Teachings in Blood

I'm not just a librarian, I'm also a vampire LARPer. I know, I know, but at least I'm not into UNIX, OK? This story involves two characters from my current campaign, and credit where credit is due. My friend Hanna suggested I should do a story about her character, Lee de Forest, and she has written the character background and made many suggestions about how I should handle the character in the story. Some very minor changes have been made to ensure the story will be admitted to Literotica. She has also read and commented the story several times. Thanks, Hanna! The other character, Andy Black, from whose POV the story is told is of course my own. And no, in-game events did not transpire as described. At least, not yet...

**************

It was the sound of the underworld: intermittent dripping, scraping noises from rats and other creatures, the clang of a grate closing in the distance or the rattle from an underground train, all underscored by a deep rumble of uncertain origin.

Andy walked towards the heavy steel door at the other end of the corridor, three crates of beer in his hands. As he nudged the door open he could feel, more than hear, the heavy thump from the dance floor one level up. These were the last crates to be brought in from the delivery truck, and his shift in the supply rooms were almost up. He put the crates down with the others, waved to Reggie and went back to change out of the work clothes.

He had lost track of how many of these underground parties he had helped organize, he had been doing it even before he moved to this city. Sometimes they were illegal rock clubs, sometimes they were "fund raisers" for some cause or other, usually on the far side of the law, and sometimes, like tonight, they were rave parties. Privately he preferred rock music, but there was something to be said for the rhythmic electronic rumble of the raves, as well.

It was after a gig like this, just over a year ago, that the thing had happened, the thing that changed his life forever. Or ended it, however you wanted to see it. He had just packed up after working the door at an underground rock club, and was on his way home when he became aware that somebody was following him. This wasn't the first time, especially when he had been working the door as opposed to the bar or the floor. He had assumed that it was one of the punters he had ejected that evening who had come around for some payback. He had slipped into an alley, pulled out his telescopic baton and waited. But when the attack came, it came from behind, a heavy blow to the back of the head and then darkness.

He had woken up in a state of panic, in complete blackness and with dirt filling his eyes, nose and mouth. All he could hear was the grating of his own frantic movements. At first, he was completely unable to move, but as the panic started to rise it was drowned by another feeling: Rage. Somebody had attacked him, knocked him out and attempted to bury him alive? This had filled him with a fury he had never felt before in his life, and what seemed like only moments later he had burst through the soil and stormed off in a red cloud of rage.

When he had regained his senses some time later, he found himself kneeling on the ground next to the torn and bloodied corpse of a nigh watchman, his hands and face covered in blood. At first, he had been shocked to discover that the source of the blood on his face was a deep gash in the night watchman's throat, but then the need for secrecy took over. He had dragged the corpse back to where he had burst through the soil, in what appeared to be a construction site, and dropped it into the hole he himself had emerged from. He had cleaned himself off as best he could in a nearby tub of water, and went home.

It had taken him several months to adjust to his new condition; his inability to go out during the day was not so much of a problem, he usually went out at night anyway. It was the feeding that bothered him. He could no longer eat ordinary food, but found that he required human blood more or less regularly or he would grow weak and irritable. At one time, he nearly lost control and assaulted a couple of guys who were fighting outside a club, just because the smell of a nosebleed made him ravenous. He found some advantages as well, however: He found that he was a lot stronger and faster than before, and after a while he figured out that if he concentrated just right he could defuse a fight before it even broke out, just by talking to the involved people in a calm voice, suggesting some peaceful solution. He had been quite good at talking down males rearing for a fight before, but this new trick worked almost every time, regardless of how drunk or drugged-up the people were. He could only assume that it was one of the perks with his "condition".

He had watched enough vampire movies to be able to figure out most of the do-s and don't-s, but he quickly understood that a lot of the stuff in the movies was bunk. For instance, he had no control whatsoever over rats or other animals, he couldn't turn into mist or a bat or anything else for that matter... and religious symbols were just as meaningless to him now as before.

The summer came, and made his life difficult as the sun set later and later every evening. He had found out the hard way that sunlight burned him like fire, and he had had to sunproof his small flat with plastic bags, gaffer tape and spray-paint to be able to continue using it. That didn't matter much, since it was in a building marked for demolition, but it made people a bit suspicious when they came to visit.

Then, by the end of July, he was approached by a group of people, who turned out to be others like him, other vampires. At first he got scared of them, since his first meeting with his own kind had ended in him getting smashed across the head and buried at a construction site, but after a while he realized that these were probably not the same ones that had turned him the year before, but a completely different set. They offered to teach him things, and protect him if he needed it, if he would join them. So, he did.

Now, a few months later, he was meeting with his new friends regularly, and working nights with his old friends whenever there were people wanting to dance or drink the night away without the eye of the authorities watching them too closely. He had learned to spot the ones who could supply him with a little blood without missing it, and to take enough to sustain him but not enough to get the donor in trouble. He had also learned how to spot other bloodsuckers, even those he didn't know, and he spent his nights looking out for careless feeders who by sheer incompetence could expose their existence, a carefully hidden secret, to the living.

This night, he was a little excited. He was hoping to find one of his new friends, Lee, in the crowd upstairs. She looked like she was no older than eighteen, but she was in fact quite a few years older than him, in vampire terms at least. She had come from Greece a couple of months earlier, because her mentor had decided it was time she saw the world. Andy was still getting to know her, but he knew that she was originally from London and had moved with her mentor to Greece after she was made into a vampire. He was a little unsure about her, because sometimes she acted very mature and assertive, and sometimes, in some situations, she became almost childlike.

The first time they had seen each other had been on a rave like this one. He had been working the floor, moving around among the dancing crowd picking up beer mugs, bottles and, now and then, party-goers who had collapsed on the floor or at tables. One of the side rooms had been used as a "make-out corner", with dimmed lights, curtains on the walls and old mattresses thrown on the floor. This room was especially important to keep free of broken glass. In the middle of his shift, he stepped in to clear out mugs and bottles, and immediately smelled blood in the air. In a matter of moments he identified the source: a knot of three people writhing in the far corner. Two of them were clearly mortal, but the third was just as clearly not. She was dressed much like all the other ravers in the warehouse, in extremely baggy black pants and a tight-fitting black top with a swirly print, but unlike the others she had her teeth buried in the throat of another girl, who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying herself. The other participant was a boy of indeterminate age, who seemed completely absorbed with fondling the mortal girl's breasts through her top.

Andy had never seen the female vampire before, but was worried that she would drink her donor a little too deep. They didn't need that kind of attention. He inconspicuously made some noise with the crate he carried around to put empty bottles in, and the vampire looked up at him, her reddish hair falling across her face. Their eyes met, and she neatly licked the twin punctures closed. Andy winked at her, and went about his business.

Later, he found out that she was older than him and knew very well how not to kill her donor, as well as a few other things that he hadn't learned yet. They had realized that they were both into underground parties, albeit from different angles, and had started a tenuous friendship. As it turned out, she was born as a mortal a few years after Andy, but as a vampire a few years before, and she had apparently had a rather unusual upbringing. She hadn't revealed many details about it to Andy, but sometimes he got the feeling that she had spent a lot of time on the street. She had also worked at a zoo or maybe a veterinarian, but she was reluctant to talk about how she got from there to Greece, or how she became a vampire.

Andy pulled off the grimy sweater and workmen's pants, put on some deodorant (he didn't really sweat anymore, but the work clothes weren't very clean and he wanted to feel a bit fresh) and got into his selected outfit for the night. He was going to wear a black semi-transparent sleeveless T-shirt, a black kilt that reached his knees and knee-high leather boots with buckles. After being filled with dancing people for a few hours, the warehouse was getting very warm and it would look suspicious if he wore too much clothes. He stuffed a pair of black rubber gloves in one of the pockets on the kilt and went up the stairs to the main dance floor.

The music was deafening compared to the relative silence of the backstage area, as it would be to anyone, vampire or mortal, but his acute senses were also assaulted by the heady scent of hundreds of steaming bodies cavorting madly around him. The smell of... food. He felt his sharp canine teeth stir in his mouth and start to extend, but with an effort of will he forced them to retract. Experience had taught him to hunt and feed before work, to avoid the temptation to drain some unfortunate party-goer completely in a hallway. Even after a year he still felt unnerved by this sensation, by the fact that the people around him, who thought he was one of them, were now in fact his prey, and he was the hunter.

Andy went over to the nearest bar, nodded to Steve who was serving drinks, picked up an empty crate and started his rounds. His job for the next hour consisted of picking up empty bottles from the floor and any other surface, and sweeping up broken glass to keep people from hurting themselves. He moved through the crowd with a grace he hadn't possessed before, dodging between the dancing bodies despite the crate clutched in his left hand. As he watched the dancers in the gloom, intersected by the sharp strobe light, he became aware of the differences separating him from them. They were here to satisfy one set of urges, he to satisfy a completely different set. The yawning gulf of alienation grew wider, until he shook his head to get rid of these thoughts. Instead he tried to focus on the music and the rhythm of stamping feet and bouncing bodies, and managed to push the feelings away, at least for a while.

Then he became aware of the looks he was getting, looks of appreciation from members of the crowd. While he knew that he was reasonably handsome he had found that it had become easier to attract this kind of attention since his "rebirth", and it hadn't taken long for him to figure out the use he could put it to. To his dismay, he had found that while his powers of attraction had increased, his desire for anything but blood had all but disappeared. He still remembered what arousal felt like, and that helped him pretend, but the mortal flesh held no appeal to him now other than as a vessel for the Blood.

The hour of his shift ended, and he deposited the last crate of empty bottles at the bar. The rest of the night was his own to dispose as he saw fit. The chore of pulling plugs and hauling boxes of equipment belonged to someone else this time. He had seen a couple of his bloodsucker friends in the warehouse, but he still hadn't seen Lee so he went to look around again. He had expected to see her here tonight, but it was of course possible that she hadn't been able to give Sebastian, her new mentor, the slip. He was a pleasant, older man, slightly quirky and extremely religious, but Lee loved him like the father she never had, it seemed.

A woman in tight-fitting, brightly UV-reactive clothes and a set of magnificently long dreadlocks nudged up against him as he tried to pass her, smiled and put her arms on his shoulders. He smiled back, put his hands on her hips and moved in step with her for a few moments before breaking contact and moving away with a wink. As long as he didn't have to talk to anyone he felt rather confident, and besides it never hurt to fan the sparks of attraction now and then. She might make a useful donor some time. Another dancer who Andy vaguely recognized, a young man this time, caught his eye and earned himself a quick hug. Andy now remembered feeding from the kid a month earlier while giving him a hand job. A shouted greeting in his ear, and Andy moved away again.

At last, as he entered one of the smaller rooms in the back of the warehouse, Andy spotted Lee just as a bright red spotlight illuminated her and separated her from the rest of the crowd. He felt his insides stir in anticipation, and stopped short just inside the door to watch. She was dancing wildly in a small gaggle of others, all of them dancing around her as if trying to display themselves to her. He recognized one or two as more or less regular dance partners, but this time it looked like none of them were succeeding in getting her attention.

She wore her usual enormous baggy pants and a slim top with a Chakra glyph that glowed red in the UV light. Her red hair was augmented by red plastic tubes, also UV-reactive, creating a bouncing halo around her. Andy stood still for a few minutes, just admiring the scenery. He had always enjoyed being in a dancing crowd, gliding between the thrashing bodies, but he had never quite felt comfortable with dancing himself. As he watched Lee's catlike grace it was perfectly clear to him why the young people around her were preening so, next to offering themselves to her. He probably would have done the same, had he been mortal still.

He was a little puzzled by the fact that Lee seldom, or never for as far as he knew, used sex to hunt. They both moved in the underground party culture, and they both looked good enough that sex was easily available, something Andy had taken advantage of already before he was made into a vampire. Afterwards, when he discovered that his sex drive was nothing more than a reflex or an echo, he still used it to gain access to blood. The first time he had seen Lee, she had been involved in a three-way makeout session, and this was apparently as far as she was willing to go. Andy agreed that this was sometimes easier and quicker than going all the way, but while he had understood that the sensation of being fed upon carried its own kind of ecstasy to the mortals, actually getting that far was a lot easier if the donor was already preoccupied. And besides, he still had all the necessary nerve endings, and with the proper concentration he could still achieve something like an orgasm, which was a bonus if nothing else. Whenever he asked her why she avoided such an effective hunting technique she would hesitate or change the subject.

The sound from the massive speakers was nearly beyond hearing by now; it could rather be felt as a pounding vibration throughout the body. Andy put on his most arrogant attitude and walked right into the small knot of mortals surrounding the red-headed vampire girl. He planted himself immediately in front of her, and for a moment he was the only thing in the room not moving. She then opened her eyes, made an "O" face, and threw herself at him in a fierce hug that he answered just as fiercely, smiling broadly.

"Andy!" she shouted over the music. "I was afraid I'd missed you tonight!"

"What, you thought I wouldn't come looking?" he shouted back. "Think again, love! So, you finally managed to sneak away from old Sebastian?"

She gave him a mock-bashful look, nodded and then winked. He laughed, and as she resumed dancing he tried to follow as best he could, drawing jealous looks from her human admirers. The next couple of hours they lost in the sea of bodies, in the storm of sound.

*******

They were walking through an underground parking garage, heading for Andy's battered old car. Lee had put on a long coat in black with red piping, and Andy was still in his kilt, having only pulled on his leather jacket on top of his thin shirt. He carried his work clothes in a duffle bag. Although he knew the sky was still black outside, he could feel dawn coming, and was anxious to get home.

"So, are you getting picked up or do I give you a ride?" He asked Lee.

"Uh, no, I'm not getting picked up, and..." She hesitated. "Look, do you have a spare room or something? Sebastian and I had a bit of a row before I came here, and I don't feel like going back there tonight. I texted him and said I'd be back tomorrow evening, and by the time he figures out how to check his mobile phone it will be dawn."

"A row? Huh... Well no, I don't have any spare room exactly, but the bedroom is secure and so is the bathroom, you can have whichever you want."

She lit up immediately. "Great! It'll be fun to see how you live, anyway!"

"Uh, yeah... about that... I'm afraid the place isn't very tidy..."

She just laughed and ran ahead to the car.

*******

Andy unlocked the door to his small flat, and motioned for Lee to step inside. He had expected her to frown at the flaking paint and rat turds in the staircase, but she had hardly glanced at it. She just stepped over the stinking garbage bags as if it was completely natural to her. While his flat was in no way neat it was certainly much cleaner than the staircase, not that that was particularly difficult to achieve. Andy watched Lee walk with a catlike gait into the small room that served as living room and kitchen. That room wasn't sunproofed, and they could see a slight pink glow appear along the eastern horizon. Andy could feel the heavy drowsiness that heralded the approach of dawn as surely as any glow in the sky, and Lee was also moving sluggishly. Still, she walked over to the window and looked out over the sodium-lit motorway a few blocks away.

The room itself was almost barren, despite its small size. The only furniture was a scratched fake leather sofa, an unmatched table and a low bench with a small TV set and a portable CD player. The corners were strewn with old newspapers and a little laundry, and the windowsill was decorated with the corpses of a few flies.

"I'd advice against sleeping on the sofa," Andy said. "That leaves the bed or the bathtub. They're both... reasonably clean. Actually, why don't I take the bathroom, the bed is a bit more comfortable after all."