Touched - Part Five

Amber felt someone bump against her shoulder again. She pulled her arms in front of her chest to lean on the bar and take up less space.

In all her visits to bars and clubs with Rochelle, she’d never been anywhere that Vicky couldn’t stand out. But just the people gathered around the bar made the vampire’s simple black skirt and peasant blouse seem bland by comparison. Leather or vinyl were the more popular choices with the men and women in the club, and everyone seemed to glow with an unnatural whiteness.

With many people, she could tell that the glow was caused by black lights reflecting off of white makeup, but with quite a few others, she wasn’t so sure. Some people looked naturally pale, and Vicky’s assurances that there were no other vampires in the club didn’t help to settle Amber’s nerves.

It was not the only odd thing that she had to get used to by hanging out at the club. Marcus had changed into an alter ego named Jenny, who was dressed to match Vicky. After a few minutes of talking to Jenny in the truck, Amber scooted closer to the door, unsure whose convincing act was more creepy.

Vicky settled the brief mental debate once they got to the club. The vampire started rounding up “pets,” as she called them, and the group joined her at a table to let her feed from them. People gathered around the table like Vicky was putting on a special show.

While Vicky took her first meal, Jenny explained that it was a regular event at the club. Vicky was the best kept secret at the Asylum, a special vampire feeding show that pulled in plenty of curious spectators, and even more pets for Vicky to recruit.

Amber couldn’t watch, and talking to Jenny made her feel funny. But after she’d attempted to wander around on her own, she decided that the bald, hulking bartender was probably the safest thing in the club to look at.

She had to use the term thing because she wasn’t quite sure if the bartender was a man or a woman. There were too many piercings in their face to figure out what they really looked like, and their corpulent body carried just enough fat in all the right places to render them androgynous.

Somewhere behind Amber, a paddle slapped bare flesh, and a woman cried out before making a pleased moan. The bartender’s bright grey eyes wandered toward the “spanking post,” but their look of interest said very little about their true gender. Amber had already found several women staring at her, and she wasn’t sure if they watched with an erotic interest or mere hunger. Both possibilities made her squeamish.

She jumped as a hand closed over her shoulder, and then she sighed. “Please, don’t do that, Marcus.”

Shaking her head, Jenny said, “Wrong name again.”

Amber rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, Jenny. That still doesn’t change my point. We’re stuck in a club where I’m not sure if I need to be afraid of the daemon or the clientele. I really don’t need you sneaking up on me.”

Jenny said, “I wasn’t sneaking. I called you twice, but you ignored me.”

“Yeah, I guess the difference in your voice is still messing me up.”

Jenny shrugged and gestured for Amber to wander through the crowd toward the back of the club.

In truth, it was more than just Jenny’s voice that was confusing Amber. Jenny didn’t look like Marcus. There were changes in the shape of her eyes, and in the shape of her mouth. Her shoulders sloped more gracefully, and Amber wasn’t sure, but she would almost swear that Jenny had breasts.

Amber couldn’t help but stare, and part of it was jealousy that Jenny had nicer legs than she did. Jenny’s tiny black skirt and silk blouse blended in perfectly with most of the people in the club, while Amber stuck out for her blue jeans and bright pink top.

No, she corrected herself. Her current set of “hand-me-downs” were also Jenny’s clothes. Amber knew that she would have shown up to the club in a grey sweatshirt and baggy, faded jeans if she’d been picking an outfit from her own closet. Short of a full makeover, she would never blend in with the club’s patrons.

Amber smiled at a sudden thought. Who in their right mind would want to blend in here?

Jenny waved for her to come closer. “Vicky asked me to come and find you. You really shouldn’t have run off like that, you know.”

“Yeah, but...” Amber shuddered. “Doesn’t it bother you to watch her feed?”

“Amber, I’ve nearly been killed several times today. If I thought it would help get us out of this mess alive, I’d let Vicky feed off of me.”

Amber bumped shoulders with a slender woman in the hallway leading to the back exit. She turned around to apologize, and instead she whimpered when she realized the woman’s eyes were black.

Amber stumbled back into Jenny, but the daemon was faster, catching her around the throat with one hand. Amber was driven back against the wall before being lifted off of her feet. The daemon balled up its other hand into a fist and slammed a punch under Amber’s ribs.

Winded, Amber pounded on the possessed woman’s arm to no avail. She was starting to wheeze when Vicky stepped into the hallway. The vampire closed her hand loosely over the daemonically possessed woman’s upper arm and flung her back at the door.

Amber was thrown into the alley outside along with the other woman, who never released hold of her throat. They tumbled around each other upon landing, but the daemon was still able to stay on top of her.

“Damn, he’s pesky isn’t he?” Vicky muttered and leaned over to grab the daemon around the chest. When it still resisted her, Vicky set a foot down on Amber’s stomach and stepped down to pry the daemon off.

Amber grunted only a little louder than Vicky did, but at last the vampire had the daemon loose. Before it had a chance to react, Vicky turned to sling it into a set of wooden palettes angled against the side of a dumpster much further down the alley.

Jenny leaned over to help Amber up. “Are you okay?”

“No, I think my guts have been rearranged,” Amber complained and turned to give Vicky a dirty look. Her eyes widened in shock, and she shouted, “Vicky, look out!”

Vicky had barely started to turn when the daemon sank a thick chunk of splintered wood through her back. She grunted, trying to twist her arm around to reach for the wood before she fell forward.

“Well what do you know?” the daemon asked, and then it cackled. “It really does work.”

“Move,” Jenny said, shoving Amber down the alley.

Amber’s ankle protested with every step, and she knew that she was slowing down instead of speeding up. She heard the footsteps of the daemon gaining on them and she turned as soon as she spotted an open door.

Inside was the kitchen of what she guessed was a Chinese restaurant. A chef turned around to jabber at them as they slid to a stop, but he turned to run out of the kitchen when the daemon crashed into Jenny and tackled her to the floor.

Amber looked around frantically before she limped to a table to throw anything she could get her hands on. The bottles thumped off the daemon's head and back, but nothing she tried prevented it from throttling Jenny.

The hot sauce and soy sauce bottles were quickly expended, and then Amber closed her hand around a canister of salt. She hesitated and looked at the can doubtfully before she hurled it as hard as she could.

She didn't expect it would help, so she was that much more surprised when a black cloud erupted from the mouth and nose of the woman the instant the side of the can split.

The dark mass condensed into a vague humanoid shape, but it seemed impossibly large and oddly proportioned.

Amber’s eyes sank down to the spilled salt, and then over toward Jenny, who still lay unconscious under the lifeless woman.

She dropped to the floor and crawled forward to grab a handful of the salt even as she saw thick scales forming on the legs of the daemon. She looked up at a pair of leathery black wings curling around the daemon’s body. It turned around to glare at her, and she sat back on her butt, her eyes going wide when the creature’s elongated snout opened to reveal a wide row of pointy teeth.

Drawing back her hand to throw the salt, Amber froze when a familiar looking chunk of wood slammed into the daemon’s chest. The end of the wood dripped a dark blue liquid that almost looked like laundry detergent.

Vicky stepped into the kitchen and hoisted Amber back to her feet with one hand. Then laying her hand on Amber’s shoulder, Vicky moved her back. She was putting herself between Amber and the daemon. Amber looked up at the ragged hole in Vicky’s shoulder, and her mouth fell open.

Vicky’s blood was blue.

The wound was deep, and it must have torn a lung, because Vicky sounded like she was wheezing when she drew in a long breath. “There’s two things you ought to remember for your next attempt, asshole,” Vicky said and held up her thumb. “One, the stake has to be made of green oak.” She paused to extend her index finger next, adding, “Two, my heart is on the other side.”

Amber heard a fire roaring before she saw the flame lined portal opening behind the daemon. A foul smelling black smoke spilled into the room, and Amber had to drop to her knees to avoid breathing it. She looked up at Vicky, who seemed completely unfazed by the smoke, or by her wound.

Her gaze wandered back to the portal behind the daemon, a pitch black hole that was surrounded by a ring of fire. The light from the kitchen barely penetrated the air beyond the fire before being absorbed by the smog inside.

Finally recovering from her shock, Amber drew back her hand again to throw the salt. Even as she did, the daemon was falling through the portal, and the rift closed in on itself an instant later. Most of the handful of salt ended up on the floor.

Amber stared at the salt scattered across the yellow tile floor before she turned to gape at Vicky. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing a few weeks in the coffin won’t fix.” Vicky shrugged and made a disappointed face. “This is gonna be hell on my typing speed.”

“Shouldn’t we go to a doctor for you?”

“Nope.” Vicky knelt down to push the woman’s body over and scoop up Jenny in her arms. “Come on. We’ve got to drag the queen out of here before the cops show up.”

***

Long after returning to the apartment, Amber paced in front of the couch. Every few minutes, she glanced over at Vicky, and then looked away again. Her discomfort was only partly over Vicky being topless. Though she wasn’t normally inclined to look at breasts, she kept glancing back to confirm that Vicky’s nipples really were pale blue.

She didn’t know such a thing was possible, but then she also wasn’t sure how it was possible that Vicky’s blood could be blue. During the ride back to the apartment, Amber had almost convinced herself that she’d seen a trick of the florescent lights in the Chinese kitchen. But the gauze pads set in a paper plate beside Vicky on the couch were lit by an incandescent bulb, and the blood staining them was still the same dark blue color.

After gathering medical supplies from the bathroom, Vicky settled herself on the couch. She had stripped out of her top with a casual quickness that should have been impossible, and then she’d bent both of her arms back to stitch her wound closed by feel. She was still wheezing from the hole in her lung, but her face was far too calm for someone with a grievous wound in her back.

Amber frowned at a random thought, asking, “Couldn’t you just, you know, regenerate from that?”

“Sure, if I drained off four or five humans in one sitting,” Vicky replied casually and smirked at Amber. “It’s easier living off of little drinks. There are so many humans who think being fed on is ‘the coolest,’ so it’s not like I have to kill to survive these days. Don’t worry about me, kid. It’s just a hole, and holes heal if you give them time.”

Amber turned around at the sound of the bathroom door opening, but she only stopped pacing to ask, “Back to Marcus now?”

“Yeah,” he agreed as he shuffled to the couch with a noticeable limp. “I haven’t been tackled like that since my last game of smear the queer back in high school.”

“Sorry about that,” Vicky said. “I would have been there sooner to help, but I really didn’t expect the bastard to recover that fast.” She smiled at Amber. “Still, it seems you’ve found a handy weapon against the daemon. I wouldn’t have thought to use salt. Holy water, maybe, but then it doesn’t work on me. I can’t imagine that it would work on daemons either.”

Amber said, “Someone used holy water on you.” She stopped pacing to stare at Vicky.

“Uh-huh. Marcus, be a sweeties and snip the knots for me, please.”  Vicky lowered her arms when he did, and both of her shoulders made sickening pops as they settled back into the sockets.

Vicky glanced around for a place to set the needle before she shrugged and slipped it into the skin of her upper forearm. “Now, here’s the plan for—”

“Do you practice this?” Amber blurted out in an agitated voice. Shaking her head, she looked away from Vicky. “Two days ago, I was a normal college student living with my family, and now...”

“Now you’re the victim of a daemon, and you’re living with a changeling and a vampire,” Vicky said and smiled wider. “Ain’t life a bitch?”

“Amber, just give up,” Marcus said as he patted the couch cushion beside him. “Logic never works on her anyway.”

“Now, as I was about to say, we have a good chance of being able to lure this daemon out into the open,” Vicky said. “You two can run to the store and buy us a few high-power water pistols and some water balloons tomorrow. Then we’ll hose the fucker down and see if that doesn’t convince him to back off.”

“Salt water?” Amber asked.

“Bingo.” Vicky stood up and stretched her arms out lightly before she went to her room. She emerged minutes later dressed in tight black jeans and a tighter sleeveless Lycra top. If she was suffering any pain from her wound, she didn’t show it as she slipped on a heavy leather jacket and tugged her long blue-black hair out from under the collar. “I’ll be back before dawn. You kids have fun.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“First, I’m going to drop by a friend’s house for a quick bite, and then I’m off to work.”

Amber asked, “So what is it that you do?”

“I ‘do’ data entry for the billing department of a blood bank,” Vicky said and laughed quietly. “The pay is lousy, but the hours are great.”

Amber looked back at the clock and groaned. “Right, you work the graveyard shift.”

***

Marcus turned off the TV and sighed. “So let’s see...so far today, we’ve indirectly killed six people.”

“The woman at the club was all Vicky,” Amber said. “I think she probably had a few internal organs rupture when she slammed into those pallets.

“Yes, but we still get credit for the new edition of Blood on the Highway.” Marcus sighed and tossed the remote over onto the end table beside the couch. “I’m not going to school tomorrow. The trip to the store could end up being fatal as it is, and I want to limit my exposure given my delicate condition.” He paused to frown at Amber’s soft giggle. “Anyway, I think I want to make our shopping run sometime close to sunset so we can phone for backup if we need to.”

“We can take the salt along for protection,” Amber said.

“Sure, and we’ll just toss it on the cars before they crash into us, right?” Marcus asked. Amber didn’t answer, and Marcus groaned as he got up from the couch. “The drivers are possessed, not the cars, and it’s the cars that will render our complexions pasty, as it were. Maybe your problem is sleep deprivation, but lately, all of your ideas have sucked.”

“Like Vicky’s plan was much better. We didn’t find any new information, and we all got banged up for nothing.”

“Vicky was talking to a psychic out back before the daemon attacked. She could have gotten us in touch with a coven, but she split when Vicky got staked.” Marcus grabbed Amber’s wrists, pulling her up slowly from the couch. “It’s been a long day, and we’ve both obviously contracted some form of stupid. Let’s just go to bed.”

“I need to clean up first,” Amber said, limping to the bathroom to shower. She was washing her hair when she heard a knock on the door. “What?”

The door opened. “I’m just leaving some clean clothes,” Marcus declared before the door closed again.

Amber finished her shower. She stepped out of the tub and smirked at the long pink sleep shirt on the counter. Well at least he’s got good taste in clothes.

Marcus was already laying in bed when she came into the bedroom, and she flicked off the light before moving carefully in the dark. She had just settled into bed when Marcus reached out to pat her arm. “Hey, Amber?”

“What is it?”

“Earlier tonight, Vicky called you my girlfriend, and you didn’t object.”

“Oh.”

“It’s okay if you’re not, but I was just...well, I was wondering.”

Amber rolled onto her other side to face him. She watched his profile from the light seeping in around the blinds, and she reached out to pat his shoulder. “Marcus, it’s a little too early to be hitting on me, okay?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t—”

“You should at least wait until our third date.”

There was a long pause. “Uh, how many have we had so far?”

“One. We went to a club, remember?”

“Right.” Marcus sighed. “Hey Amber?”

She made a soft laugh. “Yes?”

“Next time, can we just go see a movie instead?”