Zi slipped past a big sweaty man jumping up and down with a hand in the air. Someone shoved their shoulder against hers and Zi’s silk shirt brushed against his skin making her expression darken with disgust. This place, this hellish pit, attracted her just as much as it repulsed her. It was a magnificent new world, hidden from the eyes not by gates and music but by walls and beat.

She hated it because the vibrating thuds settled deep inside her chest and dictated the beat of her heart. It was anything but sophisticated, it was barbaric, primal. It overpowered the sad sound of the Violin that constantly hummed in her heart. She loved it for that. Intoxicating like a sweet substance it trickles not inside your veins but inside your very essence. It confuses, controls, erases.

Another shove took her out of her trance. There was no dodging that here, not with so many people, not without becoming too obvious. But none of those people mattered right now… and in a sense, they all did. The bar appeared out of nowhere like a rock emerging from the waves of the raging sea. Before the push of the next wave came, Zi pushed herself up and sat on the cold surface, right between two men. They eyed her, gaze running slowly up the ankle boots, past the bare skin on her legs, reached the folds of the loose silky tunic where treasures would be hidden and paused. Then moved in unison up the light fabric, again slowing around her chest area and exposed shoulder. 

Then they started moving down again.

She was dressed like a girl ready to party, they concluded.

In a sense she was.

The older man reached out and slid a hand up her bare leg.

Not in that sense.

Zi’s hand rudely slapped his away and the girl pierced the man with a glare that made his hand recoil further than the slap took it.

“Woah!” the man exclaimed.

“I’m waiting for someone.” Zi smirked a not-exactly-discouraging smirk.

In a sense she was.

The man seemed annoyed and removed himself from the seat. Zi honored that by resting her boots on his seat.

The young man on her left chuckled and Zi shifted part of her attention from the crowd to him. She didn’t remove her gaze from the people dancing but she did listen.

“Way to go, missy. That’s how you handle the old fucks.” The word “missy” made her smirk.

“Old fucks have money. Can you say the same for yourself?” She asked amused.

“Youth has other advantages. You seem to know that.” The young man countered. Zi had to wonder if she really knew. All the advantages of youth she could think of were Hazumi - “dense”, “naïve” and “dysfunctional”. On second thought, they didn’t even sound like advantages. [i]Oh.[/i] she realized then. He was talking about mating.

“Yes, it does.” She agreed half-heartedly, losing interest in the conversation and shifting her attention entirely back to the crowd. The young man continued chatting but it didn’t matter anymore. Nor did the hand he placed on her tight that met the same fate like the previous one. What mattered was that right [i]there[/i] was a person she needed to talk to.

Zi slipped off the bar and made her way to the couple. She could feel the bartender’s gaze stuck to her back like a fly. The couple went out the back door and Zi followed. Back doors were a wonderful thing, she thought, as were the narrow alleys beyond them. The beat of the facility swallowed the noise of traffic and the pushing darkness dimmed the lights. It made her hair prickle. The couple moved only a few feet away before succumbing to the desire to kiss each other senseless. Zi stayed at the door, lighting a cigarette. The smoke entered her and tangled around her lungs like a warm caress. She exhaled with a sigh, watching the smoke go up and slowly dissolve into nothing. She didn’t think of the Gatekeepers. The burning cigarette counted a few long minutes.

“Do you intend on stopping?”

The sound of her voice startled the man whose catch rest breathlessly in his arms and he lifted his gaze to her, exposing his bloodied fangs. He hissed possessively and proceeded with his messy business. Zi didn’t like killing children, of any race. But once in a while she had to.

As the hidden dagger revealed itself to pierce the vampire’s heart Zi had an unpleasant flashback that made her face cringe. She could do with less of Hazumi’s memories. Shoving the body away she rested the girl on the ground and reached for the white box behind the bins. She took out some bandage to swab up the rest of the blood and then used a cotton tampon soaked in hydrogen peroxide to clean the wound. He had been decent and patient enough to only go for her lips. The girl was going to be fine and go on with her life with the happy memory of a great night with a mysterious stranger who left her lips swollen and her mind drunk. She would wake up on a chair in the club and go home on her own accord, unsuspecting that she’d just lost a third of her blood and the future with a vampire she had a brief crush on. Maybe they could have worked out, Zi thought as she dialed the bartender’s number and stepped back, allowing the man to carefully lift the girl and retreat with her to the facility. Maybe he was the son of an elderly couple using up all their savings to get him through college. Maybe he had been decent before he’d met the girl whose blood he couldn’t resist.

Maybe.

“Rest in peace.” Zi uttered the neutral prayer and slipped back into the intoxicating light of a hundred fake suns.