Reckless: Season 2: Gratitude: Part II - Act 4
by redmoon
Gratitude: Part II - Act 4
Logan looked at his house in the twilight. He had never felt so proud of himself. And it was an honest pride. He could shout it out to the world if he wanted to. American Bar Association! The smile permeated him. It was a temporary, silly joy, he knew. It wouldn’t last and it wasn’t the greatest accomplishment of the twentieth century, but it was good enough for now and the smile just wouldn’t leave his face.
He’d stroll in the front door, the smile displayed prominently on his lips and in his eyes. Rachel would wonder what he was so smug about. He’d tell her: he’d aced the bar exam. She’d congratulate him and they’d kiss. His smile would spread to her. She’d tell him how proud she was of him. Later they’d do much more thank kiss. Maybe Hanna should sleep over at a friend’s house.
Now his promotion was guaranteed. Most likely before the merger, but if not, then definitely after. An increase in salary. A new car. A college fund for Hanna. Diamond earrings for Rachel - just because.
The house looked warm and cozy – inviting him in to indulge in the fruits of his labor. Inside would be the smell of something delicious cooking, a girl’s gossip and a woman’s laughter. Logan soaked in the perfection of this moment, wishing it would never end.
Of course it did.
Niki had spent the entire morning racking her brain for everything she knew about how a vampire thinks. What would a vampire want in payment? How would she get around her ‘family’ not showing up? What sort of a back story was believable but couldn’t be confirmed or denied?
At three in the afternoon, she pulled a grubby old denim jacket out of the back of her small closet and with a little work did herself up to be a junkie, complete with ratty hair and track marks. Gazing at herself in the mirror, the frightening realization slowly dawned on her how convincing she looked. Might this be what she would have looked like if Stuff had had its way? Or Toe Tag City?
Shaking her head to clear it of such negative thoughts, Niki easily found her way down into the subway where the junkie vamps and their enslaved fang addicts resided during the day. It didn’t matter if she smelled like a human, Niki knew, the desperate were always welcome.
The only part of herself she recognized which she kept was the silver bracelet. Unlike the counterfeits sold by the scum at the airport or the contraband produced by the Goths, or even the mass-produced originals worn by the veterans, Niki’s silver IXI bracelet was crafted by the Council and given to one it had truly agreed to protect. Niki had made no such bargain.
Pearce’s bracelet hung loosely from the Slayer’s wrist as she made her way towards the corner of the subway platform where the vamps hung out near the service corridor which ran alongside the track back to their lair.
The doors to the cars were all closing as Niki slouched down the wall into a sitting position near to one of the vamps and the homeless junkie girl who hung around him. Bloodletting from a vampire was as addictive as any narcotic, Niki knew. But the Slayer would do what was necessary.
“Hey,” she rasped, rolling her eyes tiredly, “I’ll give you this for a hit,” she sluggishly pulled the bracelet from her wrist and threw it to the vampire’s feet. She could see he already had one but pretended not to notice or care.
The vamp didn’t even acknowledge her existence for several moments, staring listlessly towards the other end of the platform.
The human junkie scooped up the silver chain and looked at it through bleary eyes. She looked eerily like Niki herself. “What’s it worth?”
“Ask him,” Niki answered after a moment. “He’s got one just like it.”
The girl —Niki placed her somewhere between sixteen and twenty five— shook the vamp by the shoulder. “Braden, how much could we get for it?” When there was no reply, Niki asked him herself.
“How much did you pay for it?”
The vampire known as Braden slowly let his head move in the Slayer’s direction. The universe in his eyes sang of despair. A tragic love song with no happy ending and no escape. After a glance, the vamp turned back to his junkie. “Send her to Mama Love and forget about it.”
The junkie seemed to accept this and tossed the trinket back to Niki, curling up tighter against her vampire master. “He doesn’t want it. Go away.” Both the vamp and the junkie closed their eyes as if sleeping away some misery.
“How much could I get for it?” Niki insisted, slowly crawling closer to the pair. “How much did it cost you?”
Though the junkie seemed to have passed out from the exertion of the conversation, the vamp opened his eyes wider as the Slayer approached. Perhaps he could smell on her who and what she was. Maybe he was even scared, but he didn’t move a muscle below his neck at her approach.
Niki’s hand found his dirty shit collar and she pulled him closer to her face, accepting with it the stink of his entire existence. The train pulled up to the platform and noise soon filled the air.
With a shaking hand, the vampire took Niki’s cheek and turned her head to whisper into her ear.
“If you go to Mama Love, keep the bracelet—” his words were slow and difficult but each one spoke his tired sincerity, “—you’ll need it then.”
Niki turned back towards him and gave him a gentle shake, no longer trying to keep up the pretense of being a junkie. “How much did you pay for it?”
The vamp slowly closed his eyes and sank back against the wall. “It cost me... too much,” he whispered. She let go of his collar with a frown. In the noise of the comers and goers, she couldn’t hear but could see his lips moving. “This used to be a prince.”
The words chilled Niki to the bone as she slowly stood from the two in the corner of the platform. If ever a vampire, in his state of living death, could be completely and utterly dead, this vampire was it. Dead now in all ways imaginable, but still able to take life.
Niki’s hand was trembling as she slid the cold metal of the bracelet back onto her wrist. This bracelet had turned Pearce back into a prince. Completely free, immunity had given him back everything he had ever lost. That same bracelet had cost Braden everything. The prince and the pauper, created by the same stroke of the pen.
But Niki had her answer.
Niki made sure to stay out of sight in the shadows of JFK until the sun set. It wouldn’t do to be seen basking in the dying rays of sunlight. When darkness had fallen, she found the same bench as last night and sat down without a glance around.
Some minutes later, with the Slayer’s composure feeling the bombardment of the very living tension, the same gothic vampire from last night strode past with a single word. “Follow.”
Led to a dark car idling in the front lot, Niki soon found herself in the back seat between two figures who looked like angels of death in the twilight. The car pulled away with the screeching of tires and, after a circuitous rout which was no doubt intended to prevent Niki from ever following it again later, pulled up near the door of a neglected warehouse.
Niki soon recognized it as the setting for a Goth-Biker showdown she had instigated last year, mentally shivering to think she was now invited in as one of its residents. Always the fear seemed to follow her. She couldn’t explain it to herself in her perpetual attempt to rationalize it away; it wasn’t the fear of death. She knew she could handle herself. It was the fear of discovery. An irrational fear, since she could easily take all the vampires in this car, even at once. Even if the car was moving. That was the confusion that made her question her decision to go through with this: if she couldn’t figure out why this entire situation terrified her so much, how could she be sure she was doing the right thing? How would she recognize legitimate danger if it should present itself?
The two vampires in black escorted her from the car and into the dark void that was the door of the cavernous warehouse. Immediately she cursed herself. She could easily recognize the legitimate danger now. Now that she was in it. There were uncounted gothic forms stalking the darkness all around. Dozens, hundreds, too many to count with just instinct. Niki swallowed. This could get bad.
Niki walked between the two angels of death, her scalp itching, her leather coat feeling more and more unnatural over her black T-shirt. In full gothic makeup again, Niki felt again like a fraud. At least as a junkie she could convince herself. Who was she going to convince tonight?
“Welcome to my home,” said a polite voice. With a hiss a match was struck and a pale face was illuminated. The glowing red of a cigarette flared to life and the match went out. She heard him exhale and she took a deep breath.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” she said with measured calm. He was silent, the only thing she could see of him was the tiny red spot of his cigarette which grew brighter each time he took a drag. “Do you have what I asked for?” she asked, standing as straight and tall as she could, knowing he could see her better than she could him.
“Not here,” the figure admitted. “Here we will discuss payment. If we come to an agreement, you will be taken to where we keep the merchandise.”
“You fear I might steal them?” Niki raised an eyebrow – something she was sure she had once seen a Goth do.
There was a note of amusement in the voice of the figure before her. “Not at all. I fear you may not be able to pay what we are asking, and so it would not worth the risk of transporting so much merchandise here.”
“Then I fear you may be disappointed,” Niki ventured, her hands in her pockets, fingering the comforting razor sharp edges and wood grain.
There was a long moment of silence where the cigarette was discarded. “There is a lot of fear here then, isn’t there?” the figure noted. “What are you offering?”
Niki could have sword her heart had started pumping ice water. He had asked simply and she answered simply. “Nothing.”
Logan’s happy moment shattered as the bullets stated flying.
He fell to the ground and covered the back of his head with his hands. He could hear the squealing of several sets of tires as cars rounded the corner onto his street and accelerated away. The gunshots rattled out of the passenger window of the lead car and blazed from the driver’s window of the tailing car.
Logan had heard enough gunshots to know that they were aimed at and hitting the other’s car. With all his logic telling him he was not in fact the target, Logan scrambled up into a crouching position in time to see the cars disappear around the next corner at the far end of his street, fire spewing from the firearm angled out the driver’s window of the trailing black car.
Even though Niki couldn’t see him, she could tell the ring leader before her was insulted by her answer.
“Nothing?” he demanded after a long silence.
“Nothing,” Niki confirmed calmly, “but the gratitude of myself and my coven.”
“Your sense of humor has no place here,” the figure said coldly. “I am a businessman and I do not appreciate jokes.”
“And I don’t care to tell them,” Niki agreed, just as coldly. “You are in fact no businessman, but a criminal. Since the time of my initial interest, I have had a chance to find the true value of the merchandise you peddle. I found it in the gutter, with the filth on the subways, in the garbage of the alleys and the shit of the sewers. You have brought this poverty to the City, selling your immunity for a vampire’s life! For a vampire’s livelihood!” The thrill of the anger she truly felt coursed through the Slayer. “Had I the time, I could have pulled one hundred and sixty six trinkets from the dead who now litter this city. My coven arrives before the end of this night and they expect to see a vampire’s paradise: a place free from the fear of the Council and its agents. Instead they will find a rank pit of despair created by your charming business.”
Niki could feel the ring leader shrinking under her words. The fear of this night had somehow been transformed into an unparalleled thrill. “I expect they will be quite disappointed,” she said between clenched teeth. “So in payment for your reckless enterprise, you will provide me with one hundred and sixty six of your ill-gotten products and I will in turn attempt to prevent my coven from decimating your despicable business. In the best possible case, I will have secured their gratitude.” She allowed a heartbeat for that to sink in. “So again I offer you: My gratitude and that of my coven.”
Niki felt the warm blood between her fingers and the cuts on her palms from gripping the knife blade so tightly. There was a cold sweat on her brow and she hoped it wouldn’t start revealing her tan.
“Take her,” the leader ordered, his voice thinner and devoid of its previous confident power. “Give her whatever her coven desires.”
Niki bowed stiffly and turned back to the entrance to the warehouse. The two angels of death escorted her back to her seat where she now felt much more like the driver than the passenger, all thoughts of fraud erased from her mind.
The car eased back into motion, taking a longer rout in the darkening evening to the undisclosed location where the bracelets were being housed, and perhaps where they were being manufactured.
After uncounted minutes on the road, the vampire on Niki’s left leaned across her and whispered something into the ear of the one on her right. The one on her right nodded and leaned forward to whisper into the ear of the vamp riding shotgun. That vamp listened then turned around to look back. After a moment he reached down beneath his seat and retrieved a small automatic weapon.
Niki’s blood ran cold. Had they discovered her? If they had wanted to kill a fellow vampire, a knife to the throat or a stake would do it, but a gun? They must have smelled the blood from her hands, realized she was human, or worse, realized she was the Slayer. Niki’s hand took tight hold of the stake in her right pocket. She could finish the two beside her, but the one with the gun in the front seat would get some shots off. And then there was the driver...
Before she could think, the man riding shotgun rolled his window down and stuck the gun out, aiming it backwards. The inside of the car was lit up in a shocking and surreal series of directed explosions as the vampire emptied his clip at the black car which was tailing them.
Niki managed to twist around to see what was going on and saw a car a few seconds behind them with no headlights and a pistol aimed out the driver’s window. She swallowed. The vampires in the back seat had no reason to fear bullets and so no reason to duck. Niki held herself straight in the seat as a bullet pierced the back window and exited the windshield at an angle bringing it so close to her head Niki didn’t even want to think about it.
The bullets continued to fly as the cars swerved around corners through a residential neighborhood. Niki vaguely recalled chasing the first bracelet peddler this far and realized suddenly that the contraband production must be somewhere here in Freeport. That meant Logan was in danger. Another bullet tore through the windows as the car swerved around another corner.
The gunfire had nearly deafened the Slayer and she hoped the car following them would give it up already. She had no idea what the politics of the Goths business was, but they all seemed very calm and at least basically prepared for this situation. Then a loud pop accompanied a spurt of fire from the machine gun and the car following them swerved out of control off the road. Niki blinked as the vamp calmly returned the gun to its place beneath his seat and rolled up the window. The rest of the ride was spent in silence, though even if something had been said, Niki would not have heard it.
Logan slowly straightened up as the cars disappeared around the corner. Seconds later, however, he involuntarily jerked as a loud crash indicated an end to one of the cars. He swallowed. So much for a delightful evening.
He turned and brushed the grass from his dew-dampened suit, marching towards the cozy house to deliver the news which seemed less like the best news he had ever heard. What the hell was this neighborhood becoming?
Niki slowly got out of the car after it had reached its destination. The low building was a far cry from a warehouse, but the same feeling of neglect surrounded it. Though the architecture suggested it was actually used during the day and should perhaps be regarded with a little more respect than simply as the dwelling place of criminals, the darkness beyond the open door seemed in that moment darker than any midnight Niki had ever seen.
Walking as if through water, Niki followed the angels of death as they disappeared into the inky blackness. Then that blackness swallowed her too.
To be continued...
This story archived at: The Slayer\'s Fanfic Archive
The Slayer\\\\\\\\'s FanFic Archive - http://www.slayerfanfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=16596