Deirdre leaves the corpses of the three hoods in the little park, her rage temporarily sated.  It is nearing three in the morning now.  It's either really late or really early, depending on what sort of person you are.  The club closes up at two, but Harry should still be finishing cleaning up the place.  He usually takes his good old time, and on most nights doesn't get out until nearly four.

Out back there's a small concrete ramp that leads out to what Harry jokingly calls the "service entrance."  Really it's just the back door of the storeroom, where Harry keeps the mops and brooms, the drink freezer, and all the extra sound equipment.  The door at the bottom of the ramp is open in the balmy early summer evening, held by a rusty tin garbage can.  Quietly, cat-like she slips in.  She closes the door behind her and locks it with the two deadbolts.  She can hear Harry in the main room singing...very loudly, and very off-key.

She shuffles through the back room, and stops just inside the doorway behind the bar that leads into the main common room of the club.  She watches Harry for a few minutes, singing Journey and dancing around with the mop.  On any other night the sight might have brought a smirk to her face.  If only his patrons could see him now...

"Don't stop, belieeeevin!" Harry sings loudly as he mops up the sticky floor of the bar.  He whirls around and gives a cry of surprise and jumps back as he sees Deirdre in the doorway.

"Jesus Christ girl!  Don't you know not to sneak up on a man my age.  Could give me a heart attack."  He pants for a few moments, hand over his chest as he catches his breath.  Then he sees the girl's face, and he knows something is wrong.  "What's the matter?  I wasn't expectin' to see you tonight like you said...somethin' happen?"  The girl's face is taut, drawn thin.  She looks like she's about to cry...or scream, he can't quite tell.  Maybe both.  "Here, sit down," he says, pulling a stool out.  He pulls out his keys and unlock the liquor cupboard.  "Lemme get you a drink, you look like you need it."

She shakes her head and remains leaning against the doorframe.  "No thanks."  She sighs.  She doesn't quite know why she came over here.  It was reflexive, automatic.  But now that she's here, she knows what she has to do.  The night's events have made that all too clear.

"Harry...we do need to talk.  Maybe you should sit down for this."

Harry can see that she's dead serious.  He's used to Deirdre looking a little morose, but this is something different altogether.  He has a pit in his stomach as he walks around the bar and hops onto the stool he'd pulled out himself.  This girl was really beginning to worry him.  In the short while he's known her, she's really grown on him.  He's too much of a professed cynic to admit it even to himself, but somewhere deep inside, he probably loves this girl.  

Deirdre runs her fingers through her hair and forces a sigh out.  She doesn't know quite how to say this, how to break it open.  If she says anything its going to be silly and stupid.  She's not even sure she's allowed to do this...No, scratch that.  She doesn't care if she's allowed or not.  

"Listen, Harry...there's a lot you don't know about me.  A secret life I lead which you have no idea about.  And now...now it looks like I'm in some trouble and I'm going to need your help."

"Hey, if its something with drugs or anything like that, believe me you can tell me."  Harry's never had any specific confirmation, but he's fairly certain Deirdre uses.  In this atmosphere, this lifestyle, who doesn't?  "If you need to pay someone off, I suppose I can lend you some money.  I know a few of the other club owners in the city, I can get you some more gigs in the next few weeks.  Whatever you need, just ask."  Harry's not used to sticking his neck out all the time like this, but there are those few in his life who he'd gladly give and arm to help.  And Deirdre is one of those people.  "Listen," he looks down at his feet as if embarassed.  "Now, you don't ever repeat this to anyone you hear," he chuckles nervously.  "But if I had a girl of my own...well, I wouldn't mind her being any like you."

Deirdre knows that's the closest the tough-facaded clubowner will ever get to saying "You're a daughter to me."  It's touching, and Deirdre gives a sad little smile.  She doesn't know quite how he'll feel after this.

"No Harry, it isn't drugs.  Nothing like that.  It's something...different."  She turns her head and stares off into the distance.  This has been one strange and hellish night, and now this is just one more thing on top of it all.

"I've...been part of something for several years.  Something...dark...and secret.  Something I've hidden from everyone, because...well, really no one would understand...or believe.  And if they did, well, then I'd most likely be dead."

Harry shifts in his seat.  Deirdre's words are doing nothing for his anxiety, nor are they lifting any of the mystery.  If anything, she is only shrouding herself in more and more of an enigma.  "Listen," he says.  "Just come out and say it.  Whatever it is, I'll stick by ya.  Just stop beating around the bush."

Deirdre forces a deep, heavy sigh from her dead lungs.  "Harry, how much do you believe in the supernatural?"

"What do you mean, like ghosts and such?" His brow creases.  He's very confused by Deirdre's seemingly abrupt switch in topic.  "I never really thought long and hard about it.  But I guess there are some things which just can't be explained straight off by science.  I suppose there might be 'something out there.'  Why, what does that have anything to do with anything?"

She's never told anyone else this before, and now that she thinks of it, it all sounds ludicrous -- never mind that this has been the fact of her life for some twenty years.  

"Harry, I'm a vampire."  She says it frankly and simply.  No menacing growl, no sonorous, portentous tone.  Just the straight fact of the undead.

Harry's face falls for a minute.  His brow knits in confusion.  And then he cracks a smile.  "Jesus girl you had me worried there.  You got some weird sense of humor on you, scaring an old man like that."  He chuckles.  "So what is this, some new gimick?Sorry to say, but it has been done before...the vampire rock star, Lestat and all that.  I dunno, could work if you give it a new spin.  But Christ, you had me worrying there for a minute."

She sighs.  Yeah, she was expecting that kind of reaction.  The whole deal sounds stupid even to her.  What more could she have expected from Harry?  Ghosts, he could believe in no problem.  Aliens, definitely.  Maybe even Big Foot and Nessie.  But vampires?  VAMPIRES?!  That's just silly.

She takes out the switchblade she took from one of the kid's in the park earlier that night.  "I'm serious, Harry.  I know it sounds unbelievable, I know it sounds like some cliche goth-rock gimick.  But I'm serious."  She rolls up the sleeve of her jacket, and stabs the knife into her arm.

"Hey!" he shouts, shooting up from the stool.  What the hell is wrong with her tonight?  He's never seen her like this.  One minute she sneaks up on him, the next minute she's talking serious, then making cracks about being vampire...and now this.  He reaches over the bar and grabs the knife, yanking it out of her arm. "What the hell is wrong with you!"

As Harry pulls the knife out of her arm, she feels the power of the blood flow through her.  The vampiric vitality which sustains her corpse-body knits together dead flesh and multiplies dead cells.  The wound closes over, leaving pale unmarred flesh where the open gash had been moments before.

She looks up at Harry with sad green eyes, who stands there with his mouth hanging open, the knife still in his hand.  "See?" she says.  "I'm not human.  What exactly I am, I don't know.  But we call ourselves vampires."

Harry stands flabbergasted.  He can't speak.  He can only stare at the spot on Deirdre's arm where the gash was just moments before.  He still can't believe what she's saying, even though what he just saw breaks all his concepts of physiology and human endurance.  "I...you...we?  How-how many of...you...are there?"  Surprisingly, he is not frightened by this.  Not really.  Dumbfounded, yes.  Incredibly, incredibly confused, yes.  But not really frightened.  Somehow, deep down inside, he knows Deirdre will not harm him.  No matter what she is.

"I'm not quite sure how many of us there are, worldwide or anything.  But we're all around, as far as I know.  There's a good population of us in this city.  I'm not the only one.  Actually, I just..." she trails off, deciding not to go there.  It would not be  good to spill too many secrets tonight, and moreover her mind is still reeling over the events of the court at Elysium.

She come around the bar and leans against the counter.  "For all I know, we've existed since the beginning of man.  We have our own societies, our own laws."  And that reminds Deirdre of the most principal of them.  "You cannot tell anyone else of this.  If you do, both our lives are at stake.  Secrecy is our greatest tenet.  Humans cannot know we exist."  

--Last edited by Tara532 on 2008-05-28 13:56:31 --

Harry slumps back onto the stool, a little shocked over it all.  He's still not really quite believing the whole business.  "So...there are vampires, all over the world.  You're one of them.  And you can't let people know you exist," he says trying to let it all sink in, like repeating a school lesson.  "So...where does that leave me?"  He still can't think that she'll do anything to him.  But there has to be a reason she's telling him all this, especially if as she said, her life is endangered by the telling.  And then, it dawns on him.  "You're...you're not going to make me...one of...you?"  He has to admit that the thought of it is both frightening and enticing.  But more of the former than the latter.  He's not quite sure he'd be ready to give up living, if all the legends about vampires are true.

She shakes her head and gives him a weak smile.  "No, not that at all.  Actually, by our laws, I can't give you the Embrace without permission from our prince."

"Prince?  You mean you have a vampire king running around?  Like Dracula or something?  Or that Alia girl in Queen of the Damned?"  Now he is really confused by all this.  His head feels like it's swimming, overloaded with epiphanies and secrets, like someone trying to cram the whole extent of world history into his brain in a five-minute lecture.