Chloé

*That old saying ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ is such bullshit. What happens when life gives you a damn kick in the balls? Not that I have any mind you … but you get my drift. It has been a long line of unfortunate events year after year … it's enough to make a vampire voluntarily go out into the sun. 

I don’t mean to complain but shit … it’s difficult not to just so fuck it to the world. I was once born into the world of the Glymera, though we were ranked towards the bottom of the infamous totem pole of rankings. But my parents had once been able to attend the race’s lavish parties and hobnobbed with the members of the founding families. I had just transitioned and was supposed to have my presentation to society but fate had other plans.

Somehow we lost all of our fortunes and were ruined by Montrag, son of Rehm. My father was going to start a business with him, but instead, Montrag swindled him out of the partnership and he had to sign over all his properties. Members of the Glymera were supposed to observe rigid codes of behavior but apparently money and power always trumped justice. But that was the Glymera for you. Double standards abounded. That’s not even the worst part. My poor mahmen I felt died of embarrassment and humiliation, though the doctors would state it was a heart attack. As there was nothing that the aristocrats loved more than a scandal, what could be more fun than watching another family’s downfall? The entire family had to hear the hushed backstabbing comments from various members and endless rejections due to our new humble status. Soon after, my father’s health deteriorated under all the stress and loss of his mate. Leaving my brother and me alone. We were basically homeless after spending our last few remaining dollars on the burial of my parents. 

I remained incensed to the point of rage about them and their standards, but it wasn’t like I could line up that judgmental bunch of bullshit aristocrats and yell at them. Living independently from all that had been a far more healthy and successful strategy so we moved to Charleston, South Carolina to the other civilian community where we had a distant cousin with whom we could stay and start fresh.

It had been a struggle having to start over, no friends, no money. I had to learn to cook, clean, go grocery shopping, everything I had taken for granted in the past because we had doggen to do all of that. Though it has been about twenty years since we lost our fortune and parents, it still stings today when I think about it.

Since then, my brother found a dangerous but lucrative way to make enough money for us to get our own two-bedroom apartment. He found a private vampire club that had an underground fighting ring where civilians are conscripted to beat the shit out of each other while the Glymera make money on bets. We even found out that they had caged Wolfen species on-premise as well. Think Brad Pitt with fangs or claws and the human movie Fight Club … but sometimes to the death. My brother found a position for me as the assistant to the special events coordinator that handled everything to do with their high spending “whales”. 

I learned how to communicate with the whales, book their rooms or reservations, and obtain whatever they needed. Anything from expensive cigars and liquors, flying in special foods or fruits from different countries to finding females for feeding or sex. I learned the ropes pretty quickly and the whales began to prefer me to handle them instead of my boss, probably because I was a female with a pretty face. Eventually, last year I became the coordinator when my predecessor suddenly disappeared.

I kept my ears open for tidbits of information that may be useful to my brother and me. As a female, I apparently didn’t pose any threat and faded into the background so I overheard tons of stuff from the flunkies to the whales to the bosses. Growing up in the Glymera, I knew secrets were a currency that I could take advantage of to regain our status and raise it even higher than it had been before our fall from grace. The females were especially gossipy and tended to disregard me when I handled their requests. They were a rich resource that also dealt in secrets and couldn’t keep their mouths shut about their hellren’s affairs - intimate or business. It was surprising that both the females and their males paid me extra to keep my own mouth shut about their bouts of ring around the bed-chamber.