When the pilot leans back in to collect ‘his kid,’ I emerge from the cockpit, taking a moment to blank myself out of their memories. Anyone inside the airport is going to mistake me for a straggler passenger getting off the plane late.
Great. Wonderful. I’m in San Diego and totally lost.
It’s easy enough to find the airport entrance. Once outside, I turn my phone back on. The trip might have been long, but I’m still in the same time zone. It’s a little after midnight, leaving me approximately six hours before sunrise. Being caught in California during the day is going to be painful. Can’t risk it. But six hours is a lot of time. Meeting vampires to drop off a message couldn’t possibly keep me out past sunrise. No matter what, I’m not making it home tonight and will need to spend at least one morning sheltered here before going back to Washington. Still, if I can get done everything I need to do now, tomorrow is all mine.
No texts came in from the Littles or Ashley during the time in the air. I do, however, have another barrage from the Peters brothers. They’ve decided to go spy on the neighbor’s house against my advice. According to Cody, they saw the two big guys dragging a live person inside seemingly against their will. I swear those two are going to get in trouble. They most likely saw them helping a drunk buddy. Honestly, if a pair of teenage boys observed a ‘kidnapping,’ the bad guys didn’t make any effort whatsoever to be subtle. While it could potentially mean they’re vampires capable of erasing the memory of witnesses, the most likely explanation is the Peters boys are seeing something innocent and imagining it dark.
Sighing, I shake my head and pull out the business card for the Delirium night club so I can plug the address into my GPS app.
How the hell did anyone find places before smartphones? Seriously.
17
Loosely Organized Chaos
I stop at a hover maybe 250 feet off the ground, observing Delirium.
The night club, not the mental condition.
It’s an ultra-modernist industrial orgasm of burnished steel and sleek black lines, the exterior walls covered in one of those mind-warping illusion patterns where the spiraling dashes appear to move if you stare at it too long.
Wow. Merely looking at the place makes me feel a touch woozy. I’m not sure if the designer was going for East Berlin circa 1989, techno-dystopia, or what. No line waiting to get in, but the parking lot has a decent number of cars, mostly Lexus, BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. Good chance my jeans-and-T-shirt outfit isn’t good enough. Don’t care. If anyone tries to give me attitude for not wearing expensive clothing, they can spend an hour clucking randomly like a chicken.
No one stops me at the door, which is strange for more reasons than simply my overly mundane attire. Everyone keeps telling me how I look closer to sixteen than eighteen. Last I checked, the minimum drinking age remained twenty-one. Oh, maybe this isn’t an alcohol club? The few windows on the outside appeared dark, so it might be a nude bar. Unsure what to expect, I pre-cringe on my way across the foyer to the second set of doors.
Inside, it looks like a trendy bar—or a movie set for a trendy bar in a science fiction world. At least there aren’t any nude dancers. Whew.
Not saying I’m an expert on bars or anything. In fact, it’s a true statement to claim I never set foot in a bar my entire life. The few times I’ve been inside them all happened after my Transference. A blonde woman standing at a small cashier station on my left gives me a ‘what are you doing here’ disdainful look. She’s wearing a shockingly bright purple dress with weird silver hoop things in the shoulders—basically a fashion show experiment from the Jetsons.
I make eye contact. She’s mortal, so I ‘encourage’ her to ignore my plain clothes and insert a command to tell me where the guy I’m supposed to meet—Jermaine Warwick—is. Mentally inserting the name into her consciousness triggers a reactive thought. He’s in a VIP area accessible via a short corridor on the other side of the room. An image of him forms in her mind in response to my question as well. I’m looking for a black guy in his mid-twenties with an old-school afro as if he hasn’t realized the Sixties are over. Heh, maybe he hasn’t. Dude’s wearing a loud-as-hell pinkish blazer, so he ought to be reasonably easy to spot… from orbit.
Careful to shield the scroll from bumps or the wait staff zooming around carrying trays of drinks, sushi, overpriced hot wings, and whatnot, I make my way across the club to the hallway. Naturally, I catch a few looks. Guess places like this rely on a person’s sense of shame to keep everyone up to dress code. Good thing for me, I don’t care what anyone here thinks of me. I walked halfway across Woodinville bare ass naked. Wearing jeans into a fancy club doesn’t bother me at all. The people here might look trendy, but I’m comfortable. Hmm. Maybe I should exploit Sophia’s illusion powers so I can stay in sweat pants all the time and hide it.
That’d be the life, right?
Anyway, I’m not planning to be here long, so it doesn’t matter. It’ll take me longer to go find ‘nice’ clothes than drop off the damn scroll and leave. Do they make delivery people dress up before dropping stuff off here? Well, they probably don’t walk in the front door, either. Whatever.
A guy in a white suit steps in front of me, raising one hand and an eyebrow when I attempt to enter the VIP area. His attitude is somewhere between keeping a little kid out of a bar and making sure the peasants don’t stray into the nice parts of the building. Lots of Dad’s Eighties movies have the ‘Kent’ character. Rich parents. Handsome. Jock. Gets a brand new Mercedes the day he turns eighteen… and a total douche. He hasn’t said a single word, and he’s totally ‘Kent vibing’ already.
Not sure what exactly put me in a bad mood—other than being away from home when I really ought to be watching my siblings—but the idea of hearing his sanctimonious voice infuriates me even before he opens his mouth to tell me I’m not worthy. Fortunately, he’s a normal human, so there’s no need for me to talk my way past him.
One mental jab and he stands there staring into the fifth dimension. No need to make him forget I exist, only ignore my presence. Yeah, this is totally not the atmosphere I expected. No pounding music, no packed dance floor full of young adults slathered in neon baubles, and probably more a restaurant than the term ‘night club’ implies. If the local vampires use this place as a meeting-slash-feeding area, it makes sense to provide food for the blood donors.
The carpet in the VIP hallway has a similar mind-warping illusion pattern. Thin blue lines on black harken back to mid-1980s video game box art, but also create the appearance of pits and hills due to the way the lines bend and warp. Yeah, this is not the place to walk when drunk. Following the Jetsons’ fashion model’s thoughts, I head to the third door on the left.
The room is basically set up like a lounge with wingback chairs, a few small coffee tables, more chairs, a sofa, fireplace containing a neon squiggles pretending to be flames, and a ton of burnished steel décor. It’s a complete clash between a stuffy old English sitting room and something out of a noir corporate dystopia where it’s 300 years in the future but the décor somehow feels retro.
Jermaine’s reclining in a wingback chair near the fake fireplace, one elbow on the armrest, hand supporting a wine glass of alcohol-infused blood. The smell is obvious from here. The guy’s smaller than I expected, kinda reedy. Between his Sixties hair and supremely relaxed posture, he makes me think of a Vietnam-era soldier who deserted, crawled into a hole deep in the underworld, and started a little opium den.
Hi, my name is Sarah and I watch far too many movies. I’m an addict.
Seems I’ve interrupted a conversation. Three other vampires in the room all give me the same ‘who is this bitch’ look. A super pale woman in a frilly goth dress lounges on a sofa to the right of the false fireplace, her bare feet up on the cushions, boots on the floor nearby. She’s probably around my age, meaning eighteen or nineteen, though she looks it. Goth Queen rolls her eyes at me, holding back the urge to laugh. I’m not feeling hostility, more of a �
�how did they let you in here like that’ vibe.
To the left, a pair of guys in their apparent thirties sit on either side of a little round table about the size of a dinner plate. The one on the left has Italian or Mexican features and appears to be going for the cowboy aesthetic via fringed jacket and snakeskin boots. His friend is almost as pale as the girl, but oozes a sense of ‘I’ve got money’ in a black suit over a neon purple dress shirt—the top four buttons open revealing his hairy chest. Multiple silver chains hang at varying lengths from his neck, some with charms, others plain. He’s totally got Alice Cooper hair but looks nothing like him facially. Head’s too narrow, face is too young, and a big Adam’s apple. His week-without-shaving aesthetic gives him a presence somewhere between renegade music producer and laid-back rock star.
Jermaine narrows his eyes, no doubt wondering what the heck a girl like me is doing walking into this room uninvited. For the most part, vampires can sense each other—as vampires—on sight, even from behind. I say ‘for the most part’ due to my stealth technology. Other vampires need to look me square in the eyes—when I’m online—to get the same read on me. Offline, no one can tell. Duh, it’s kinda stupid to point out since when I’m offline it means daylight, so no other vampires could be around to see me.
As I’m both online now and making eye contact with Jermaine, he obviously knows I’m a fellow vampire. Also, unless they’re way older than me, they won’t be able to read my mind—another big clue as to my being an undead. It takes roughly an eighty-year age gap for a vampire to be able to force their way into another vamp’s head, not counting the mental link to one’s sire.
Jermaine makes no move to speak or do anything.
Okay… before my death, I’d have stood there awkwardly waiting and probably thinking I did something wrong. Now? I don’t care. Just want to go home as fast as possible, so I walk up to him. “Hi. Don’t mind me. Just dropping off.” I hold up the scroll. “You’re Jermaine right?”
“Oh, wow,” says the woman. “Who turned you so young? Poor thing.”
Ugh. This again. Foreign city. Need to be polite and all, so I resist the urge to sigh. “I’m eighteen. I have resting kid face.”
“Girl, you is a walkin’ fashion apocalypse.” Jermaine flails one hand about in a parody of a priest dispelling a curse, making a face like I’m wearing an outfit made of anchovies. His tone is unabashedly flamboyant. “If you’re goin’ to be spendin’ any time ’round here, we need to get those rags sorted.”
I’m about to laugh when it hits me he might have a point. Crap! Wolent sent me here officially. I’m like an ambassador or something. Maybe jeans and a Death Note T-shirt is a bit too informal.
“Sorry.” I flash a weak smile. “Totally my fault. I should’ve dressed like an emissary.”
The other two guys laugh.
“Aww, just teasin’ ya.” Jermaine cracks a smile. “We ain’t formal. Welcome to San Diego.”
“Thanks.” Whew. Always a good thing not to start a vampire war for being too casually dressed.
He gestures at the other vampires. “Allow me to introduce Wednesday Muir, Dusty Molina, and Shaw Kimball.”
Wednesday nods as he says her name. Dusty—the cowboy—makes a hat tip gesture despite not wearing one, and Shaw tilts his hands up in a ‘what you see is what you get’ manner. Or maybe he’s making an ‘it’s here if you want to ride’ offer. Ack. I pretend to ignore it since I’m not sure what the heck he’s trying to say.
I almost laugh at the girl having the name Wednesday given her looks. Naturally, she senses me wanting to laugh and does it for me.
“Hi.” I wave at everyone. “I’m Sarah.”
Jermaine flicks two fingers in a beckoning manner at the scroll. “Lemme see that.”
I hand it over. Gah, feels so weird acting in an official capacity as a representative of Wolent. Great. I’m like the vampire version of student council president: technically here in an official capacity, but the janitor has more power—and respect. Maybe I should invest in some professional attire for any future social situations Wolent might send me on or require my presence for. Good chance no one warned me to dress nice for this because they saw me in the ridiculous gown Aurélie loaned me and assumed I adored overdressing. Seriously, the one she wore the other night had enough room under the skirt to conceal an operational merry go round for brownies—the little one-foot tall dudes, not pre-Girl-Scouts.
Jermaine sets the scroll on the table to his left, then gestures at the other wingback chair opposite his. “Please, have a seat. Relax. You look like you’re ready to run right out. Socialize.”
“Yeah, well…” I sit where indicated. “I kinda was. Got a minor situation at home.”
“Sorry to hear that. Hope it ain’t too bad.” Jermaine offers a warm smile.
“No, I meant ‘minor’ literally. I’m responsible for three kids.”
All four vampires give me curious looks.
“Actual kids or are you chaperoning newly turned vampires?” asks Wednesday.
“It’s a complicated situation. Actual kids.”
Dusty and Shaw fidget uneasily, seeming concerned.
“No, they’re not for biting. They’re my siblings.”
“Oh, honey, this I have to hear.” Jermaine leans forward. “Please indulge my curiosity.”
So much for a quick drop off and run. “I had a mild panic attack after my Transference. The guy who turned me lost track of my body so I ended up in a morgue having no idea what happened to me. Didn’t know vampires existed…” I share a brief version of my first few days as a vampire, focusing on my snap decision to go home to my family and refusal to let them believe I’d died.
Dusty gets a far-off ‘wish I thought of that’ look. Wednesday ‘awws’ at me while Shaw doesn’t show any particular emotion on his face.
“Cool. Cool. I can respect.” Jermaine sips blood. “Long as you keep discretion.”
“Wish everyone thought the same way. I’m all about keeping my head down, but there are some traditionalists who aren’t happy.” I explain the situation with Stefano and Paolo. “Arthur Wolent doesn’t object at least, as long as I’m careful.”
Jermaine’s expression says ‘ahh, no wonder you fell in with him.’ Yeah, true. Can’t argue. Forces gathered against me, so it would be stupid to ignore a powerful ally. “Politics are a bit more relaxed down here. Certain situations make alliances more valuable. We have an ample font of other issues so have no need to look for reasons to get pissy at each other.”
“Uh oh. Sounds bad.” I whistle.
“Mexico’s pretty much lawless as far as our kind goes.” Jermaine sips blood. “Unless you go down by Mexico City or anywhere big. Tijuana’s a damn murder amusement park. Only thing stopping them from makin’ San Diego untenable to us is they’re so disorganized they rip each other up as much as anything else. They often head our way since we’re so close, tryin’ ta extend their territory. All up by Los Padres Forest is almost as bad. Ventura, Oxnard, Lompoc, all them places there are pretty wild in terms of vampires. We’re caught between it and the freaks in LA.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I had an issue with the freaks in LA once before.”
Dusty and Shaw go on for a while about vampire gangs and how idiotic they think the fools are. Fortunately, the ‘gang’ vampires in LA spend all their time fighting each other and don’t often leave the city.
“Were you serious about me being underdressed? I really should’ve worn something a bit nicer for an official visit to like the ‘mayor’ of San Diego.”
Jermaine and the others laugh.
“Cassandra basically calls the shots around here,” says Jermaine, “but she’s not officially in charge of anything. She and Wolent go way back, like to the 1800s.”
“Wow…” Impressive, but not enough to shock me. Aurélie experienced the Transference in 1643.
“They’re long-time friends.” Jermaine makes a suggestive eyebrow motion. “Rumor has it they might�
��a been more than friends at one point. But then we’d be talkin’ all ‘unsubstantiated rumor’ and all.” He picks up the scroll. “This here is basically the old-as-hell version of a ‘what’s up, not much, cool’ text exchange.”
I laugh. “Really? Guess it’s more to send me down here to meet you guys then? Announce myself to Cassandra?”
“Eh, something like that.” Jermaine swishes the last of the blood around his glass before draining it. “Nothing so formal. Ain’t like it is in Europe, or even the East Coast. Damn New York vamps waste too much damn time on formality. Bunch of elitist fools, ya ask me.”
“Like London? They kinda got mad at me for not presenting myself to their leader right away.”
“Oh, wow. You went to London?” Wednesday sits up. “What’s it like?”
I shrug. “Basically a shadow monarchy. Vampire king. Got the sense of it being formal and organized, but I didn’t get too deep into it. Had no reason to stay there long.”
“We’re a lot less caught up in the details of politics here,” says Dusty, his voice deeper than his appearance implies. “Some cities have a strong vampire who takes the time to establish order, gather underlings, and enforce their power. Like Chicago back in the twenties.”
I can’t tell if this guy’s trying to sound like he’s from a 1950s western movie, he lived in the actual fifties, or it’s merely his voice.
“Yeah.” I chuckle. “I’ve kind of been thinking of it like the Mafia without the crime part.”
“Don’t let ’em fool ya, honey.” Jermaine winks. “They’re inta plenty of crime. Just not the same kind. Big money white-collar stuff, not prostitution, drugs, and protection.”
“Every so often, ya get two such ‘kings’ too close to each other.” Shaw wags his eyebrows. “Then the fireworks fly. Fun to watch. Not so fun to be caught in the middle.”
Vampire Innocent (Book 10): A Vampire’s Guide To Adulting Page 19
