Damien and Alec sat in the back of a limo with a procession of black cars behind them. They pulled up to Alec’s newest club on the strip of New Bedlam that bordered the toxic slums of Rippertown. Giant werewolf bouncers guarded the door, deciding which vampires were allowed to enter. The line of vampires in leather and lace wrapped all the way around the corner. The loud bass of the music inside pulsed through the air.
Alec stepped from the limo like he was stepping onto a red carpet, and he was greeted as such. The vampires from the ghettos of Rippertown called out to him like he was their rockstar idol. Alec’s men encircled him, and when he was done waving to his adoring fans, he turned to Damien.
Damien raised his voice over the roar. “Hey, I’m not uh… too good with large crowds.”
“We go in the back,” Alec said.
Damien and Alec were escorted down the brick alleyway to the back door by Alec’s men. The bouncers opened the door so that Alec didn’t have to miss a beat as he entered the back hall of his night club.
The loud music was muffled by the sound-proof walls of the room. To their right was a long hallway with doors. One of the doors was cracked open, and Damien took the opportunity to peer in as the men took off their coats and gave them to the bouncers. It appeared to be a private room for strippers and lap dances, but it was empty.
Maybe Alec hadn’t opened up that part of the club yet and would wait for the first year buzz to die down before using it as a ploy to entice customers to come back.
But, the group began to move, and Damien followed the line of vampires going down the hall. Damien was liking this feeling. Last time he was in a vamp club, they were telling him he didn’t belong unless he wanted to be on the menu. Now, he was following the owner through the back way to yet another guarded door with a keypad entry.
Damien was impressed by the amount of security until he saw what was behind door number three: the sewers. And the sewers of the nightclubs were putrid with the smell of rotting body fluids. Unfinished Bloody Mary’s were poured down the sinks and traveled through the pipes which drained into these underground tunnels. Damien remembered living in these sewers with the other dirty kids, and they avoided the tunnels running from the nightclubs. They reminded him of The Bog of Eternal Stench from Labyrinth. Once you got the smell on you, it was never coming off.
Damien covered his mouth and nose with his hand in an attempt to quell his retching stomach. But, his sense of smell was overwhelmed by the sight of some Frankenstein’s monster of a machine. It was hexagonal-framed, and it was lined with knob and tube wiring. A faint glow was emitting from the center of the frame, and it throbbed and pulsed. The whole thing hummed, in and out.
“This, Damien, is my portal,” said Alec. They stopped at the railing to look down upon it. The rest of Alec’s men descended the metal stairs.
Damien said, “I didn’t think it was going to be so big.”
“Well, I want to get as many people in and out of the portal as I can in one run. Quick and efficient.”
The portal sparked. The light in the center floated around like a hologram, and it blinked then disappeared into a thin white line, like turning off an old tube TV, then the glow returned suddenly. There was a control panel in front of the machine that looked like a repurposed dashboard from an airplane’s cockpit. It was covered with knobs and switches and dials.
Alec explained, “They’re waiting for a group to return. But, this is what I need you to stabilize. The connection sometimes cuts off without warning. Here. They are returning now.”
The light in the center became iridescent as it stretched within the entirety of the frame. Then, Damien saw, in a line that never seemed to end, a caravan of vampires dragging humans behind them by ropes and chains. The humans were wide-eyed, terrified. They shook and trembled, half-naked, bloodstained, and bruised. Tears streamed down their faces. The ones that wouldn’t walk were being ripped off their feet, dragged by their hair, screaming and wailing, saying “Please, I have kids. What are you doing with us? No! You can’t do this.”
And as a human was being shoved through the portal, the electricity glitched. The light sliced down in a thin line, and the human was cut in half. A head, some shoulder, and an arm were all that made it through the gate. The bloody stump was smoking. When a surge of power rebooted the portal, the vampire drug the other half of the body in by its ankle. The vampire snarled as he dropped it to the ground and kicked both pieces to the side of the procession. With the wet crunch of gushing blood and cracking bones, the two bits of torso spun across the floor, leaving a slime trail of organs in its wake. A barefoot girl was dragged through the mess. She screamed and cried as she felt warm, thick blood between her toes.
Damien stood petrified and enraged at the scene, but he immediately fixed the machine so that it would never ever falter like that again. “There. It’s fixed,” Damien barked and finally tore his eyes away. How could he forget everything his father had mentioned about regulating the portal he was building so that demons couldn’t treat the Mortalworld like a buffet?
Alec marveled, “Fixed? Just like that! What would take me decades after trial and error took you not even a moment.” Damien turned to glare at Alec, but saw instead the humans were being pushed to sit on the dank floor in a line to be examined. The vampires ripped their faces left and right, and began sorting them into different groups.
Damien’s jaw clenched. “Alec, what the fuck is this?”
Alec was dumbstruck for a moment but began to laugh. “Damien, you know what this is.”
Damien stood his ground. “Explain it anyway.”
“Damien, this-” Alec gestured to his monstrous machine. “...is the new age.”
“This is wrong. This is disgusting. This is-”
“This is industry! Before, it was the rare human up for sale or the lost few roaming the streets. Mass production. This is how we excel! Soon, there will be no drinking rations from crystal glasses in the guise of civility. We will drink straight from the fountain of life like gods, like vampires were meant to!”
“These are innocent humans, Alec!” Damien’s nostrils flared. He remembered battlefields he had painted red by his master’s orders. Guillotines dropped at the whims of someone’s wish.
Alec snorted, “Where do you suppose the blood in our cocktails comes from?”
“From humans, yeah, I get it, but-” He turned back to the horrible scene. “But, I made a fake sun earlier. What if I made you fake blood?”
Alec snarled, offended by the heretical idea.
Damien begged, “It would look, taste, feel, smell like the real thing. So, you can have as much as you want without any of them.” Damien gestured to the people now being shuffled off into different tunnels.
Alec snapped, “That is the dream of our fathers! We are vampires. This is what we are! And we need to embrace it. Not shame it! It’s what I’ve been saying all along. I’m not going to hold back any longer. We aren’t playing this meek, pitiful role they cast us in.” Alec took a breath to read Damien’s face, which had turned to stone. So, Alec pressed on, “I’m going into the future. Are you coming with me?” With the stroke of his hand, Alec gestured to the portal, to the line of humans being led off, down through the canals of New Bedlam.
Damien returned his eyes to Alec. “Where are you taking them?”
“Come,” Alec said. “I’ll show you.”
