Damien skipped the long line at the front of Alec’s nightclub in downtown New Bedlam and teleported himself inside. This club was drastically different from the little blood bar in Darkside. There were red strobe lights and speakers pounding out otherworldly EDM. Bodies were pressed together in bloodletting, tantric dances from the edge of the bar to the walls. There were chains and teeth and black eyeliner and smoke, and Damien instantly regretted this decision. The crowded club felt to him like a million hands were touching him, grabbing him, clawing him further and further into the mass of fishnets and flesh.
He closed his eyes, and in between one heartbeat and the next, he transported himself to the bar. But, there he was, still being crushed by bodies. He felt as if at any moment these hands, all these many hands, would begin to cut and pull away his skin. The skin that was perfect and flawless, the skin that hid the monster underneath, bent and knotted and crippled and broken. All that protected his true self from the people surrounding him was his skin, and skin was only so deep and easily cut off.
But, he forced himself to stay at the bar, forced himself to deal with the anxiety twisting at his stomach. Exposure therapy, yeah? He had to fucking get used to this. He had to acclimate to this fucking feeling of being exposed, discovered. Just like he acclimated to granting wishes, like he acclimated to the dark, like he acclimated to the demons. He had to be his own master now and grant his own wishes. And he wished the thought of being his own master made him feel better. It sounded freeing, but it’s just another pretty lie, because he wasn’t a very nice master.
Deal with it. Suck it up. Quit acting like a little bitch. Get your shit together. You don’t want to be noticed? Huh? Look at me. Look. At. Me!
Damien opened his eyes, and he spotted his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. The reflection showed only the empty club, the glass liquor bottles, and him. He was the only non-vampire in the place, the only one with a reflection. And in the reflection, he saw a young man, trembling, white-knuckled, and terrified. The music and white noise muffled out in his ears. His reflection glared over at him. It said, Does this look normal to you? You don’t want to be noticed? Don’t act like a fucking freak. Pretty goddamn simple if you ask me.
Damien nodded to himself, took in a breath, and that was when the bartender stood between him and his reflection. “What do you want?” She yelled over the crowd. Her appearance was striking, but she looked bored. She wore a neon-green, ripped crop top underneath black mesh. Her lips were a deep purple, and her hair a vibrant red.
Damien shook his head clean and said, “Whiskey. Neat.”
The three vampires nearby, and the bartender, looked at him. Really looked at him.
Smooth, said his own voice in his head. So much for not being fucking noticed.
The bartender set down the glass of whiskey and just walked away. She didn’t even ask for money or if it was going on his tab. She just walked away and whispered something to her coworker on the other side of the bar.
“You have a heartbeat,” whispered a voice into his left ear. “What are you? werewolf?” the lady vampire on his right asked above the din.
“Werewolves still drink blood. So do demons,” her male cohort corrected.
“Fairy, then? Why’s a fairy in a vamp club? Or are you a witch? If you’re a witch you shouldn’t be here either.” The lady blatantly licked her sharp tooth.
He felt something brush his neck, and he turned to see the guy to his left had been sniffing his neck this whole time and wasn’t stopping.
“Nope, not a witch,” the guy smelling him said. “I agree with you. I say fairy.”
“What I am,” Damien found himself saying, “is about to knock your teeth out if you smell me again.” And he realized the couple on his right was sniffing him now too. This was beginning to attract attention, which Damien didn’t want, but he forced himself to stay anyway.
“Hey. What did the guy with a pulse say when he walked into a vamp club?” the lady asked with a toothy grin.
“Bite me!” her partner answered, and they laughed and snorted.
Damien had already been all angsty knots and nerves. And yes, he probably hadn’t thought this all the way through, but then again, maybe he had, and maybe this was the whole point- Damien was looking for a fight.
He figured the couple was all talk, but the guy on his left sniffed him again. Damien’s right hand was holding onto his whiskey glass, and he didn’t want to be the kind of man to make empty threats. He shot back his whiskey then slammed the glass into the vampire’s head. And the scrap ensued with lightning speed. The couple lurched back, other vampires jumped to attention, and the guy with the bleeding temple stumbled backwards, holding onto his head.
Before Damien could blink, several vamps had him pinned back and open for others to sucker-punch and kick. One of which was the colorful bartender. She was gripping onto a baseball bat with nail spikes sticking out of the end.
Damien saw the terrifying thing very clearly just before it became a blur, smashing him right across the jaw. He felt the punctures, the blood filling his mouth. He felt his teeth ache and splinter apart as his inspecting tongue ran over them.
Then, an outside tongue lapped the spring of blood off his cheek. It was the all too-familiar feeling of being suspended in chains by his arms, hellhounds pulling him apart, a demon cutting out his teeth. He had had worse. He just proved it to himself. This is the worst they can do. And to think he was afraid of an innocent crowd.
That is when Damien began laughing hysterically. An opened mouth grin with blood filling the spaces between his shards of teeth. The air he sucked in while laughing seared the severed nerves inside his mouth.
The vampires all leered at one another, concerned, aggravated, and rightfully pissed off. The bartender licked the dripping blood off the handle of her baseball bat. She said, “Finish him,” to the guy still holding onto his bleeding temple.
Damien hung limply between two vampires who were holding his arms on either side.
The guy nodded to the onlookers, cleared his throat, and pumped himself up with the support of the crowd. He took his balled fist and raised it dramatically high and wide. Damien looked up at it right as it was coming down on his skull, and the force of the blow ripped his body out of the grips of those holding him and sent his nose right into the concrete.
The onlookers made several noises as the DJ cut off the music. Damien groaned and peeled his face up off the ground. His sinuses throbbed under the pressure of gravity, as he brought himself upright.
Again, the confused and unsettled vampires glanced around at themselves and this idiot kid who kept getting up.
Through Damien’s blurry vision, he located the man who had sniffed him, and he said, “Again.”
"What? What the hell did you just say?”
“Again.” Damien beckoned him with two fingers. “Come on. If you want blood, you got it. Again.”
The bartender eagerly handed the other vampire her bat. The guy refused it and revved up the smile on his face. Instead, he took Damien up by the throat, right underneath his chin. “Okay.” He eagerly accepted Damien’s proposal, and the vampire lifted him off his knees, up into the air, until Damien’s feet couldn’t touch the ground.
From the other side of the bar, someone screamed, “Hey! What the fuck? Hey!”
Damien’s vision was now blotting out. Damien’s back was slammed into the corner edge of the bar. He began to kick and struggle with the lack of oxygen, but the vampire’s grip was ironclad. Unmovable.
“If you’re offering.” The guy opened up his fanged red mouth.
Damien lost consciousness. When he woke up a second later, he was on the sticky floor hearing, “Do you know who that is? It’s Damien Fucking Parker.”
“Never heard of him,” said the guy.
Damien gasped to catch his breath. He choked. His eyes opened to see fanged vamps lapping from a puddle of his blood, like lions at a quickly evaporating watering hole.
“He’s Death’s son and Alec’s new beau, so-”
“The bastard started it,” said the bartender.
“Do you think I give a fuck? Do you think Alec will give a fuck?”
The bartender looked down at Damien. “Shit.” She ran her fingers through her red hair.
“Yeah. Oh shit is right. You better hope losing your job is the worst he does.”
Damien was suddenly hoisted up by his dislocated shoulder. After groaning, Damien coughed. He didn’t know who was supporting him, but he could see the purple lips of the bartender snarling at him. With a tendril of bloody drool dangling from his mouth, he managed to gurgle at her, “Nice bat,” before his savior carried him off through the crowd with a commanding, “Move.”
The toes of Damien’s boots scraped lifelessly across the barroom as he was dragged outside and placed delicately into the back seat of a car. He drifted in and out of consciousness while street lights and tops of tall, shadowy pines passed by overhead as they entered Darkside. He remembered someone trying to prop him up and pour warm thick liquid down his throat, and he awoke in a decadent bedroom lined with cherry wood and velvet.
