My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 04

What the fuck. He could smell so many things, like each and every one of them was shoving a body part under his nose.

He squeezed the steering wheel until he felt his knuckles fight to circulate blood. The thump thump of the music of the club filled his ears, resonated in his skull, matched his heart rate. He growled at no one as he stirred in his seat and felt his muscles tense, felt his teeth bite down, felt his blood kick into high gear and fill his muscles.

Calm. The fuck. Down.

He moved on, forcing his breathing to settle and his eyes to focus on the street. Lot of people, lot of pedestrians with no respect for the road, lot of people drunk or high stumbling onto the streets. Much as he wanted to run them over, that'd mean the end of his career. But maybe jail would better than this job and a shitty apartment.

He got maybe forty feet before someone jogged up to him from behind. Him specifically, not any of the other cabs. Some guy in a suit, with a suit that probably cost as much as Eric's apartment. He had a shaved head too, a white guy, with some scars on his cheek and a thickness to his shoulders. And a big, bright smile.

Eric squeeze his steering wheel harder as he felt his arm hair stand up on edge. Dangerous. Man probably had a pistol inside his suit jacket. And from the way he carried himself, the man knew how to fight. Someone Eric would have approached carefully in the ring.

Eric pulled over, but the man didn't get into the taxi. Instead he came up to the window, and knocked on it twice with a knuckle. Going to be one of those nights.

With a sigh, Eric rolled down the window. "Yeah?"

"Eric Tanverson?"

"... do I know you?" He looked the man up and down again. Nothing about the stranger suggested aggression, except for maybe the snake smile he had. A liar, or a lawyer; same thing.

"No. I'm John Ganders, work at Bloodlust. I recognized you from the local MMA matches."

Eric sighed, again, for the millionth time, and looked back to the windshield. "And?" Fuck this guy. His fighting career was over, and even if it wasn't, not like he or any fighter would appreciate getting their life interrupted like this.

"And, saw what happened to your knee. Wife nearly passed out in the seat."

Yeah, having your knee dislocated and its ligaments ripped apart often meant the shin got to move in a direction it was very much not meant to move. It also meant his knee was ruined.

"Yeah. And?"

"Heh, knew you were an asshole Mr. Tanverson."

"Excuse me?" He glared at the man, checked him up and down again for any movement, or for a gun, before he put an elbow on the window trim, and turned in his seat to face the man. No need to check the mirror for what his face looked like, he knew he was carrying his 'I'm going to rip your head off' face. Local news used to love to bring that up.

"Had to see if your ring persona was real, or just bullshit. But luckily an asshole like you is exactly what I want in a new bouncer." Mr. Gandra — or whatever his name was — leaned toward the taxi, rested his hand on the roof, and grinned at him. "I'm offering you a job."

"... in case you haven't noticed, I have a job, and you're getting in—"

"Without cab drivers, the city would die. Far be it from me to judge you your choice of vocation, Mr. Tanverson. But, work for me, bouncing for Bloodlust, and you'll be making triple what you make now. Better benefits too."

Triple. Triple. He could wipe his debts, he could settle his divorce, he could—no. He'd tried public work before. Never worked out, for good reasons.

"You don't want me bouncing for you, Gandra."

"Ganders."

"Whatever. Not going to bite my tongue for stupid customers. So—"

"And that's exactly what I'm looking for, Mr. Tanverson. An attractive man with a sharp tongue and a rough history. Bloodlust attracts certain types, and I need someone good with their words and a good looking jaw to go with it. You'll draw in a certain clientele, and get rid of others with a conversation. Only need to use your fists if absolutely necessary, but those situations do occasionally happen."

Attractive? Was the man gay? Maybe that was the unusual vibe Eric was picking up from him; which made sense, given the amount of times Ganders looked him up and down. He wasn't getting any aggression from him.

Or he was just the friendly sort. Not many of those in your life, Eric. Man said he had a wife anyway.

"Good with my words? You can't be serious."

"So you're telling me you didn't go on that five minute long, uninterrupted, flawless, not a single stutter rant about your Crowley match, a few years ago? A perfect stream of unending insults? It was like a scene out of Full Metal Jacket, fucking beautiful."

Crowley had pissed him off with some pre-match dissing. Man just needed to be put in his place. That had been a fun night though.

"... this some kind of trick? You offer jobs to strangers all the time?"

Laughing, the man reached into his suit jacket, and pulled out a card. "My business card. Think it over, give me a call. You're already working nights, so you might as well make decent money while doing it."

The grimace in Eric's lips refused to leave, but he took the card anyway. That was enough for Ganders, and the man offered him a salute before he walked back to his club. Not his club, according to the card, but a club he worked for as a manager.

Eric set the card on the dash, and resumed his route.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back in his apartment. His shit apartment, the cheapest one-bedroom he could find that didn't put him in Devil's Corner. He growled at no one and tossed his keys onto the kitchen table before he stepped into the bathroom. More like a closet that just happened to have a small tub and a toilet. But it was enough for him to stand in, and look at himself in the mirror.

Mom always said if he didn't stop frowning his face would get stuck that way. She was always right.

Eric sighed and looked down at the sink as he set his hands on the outside edges of the counter. He squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed until his arms started to shake, until his fingers turned brighter at the knuckles, and he heard the tile on the counter top begin to crack.

Calm. The fuck. Down.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. He stared at himself in the mirror, the sweat that was beading on his forehead, and at his brown eyes. There was a spec of amber in there that almost made his eyes look like gold; his wife had loved it.

The night ran through his mind, with each cab fare planting a specific memory. There'd been a couple covered in tattoos, and he knew they had knives in their boots. There'd been a couple of women who smelled of cocaine, and one of them looked comfortable with her purse, like she might have had a gun in there. There'd been more than few guys who looked ready to fight with their bare hands. And there'd been a few dozen men and women so fat they had trouble getting into the cab, let alone pose a threat. Prey. They were just prey. Meat. Lambs for the slaughter.

He stared at the sink and watched it vibrate. His arms were still shaking, and his fingers were starting to sink into the counter, through the tile. He wasn't gripping the counter like something you'd squeeze in the palm either; instead, he was pressing his fingertips down on it like claws.

He let go of the counter, and stared at the indentations of his fingers. He was a strong guy, but not that strong. The fuck was eating at him so much? Handed an opportunity to get out of this hole and he couldn't even think about it, could only think about all the irritants in his life.

The smell of blood was in the air. Was it? There was no blood in his apartment. But, he could smell it, smell the life of it drifting through the air. An odor so thick he could almost swim in it, run his hand through it. Once his fingers let go of the counter, he raised one and stared at it, at how it flexed and squeezed and curled like there should have been claws there. Only way to describe it, only way it made sense. There should have been claws on his hand.

He slammed the bathroom door, and collapsed against it. Ass to the tile of his bathroom, head hanging, he gripped the back of his neck and squeezed on it. The muscles fought back, and pulsed. They felt bigger. His head jerked up with painful neck snap, and he raised his hands again to look at them.

Claws. There were claws.

He stared at the colossal hand, at the nigh black hair that was growing from the back of his knuckles, far longer than his normal hair. Hands big enough to crush. Hands strong enough to tear people apart. Hands fit for pinning down prey as he bit into them and ripped out their throat.

No air. No air! Couldn't breathe, couldn't get air, couldn't get above the blood. He stood up and turned around, but his hands couldn't grip the doorknob right. Drowning! Couldn't get out, couldn't breathe, couldn't—

His head jerked up from hanging between his knees. Breathing again, he could breathe. His ass was still on the bathroom floor, and his hands were normal. Normal, perfectly normal. Beads of sweat had started dripping down his face again, and he wiped them away as he forced himself to stand up. He wanted to vomit. Nausea ripped at him, and dizziness destroyed attempts to stand.

He should see a doctor. He must have caught some sort of disease, right? What the fuck sort of disease made someone hallucinate like that? No, not a disease. He must have just been stressed. Last thing he needed was to get locked up in a psych ward for something that was just his stress and imagination. And that's all it was. Stress, and probably malnutrition. Hell, maybe he'd just fallen asleep for a few seconds and his fucked up mind took the opportunity to hit him with a quick nightmare.

He needed to eat something. Groaning, he reached out for the bathroom countertop again, and forced himself to stand. Best he had in here for food was a multivitamin, but he took it anyway, swallowed it dry, and turned around to face the door.

Blood. There was blood on the door. It was pouring down from the seems, trickling, thick and heavy. It came down over the smooth, boring slab of white-painted, worn wood, and buried it in flowing red.

He was hallucinating or dreaming or something. Snap out of it. Breathe! Fucking breathe.

"No. No it's a dream. I'm dreaming. I'm fucking dreaming. This..." He reached out for the doorknob, and opened it. White flashed, buried him, blinded him, and he plummeted down through the floor as it gave way underneath him. Blood. He was sinking through blood. Drowning again in blood.

Before his lungs started to burn, the blood dropped him onto new surface, like he'd fallen out of the guts of a cow. Dirt in his fingers, blood dripping down from his smooth head and nose, from his shoulders, and down into the grass before it disappeared. After a minute of silence, of waiting for death or for this sick joke to be over, he stood up, gasping, staring, looking around. Where the fuck was he? Not his apartment. Jungle? Forest? There was grass, there was blood, and there were trees. The wind cut through the branches and howled like a banshee. The quiet hum of the city was gone, and instead he was surrounded in the silence of screaming winds and rustling grass.

No way this wasn't a fucking dream. He slapped himself, hard, hard enough to cause his head to jerk to the side and for his neck to wrench. Pain hit him with all the bitterness and stinging aftertaste of a real slap. Not dreaming then. Maybe? Christ, he was in a forest, he had to be dreaming.

He looked around again. Blood on the grass, blood on the trees and their bark, blood on his clothes. He raised his hands once more, and tried to wipe the sweat off his face. It wasn't sweat. His palms dripped of the red liquid, and when he tried to wipe it off his jeans, his fingers grazed something soft and squishy.

Flesh, not his, was on his leg. Something wet, warm, with a bit of fur, was stuck to his fucking pants leg. He gulped, body shaking and lungs refusing to breathe again, and he flicked it away. The air was cool against the wet skin. Cooling blood.

He turned around. A body, something with antlers, something with fur and hooves. A leg, a destroyed head, brains and eyeballs and teeth broken apart against the wood of a tree. And he could taste it. He could taste blood, and bone, and shit he didn't know the name for. He put his fingers to his mouth, and pulled out a bit something trapped between lip and teeth. It was meat. It was flesh.

There was only one source of light, and it was casting everything in the most sorrowful shade of blue his mind could comprehend. As if light itself could be sad. As if light itself could mourn. The full moon.

He fell to his knees, and stared up at the night sky. The moon stared at him, demanded his attention, demanded his eyes and for him to look at it and only it, before it bellowed a booming voice upon him. A woman's voice? If a celestial body could have a female voice, something that echoed with power and depth and noise beyond imagining, it would have sounded like that.

"Breathe!"

His eyes snapped open, and a lungful of air hit him hard enough to send him stumbling back.

His bathroom. The cold tile on his feet, with tiny puddles of his sweat. The shitty door, just old, worn wood with white paint. The dirty shower curtain and stained tub. The bathroom counter that he'd just damaged. He was back in his bathroom, which meant all that insanity was just a dream.

It couldn't have been a dream. He hadn't fallen asleep, and hell, he was still standing up, hand on the doorknob. Hell, his face still hurt from the slap. Hallucinating, not hallucinating. Make up your fucking mind, brain. If you're going to fucking kill him, or turn him into a psycho or something, do it now, stop fucking with him.

Open the door, Eric.

He gulped, and stared down at where his hand squeezed the metal, arm quivering, doorknob shaking in its loose screws. Open the door. Open the fucking door.

He opened it, slowly, the creak of the metal hinges ringing out like sirens blaring in his ears.

A meow almost made him jump.

"Kat, god damn it girl. I could have..."

Kat rubbed herself against his legs. An American Shorthair, Kat was a beautiful little lady, with black and gray lines and a white tummy. And the softest, most elegant face. His total fucking opposite.

As she did circles around his legs, rubbing herself to his shins, he took another deep breath. The anger faded away, the shaking stopped, and he found his old smile again as he leaned down to pick her up. It was why he bought a cat after all, to relieve stress. Supposed to add years to your lifespan. And he fucking needed it.

"Girl, I may be going crazy. I think... I... I don't know girl. Could be going crazy. Could be... just... stress." Just stress, that's all it was. He was fine two days ago, other than the inevitable peptic ulcer from his regular job that was going to kill him. Just fine. Completely, totally fine.

Kat seemed to think so. But then, Kat was a very dumb cat. Like nothing was wrong, like he didn't just have a bunch of hallucinations, like he still didn't remember the taste of animal blood in his mouth, and the texture of its flesh, like everything was perfectly fine, she purred.

He needed to move on, think about something, anything.

"... you think I should take the job? Working as a bouncer is bound to lead to violence... course, with the people I see in that Bloodlust club, a single punch would take out most of them." Bunch of city slickers; of which he was too, but at least he wasn't soft. He shrugged, cradled his girl to his chest, and sat on his half-broken couch in front of his tiny TV.

Kat purred into his neck, and gave him a few headbutts, ears rubbing against his jaw and paws pressing against his chest. The cat odor was strong, but not bad. He'd changed the litter before leaving, but he could smell that too. Hell, he could smell old widow Ms. Swanson smoking cigarettes a few rooms down the hall.

And he could hear the televisions of nearby apartments, when he normally couldn't. He could hear the potheads talking down the hall. He could hear the barking of dogs; nothing unusual there. But he could hear the meowing of distant cats too, in rooms far down the hall, and from floors above and below him. And, as Kat continued to purr into his chest, he could hear the rumbling in her body almost overpower his hearing, like a lawn mower.

Good thing he loved the sound and feel of her purrs. He lay down on the couch, set Kat on his chest again, and pet her as he tried to let the thoughts pass. He knew what his own blood tasted like; a decade of fighting in a ring taught him that. The taste of that thing in his dream, that buck, was a different taste entirely. Hair, iron, and other crap he couldn't guess. And he could feel his muscles ache, as if he'd just run miles, as if he'd just spent a night at the gym.

His knee was fucking killing him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He woke up sweating, and gasping.

Kat flew off of him in a panic, and he winced as her claws nicked his skin. The tip of one of her nails got trapped in the fabric, and came off of her claw easily. Clip her nails, you lazy fuck.

Groaning, he set his feet down on the floor and forced himself to breathe. Still sitting on the couch, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, hands and head dangling. Sweat dripped from his forehead to the carpet, and he could feel it soaking through his shirt; goddamn underwear too. He needed to go pop a multi-mineral or eat some half-salt or something, before he compromised his electrolytes. The fuck was wrong with him? He couldn't stop sweating all the time, but it wasn't gross nasty sweat from the heat or exercise. It was a cold sweat, like someone was choking him to death and he couldn't stop them.

He brought his hands to his face and wiped away the drops. Dreams. Fucking nasty dreams, of animals chasing and biting things. Of roars and tearing flesh apart. Dreams about weird things, weird looking beasts with too many arms or legs, and him ripping them apart. The hallucinations fit much better in his dreams, made more sense to be there than when he was awake, but they weren't as bad as the hallucinations yesterday either.

Just needed a nap. That's all he needed. Now he felt better, with all the crazy shit in his brain firing during his slumber instead of while he was awake.

"You ok Kat?"

Kat meowed her annoyance, and hopped up onto the small table between him and the TV. Perched and frowning at him, she meowed a couple more times, and waited. A queen who demanded her respect, and her food.

"Sorry girl. Just... really weird dreams." He got up, did a few stretches, did some leaned squats on his bad knee to warm it up, and went to his tiny kitchen. A glance back over his shoulder showed the sun starting to cut through the curtains. Meant the sun was peeking over the neighboring building. Lunch time. "Shit, really sorry girl. Must have conked out longer than I thought."

Kat followed after him, and as per usual once she realized he was going for the cupboard by the oven, she started rubbing against his leg. Queen wanted her food. And of course only the best food would do.

"You know you're the reason I can't afford good coffee?" Groaning again, he put the pot on between pouring the girl her food bowl, and filling her water fountain. She got the good food, and the fancy drinking gadget that created moving water. He got rice and shitty coffee.

Couldn't bring himself to do otherwise. He smiled down at the little lady as she started to eat and licked from the tiny fountain, with the grace of a queen too. None. And as she ate, he scooped her litter box, swept up any bits of litter, washed his hands, and sat down with a bowl of rice. After the rice he'd shower, and then watch TV for a little while before getting some more sleep, and then going to work. Another regular, boring day, with a routine so dull it was undeniably a repeat of yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Until someone knocked on the door.