maze. It was one thing to witness such a potential perversion of human decency, but quite another to actively take part in it. With the boys gone, she could easily let the vampires free, and she knew it. It took a while for her to convince herself that wasn't the right thing to do, but ultimately she determined that it was really none of her business. She didn't know enough about the situation yet, so they might be in there for a good reason.

Walking past the cages, the people in them begged her to set them free. They realised she was alone and could smell her insecurity and frothing sense of justice. She brought bags of blood out of the shed, and tossed one in to each of them. She had been warned not to go too close as, although their bites couldn't kill her, they could certainly pull off a limb and make her life immeasurably more difficult until she healed. Similar to vampires, werewolves weren't quite as immortal as they'd like to believe. And unlike vampire, if part of them was ripped off, it wasn't going to regenerate so quickly.

“Why don't you come closer, little girl,”one beckoned.

“Let me out and I'll help you,”another one hissed.

The voices were endless. Each vampire had something to say, and it was mostly just some form of-‘let me out.’She went up and down the isle, ignoring them while throwing in blood bags, until she passed a young man that looked familiar to her. He wasn't looking at her. He kept his eyes on her shoes, pacing back and forth as she passed, even ignoring the blood bag that hit the floor.

“Do I know you?”she asked. He looked up at her face, but didn't respond.“I do, don't I? Where do I know you from?”

“It doesn't matter,”he said, and continued his pace.

“Don't you want your food?”she asked. He looked to it and shrugged it off.

“I don't like it,”he said.

“Not many options,”she said.

“There's you,”he said, stopping and staring into her eyes. It was one of the most intimidating and yet oddly erotic things she had ever witnessed.

“You drink werewolf blood?”she asked.

“Yes, but that's not what I meant,”he responded. She took the hint, and blushed.

“How long have you been in here?”she asked.

“Too long,”he replied.

“Are you always this evasive?”she asked, getting a bit frustrated at the lack of meaningful answers.

“We knew each other in school, Bri,”he said, keeping her gaze.

“Conor?”she asked.“It is you, isn't it? How did you get in here?”

“Does it matter?”he asked.“It's not going to make you let me out.”

“I can't,”she said, remorsefully.

“You could,”he said. Then she was looking at her shoes.

“I better go,”she said, and took off to continue her rounds.

“Come back sometime,”he said, and a strange feeling welled up inside her as she walked away.

“Kate, let go of the pole,”Vincent commanded.

“No!”she retorted.“You grab a pole.”

“You're drunk, and covered in blood,”he said, then added,“At least you and Christian had a good time.”

Kate didn't respond to this. Instead she grabbed Christian around the waist and pulled him in for a kiss. She figured she might as well just let Vincent think what he wanted for now. She was feeling amazing. Her blood lust was gone, her teeth were tucked neatly back into her gums, and that dog had drunk just enough alcohol to get her a serious buzz going on. People kill animals, she figured, so I'm not doing anything too terribly abnormal. I'm sure in some country somewhere humans eat dogs or animal blood, in a stew or something.

She was content to dance the night away, possibly have s*x a little later on, and finally enjoy herself again. She had killed two birds with one stone, so to speak. Her energy was back up, she was drunk, and frankly she felt a bit like the world was on fire… in a good way. So, she spun around and around, and danced up and down that fun little pole. There were too many people there enjoying themselves for anyone to notice, and she was having a lot of fun.

“Hey you, with the ears,”she yelled to the man on the next pole,“can I touch your ears?”At that, him and the entire couch of creatures watching him turned to gawk at her.

“That's it,”said Vincent, lifting her off the table and throwing her over his shoulder.“Sorry, folks. She's just learning manners.”He marched her up to the hotel above the dance floor. He had booked a room while she was at the park, and now lugged her into it and threw her onto one of the beds.“Sleep it off,” he said. And with that, she was out.

“They must have kept moving,”Dylan finally said.

“Where to, though?”Kilian added.

“We should go back to her apartment and wait it out till morning, the news might tell us more then,” Bennet said. The two finally conceded and they returned to the Westbury hotel.

“Look through her stuff,”Kilian said when they arrived.“Try to find something that indicates somewhere else she might go.”

“Why bother?”Bennet asked.“It's probably the other one running the show. Kate always was a push over.”

“I'll take a look,”Dylan said, ignoring Bennet's jeering. He wanted an excuse to look around anyway. Getting to know her wasn't going to help him let her go, but it would temporarily satisfy this hunger he had inside him that was missing her. He looked in her bedroom for boxes under her bed or in the wardrobe, but there was nothing. Her jewellery seemed cheap and impersonal, the bills and receipts on the bed were just as untelling, and there didn't seem to be a lot else of a personal nature. The furniture was there, and her taste. So were the clothes, but none of it really said anything about her. He started thinking that maybe her shy and quiet nature had just made him think she was more thoughtful and interesting than she really was. Maybe she was more of a blank canvas or, it dawned on him, maybe she was hiding something. How else could she have no keepsakes or photos?

Dylan returned to his brothers, who sat in the sitting room on the semi-destroyed couch and were trying to get some shut eye.“How well did the two of you know Kate?”he asked.

Kilian used a finger to push the brim of his hat up off his eyes. As he lay flat on the couch one direction, Bennet laid the other.“Pretty well,”he said.“Well as we could for someone so unsure of her own self. Why?”

He looked to Bennet, who didn't seem to be interested in offering any further extrapolations.“Just wondering,”Dylan said.“She has no personal effects. Not even papers with scraps of writing. It's like she wasn't really living here.”

“More like she wasn't really living,”Kilian said. Dylan shot him a look.“It's true. There's not much to her. It's not like she had hobbies she was mad into or a stimulating sort of job. I don't even remember what she studied at college, so it couldn't have been that interesting.”

“You dated her,”Dylan said to Bennet.“You must have more to say for her?”

“Leave me out of this,”said Bennet.

“She's not nothing,”Dylan said to the room.“I'm going to get some sleep, wake me when the news reports the bodies or the crows come.”With that, he went into her room to clear off her bed. The pillow and blanket had her scent. Lying down in them made him more comfortable. She wasn't nothing. Maybe she didn't know herself, he thought.