#amerix

Coryss took a glance down. Luckily he hadn’t He did feel dry though, all the way through. “Fun? You’re supposed to be dead!”

“Yes, I know,” Ulris waltzed passed them, ignoring the knife and whatever Amerix was making, and sat on the glass desk, too casual to really care about whatever they were up to. “It’s a bit of a parlor trick. I was so excited when I found out I could do it. Not all vampires can, you know. Found that out the hard way.”

“They found your head at the party,” Coryss breathed. His breathing was labored, his throat parched. “The police said you were dead.”

Ulris opened his eyes further and gave them a ‘no duh’ look. “I didn’t want to go to prison. You know what they do to vampires in prison? It’s quite dreadful and I’m far too important, and pretty, for that.”

Coryss didn’t know what happened to vampires in prison. He didn’t really care.

“So you just, played dead until they left?”

“Yes, well the mortician owed me a favor so it really was quite easy.”

“And you decided not to answer the door, just to wait around and yell boo at us?”

He crossed his legs. They didn’t seem to have the same kind of damage as his arms. “Like I said, it’s fun. Whenever I die people come by, break in, try to loot the place. I’ve learned to, not so much let them, but to see how much they can take. You did very well, even with that little breakdown in the hall and the sigil you put on my fish tank. You are going to have to undo that though, my darlings don’t deserve that.”

Coryss chanced a glance at Amerix. She waved him off. Something for later then.

“You aren’t like other looters, it seems,” Ulris put a black nail against his black lips. “You came here looking for information, something important.”

Coryss froze. He didn’t know how Ulris would react to his need, what he’d come here for. At best he’d be laughed at, at worst, Ulris would decide to protect Julian’s information by killing them both. They were trespassing and Coryss was armed, still, with a silver dagger. He could easily pass their deaths off as self defense.

“Um, well, uh,” Coryss started. He sucked on his lip and tried again. “We were looking for information on Julian Nakamura.”

Ulris cracked his neck, thought better of it, and pushed his head more solidly into place. “Julian? That’s an odd reason to break into someone’s home. If you had come during the day my gardener would have gotten it for you. That’s a minor thing to trespass for.”

Coryss ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t think there’d be a gardener.”

Ulris leaned back and opened a drawer, pulling out a post-it note and a pen from his desk. He quickly wrote down the information that they had come for. Feeling a bit silly now, Coryss picked up the sheath and put the dagger in his pocket. Amerix followed his lead, though she kept her hand on her fanny pack just in case.

“Why do you wish to bother our poor introvert, anyway?”

Coryss lowered his head. He felt shame at it, suddenly, like this was something so beneath what vampires would find important. “They saved my life, recently, and that of my friends. I made a deal with them, to help us and I would give myself to them.”

Ulris stared at him for a long moment before bursting into a violent sort of laughter. It was a laughter that showed off all of his narrow and sharp teeth. They were the kind of teeth that scraped against the jugular, that itched after they grazed the skin, that threatened to tear the throat out. Coryss felt like he knew them far too intimately. He froze, taking a single step backward. He was dressed now, lucid, and not pretending to be something that he wasn’t. Still, a fear blossomed in him that Ulris would recognize him as one of those he had drank from just the other night.

“And what, pray tell, do you think they would do with you?”

Ulris held out the post-it note to him then and he snatched it, trying to be close to him as little as possible. He didn’t think he could stand the concept, of being touched by Ulris again, now that he knew which of those at the party he was. He didn’t ever want to see Ulris again.

Ulris had other plans and he rolled his wrist, sliding forward an inch, and caught Coryss by the hand. He helped himself to his feet and drew terribly close, so close that Coryss could feel the lack of breath against his cheek. He shuddered, closing his eyes and, as if on some kind of instinct, bared his heavily bandaged throat.

“They would do nothing with you that you desire, if they do anything with you at all. You think that a vampire is tame, because they do something nice, every once in a while, but while Julian is leashed they are also the hungriest of us. You know what happens when you try to pet a starved dog, yes?”

Sweating, panicked, Coryss nodded.

“Julian is always feeding and yet always feeding. And you, well, you smell delicious and oh so familiar.”

Amerix put her hand, gently, on Ulris’ wrist. He snarled and hissed, releasing Coryss’ hand immediately. She followed him, still holding onto his wrist, until he was once more sitting on his desk, as the veins of his arm and hand turned black and prominent.

“I think that’s enough of that, don’t you?” Amerix threatened. When she released his wrist there were welts that had cracked and were bleeding a thick dark ichor. The wounds were in the shape of some of her rings.

“Yes, indeed,” Ulris sniffled as he shook his wrist, trying to shake off the effect of the silver. “Don’t be strangers, now.”

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Amerix decided, placing her hand on Coryss’ back and turning him towards the door. “It was absolutely awful meeting you.”

Ulris didn’t show any signs of insult to that and waved them off with his uninjured hand. Amerix kept her hand on Coryss’ back as she led them out of the workspace and back into the sitting room. The door was barely closed behind her when she grit out a simple, “Yep, I was right. I hate this guy.”

[Coryss 2:43am] Hey, I found something. Through the library, right through the hall, and through the sitting room.

There was only a few seconds of waiting before his phone dinged.

[Amerix 2:44am] Good. I’ve found nothing. I’ll head your way.

With that settled he went to the desk, searching through it. He could see into the top drawers due to the glass counter, but under that he really had to dig. There were journal entries, photos of people, some of them with red skulls drawn in the corner, and all sorts of odds and ends. Some were sewing utensils, some were misplaced, tools, and there were even some loose keys. There were files, including ones on plans for the house, which had a map and photos from different time periods, and a very thick one on one Cascadia Grimish, which he barely glanced at for more than a name. In the bottom drawer, on the left side, were more papers, these showing great signs of water damage. There was a box, which was locked with a smaller key than any of the others he’d seen yet.

Something moved.

He dropped the box, glancing around the room. He wasn’t sure what it was, but something had definitely moved. He went over all of it with his flashlight, trying to figure out what. It could have been his imagination, he was already feeling on edge. There was a window in here, a big one, and those trees outside left long claw like shadows in the moonlight. It was easy to expect what wasn’t there.

Leaving the desk behind, he started to wander to the toolbox. It didn’t make much sense for an address to be saved there, but he didn’t want to leave anything unturned, just in case.

A hand reached out and caught his arm, cold and clammy and dead. He screeched, pulling himself away as best he could. The hand clutched him tight, muscles tight with rigor mortis. He kicked out, not at the dress form, but at the undead thing that had been standing there, just pretending, just standing still, all that while. It let go of him easily enough, falling to the side and stumbling a bit. It wasn’t stopped, it wasn’t even deterred, but it was off of him. He looked around, but there was only one door out of there and he was going to have to run past it to get out.

“Shit!” he called out, “Amerix!”

She couldn’t have been far. She knew magic. She could help him.

He swung his backpack around to his front as the body righted itself. It ran a hand over its stomach, wiping off the grime he’d kicked onto it. He grit his teeth, cursing himself. He was an idiot. There was no reason for him to have hidden the knife in the backpack. It was no use to him in there.

The body rolled its shoulders and then its hips, joints popping. Now that he was paying more attention to it he could see that the arms were sewed on at different intervals, the stitches thick and black. The skin surrounding the cuts, including the one of the neck, was rotted and greenish. Coryss had heard of a lot of creatures, things that, before the joining, were considered monsters, but he’d never heard of something like this.

He whimpered as the thing approached him, walking slowly, jerkily, like something from an old horror movie. He was digging past the snacks, trying to get to what he needed. He shouldn’t of put it on the bottom either. He was going to die. He was going to be torn apart by this undead thing, and it was all because he’d put his knife at the bottom of his bag.

It veered off though, inches away from him, the moment he got his hand on the sheath of the dagger. It suddenly lost interest in him, shakily walking towards the refrigerator instead. He didn’t take that as a breather though, he drew the knife and freed it of it’s sheath, tossing the leather to the ground. He was going to be ready.

There was a pounding on the door. Amerix was there. She had really come to rescue him. She’d probably heard him screaming like he was being murdered already. There was a crack and small explosive sound. She was going to get through. She was going to get to him.

The headless body was opening the refrigerator. He didn’t know why. He thought that he was the target here. He wondered if he should go after it, be on the offensive, attack it.

The fridge had a few blood packs in it but those weren’t what was important. What was, was the head. It was a head that Coryss recognized. It had a bowl cut of black hair, too much black makeup and black tears trickling down from the eyes. The eyes, as well, were black, aside from the bright red irises. The body grabbed the head by the hair and pulled it out of the fridge, turning and holding it out like it was the head of Medusa, aiming those all wrong eyes at Coryss.

The door flew open, smoking on the other side, and Amerix stumbled in from her own momentum.

“I thought you were dead, you numbskull!” she growled as she made it to Coryss’ side.

He didn’t answer, just kept shaking, pointing at the thing in front of him with the knife. She followed his aim and gasped, digging deep into her fanny pack.

The corpse pulled the head back and gently placed it on the stump of it’s throat. It held it there with one hand as another went to a pocket in the gown. It came back with a collar, which it wrapped around the slice separating the two pieces and synched it tight.

“You should have seen your faces!” Ulris cackled once his head was back on straight, curving his back and laughing to the ceiling. “Oh that was priceless, it really was.”

Amerix had pulled out a long strip of wood, almost the full length of the pack, and a small vile of water, which she was about to pour on the wood. “What?”

A slight shifting, sound from within one of the stalls, but nothing else. There was blood dripping onto the floor, pooling around the porcelain. Julian was certain that any janitorial staff hated cleaning the restrooms of such establishments but would find this even more deplorable than usual.

They went to the first door and took the handle, tugging on it hard enough to tear the lock out of the door. The human on the other side yelped as the metal clattered onto the floor and they were revealed to Julian.

He pulled his long thin legs up, covering his body with them. He was nude, as were the rest of the humans, and his mess of curly hair was plastered to his head from where blood had pulled. His skin was pale from blood loss and he was shaking from the cold. His eyes were bloodshot, making the blue of them almost glow in comparison. His wrists had been cut multiple times and the blood oozed from the wounds as he pressed them close to his legs.

“I’m sorry!” the man chirped, “I’m sorry I hid. Please, don’t hurt me!”

Julian cocked their head, looking the man over. This was terrible etiquette for a thrall, but thralls didn’t fear the loss of blood, did not hide from their kind, did not cower at the concept of pain. Something was terribly wrong.

“You are not one of Ulris’,” Julian thought aloud. “Where did he fetch you?”

The man shook his head, gasping. He was in bad shape. Judging by the bruise forming on his arm he was the one who had been holding the door closed, meaning he was in the best shape of all of them. Julian left him then, going to the sink to gather some paper towels and to soak them in the warmest water they could get. They allowed it to drip down their arm as they returned, not kneeling on the filthy floor but bending down to reach out for the human’s cheek.

“How would I hurt you with this?” Julian reminded when the human flinched away from the paper. “If I wanted you hurt, you would be hurt. There would be no stopping me.”

The didn’t calm the human at all but he did force himself still, to allow Julian to wipe some of the grim and blood from his wrists and face.

“Why are you doing this?” the human asked, lip shaking.

“I hate Ulris’ parties. Truly, I find these things distasteful. You are of interest to me, you are not a thrall, not completely, and that is upsetting in many ways.”

He shook his head, shoulders tense but loosening a little bit. “We aren’t. The three of us. We aren’t thralls. We didn’t agree to this. Please, can you get us out of here?”

Julian sucked on their fangs, thinking that over. They really needed to find out where Ulris had gathered the thralls. If they were on rent, the most likely of options, then the company that procured them could be shut down for such an incident. Julian didn’t know how they felt about that. They had never been a fan of such business practices but they also had a reputation to keep. Bringing ruin upon an organization that brought ‘fun’ to so many would only make Julian detested by the others of their race.

The freckles on the man’s face were dark and there was blood in the pores of his skin. He was going to have to exfoliate heavily to get all of that out. He was handsome though.

“I’m not certain of that. Sneaking you out would be impossible,” Julian mused, “And I was hoping to leave soon, if not immediately.”

“Please?” The man kept saying that but now his hand shot out to gab at Julian’s wrist. “Please, I’ll sign whatever contracts you need, you can make me a thrall or you could just bleed me dry, I don’t care! I don’t matter. I’ll do whatever you want to get Tali and Nico out of here.”

Julian raised an eyebrow. “Are those the other two who are hiding away in here?”

The man stiffened but he did nod.

Julian considered it for a moment. It had been a long time since they’d had a thrall of their own and while the man was handsome beneath all of the grime, they didn’t know if they wanted him in that way. How many had drank from him before in this night alone? Then again, he did say that he would do anything.

“My name is Julian Nakamura,” Julian introduced, showing their fangs. “And you are?”

He stumbled over his own name when he gave it, both from fear and from blood loss. “Coryss Maltho.”

“Well, Coryss, luckily for you I am having a dreadful time at this party.”

Coryss was confused by that, his eyelids drooping heavily. He looked on the verge of collapse. Julian had to assume that it was because of his blood loss. They ran a thumb over his jaw, watching how his adam’s apple jumped and a sound caught in his throat. Perhaps later, once he was no longer on the verge of fainting Julian would drink from him but right now he was a cesspit from all of those other touches.

“Remain here, take care of the others,” Julian instructed, “and I will be just a moment.”

Coryss leaned in against their hand. He was flushed, skin too hot. He felt alive. His pulse was pounding enough for Julian to feel it throughout their body. “You’re leaving us?”

“For the moment,” Julian promised, “I presume you will all die if I do not.”

That got Coryss to pull away, leaning his head on the cold tile behind him. “I fear we may all be dead regardless.”

“Nonsense!” Julian flashed him a grin, full of fangs. “If you were dead I would not be bothering with you.” They stood up to their full meager height and turned from Coryss, walking out of the bathroom stall and making their way back to the dance floor. They wondered if there were some better way that they could barricade the door, to prevent anyone else from finding the humans. If there were, it did not truly matter, since there was hardly a reason for anyone to want to go in there.

The song had changed but other than that there had been no alteration in the time in which Julian was absent. They looked around the room, not able to see what they were looking for at such a glance and then took in a deep breath, opening their senses. They could smell the blood of the thralls, even through the door, the blood at the bar, in its accurate packaging, and the blood of those on the dance floor. The blood f the other vampires was clearly different from the rest and easy to ignore, the smell more metallic and rough. The smell that they were looking for was near by, but still buried beneath a few rows of partiers, smelling more perfumed and spiced, myrrh and cumin among the rabble.

They headed towards it, pushing through the crowd with a bit more force than they had before, more of a need. They kept their drip stand close to them, clutching it like a cane on uneven soil, and tried not to let those touching him, drunk off of excess, touch them for too long.

Wandering through the crowd, much less anxious than Julian, was a young women, possibly even a teenager, wearing a posture collar with silver threaded through it. She had a large belt bag wrapped around her waist and her long brown and blonde streaked hair was pulled away from her face. She wore a shirt that said, “Safety Sorcery” on the front and a list of services that she provided on the back. Julian didn’t know when Safety Sorcery became a thing, but they were at a lot of clubs and parties like this. Their job was to make sure that people remained safe and healthy, could get out if they needed to. She was perfect.

“Excuse me?” Julian all but shouted, reaching a hand out and placing it on her shoulder. She turned slowly, not at all surprised by their touch. “I am in need of some assistance.”

She looked them over, arms crossed over her chest. She had dark skin and broad features and the tattoos on her arms danced in the vibrant lights. “What seems to be the issue?”

“It’s a bit… confidential,” Julian admitted. They didn’t want to shout the whereabouts of three hurt humans to the entire party. “Would you allow me to escort you to the restrooms?”

At that her face scrunched up, eyebrows drawn down. “No. No, I’m not following you anywhere.”

It made sense but still Julian’s brow raised. They were against using mental prodding on people, unless they were on the level of food or less. They would much rather her help them willingly.

“I’m not the one who is in need of your assistance, honestly, and they are in terrible condition. I fear I cannot bring them to you.”

The most important thing that she brought was an address. Ulris was well known in the vampire community, just not very well liked. It wasn’t hard to find out where he came from. It was a lot harder to find Julian Nakamura.

They took a taxi there. The city was too packed, ever since the joining of the races, for anyone but the bigwigs who had nothing but time to sit in traffic. There were still rickshaws and bikes and all sorts of other vehicles though. It was hard to travel on anything but foot or bicycle a lot of the time. They went late at night though, when the vampires and fae and other nocturnal creatures roamed. The city truly never slept, there were enough people, enough different kinds of people, to need late night amenities and entertainment.

Traffic was lighter at night, even lighter when they got close to the vampires abode. It was a spacious amount of land, with black twisted trees with scratchy bark growing in spindly troves around it. There were no leaves on the trees but there were eyes, glowing and watching from between the trunks. Animals, Coryss hoped. The road was cobblestone, when everything else was paved. Amerix pretended not to be impressed. It was everything a haunted forest should have been, including the sound of wolves howling in the distance.

It was clear that their driver was nervous. He was an old imp, horns curled and fat, laying tight against his red skull. Imps were mischievous and quick, but this one must have spent most, if not all of his time, among the mundane. He kept clutching at the godling hanging from his mirror, an air freshener with googly eyes on it, shaped like a foot, and whispering prayers to it. He barely stayed long enough for Coryss to pay him before he was speeding back down the path, the glowing sign bouncing on each stone.

“I hate this guy already,” Amerix rolled her eyes, looking at the estate.

It was colder here than the rest of the city, the rest of the night. It had to be intentional, just to make the place feel spookier. It was working.

Coryss pulled his flannel closer, buttoning it. He reached for his flashlight but Amerix was quicker, pulling three crystals, amythest, from her fanny pack. With a breath they started to glow, a bright lavender light, and they floated, albeit aimlessly, around her.

“Show off,” Coryss grinned.

“You love it,” she threw him a wink.

He did. He wouldn’t deny that.

She led the way to the door and knocked on it, hand on different parts of the wood. The paint on it was peeling and the window was an inverted cross with red glass. The wood around it was old and cracking. Everything about it looked abandoned and slanted. It was a horror movie cottage, but spiraling as it rose upward, at least four stories. It was too big of a house for one person. Coryss was certain that he was right, that someone else lived with Ulris, watching over the house.

But no one was coming. They stood there for a few minutes, just waiting, but there was no one there. Not even a light turned on in the windows.

Coryss started to look around. There was no mat, not potted plants around. He couldn’t reach the gutters. “You think there’s a spare key hidden away somewhere?”

“I think,” Amerix started, speaking dramatically slowly, “that this guy really likes appearances. There’s a specific thing that always happens in scary movies that I think we should try.”

“Oh?”

She reached out and gently took the doorknob in hand. She turned it and, as she’d predicted, the door was unlocked. It was like someone wanted them to enter, was daring them. It creaked terribly as it swung inward.

“And there we go.”

The interior was very different from the exterior. While the outside was trying to be a ghost house or a witches cabin, the inside was sleek and modern. The floor was made of black tile, varnished until it was almost smooth. There was a trail through it, a red stream, only an inch thick, leading deeper. It lit up, faint but present, when they stepped inside. The walls were smooth and black metal. The hall was curved and narrow, making it impossible to tell what was coming up in the next few yards. And it was as cold as a mausoleum.

“Yep, I hate him.” Amerix took a quiet step in, her lights reflecting off of the walls, and filling them with more brightness than the light that was given to them did. It made the place feel a bit more hospitable.

“We need to find his bedroom,” Coryss decided, “or his office, if he has one. This place is huge and weird. He’s got to have an office, right?”

“Definitely, or a vault.”

They started to walk. There was nowhere to turn, no doors on the sides. There was a slight slope and they were definitely going upward, but there was nothing to break up the metal walls. There was nothing. They were walking for maybe ten minutes before Amerix stopped, sighing and rolling her shoulders as best she could while wearing a posture collar.

“Something’s wrong. We should have found something by now.”

Coryss agreed. “You think there’s a second entrance? That this one was just a red herring or something?”

“What? No, that’s stupid.”

He didn’t know. This guy seemed to really want to set a specific mood. He wouldn’t have been surprised if there were secret levers and a dungeon in the basement or something.

She pinched her brow and, not so gently, kicked the base of the wall, making a loud reverb travel down the length of it. “Oh my god, this guy’s probably a huge nerd! I should have thought of that!”

“Hidden doors?” Coryss guessed.

“Fucking hidden doors!”

The walls all looked so smooth but still the stared to run their hands along it. It wasn’t so much that they were looking for cracks, but just something. Coryss was the first to find it, the wall warmer in one space than the rest. He pushed on the warm spot and it warped under the pressure, pushing in enough to activate whatever the mechanism was. It clicked and lines appeared on either side of it, before it hissed and pushed forward and up.