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Slap. The newspaper was sprawled on the coffee table in front of me by that afternoon. I was sitting cross legged on the couch in front of the big screen in our open living room. I continued reading my sweet romance novel with little interest in the newspaper article.
Tahmeed looked at me with arms crossed impatiently after she had slapped the paper down with a smile. “Not even six hours and you’re already on the front, I’m sure Haymen will be impressed. It should be a descent payout with the size of demon and catastrophe it could’ve been.”
I picked up the newspaper and evaluated the graphic yet sexy photo of my spiny back. Being able to actually see the demon that I had become was beautifully haunting. I looked bad ass. I was crouched in front of the water, my slit eyes alluringly crazed. I looked like a water siren and I had the feeling that if I were truly that species of demon, humans would not survive in the water around me, men in particular.
“A decent angle, to the cameraman I give credit,” I unleashed a ruthless smile.
A small beep began in my ear and I didn’t even have to look at the screen to know who was calling. I was going to ignore it until I saw Tahmeed look between the beep in my ear and me expectantly. Of course she could hear a private call. To defy Haymen was asking for torture if not a death penalty. I smiled brilliantly at her feigning my ignorance to her too watchful eyes. Tahmeed had noticed my reluctance of being contracted to Haymen shortly after my recruitment. I learned early on to have the control and restraint as to keep that secret. Although they were also the Guardians of this city, they were as much friend as they were foe.
I brushed my finger over the small metallic chip on top of my ear to take the call. If I had brushed it the other way it would’ve initiated a small screen in front of my eyes to type away or treat as any modernized phone. Instead I simply chose to take the audio instead of visual. The shorter the call the better.
“A full-grown mother madrin, and my–don’t you look beautiful sprawled on the front cover,” his low voice purred through the ear piece. Most women’s toes would’ve curled at the way he spoke to me. Haymen was by far an extremely attractive man, but it was what dwelled beneath the surface that was nothing but ugly and destructive. His true nature that my demonic self was drawn too but hated at the same time.
“How much?” I said asking for my reward.
“You never play with me my beautiful Vi, it makes me so sad,” he said sounding as if he were sobbing.
“We don’t get paid to play,” I simply said walking out of the lounge room and back on to the balcony where Tahmeed couldn’t overhear. I looked out at the setting sun which glistened over the black water. It would be such solitude to live in there, the depths of its cool water and isolation. There was a yearning for me to dive into it and never return but I wondered if that were me or the demons blood inside of me. Especially the one which I had just called upon hours before. I looked to my right where I had been earlier. It had now been closed off where the humans cleaned up and hovered a large suspended crane to pick up the remains of the madrin. I smiled looking at the size of the cage. Looks like they will be calling back up because it was a lot bigger than that. Oh yea, it was so much bigger. Haymen’s voice brought me back to reality and our battering.
“It’s in every demon’s nature to play,” he said and I knew he was smiling. “I will show you the real meaning of it one day when I have you in my chambers.”
I pressed my back against the railing with my hands resting on either side of me. “You make it sound like a dungeon and there is nothing you can offer me that I can’t get elsewhere on my own. Thanks, but no thank you. Just pay me my money.”
“I could pay you nothing if I wanted. I find your customer service lacking,” he said in a tone that reiterated his ownership of me. It was distant to his usual playful one. I had heard him use it on others before and it was usually a done deal that nothing would work in their favor there afterward. I gritted my teeth. I had been saving up for something phenomenally expensive and this payment might be just enough to purchase the item.
“You are not my customer,” I tried to say sweetly instead of gritting my teeth. I went to say something smart ass but he cut me off.
“Watch your tongue my darling Vi, your allure won’t work if you don’t have one,” he said. Another Bing on my phone. I held down my metallic ear piece for three seconds which crafted a visual blue screen in front of me. I looked down at the screen pleased with the amount that had just been directly deposited into my bank account. It was more than generous as all my pays had been.
“Thank you Haymen,” I said. “Pleasure as always.”
“Vi, go with the blue dress tonight,” he said on the other end of the phone. “It does always bring out that hair of yours I love so much.” He hung up on me and I looked down on the screen which had recorded our communication. One minute and twelve seconds. And let that be the last of him for another two weeks, please. There was something about Haymen despite my displeasure of feeling like a slave for him that made me uncomfortable. For some reason I liked to challenge the man who thought he could rule and own everything and in his own right he probably could but I wasn’t allowing him to fully own me, when he’d already taken everything else. At least that’s the defiance I had to learn to reel in if I wanted to live.
“Come on girl!” Destiny said bursting out from the lounge room with a bottle of champagne. “The night is young, let’s go out on the prowl tonight in celebration.” I touched my ear to close the screen and telecommunication not at all surprised that Haymen knew the girls had been planning a night on the town. I was feeling a little frisky after such a great kill and I knew that it wasn’t in celebration of my kill, we did this all the time. It was simply because Destiny loved going out almost every night and so to speak we were immortal until something bigger came along and killed us.
Destiny, Tahmeed, and I, stepped out of the long stretch limo two blocks from the entrance of the club. We preferred walking the two blocks and having it as a preventative in case people began to swarm our limo at the entrance which was utterly irritating. Within our treaty we weren’t allowed to hurt humans. Well, publicly anyway. If you didn’t get caught it didn’t count as far as Haymen was concerned.
Shabeah was glorified for its gothic architect, consisting of older buildings and lack of advancement in technology in comparison to other cities. Some parts of it still maintained cobbled streets and churches which long passed their time of being holy. Haymen had a preference and that was to hold back the technology for as long as possible preferring the more remnants of his ‘old’ days, which no one was actually certain as to how far back that tracked. I had seen photos, media and movies of cities that were far beyond our ‘primal’ city and yet that was what glorified and beautified Shabeah, enriched with its history and dark alleyways that were easy for murder by a certain few demons. Humans claimed that the area which the poor lived was haunted. It might be, sure, countless murders would’ve been conducted there but why worry about that when you have actual demons to look out for?!
“Alexa said she can’t come tonight,” Destiny began as we approached the club.
“I have a feeling that she is still with Doc, do you think she is having issues with her sleeping?” Tahmeed asked as her throat widened to empty the remains of her bottle of Champaign... that she had opened only moments before. She threw it into the back of the limo and smiled as she wiped away a few drops from her mouth. I figured out quickly that my tolerance to alcohol was much greater than when I was human. That was apparent for the others as well. Tahmeed was the most formidable in that department.
“Maybe she had a major hunt that’s taken a few days,” I said as we began walking to the entrance. I had the same suspicions as the others. But it was nothing that we would advise of one another even if we were having issues with the demons that sought after us when we slept.
“Who knows,” Tahmeed said shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe she’s hunting. That or she’s the one being hunted. She’s been odd lately. Maybe she is near compromised.”
There was a silence. I had no interest in talking about this anymore. It wasn’t something we usually spoke about. It wasn’t the demons we hunted during the day that killed us usually. Although of course it happened. Eventually, it was those demons who waited in the dark of our sleep that would possess our body and take it for themselves. That was the implied ending for all of us, unless we found them first which had been a failure for generations before us.
“Enough of this talk! We didn’t get dressed up to talk about depressing shit! We’re all on our own here, her fate is only hers. Let’s drink instead. It’s her battle not ours,” Destiny said bubbly as she readjusted her hair while we approached the glassy entrance.
Destiny wore a short purple dress that didn’t leave much to the imagination, it curved her bountiful chest and curvaceous hips splendidly. She wore knee length black boots and so many bangles you could hear her like Demon Claus coming a mile away. Her blonde, bountiful curls had been straightened into a high pony tail and her usual blue eyes were ivory tonight with black and greens of make-up smeared onto her face in a hauntingly beautiful allure with black lips.
Tahmeed was a little more modest in the sense that she went out in one of her demon forms which was fully naked but covered in an ivory plated skin. Her usual tanned skin completely vanished and her usual brown eyes were completely swallowed in black with no pupils to show. She had a very specific species of demon she liked to take to bed. From what I heard, they were rough and her skin was an armor that could take that kind of... pounding. She was the shortest of us three but made it up in the height of her heels which were an excessive six inches. She walked in them flawlessly. The fashion of the rich and famous was elaborate in comparison to what I was used to wearing in my human life. I had certainly seen quirky wardrobes since my ‘career’ change and being involved with the media and the humans and demons who marvels in such pleasurable things.
I defiantly wore a simple leather black dress in comparison to the recommended blue one. I knew the exact dress Haymen was suggesting because he had sent it to me a month ago in a neatly wrapped box with a red bow that was the same size. It had sat under my bed ever since.
The music was suffocated by the glass domed entrance. The line-up of humans trying to get in stretched past the corner but to our credibility I hadn’t waited in line once since I’d been turned.
“Vi!” One of them called out. It was a young male whose hair stuck to the side in one of the latest styles with feathers poking through, “You were amazing today! I love you, so much!” he said as if to reach out and touch me.
Destiny pulled me tighter into her and looked to the group of men. It wasn’t just one but a whole bunch of them who looked at me starstruck. “No touching tonight, boys, she’s mine,” she winked and continued pushing me to the entrance. She had stopped me from giving them a piece of my own mind. Humans were disgusting in their excitement of having to touch and make contact. Looking was never just enough. I didn’t mind being admired from afar but don’t gasp at me close and try to touch me. No one was ever to touch me unless invited. I wondered if that was my own true feelings or the energy of one of my demons. But humans touching me was something I detested.
Tahmeed finished another bottle right before the entrance before throwing it a fair distance away into a side street bin, and triumphantly getting it in. Was that illegal, yes. Did anyone care if Tahmeed did it, no. Onlookers looked at her with awe, if you were daring to come to this club as a lower demon or human you wanted to make sure that you were entirely obsessed and crazy to even dare come in here because there were usually deaths and little traces to how and who.
The bouncer saw us and pressed his hand against the glass. It reacted with his touch, a plain human bouncer, to claim it being ‘fair’ for all species. The glass opened through the side where we could walk straight in. The dome glowed red for a second, it was scanning to make sure we didn’t hold any weapons. The process began two years ago when ownership changed. It was a way to stop the weapon and human trafficking that used to happen in here when the mafia was involved. After running it for so many years it was investigated that the humans were being sold and fed to demons. This was once the bloodiest and reputable dangerous club to go to and now the most high classed where everyone wanted to be. Mostly because the demons thrived in a place where so much human blood had already been shed. That, and it wasn’t in the center of the city or the red light district. It was a complete world of its own. The bouncer checked above his head where a small green dot flickered. He smiled and looked back at us.
“Enjoy your night at Ravish, ladies,” he said letting us through. Despite its ugly dome like entrance as soon as the two wooden doors were opened by the fellow security guards, the music poured out and the lavish red walls were revealed. Small lights on the ceiling led the way through the dark hallway, music of scratchy and heavy pounding alike encased us. I turned to Tahmeed who was downing another bottle of Champaign. I raised an eyebrow at her as if to say, ‘where did you even hide that?’ She winked and polished it off as we walked into the next set of open doors.
Demons from all over the city, of all species danced through the club and naturally more than half had taken on a human form. Demons found it almost entertaining to do so, for those who could. For some reason humans thought they were more civilized or ‘safe’ in this form. It was a decoy often to allure humans in for their own intent. Tahmeed swept the room with her eyes and found exactly what she was looking for. Coming in at seven foot, a little small for his kind, and shoulders that I am surprised fit through the frame of the door, she beelined the red looking beast. His blue teeth flashed at her. Either he was a regular patron of Tahmeed’s or no words had to be spoken between them as to what they both expected that night. Within seconds, Tahmeed was lost to the crowd of ravers.
“Well shit, that was fast,” Destiny said. “She could’ve at least had one drink with us and played hard to get,” she smiled while linking her elbow with mine. “Just you and me.” Destiny was touchier than I liked. She seemed to be the only Guardian who acted in such a ditsy way but the others including myself allowed it. It was harmless for the time being.
Caged dancers hung above our heads, their sequenced and glittered bodies not leaving much to the imagination, especially when I looked up into those glassed cages that levitated in the air.
“Breakfast,” I said under my breath.
“What?” Destiny asked absentmindedly as she looked for two available seats. As soon as we approached the bar, two women were asked to leave. The women in silken silver hair and an unnatural glow like the moon were not happy to be ushered along.
“My two favorite girls,” the barman who was used to Destiny’s flirting, said. He gave no further attention to the two he just requested to leave. She smiled as she took a seat at the long modular glass bar. Within it tiny fish circled. I watched the all black obsidian man next to me coax the human male he had with him to try one of the fish. Good luck to him. There were small holes drilled into the top of the bar where patrons could take one at a time. The demon traced the movement of one of the small fish and caught it efficiently with two fingers; he scraped it out. The fish floundered to be in the water again but his grip was firm, much like the hold he had over the human who looked no older than twenty.
The bartender in front of him lined up a trail of salt which could be snorted after the fish was eaten.
“I don’t know, I haven’t done any demon drugs or anything like that,” the human said nervously. I watched curiously as to whether the human was dumb enough to try. That fish would outlast him and possibly his internal organs, if his demon weren’t kind enough to put measures in place first. If he had, well the fish was definitely an aphrodisiac, where in most cases you would dance and have sex for days without realizing or remembering what happened. Snorting the salt afterwards, made the fish react, almost instantly as it scorched its skin and it flamed up within.
The demon that reminded me of obsidian looked at me. His skin was leathery black and his eyes were yellow slits in his head that seemed too small for his body. He had one elongated nail on his pinkie which I realized he was tapping on the bar. I had never fought an Obsidian before but I heard they could make your greatest nightmares seem like reality. If an ally however–they could, if they wanted, make your greatest fantasies seem real. I very much doubted anyone saw that side of them. They fed off the horror and pain of others and I very well might be watching as he coaxed his next victim.
“Pretty,” is what he purred at me with a voice that was far more heightened than his blinding darkness. The longer I watched the more I felt like I was being swept into the depths of his allure. It was almost transfixing.
A drink was pushed into my hand, snapping me out of my daze and leaving me to my own affairs.
“Don’t stare too long,” Brady the bartender said to me. He was cute, with red hair and few freckles across his face. Very much averagely human. “And before you ask, no he’s not going to murder that boy, he comes into town now and then, picks up his fun, and sticks to his own business. If that kid is stupid enough to mingle with him in the first place then I’m sure he knows what he’s getting himself into.”
“Come on Vi, don’t go all work on me now. Tonight is our night, and you need to get laid, seriously, what has it been two weeks?” The reality of it made me swallow, hard. That was the odd thing about becoming a Guardian. I had a phenomenal allure to appease my appetite, to kill, and have sex. Unrelentingly so, and as soon as one of us somehow managed to get to the two-week mark we were hell to live with and it affected our work. Of course, I had to keep in the back of my mind that those who I slept with died within three days.
“Yea but I’ve got to deal with those bodies lining up behind me. Someone’s surely going to come a knocking and question why,” I said getting a laugh out of Brady. I threw back my drink and requested another one. I was hoping the drink would knock back the edge of requiring a regular sexual partner. Well, that’s the technical term. I just wanted to fuck the shit out of someone. There was so much anger and frustration in me just from my appetite not being met. If time allowed it and a there was a suitable partner, I would relinquish my job momentarily and just fuck for a week straight, hoping it would drill this constant frustration out. I felt like a dog on heat as my eyes acutely scanned every male in this room and my eyes even trailed over a few women out of wondrous curiosity.
“Oh please that’s just a rumor, and besides, you can’t help it. Who knows maybe it’s a backlash of one of your demon’s blood. But let me tell you just as much, you can’t live going without,” she said sipping on her cocktail as she actively scanned the room. “No offense but you’ve been a bitch to live with for the last week. You need to sort that shit out.”
I smiled and picked up the skewer with my small olive to my new drink. “I’d hate to see your mean side,” I said with a smile and ate the olive. She charmed one back and slid off the chair. She grabbed my hand to lead me onto the dance floor.
“Let’s go make a spectacle and dance. We can’t let Tahmeed have all the alluring attention.” I looked over the numerous dancers trying to find her and instead Destiny pointed across the room, where against the wall Tahmeed was showing her impatience of having to wait for a demon, she all but beelined before walking through the door.
“Time. Twelve minutes,” I said to Destiny who looked over at Tahmeed with a smile. We had only been here for twelve minutes and Tahmeed was already trying to drag him away. She was a woman that did not mess around. The music pounded around us but she made sure to speak loud enough for me to hear.
“Darling, we live in the world and are a mixture of demons, this isn’t a fairy-tale. We are and act exactly like our demonic counter parts. If there’s a thirst then no one is to deny any demon theirs for the taking and the need for it to be quenched,” she said taking a sip of her pink drink. She watched others out of the corner of her eye, on the hunt for something new. The reality was, she was right. And I knew the consequences if I didn’t squash this building frustration now.
