Hunger Pangs

[daniel_stacy]

Daniel was starving.

No, really.

If asked, the vampire would swear he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Spending time with Holly was akin to fasting at a dinner table piled with sizzling, juicy steaks. He jogged to his car with the biggest ‘fang boner’ of his life, his face morphing into demonic features and remaining as such for the entirety of the drive into Las Vegas, where he hoped to arrive in time for the casinos to unleash drunken, giddy tourists onto the sidewalk. He parked his car and struck out on foot.

Where, where, where are you going? Get your game face on. Not that one, the pretty one.

Great. Now he talked to himself.

Screw it. He didn’t have the patience for sweet talk. He abandoned the casino plan and swung into a parking garage stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. Sooner or later, a woman who dressed like an extra from Knots Landing would toddle to her car, inebriated and ripe for the sucking. Daniel stopped on level four and meandered between the parked automobiles, in search of one with the hallmarks of womanhood: lipstick tube, emery board, hairbrush. He shielded his eyes and peered into the driver’s side window of a silver Miata.

[Thread: Open to Theresa]

Comments

[tiny_dancer81]

Malcolm turned out to be an architect who worked for a firm in Dallas, and he had a half-decent body under his suit, so Theresa left him off easy and gave him a number where he could reach her if he wanted to party again. He was going to be in town for another week, and she was going to need a sugar daddy to buy her things and give her money if she wanted to get a roof over her head. She had her eye on a suite at The Hart, which was where she'd gone with Malcolm, but that cost plenty of dough. There was a reason she pandered to the over-fifty crowd.

She was in the parking deck looking at the cars and wondering if she'd be able to get a date for that night. It was good in a weird sort of way that she'd been turned so young, because it ensured that she'd never get old and used up on the streets. Maybe if she pretended to be lost, some kind soul would take pity on her. She'd done it before.

There was a black Lincoln double-parked on the fourth level, and Theresa smiled to herself when she saw the doctor's insignia on the license plate. She could use a doctor. Even if he was balding. She circled the car, spotted the brown-haired dude scoping out a Miata. The vampire's eyebrows went up.

"Don't tell me. You lost your keys."

[daniel_stacy]

Startled, Daniel jerked upright. “What?” He saw the girl. “No,” he scoffed.

He leaned down again to survey the contents, balling a frustrated fist against the glass when he saw a wadded up neck tie. What kind of dude drove a Miata? A short one. True, a man’s blood would do the trick if the situation got desperate, but after the last few hours, he really, really wanted to drink a woman, and since he wasn't encouraged to bite Holly...

Wait, could I eat her?

He did a double-take. The brunette was petite with an elfin face, the kind of woman who would be carded for alcohol purchases well into her thirties. The primary smells coming off of her were cigar smoke and cologne, so he knew she hadn't been alone for long.

But there was something off.

He narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t hear anything. You don’t have a pulse, either. Am I right?”

[tiny_dancer81]

Another vampire. Great. At least this one was male. That meant he wasn't really competition, at least not in her particular area of expertise.

Theresa looked up at him and smiled, jutting one hip out. "Bonus points for you, Slick," she said, taking a whiff at the air between them. Then she boosted herself up so she could sit on the Lincoln's hood. She wasn't much of a fighter. Back when Dane was still whole, he'd talked their way out of trouble, at least until he found himself in a puddle of gasoline.

"Last call is at two," she told him, holding up her wrist so his sharp eyes could see the digital face of her watch "Bar crawl ends then, so if you're waiting for a snack to stagger by you might as well take a load off."

[daniel_stacy]

Daniel groaned, his eyes rolling to the concrete ceiling. He raked his fingers into his hair and tugged on it. “It’s only been an hour. It’s only been an hour, which makes it one. Goddamnit.” He thought about kicking a tire to vent some frustration, but decided against it. Instead, he hefted himself onto the low wall that overlooked the strip.

This was a fun change of pace. Get laid, feel spun up.

“I am so thirsty right now, I could eat…” He spread his palms to encompass the full spectrum of the population. “Name it, I’d bite it. Nancy Reagan, I’d bite it. Oprah Winfrey, I’d bite it.”

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa almost laughed at him, but settled for rolling her eyes. She remembered that, that feeling like your insides were going to turn inside out and then explode if you didn't bite down on a vein. She'd learned reluctant moderation out of necessity, and in this new city she'd have to be even more careful until she felt safe.

"You must be brand new," she said, crossing her legs. "Either that or you haven't eaten in days." And it was fortunate she'd fed from Malcolm's wrist after the coke was absorbed into his bloodstream, because this one's obvious hunger might prove to be infectious. The brunette took a deeper sniff, and one eyebrow raised.

"Smells like both of us have been getting some nookie."

[daniel_stacy]

Daniel screwed up his face. “Nookie?”

He swung a leg over the wall and straddled it. From this vantage point, he could see up and down the strip. He checked out the line of metered cars below him, the taxis weaving in and out of traffic. Whether she intended to or not, the vampire had struck a nerve; why did the undead always feel the need to call each other out on that? Was it a pissing contest? Social stratification?

“I may be new, but you were, what… seventeen when you were turned? Eternal jail bait.”

He wasn’t going to admit the reason for his hunger and risk ribbing from Punky Brewster.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Eighteen, actually, and thank you."

Theresa gave him her cheekiest smile when she said it, and you'd never have guessed from looking at her that she hadn't wanted to die. She was a realist and knew how to play the hand she'd been dealt, so when she woke up with fangs it seemed pointless to bitch about it for long. And she wasn't that much different now than she had been before.

"This is a good place to dump bodies, so I've heard. Planning to catch and release or finish your dinner?"

[daniel_stacy]

“I don’t think I’ll be releasing anything,” Daniel said, swinging the foot nearest the Lincoln. “I’ve been on a…” He grimaced. “A hunger strike.”

No, wrong phrase. An elimination diet? Either way, hadn’t he just told himself not to share that kind of information? Next thing he knew, Daniel would be spouting it off to Deanna. Which reminded him, he needed to scrub himself of Holly’s scent before coming into contact with his sire, the redheaded bloodhound of Las Vegas.

“A quest is more like it, to see how long I can stand not feeding.”

Daniel pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and scratched his elbow.

Holly…

In a vivid mental image that kept looping, he saw her sitting astride his hips, that soft mane of hair swinging around her shoulders. Halfway to the city, Daniel had considered pulling a wild u-turn and kicking through her motel room door, no invitation required. Several versions of what came after drifted through his head.

He had gripped the steering wheel and stayed the course like some twisted version of a monk.

[tiny_dancer81]

The shorter vampire's eyebrows drew together, and she debated with herself if she cared or not about why Slick was so twitchy. She had a limited tolerance for bullshit, which was why her human self hadn't cared much for Dane until after he put the bite on her, but vampires didn't usually get twitchy unless sunlight or religious symbols were involved. Did she care?

"My name's Theresa, what's yours?"

Fuck it, she had some time to kill before the owner of the Lincoln made what was hopefully a manfully stumbling way back to the car where it was parked. The automobile was big enough that she could assume the position in the backseat if she had to. There were some benefits to being so short.

"We've got an hour or so to hang out, we might as well be on a first name basis."

[daniel_stacy]

So she was staying?

Daniel swallowed on that slightly funky reality. He supposed he could always pull her pigtails if she tried to horn in on his intended meal. He didn’t have a hard-on for fisticuffs, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to put her in a headlock.

“Daniel,” he said. “How long have you been, uh…” He scratched his cheek. “Dead?” Often, a vampire gave away clues in apparel, vocabulary, posture, moxie. He wasn’t getting much of a read off of Theresa, and that told him she was modern. The whiff of cigar smoke came at him again when the air shifted; whose grandpa was she banging?

[tiny_dancer81]

"It'll be my fifth anniversary in December. I was supposed to have graduated from college by now."

It was true, although she'd spent most of her junior and senior years doing blow and hooking to support her habit. She'd been a decent student when she'd bothered to go, it was just that she'd had...other priorities at the time. Since her turning, she'd learned by the seat of her pants.

"You're not even a year old, are you?" she asked, studying Daniel out of the corner of her eye. "You're practically crawling out of your skin with wanting to eat somebody. You're not one of those purists or anything, are you? Like, you have to drink virgin's blood or it doesn't taste right?"

[daniel_stacy]

He paused, his fingers still touching his cheek. “What the fuck, that exists?”

Daniel tried to envision himself giving a rat’s ass whether the person he ate had a sex life. He couldn’t see how it would change the taste, unless there was diseased blood involved, or hormones or something. Talk about cruel: taking a person out before anyone got to home plate? He wasn’t that bereft of humanity.

“My palette’s not that developed. Let’s just say I found myself in a look-but-don’t-touch situation, so I’m famished.”

He wished he had a pen and notepad so he could start jotting down all the quirks of vampirism Deanna hadn’t shared with him. Call him crazy, but he was getting the impression that his sire didn’t expect him to last long. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

“Also, I doubt there’s a virgin within a mile of this place.”

[tiny_dancer81]

That made her chuckle, or at least snort, and she uncrossed her legs to let her feet dangle just above the ground. She was wearing low heels since she'd never gotten the hang of stilettos, a knee-length skirt and a tank top. She cultivated the innocent look on purpose.

"Dane used to say there were all kinds of vamps, but the really quirky ones were usually more than a couple of centuries old. The sort who thought Dracula was a biography. Lived in mausoleums, slept in caskets, never kept mirrors around. Weird shit like that."

She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by. "And I know all about look-but-don't-touch. One on one with a human is the worst when you know you can't or shouldn't bite."

[daniel_stacy]

“And yet, the pay-off,” he countered, shaking his head. “Way worth it.”

If anything was going to go his way in terms of survival, Daniel reflected, it was going to be forging past the immediate impulse… which was, ironically, a quality Holly claimed not to have. He could be bigger than the monumental oral fixation he’d been saddled with in exchange for endless youth. He didn’t have to chase necks so doggedly that he ran headlong onto the pointy end of a stick.

Suck on that, D.

“I like to have my cake and eat it, too.” He raised a knee up to his chest.

[tiny_dancer81]

Oh. Daniel was one of those.

"What's her name?" Theresa asked with a slight smile, taking a wild stab in the dark because she had a hunch she'd be right. No wonder he smelled like sex. Then again, it meant he didn't do it for money, because women didn't have to pay for it.

"Is she your girlfriend?"

[daniel_stacy]

“That’s a strong word,” he said.

What was Holly? She was girl who called a spade a spade; whether screwing around was just for fun or going to be a repeat occurrence, he had no doubt she’d tell him, and well as how many other guys were on her call list. Guys he would want to strangle, just because… well, that’s what you did. You got a mental picture immediately followed by the urge to bash its head in.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll let the lady keep her anonymity. It’s a small world. Maybe she doesn’t want people knowing she climbed on a guy who’s room temperature.”

Sure, that, and he had struck gold; he wasn’t going to go telling everyone its whereabouts.

“What about you? Ever date a human?” Because he needed to know if that was as odd as it seemed.

[tiny_dancer81]

"Dating's a strong word," Theresa said, echoing Daniel's words with a deadpan expression. "Usually I call them clients."

He'd either judge her or he wouldn't. Some vampires made a big whoop out of the hunt, as if she wasn't genuine because she let dinner come to her. She was an opportunistic predator rather than a confrontational one, lacking the combat skills necessary to fight for prey. Not that she liked the stigma attached to the word whore, but when something was true you might as well hold your head up and keep your back straight.

"And I came out here from Hollyweird, where vampirism is practically just another fetish. Girls getting with dead guys isn't as big a deal as you might think." Maybe she's kinky, this unknown lady friend. Theresa managed not to say it. She didn't have to be foul-mouthed all the time.

[daniel_stacy]

An undead hooker. Huh. Daniel gathered both knees into his elbows and looped his arms around. So his sire hadn’t been kidding when she hinted that those vamps who didn’t steal for cash, screwed for it. Theresa didn’t look like any prostitute he’d seen before, but he guessed there was a market for the kinder-whore thing.

He raised a hand.

“Question. How do you—?” He broke off in search of the right phrasing. “How do you do that if they’re… old or they smell weird or are otherwise just grotesque? Doesn’t it make your skin crawl? I mean they’re inside you.” He drove the point home with his hand. "I can't even bite someone if I don't find them marginally appealing and that takes ten seconds."

[tiny_dancer81]

She almost called him 'little boy' at that, because if he knew where she'd been and what she'd been doing before she was a vampire he wouldn't have asked her that question. Her smile had a bit of an edge on it now, just enough to give it away that she was slightly nettled.

"Everyone's old compared to me, hon, at least as far as they know. My cutoff age is sixty, and I judge by the clothes they're wearing, what type of watch they have on, and whether or not they can hold their liquor. You might as well ask them what it's like to screw somebody who looks young enough to be their daughter. By their second wife."

She wished she smoked, but that was one habit she'd never taken up. "Besides, fucking is different than eating. Eating is personal, something only another vampire would understand. Sex is universal."

[daniel_stacy]

Theresa may have edited herself, but Daniel wasn't a complete dolt. He knew from her face and condescending use of the word 'Hon' that he struck a chord. "Hey, no need to get your panties in a wad, sweetheart.You fling that word out there -- 'clients' -- like the undead's worldliest hooker, just daring me to say something, so I do and you're pissed? I could do a lot worse than ask you how you tolerate servicing the life insurance set."

He hopped off the wall and wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans.

"As for feeding, yeah. It's different than fucking, but not by much, so far as I can tell. Penetrate, exchange fluids, bam. Somebody's spent."

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa's expression shifted because she was looking inward, flashing back. Dane hadn't been the first one to bite her, so she hadn't realized what he was doing to her at first, and it wasn't until he broke the skin and began to drink her blood that she realized she was in trouble. She'd panicked even in the midst of her comedown, had lifted her knee into his balls to get him off of her, but he'd been too strong for her. When he was finished and offered her his wrist, she'd drunk because he'd said she'd live through it that way. Had he sold her a bill of goods, or had she just been stupid enough to believe him?

"Sometimes it's not so bad," she told Daniel, and there was a new note of honesty in her voice. "They're usually really nice to me because they feel so guilty, and they're so grateful for the sex that it's kind of pathetic. They get what they want and so do I. I've done worse."

Down on the street, someone blew their horn raucously, and the brunette started when the sound echoed in the hollow space of the parking deck. Wow, she'd gone deep for a second there. She'd need some drinks if she wanted to work tonight. She glanced at her watch. One twenty seven.

"So where's your sire?" she asked, her tone getting more conversational as she shook off the last of the reverie. "Mine didn't let me out of his sight for the first nine months, said I had to learn the ropes."

[daniel_stacy]

As he listened to her talk –

’It’s not so bad… they’re usually nice to me…’

– Daniel felt something in his chest quicken. Kind of a burning sensation. He rubbed at his sternum knowing that it couldn’t be indigestion, so what gave? Oh no, he thought, his expression souring. Was she somehow tugging at his heartstrings? What was going on with him?

He cleared his throat. “I uh… well, she’s a piece of work,” he said. “We’re not close. I went down kicking and screaming and I think she’s had second thoughts. But I don’t know. Maybe she’s always like this with her offspring.”

Had Deanna procreated as a human? He had limited knowledge of the life that came before Deanna was a vampire, but based on her personality in death, he hoped she hadn’t. Poor little bastards.

[tiny_dancer81]

"She?"

That made her dart a look in his direction, and then she looked down at the Lincoln's shiny paint job. It shouldn't have surprised her, since male vampires tended to turn girls while women went for the opposite sex, but there was something in Daniel's tone when he talked about his sire that struck a chord. She'd come to at least appreciate Dane, but it was learned behavior because she'd needed him to help her survive. Now that he was gone, she was having to manage on her own again.

"You don't like her very much, do you?" Fuck, she wasn't going to get all squishy, was she? "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."

[daniel_stacy]

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Shrugged. “Sometimes I like her a lot,” he said. “I get these pangs. And sometimes I’d rather eat glass than spend an hour with her.” He chewed on his lip. “Y’know, it’s like being a teenager and you’ve got his parent you hate, but at the same time, you’re scrambling for attention.”

[tiny_dancer81]

That made Theresa's smile turn rueful, because she remembered that too. Once she'd come to understand that her sire believed he was saving her, she'd developed an intermittent, grudging fondness for him. Yeah, he'd had the emotional maturity of a cantaloupe, but most vampires did. There were times when she'd wanted to make him proud of her. When it got so late that it was early, sometimes she'd miss him.

This was getting uncomfortably human.

"My sire believed he was doing me a favor. Do you regret that you drank?"

[daniel_stacy]

“I don’t even remember doing it,” he said. “For all I know, she pried my mouth open, pinched my nose and dumped a cup of blood down the drain.” Daniel had a hard time believing that his human self would have sucked blood out of Deanna’s open, gaping wound, no matter how desperate the situation. Hot, yeah; the redhead was smoking hot. But… tasty to human tongues? Dubious.

He braced his knee on the fender of a Dodge.

“Can’t say I’m sorry I’m a vampire instead of being plain old dead, though. You?”

[tiny_dancer81]

"Better to be a walking corpse than one buried in the ground."

No, she didn't regret it, at least not at this point. It meant she wouldn't die of an overdose, and it ruled out her contracting some hideous disease. Street kids died young for a multitude of reasons. In a bizarre way, she'd gotten the good end of the deal.

"You're okay, y'know? A little unschooled, maybe, but it takes time to develop a pattern. I had an advantage doing what I do. It taught me how to be a survivor. I just had to adjust that to doing it after the sun went down. You'll learn too."

[daniel_stacy]

“Unschooled,” he said. “Story of my life.”

Daniel had gotten through private school on a wink and a nudge and a check to the right foundation. Then he slogged through six pricey, yet ultimately fruitless, years of college on a Communications major and a transcript full of C’s and D’s: the grades you got for showing up, more or less.

Yes, Daniel was a survivor, too… the truly pitiful kind. The cockroach who never quite got stomped out.

“Well, I’m more of a common sense kind of guy, anyway,” he declared. “As long as I don’t light myself on fire or fall asleep on a park bench at 5 a.m., I’ll be alright.”

[tiny_dancer81]

Theresa snorted, then covered her mouth with her hand. "Yeah, fire is bad. It's the reason my moron of a sire isn't here anymore. He got on someone's bad side, and they lit him up."

Watch check. One forty five. Fifteen minutes and ThunderCats were go. She hoped the car's owner was male, and that he wasn't too fat or ugly. Even she had her standards. She craned her neck so she could see over the lip of the parking deck, watched taxis picking up late night fares. Then she faced Daniel again.

"So where do you go to party? I'm looking to move into The Hart, but I have to get some cash together first. Vegas is a lot like Hollywood, you just have to know where the rich types hang out."

[daniel_stacy]

“Recently a series of gay bars,” he said. “My sire is strictly chickly.”

Oh. That made him sound like one of those dudes who didn’t have his own social life, just an extended network of acquaintances via his more popular and better looking friend.

So how did Daniel like the party? His inner rich boy rebelled against the idea of Vegas nouveau glitz. He gravitated to dirty bars where the down-and-out washed up, where on any given night, you could take a seat on a stool next to some guy named Sal and throw darts and bitch about women, then get trashed and puke in a stall. His cause was helped by the decline of Las Vegas, the city that law enforcement had bent over a barrel and screwed in the ass in a previous decade of mob roundups.

“Well, I like dives,” he said. “The scuzzier, the better. I don’t do all this.” He twirled his finger at their surroundings. “Any meal I order here is take-out. But I can see how a dive would be counter-productive for you. What do you do when you're not--”

Uh...


"Meeting clients?"

[tiny_dancer81]

"Really."

Now that was interesting, and Theresa's spine straightened as she pulled herself out of the slouch she'd assumed. One foot kicked restlessly at the Lincoln's fender, and she laced her fingers together in her lap. She went with older guys because the Lolita thing never really went out of fashion, but that was work. On the occasions she had sex for pleasure, when she wanted someone who could potentially get her off, she was girls-only. Maybe she should hang close with Daniel for a week or two.

"I like to play blackjack, but the security there is really anal," she said with distaste. "I have an ID, and they've carded me every time I try to order a drink. Hotels are different, but casinos are really strict." She looked down at her lap. "I do like to get out and shake my ass at a dance club. With the days so long, I have to wait until its safely dark to venture outside, but I can dance til dawn."

He was right, though, a dive would have been counter-productive, because she had to get out and be seen if she wanted to get a few regular clients. They probably didn't have movie stars in Vegas, but they must have some kind of social strata. "Where do you crash when you sleep?"

[daniel_stacy]

“Basement apartment,” he said. “Cheap digs and I’m not exactly complaining about the lack of natural light. It’s loud on street level but I could sleep through a nuke.” Daniel adjusted the strap of his watch. He hadn’t cared much for telling time when he was alive, but since it meant the difference between a nice long nap and a fiery personal inferno, he was trying to turn over a new leaf.

“Hey… what’s a good club if I wanted to… take a girl out? Dancing,” he clarified.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing having Theresa around. The female perspective without the snark. No way in hell he’d ask Deanna a question like that, especially now that he knew she tried to get up Holly’s skirt.

[tiny_dancer81]

The brunette's eyes rolled towards the concrete ceiling of the parking deck while she thought it over, and when she re-focused on Daniel she said, "The Funhouse. Two-drink minimum, reasonable cover charge, killer DJs. You kind of have to watch yourself in the men's john near last call, because the bouncers are serious about clearing people out when they close, but it's a real hot spot."

She couldn't ask for an intro to his sire, at least not quite yet, but if he had a couch to sleep on... "You're gonna think this is weird, but can I crash with you for a few days? I'm putting a nest egg together to get a real place, but I need to get some more bread. I can chip in if you need me to pay my own way."

[daniel_stacy]

Alright, that caught him off guard.

He reached up and squeezed the nape of his neck, then lifted his shoulders nonchalantly. “Yeah. Sure. Why the hell not?” Maybe there was something in it for Daniel, too. Five years vamped was a heck of a lot longer than eleven months. If he could pick her brain and glean any survival info, it’d be worth it for the next time D decided to use him as a body shield.

“It’s 1217 Flamingo. Jump in the elevator and hit ‘B’. Just…” He grimaced. “Just don’t bite the upstairs neighbors. You’re gonna want to because they're pricks but it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

[tiny_dancer81]

"When I bite, it's usually in the afterglow."

Theresa had made a mental note of the address because she had nothing to write on, and this was a good sign. She did need a place to crash where she'd be safe and anonymous until she could get above ground, and she really did think Daniel was okay. She'd been green herself once, it wasn't a crime.

And this one probably wouldn't ask her to blow him for the privilege of sleeping on his sofa, not if he was wrapped up with some human.

"It's five minutes til two," the brunette told her companion. "I'm probably going to be out of here if the owner of this car turns out to be a straight male, so I can leave you to your dinner. Take their cash, leave the plastic. I hope you know at least that much."

[daniel_stacy]

He smirked. “I’m not a total idiot.”

Actually, he was, because half the time he forgot to strip their wallets.

Daniel pushed off the Dodge. “Adios." He saluted. "Good luck with your sales or your killing, whatever comes first.” He set off in the direction of the stairwell. Last call meant more than just wasted tourists; it meant tired employees meandering to their cars.

He had an appointment with the bottom level of the deck.

[tiny_dancer81]

She gave him a wave, then smoothed her hair into place. She really missed mirrors. If she got lucky, or let someone else get lucky, she'd have money for some new clothes. Party girls had to look good if they wanted to get paid.