I excused myself to the bathroom on our way out the door and cried for several minutes once we were done. My time in the purists had taught me how to hide those emotions, and while my time outside them had meant I couldn’t hold it in as long, I still knew how to find a quiet place before that dam burst. The Lady had spared me another few weeks, she just couldn’t fucking do it without dragging up bad memories first.
I had loved my time in the Purists when I was with them, and I’d done so much good with it. No…not good, but I’d been happy there. I’d fallen in love, been content as I could have been with my life, I’d become a…
None of it mattered anymore, I’d been forced to leave that life behind, and now my fucking life was up for grabs. I just needed to toe the fucking line, keep as much as my past hidden as I could, and I’d be okay.
After a long while I cleaned my face in the sink and walked back out to the front of the building where Misha waited for me. He looked me over for a long moment, and asked if I was ready to go, and we made our way back to the car and started toward the usual meeting spot with Vergil.
Vergil was…well, no one was exactly sure all things considered. He was probably supernatural, and seemed to know more about it than any half-one had a right to, but no one could ever figure out what he was. Not a vampire or werewolf, certainly not a ghost, seemingly without the air of a witch, and without the behavior of a fey.
It was likely he was an Urban Legend, a supernatural created from the belief in some story, though of what story I had no fucking idea. Legends could come from pretty much anywhere, of any time period, and as long as they kept acting out the basics of their story stick around. It wasn’t much help though, and the real Vergil wasn’t the sort of thing which became an urban legend.
Misha and I parked in the lot for Vergil’s club and climbed out of the truck, the man sighing as I pushed past him and walked toward the door. I could already hear the sounds of partying and music through the walls, and everything smelled like beer and vomit and the stink of the nearby James river without me being inside yet
Four stories tall, the building was once a warehouse in Richmond’s past life, with its stone face still plain to look at to this day. Vergil had apparently bought the land up in the nineties to convert it to a nightclub, and had stubbornly refused to age its appearance since. Only indulging in a little bit of branding and some new reinforced windows to stop any problems.
A neon red sign hung over the single metal door that read Dante’s Inferno, and a bouncer stood letting in a line of people one by one. I walked past them all, getting some grumblings, and the man barely passed us a glance before letting me and Misha walk past.
The first floor was for checking in and those who needed a break, with a sitting area that warned visitors to not talk and a bar for those who wanted the quieter experience. It was still dreadfully loud to me though, and the thump and beat of music through the walls was already overpowering. I had no idea how people found this fun, even if I’d put up with it in the past for Vergil’s sake. He’d been one of the few people to stick up for me at my trial when I’d been brought in, and helped me get on parole.
Misha went up the spiral staircase to one of the upper floors, and I went to the elevator and climbed in once I made sure no one would be joining me. I pulled out my keyring, only bearing the couple keys to the house I had and the elevator key for the club, and twisted it in the control panel’s lock, watching the letter four glow as the doors closed.
A few seconds later, and I was on the fourth floor reserved for what was supposed to be offices and was actually a hangout for Vergil’s workers, with enough soundproofing I could barely hear below us. The first room it opened up into was a kitchen and dining room of all things, which were empty except for the golden retriever Scruffy who sat sleeping in one corner on a bed.
I smiled at the dog, and walked to the breakfast bar of the kitchen and grabbed the jar full of his treats even as he slowly woke up. Scruffy jumped to his feet, and the dog padded over to me as I pulled out a bone shaped cookie and held it down to him he took joyfully as I scratched behind his ears.
Friend! He called out, getting a small chuckle as I knelt down to talk to him. You’ve been gone a while.
“Oh, a couple weeks,” I admitted moving my scratching to below his chin, “Vergil wanted to talk to me, is he in?”
Office! Scruffy barked, running in a circle before starting out of the room, his treat half-held in his mouth. I’ll lead!
“Show me the way I’ll give you another bone on your way out,” I told him, smiling as I followed after him.
The next room was the lobby of sorts, a smallish room built with tables and couches and a large tv that currently played documentaries. A half-dozen doors lined the room, each one a living quarters for the various people who stayed here at different points.
I’d stayed a few times myself, taking the guest room the couple times I’d managed to get too drunk to go home or needed space from the Covenant. Misha had never minded, he wasn’t confrontational enough to stop me, Vergil was a trusted enough figure, and sometimes he never even noticed I left until I got back, though it wasn't my preferred option. Something about the place always gave me a strange vibe, as much as I liked the people here. It smelled wrong, the scents here were always so different than they should have been, and it almost melted together to the point I couldn’t smell anything. Even the shadows felt wrong, and I could have sworn I always saw something creeping within them.
Vergil’s security team of three sat around the room’s poker table, deep into a game that had piled up a large amount of chips in the center. I knew them all casually, though they all seemed to prefer to keep to themselves and refer to me more as just a visitor than a friend of Vergil’s.
The tallest was a muscular looking man, with a tattoo of a scorpion on his neck and his hair oiled back I knew as Scorpion. The oldest of them a woman in her sixties I knew as Thea, wore military clothes, with a #Number 1 Mom mug in front of her and a large knife on her side. The last of them was a younger woman, named Catherine, with bright red hair who wore a leather jacket and played with her necklaces pendent
“Oh look, it’s Vergil’s puppy,” Catherine purred, barely looking up to me as she gave a small smirk to her cards. “He told you why he was calling you in? Heard he had something for you.”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” I admitted, watching as Scruffy came back and sat next to me. I leaned down and pet him and explained, “he didn’t tell me shit.”
Vergil talks about you a lot, Scruffy offered, panting happily.
“I think it’s nothing,” Thea said, cackling at something as she tossed more chips on the pile. “Way he’s been talking I wouldn’t be surprised if he just got bored and wanted a friend around. Never hangs out with us anymore, might just be getting desperate.”
“He probably just has a job or something,” Scorpion muttered, sounding distasteful of the idea. “Though I think he’s been going around shopping, maybe he does just have a gift for the wolf.”
“Only one way to find out,” I sighed, turning and walking toward the door I knew to be to Vergil’s office.
The office was cold, and I pulled my jacket close around me as I stepped into it and closed the door behind me. The sort of cold that fogged the air, and made your skin feel wet to touch, I had no idea how one achieved that. I never even knew why, but it never seemed to bother the man and definitely didn’t bother his girlfriend.
Vergil sat behind his mahogany desk, lounged back in a leather bound chair with his feet on the table as he watched a wall mounted tv. A tall man with broad shoulders and rather obvious muscles, he bore a certain unhinged ferality to his appearance; with unkempt hair that came to his shoulders and a goatee, both a messy gray despite a youthful appearance that made him look no more than thirty. His black slacks ragged at the bottom, and his dark gray button-down only had the bottom half of its buttons done. He was the only thing on this floor I could smell without even trying, though even he just smelled like wet dog and something rotten with nothing beneath that. His girlfriend, Calliope, sat across his lap holding gently onto him despite how unneeded the gesture was.
Calliope was young looking, maybe my age, a fact that was only surprising in that she’d been dead for two hundred and fifty years. She wore a fancy looking colonial era formal dress, and her long hair came down straight and to her waist. Her skin, eyes, clothes, and hair were all a bright white and semi-translucent so I could see Vergil through her, except for two glowing red death-marks the size of quarters on her forehead and chest.
Neither of them noticed me until I was about to sit in front of the desk, so entranced they were in some romance movie they were both crying at. Vergil stiffened a moment when he realized I was there, before chuckling as he grabbed a few tissues from his desk to wipe his face.
“Didn’t hear you enter,” he said, slowly sitting up and half-moving through his girlfriend who remained floating in the air.
“I did, didn’t care,” Calliope laughed, her voice like smoke in the wind, flying into the air and doing a loop before sitting on the edge of her boyfriend’s desk. “How’s it going, Mary Cherry? You look beautiful, you get a new skin care routine? It looks positively corpsely.”
“I’m good,” I half-way lied, smiling as I sat back in the leather chair in front of the desk. “And yeah new routine, grave dirt. You’re looking lively.”
The ghost shrugged, giving a smirk as she answered, “lots of fun with the living.”
I chuckled at the idea, and Vergil rolled his eyes with a smile as he asked, “so, your birthday’s in a couple weeks isn’t it?”
“Oh it is?” Calliope chirped happily, floating over and resting her head on my shoulder as she sat in a non-existent chair, her touch feeling like a block of ice even in the already freezing room and making me shiver. “We should throw a party, we could do a lot here! What do you think, Mary Cherry? Strippers, beer, some weird werewolf shit probably. Do werewolves do weird sex things with their powers? I mean, I know I do and would, but-”
“Ethereal dearest,” Vergil interrupted, holding back a laugh at the woman, “give her some space, I was just making small talk. We don’t hold a birthday unless she asks us to.”
“Oh fine,” Calliope muttered, sinking slowly into the floor before rising back out a few seconds later to “sit” in Vergil’s lap.
I sat there silently for a long moment, unsure what to say as I watched both of them in confusion in horror. After several seconds, I merely sighed and told them, “no birthdays please, my last birthday wasn’t exactly a good experience.”
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“Well, I can get that,” the man admitted with a slow nod, “alright, no parties. You mind presents?”
“Presents are fine,” I laughed, shaking my head at the thought, “is that seriously why you asked me over here, party planning?”
“Oh, I wish,” Vergil said, suddenly sounding serious as he opened his desk and sat a brown parcel the size of a fist on the table. “When you get home tonight you’re going to wait until after midnight, then you’re going to open this box. Not before, don’t tell anyone else about it, just open.”
Well, fuck.
This sounded like the sort of thing I was going to get in trouble for accepting, or at the least bordered on a bad idea to do. All the same, I knew Vergil too well to turn him down outright, and so I asked, “will The Lady disapprove of this if she finds out?”
“I don’t think so,” Vergil said, sighing at the idea. “A contact of mine called in a favor for a friend of theirs who knew someone else, and told me to follow those instructions. I was…insured, you would not be harmed by this action.”
I nodded, slowly taking the parcel and turning it over in my hands, the weight of it being strangely light, almost fragile in my hands. “Who sent it?”
“I don’t know,” the man admitted, sounding almost bothered by the idea, “my contact refused to say, said they were paying off a favor themselves. If this ends up being anything bad let me know, and I’ll help out as long as I can.”
“Thank you,” I said, hesitantly sliding the parcel in my pocket. I was worried about keeping it on hand like that, but Vergil’s reassurance helped a little. “Anything else I need to know?”
“Oh, nothing off the top of my head,” Vergil shrugged, giving me a reassuring smile, “that if you ever need anything you just need to say.”
“Vergil I don’t want to be a bother-”
“It’s not a bother,” the man interrupted, giving a small smile at the thought, “you’re not going to believe this, but I was in a similar situation to you once, and I know it’s hard to get out of it. If you just need help meeting new people, I can help, if you need a date, I can set you up, if you need small jobs or resources, I know kneecaps to introduce you to. I know The Lady has you working for her, but I also know she’s not treating you as well as she could.”
I nodded at the thought, furrowing my brow slightly as I rose to my feet and told him, “I’ll keep it in mind,” before I turned to leave.
He wasn’t wrong, and earlier at the coffee shop had certainly made me feel a little more like I needed more pay. Even with The Lady paying my share of bills at the Covenant and giving me a little extra spending money it did always make things feel tight, even before I paid for gas when I borrowed a car or got something special.
With a sigh, I tried pushing the annoyance aside as I stopped in the kitchen area and started to fetch Scruffy another treat. I was just turning to give it to him when I saw Calliope flying toward me with a broad smile.
“You’re spoiling him,” the ghost said, giggling as I tossed Scruffy his treat. “Hey, look, I know you said you didn’t want to do a party, but can we at least do a small get together?”
“Look, it’s just not a big thing for me,” I said, looking away from her before my face could betray anything. “A…a lot happened on my last birthday and it was under different circumstances. I just…I’m not sure I’m good for a celebration this year.”
“Oh come on,” Calliope stressed in frustration, suddenly flying into me. I felt my heart turn cold, and my body jerked and turned as I felt it move against my will while I draped dramatically back against the breakfast bar and declared, “I am so dramatic and sulky, watch me be too cool for cake and presents.”
The cold in my chest shifted, and I forced it out as I fell forward coughing as Calliope flew out in front of me giggling wildly. A cold sweat formed on my brow, and I yelled out, “how the fuck did you do that!?”
“Possession, basically takes one lesson,” the ghost offered, moving to lay across the dining room table. “Works really well on dead bodies and animals, humans usually need you to invite them in or it only lasts a few seconds.” an idea seemed to click in Calliope’s head, and she quickly set up as she asked me, “can I borrow your body?”
“Can you what?” I asked, rising back to my feet and looking at the ghost in confusion.
“Can I borrow your body sometime?” she asked, flying over and resting her hands on my shoulders, “look, you invite me in I can suppress your mind, it’ll be like you blink and it’s the next morning. I promise I won’t do anything you don’t give me permission to. I haven’t got to be in the flesh in decades, it’d be fun.”
“Why me?” I asked, furrowing my brow even as I had to laugh at the absurdity of the idea.
“Because you’re hot,” Calliope lied, shrugging at the question as she looked me over, “if I’m going to be borrowing anyone’s body, yours would work pretty well. I think I could get some free drinks, I would just need to do something with your hair.”
“You are the horniest fucking ghost,” I laughed, rubbing my eyes as I stepped toward the elevator. “You know most ghosts I met care more about unfinished business and the like?”
“Look, things feel great when you’re a ghost,” Calliope admitted, standing next to me in the elevator and clicked the third floor, “but it’s great when you have a heartbeat, and I haven’t got to go wild like that since the guys thought I was wishing them luck in the trenches. God, mediums I tell you, absolute freaks, shame they’re so rare nowadays. You know I knew one during the Adams administration, not John, that-”
“If I consider it will you spare me the details?” I asked, laughing as Calliope gave me a smile as the door opened. I wasn’t going to let her do it in a hundred years I thought, but honestly maybe if she thought I was considering it I’d get spared the stories. Calliope had died without her fairy tale romance, and she’d made clear her attempts to make up for it more than once.
“Vergil and I need to go finish that movie anyway, see you Mary Cherry!” Calliope chirped, flying out into the party, through a man who suddenly shivered violently, and into the ceiling of the building.
Morbid curiosity did leave the thought with me for a few seconds, she was a good friend and honestly I wasn’t doing that much with my free time. That was a train of thought for another time though, if I needed to get depression off the brain, and at the moment I was trying to avoid getting overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the club.
What felt like hundreds of people were packed between the second and third floor, even if the third floor was a little less busy. Here there were plenty of tables and booths, with a local rock band playing on one of the stages. Voices melded together, each painfully clear for me and yet each blending into one mass of sound, not helped by blaring music and squeaking amps. The red lights served to dampen the visual stimuli, but there were still too many people packed together and all performing a hundred acts.
Then there were the smells, a hundred alcohols, a hundred mixes, a hundred people wearing cheap cologne and perfumes and with their own scents and sweats.
The wolf was howling at it, clawing at the door, wanting to come out and attack the collection of half-ones and make them run. Their fear would cleanse the air, give me a taste of something good on the tongue. The closest one to me was a woman high as could be, and she wouldn’t have been able to stop me eating her heart, ripping out her throat and moving onto the next.
No, I couldn’t do that.
“Focus, Mary,” I muttered, shaking my head as I walked through the crowd and to the bar where I sat on one of the empty stools. I couldn’t get in trouble, and Misha and a bunch of whatever Vergil and his friends were were around.
I was barely sat for a few seconds before the bartender Hannah walked over to me, her long green hair pulled up into a bun with oyster shaped clips holding it in place, and a leather jacket with a trans pride flag on it pulled around her. She giggled as she saw the expression on my face, and shook her head as she asked, “usual?”
“Yeah, please,” I muttered, watching her set a pint glass out and start to mix the concoction.
Absinthe, rum, tequila, and soda served with lemon were mixed together under the counter, and slid over to me as the bartender proudly declared, “Werewolf Iced Tea, right up. You wouldn’t believe how many of these I’ve been needing to make without patrons seeing today.”
Werewolves healed faster than half-ones by no small margin, which while normally good also meant getting drunk and staying that way could be an exercise in creativity. Your options were to either drink enough to kill most half-ones in a short time, risk death and mix it up with silver, or drink the highest concentration drink you could in short bursts. Werewolf Iced Tea happened to be Dante’s Inferno own solution to that problem.
“Misha drinking that much already?” I asked, furrowing my brow as I looked up to the woman.
“Nah, few of the people from your covenant are up here,” Hannah said, pointing past me to one of the corners. I turned in my seat, and sipped my drink as I saw Knives and their pack sitting at one of the tables with a few empty glasses between all of them laughing about something. “He swung by to return my copy of the Rubaiyat and went back to the second floor I think.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame him,” I admitted, taking a deep gulp as I watched the pack absently. No one liked Misha protecting a Purist, sparing her life in a fight and then getting her a second chance at life. A lot of the people in the Covenant didn’t trust me at first glance, and by proxy refused to trust Misha.
They did look like they were having fun though.
The man I vaguely knew as Andrew sat in a chair with his girlfriend Tara sitting in his lap, another one, a man named Basil, sat across from them seeming lost trying to keep up with their conversation. Even Knives, who was standing a few feet away talking up a half-one woman seemed to be leaning back to chip into a joke or thought.
It reminded me of my old pack, when I was one of the Purists and we would spend hours together joking and laughing and doing whatever. Everything had started falling apart two years ago though, and now it was almost a year away from them and I hadn’t had that closeness in too long.
I sighed, and slowly my focus moved to Knives as they seemed to get along with the half-one they were flirting with. The half-one kept playing with her own hair like an unsure child and Knives’ hand practically had grown to live on her hip. There was something nice about the sight, and it might have just been the fact I hadn’t had a mate since I’d left the Purists.
I didn’t get the choice in target, even if she was rather pretty, but that was personal preference. Half-ones looked the same as us, but I couldn’t really see myself wanting one like others seemed to at times. They were exactly what they looked like, too solid, nothing interesting or curious about them. That didn’t say anything about the fact they were weak and squishy: you handled one too roughly they’d break like a toy you’d never glue together again.
“Mary,” Hannah said, tapping my shoulder and making me turn to her, “I can’t tell if you’re wanting to fuck them or kill them, but either way you’re giving off weird vibes. We need to work on your people skills.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, nearly finishing the rest of my drink in a few more gulps. “Just got lost in thought.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” she laughed, shaking her head, “oh, looks like one of your friends is coming over.”
I was about to ask what she meant when a heavy arm was suddenly thrown around my shoulder and Andrew half-threw himself to lean against the bar. The wolf wanted to rip out his throat and tear out his heart for it, but fought the urge as I watched him. The werewolf was laughing about something, and slowly pushed himself to stand, his short-cut black hair a mess and soaked with sweat.
“Cannibal!” he declared happily, holding onto me like a friend despite having not said thirty words to me in the last year. “Are you here to celebrate Tara’s birthday? Oh, you shouldn’t have, I didn't know you cared that much or like, at all. You know Tara? She’s great.”
“Vergil just wanted me to swing by,” I told him, unsure whether to laugh or push him off. The wolf didn’t like being restrained, though it wasn’t actively growling and wanting to murder him past the initial startle like I would have expected. “Didn’t know it was Tara’s birthday.”
“Yeah it is!” Andrew declared happily, slamming a few bills across the counter for Hannah. “My girlfriend is twenty-four today! Fuck me, she gets more beautiful every day you know that? She’s going to be like, a hundred and fifty and I’m going to see her and my eyes will just melt at that point.”
“That’s good,” I said, barely holding in a laugh as the man pulled me to my feet.
“Come on, cannibal,” the man tried urging me as I slipped from under his arm, “I can introduce you to Basil, you two would be hot together. He’s like a four and you’re a five, you’d be like a nine together that way, which is like….” he clicked his tongue and shot a finger gun I thought was meant to be aimed towards me as he quickly adjusted it so.
“I should probably get on my way home anyway,” I said, knowing I needed to be expecting a call and that no one sober would want me at a birthday celebration. “Besides, I’m sure Lord’s getting lonely, I promised him tuna when I got home.”
“Lord?” Andrew asked, laughing a moment before he seemed to recognize it, “oh, Whisky! Yeah he’s fucking adorable, keeps us company whenever we’re working out or watching movies, he’s just our emotional support buddy, you know? Well, I’ll let you go, bye cannibal!”
“Bye, Andrew,” I laughed, watching the man grab his drinks from Hannah and stumble back toward the crowd.
Honestly it was tempting to try and join the party, and drunk as everyone was I might have been able to get away with it for a time. I just also knew I wasn’t someone they fully trusted, someone they liked, and it could have easily turned into a confrontation and ruined the party at the first wrong move. Besides, Andrew was talking about trying to set me up with Basil, and as nice as it would have been to have someone it still felt wrong.
Hunter and I had only been separated for a little under a year, and I wasn’t sure we ever technically broke up. As far as some Purists were concerned, he was still my mate, and I still wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
