Reckless: Stuff - Act 2
by redmoon
Stuff - Act 2
September 4th, 1981
With the scotch and stuff still throbbing through her body, Niki’s hands folded and fidgeted continually in her lap. Her eyes shifted ceaselessly and her lips trembled. The club was dark and hot and the stench of vampires set her on edge. She blinked continually, looking over her shoulder every few seconds as Toe Tag City waited for their turn to play.
Jimmy took her hand from behind and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Hey, baby, you okay?” He frowned, then leaned in and kissed her neck. She clenched her jaw and resisted the sudden and unexplained instinct to break his nose. With her stomach doing somersaults, the girl pulled away from him and disappeared out the back exit into the alley.
Gasping for breath, she held her arms close around her body, trembling. She tried not to breath, since every breath brought fresh writhing worms into her lungs. She doubled over and tried to make herself invisible. But someone was watching.
“Hello, precious,” the rasping voice said as its owner stepped from behind a dumpster. “You look cold. Let a fellow warm you up—”
Niki stood, her jaw tight and her eyes slits. The quivering throughout her muscles seemed to align itself along her arms and her fists balled. “Fuck off, asshole,” she growled.
“Precious, precious,” the figure scolded. “That’s not very polite.” As he stepped into the light cast by the lamp above the ‘exit only’ door to the club, Niki’s other senses were confirmed by his vampiric face and eyes.
With a deep breath, the writhing in her lungs seemed to calm, the chattering of her teeth quiet and her senses focus with no effort at all. Before she knew what was happening, she had charged towards him, smashed his face with her forehead and thrown him upside down into the opposite wall.
Electricity danced through her, surging with almost orgasmic intensity, pummeling her senses as she released the violence at the creature. Before he had a chance to get up, her young lithe body carried her to him and she threw him head-first into the dumpster, eliciting a scream from the surprised vampire.
With a fire burning through her muscles and steel suddenly taking over her bones, she took the creature by the jacket and launched him completely out of the alley and into the traffic in front of the club where a car swerved, but struck him anyway. As soon as he was up, the vampire took off running amid screeching traffic.
The nineteen year old stood panting for breath, her eyes wide, her muscles again trembling. The lust in her blood was not yet satisfied and the writhing and chattering started up again.
Jimmy stepped out of the door, with a frown on his face. “Babe? You out here?”
With lightning reflexes, she grabbed the guitarist by the jacket collar and pulled him out of the doorway, slamming him against the brick wall, the door clicking closed seconds later. With a spark in her eyes that he had only an instant to register, Niki’s fingers tore off his jacket and ripped his shirt open. Her lips were soon on his and she melted into him against the wall of the alley, taking his hands and moving them over her breasts with a groan.
It took him a shocked moment to react, but soon he was responding to her every desire— right up until the sirens and glaring lights filled the alleyway, blinding their senses.
Sweaty and only partially clothed, Niki found herself in the back of a squad car, her hands cuffed behind her back. As the car pulled out of the alley, she could see the car that had swerved to miss the vampire was nuzzled up to the car it didn’t miss and broken glass was being swept off the street. As the high slowly melted from her brain and body, Niki considered the blood that must be covering her hands and was now doubtlessly all over poor Jimmy.
The Slayer groaned. Addison would not be pleased.
September 5th, 1981
Niki kept her eyes downcast. Her Watcher was more vocal than she had ever seen him. He was actually expanding her vocabulary. She had never heard a more effective use of the word ‘promiscuous’. Unfortunately, since he had claimed her as his own, he had had the authority to allow the tox screen. Stuff —wherever it came from— was not identified as a narcotic, but as some kind of industrial chemical mixed with organic solvents. She was warned to stay away from asbestiforms and exotic animals and slapped with a $450 fine for indecent exposure and a warning for mischief.
Addison raised his hands expressively as he continued about the responsibility of the Chosen One which included at the very least not being arrested. It didn’t matter, he emphasized, that she had been battling a vampire: discretion was key. The government, he warned, would love a chance to dissect a girl with superpowers. And the public! They would have her locked in a cage for the rest of her unnatural life.
Niki tried not to think about how much she wanted another drink. Specifically, how much she wanted that drink to have about five grams of industrial chemical and organic solvents mixed in with it. So she thought about what she had done. A flush filled her cheeks. Fortunately since she and Jimmy had actually been in the process of putting their clothes back on when they were picked up, Addison would never know how far she had gone. She bit her lower lip and decided to concentrate on that.
“Our agreement was that you could pursue this musical career of yours assuming you stayed out of trouble—” Addison glanced at the girl and saw the dreamy expression on her face. “Are you even listening to me?”
Niki blinked and snapped out of her reverie. “Uh... what? Sorry?”
Addison sighed. “I want you to tell me something,” he said with deadly seriousness.
Niki’s eyes searched the room for the correct answer. “I... will never touch that stuff again,” she prayed that was what he was waiting impatiently to hear.
“And that boy?” her Watcher’s eyes were hard and cold. Tragedy or no tragedy: some fun was not to be had by girls her age.
Niki blinked. Jimmy? “Never touch him again either,” she lied.
Addison nodded curtly. “Good. Now go to bed.” And he turned and retired to his own room, closing the door with the exhaustion of someone encountering the full effect of a teenager for the first time.
Niki sighed. Glad that’s over, she stood from the kitchen table and made her way to the door. “I need a drink,” she muttered under her breath.
September 6th, 1981
Becky frowned. “Damn, Niki, I don’t know.”
“Come on,” the Slayer scowled impatiently. “You fucking pushed it on me. You’re not cutting me off now.”
Jesse looked to the floor, his expression hidden in the shadows of this place. They were just packing up their gear. This bar was a rathole, not a single person of taste in the whole place. And some real freaks besides. “Sorry,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to get you hooked.”
Niki scoffed, irritated and slightly desperate. “Oh– come on... I’m not hooked... I just... I just want some, okay? It makes me play better, right?”
Becky’s eyes shifted nervously. “Actually, Niki since you’ve been drinking and stuff... you’re rhythm’s kinda been slipping. Maybe you should kick it... just for a while.”
Valtaine bared her teeth. She opened her mouth to reply, but she couldn’t think of anything music related to say. She couldn’t tell them the real reason she wanted it. Couldn’t tell them that she hadn’t felt like a real Slayer since the night she had taken it for the first time: hadn’t felt like a real Slayer in her whole life before that night. “So that’s it? You’re cutting me off?”
Jesse put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, Niki.”
She shrugged off his touch and let her drumsticks clatter to the floor of the grotty joint. “Yeah, right,” and without another word she found a stool at the bar and ignored them as they finished packing their instruments into the van. Fuck them.
The barkeep sauntered over to take her order. He had a long nose, almost beak-like, and upswept eyebrows. “What’re you having, little lady?”
Niki sighed. “Scotch...” She glanced over her shoulder as he reached for a glass to make sure the band was out of earshot. “And have you got any of that... stuff?”
"Sure," the barkeep smiled. "Just as soon as I see some I.D."
Niki's jaw clenched. Like lightning, she jumped from her stool and grabbed him by the collar. The stink of demon was all over him. "Listen you pansy freak, I'm the Slayer, you got it? I could mop this greasy floor with the inside of your skull in a heartbeat, so give me some scotch and some God damned-"
Before she had even finished the sentence, the barkeep set a small vial of white powder beside her glass. She released his collar and sat back down as he poured her some amber liquid. As she began to mix in the Stuff, a smile spread across the barkeep’s face. At a hundred bucks a pop, Felix didn’t stop smiling till the day he died.
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