Prince of Pierce - Act 1
Tom stretched his colossal shoulders and his black canvas shirt strained against the bulging muscles. He was at home with unleashed power, he made no attempt to hide that. The bigger things were, in general, the happier he was as a person... well, demon. There was no reason demons shouldn’t be happy. But this made Tom uncomfortable and he had a hard time hiding that: he didn’t like fragile things. The only thing that made him more uncomfortable than fragile things was fragile things that he mustn’t break. He wasn’t very good at that.
The young girl with the bandages across her face was fragile. She also mustn’t be broken. Diego had introduced the new barkeep to her stating that she was integral to his new career. How a seer was integral to serving drinks, Tom had yet to learn. For his part, he would much rather put this girl on a high shelf somewhere where he wouldn’t break her. Still, the titan of a demon sat on the uncomfortably narrow playground swing, making the crossbar above them creak under his weight.
“Have you come to play with me?” she asked sweetly.
The girl swayed gently back and forth, contemplating. She had the look on her face of looking curiously at something. This was most certainly not the case, as the white gauze bandages wrapped tightly around her eyes attested. As happened with so many seers before her, who began having their visions at a premature age, she had gouged out her eyes to end them, to the great distress of her parents. The psychiatric institution to which she had been committed was one of the best in the state, and she had no shortage of visitors.
“I... I don’t play,” Tom answered hesitantly. The truth was, he did play. He even played with girls like her. She, however, would likely not survive the kind of play he envisioned. “I’ve come to ask you about your dreams.”
The nine year old became inwardly drawn and silent. After a long uncomfortable silence during which Tom had the overwhelming urge to leave, the girl swallowed. Her hands gripped the chains of the swing tighter and she turned to face him, as if she could see him through the gauze. It was fortunate for her that she could not, since at that moment Tom shrugged, a disturbing sight.
“I had another last night,” she whispered fearfully. She didn’t wait for him to reply: she could tell he wasn’t the talkative sort. “In it, it was dark... but it’s always dark in those dreams.” She was quiet for a little while, recalling the nights she could remember when her dreams had been happy ones. Rivers and forests. Not concrete and death.
“Tell me,” Tom prompted.
The girl swallowed. “There was a man —a bad man— he had a sword. He put his sword through people and other men were there and they laughed.” She licked her dry lips and glanced away from the frowning Tom. “He was a king or a duke or something.”
Tom’s face was a mask of confusion. This was the seer? He’d read better premonitions in his tea leaves. Without a sound, he stood and turned to leave. To his complete astonishment, he felt her hand on his own and he stopped. As soon as he turned to face the child on the swing, the world swung sickeningly out of reality.
Tom stood in the clearing of a park. From the buildings behind the trees, he could tell it was Central Park. Tom was lost in confusion for several seconds before his limited experience told him he was seeing the seer’s vision.
A dark figure stood nearby, surrounded by uncounted other dark figures. The smell of vampire was overwhelming. Tom swallowed. He supposed that in a vision he was perfectly safe, but he didn’t care to test that. As the vision commenced, Tom frowned.
At the vampire’s feet, on her knees, was a girl with her hands tied behind her back. She was bruised and bleeding to the leers of the surrounding crowd of fangs. The lead figure wielded something that was not at first recognizable to the barkeep. No one had ever come after Tom with a kenjitsu katana before.
With a gentle whoosh, the figure brought the blade through the air and stopped it inches before the neck of his captive. There were laughs from the crowd as the girl’s breath caught. The figure stood back with satisfaction, then with a snarl of unparalleled cruelty, he drove the blade with his palm through the girl’s throat.
Tom blinked. It had been a while since he had seen anything like that. Then the figure turned, putting all thoughts of the good old days out of the demon’s head. The Prince of Pierce’s eyes glinted in the lamplight; yellow with vampiric hunger. His face was contorted out of all human shape. The girl on the ground with the blade in her throat gurgled for an agonizing moment. Before she was silent, the crowd descended on her. Pierce closed his hands into fists and looked down at them with a broad grin.
Tom took in a breath. Then the darkness of the park melted away and he was looking at the girl on the swing with the look in her eyes that he couldn’t quite make out.
Niki slowly swirled the pale golden liquid around the bottom of her nearly empty glass. With a resigned sigh, she let her head sag forward, allowing the white pompom to roll around from the back of the fuzzy red hat and flop against her forehead. `Tis the season.
“More?” Tom held up the bottle of golden liquid. It never seemed to get emptier. This odd fact, however, did not prevent Niki from getting drunker. The Slayer shook her head, placing her hand over the glass.
“I really shouldn’t,” she sighed. “It’s not good to drink alone.”
“Where’s that lawyer friend of yours?” Tom asked innocently, ducking his head as he walked down the bar to avoid bumping into one of the hanging lights.
“Probably sitting down to a nice...” Valtaine winced, “dinner with his lovely wife and precious daughter.” She snatched the glass from the bar’s surface and emptied it.
“What did happiness ever do to you?” Tom asked with a raised eyebrow. He set the bottle down and the vial of white powder beside it.
Niki glared at him. “It went out for a pack of smokes and never came back,” she said cynically. Pointing to the glass she barked, “fill it.”
Once she had settled back into her fuzzy-red-capped depression, she calmed down. “I suppose Pearce will be along anytime now, though. Poor bastard. No life whatsoever.”
Tom shifted uncomfortably. He knew this was going to come up eventually. It was for exactly this reason, he supposed, that Diego made his barkeeps visit the seer. It’s always best to know about potential customers before they decide they’re thirsty.
“You know...” Tom began with a frown. He wasn’t really sure how one did this sort of thing. “How much do you really trust that vampire?”
This caught Niki by surprise. Her eyes shifted uncertainly for a moment as she tried to reach into her haze of memory to make sure she had just heard what she thought she had. “Uh.... not much. Why?”
Tom sighed. He was botching this up, that was for damn sure. “Don’t,” he said simply.
“Don’t?” Niki squinted at the play of shadows above the hanging light that was Tom’s face.
“Don’t trust him. He’s evil.” Tom assumed the conversation was over and he commenced dragging the rag across the bar’s surface.
“And...?” prompted the Slayer. “Practically everyone I know is evil. That doesn’t change much.”
Tom shrugged a particularly disturbing shrug. “I mean don’t trust him because he kills people. He will kill people.” The barkeep was struggling.
Niki was frowning. “Pearce? Psh. He’s harmless. Cursed, you know?” She sipped her drink. “Can’t even make the face. Couldn’t even scare a corpse to death.”
Tom was shaking his head with frustration when the Nail Biter’s door opened and the devil of whom they spoke marched in. The barkeep’s hand moved of its own accord. He found the Magnum Wiley stored under the bar and in a ramrod straight arm aimed it at the vampire at the door. “Out,” the demon ordered.
Pearce’s look of utter befuddlement met nothing but the hard glare of the demon behind the bar and the unconcerned look of a drunk Slayer. With hands raised inoffensively, he backpedaled out of the bar and trudged morosely up the stairs onto the street.
Cold and thirsty, Pearce wandered down dark deserted streets. He’d have liked to find some hookers, but he had no cash on him. It had been foolish of him to rely on the Council for credit. Now that they were out of contact, he was on his own and his girls were gone. None of the pimps who had been his best friend a month ago would give him the time of night now.
“You’re lost,” a calm voice said from the shadows.
Pearce continued walking. “No, I’m hungry, so it’s you who should get lost.” He stuffed his hands into his denim jacket and trudged on.
“The Prince has lost his throne,” the voice went on. It seemed to get no further away, even though Pearce kept walking, and there were no sounds of footfalls. “Do you wish it were otherwise?”
Pearce stopped at the word ‘wish’ and grated his teeth. It didn’t sound like Fetters or Mault or any of the others, but it had been a long time since he had heard his old gang. The vampire opened his mouth to say something foul, but couldn’t think of anything. This very fact stung. “Go away,” he said at last, moving forward down the street. The voice would not be dissuaded.
“What would you say,” the voice went on, calm and unamused, “if I were to offer you something more precious than all the working girls in the world.” When Pearce did not stop and did not answer, the voice took on the sound of a smile. “What if I were to offer to reverse the wish?”
Pearce stopped. He licked his lips. "Go on."
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