Time: Night
Location: The Pit
Interaction with: His very first shot of whiskey
Noah had thought that they would leave after disposing of bodies but this was not the case. Silas grabbed Noah by the back of the neck and quickly shoved him through the side door and into the thunderous room of The Pit. The club’s music rattled around in his head and the lights inside strobed and flashed. Random faces lit up for fractions of a second, not long enough for him to focus on one but forcing his eyes to dart wildly around as each sweat covered meal was lit up under colorful spotlights. Nothing stayed in focus, there were swarms of people everywhere and every single body in the room smelled like dinner. Even after having just eaten the overwhelming scent of warmth, sweat, and lust caused his vampiric hunger to claw its way back up his throat. He didn’t understand how other vampire’s hunted here, how they could control the vampire instinct when everything about The Pit seemed designed to strip control away. Noah had never really learned control to begin with, the only thing that stopped him from massacring every living thing that crossed his path was a desire to please his clan and its leader.
As he stood frozen and wide eyed he felt his hand being pried open and something forced into his hand, startling him out of his trace-like state. Noah stared for a second at the objects placed in his hand, a dark pair of sunglasses and two strange squishy things. He then looked back at Silas and tilted his head in confusion. The older vampire gestured to his ears and it look another few seconds before Noah understood what the squishy things were; ear plugs. He twisted the ear plugs into his ears and put on the dark tinted sunglasses. He slowly realized why Silas had shoved him into The Pit, it was just like when he was a child and his older cousin had pushed him into a pool to teach him how to swim. Sometimes you either sink or you swim and Noah had learned to swim that day. And now he would learn to walk around with the humans in their noise pit, and he would learn control.
“Better?” Silas asked. Noah could still hear the vampire but the volume of everything in the club had now been turned down, and the lights where much less distracting. He nodded slowly in response, more able to focus than before as the distractions of the club dull slightly. His hunger for blood still gnawed at him, and the smell of the place was still overwhelming but now he at least could hear his own thoughts over all the noise. It was then that Sierra appeared holding small glasses that clearly did not contain blood. He hadn’t even noticed when she had left but he took the glass offered to him and starred at it. The other two vampires were drinking from their glasses so Noah did the same, although he wasn’t sure why he would drink anything that wasn’t blood. What purpose would that serve?
The dark liquid burned its way down his throat in an entirely different way than the hunger burned. It quieted his hunger for blood just enough to that it wasn’t the only thought that occupied his mind, and sent a warming sensation throughout his normally cold skin. He starred at the empty glass thinking, at first, that it was some sort of witch potion but upon smelling it recognized it as something his father would occasionally drink. Whiskey. Noah had never had alcohol before, and he decided that while it paled in comparison to blood, he still liked it. Noah looked up from the small shot glass and grinned. Sierra responded by clapping her hands in amusement and plucking the shot glass from his hand. He followed her back to the bar where they got more whiskey.
The whiskey helped Noah relax more, and after some time the club seemed less and less unbearable. He watched how the humans acted in the club, doing his best to imitate them, trying to seem less out of place than he normally did around his prey. He was understanding the point of the exercise; to be a better vampire he would have to learn to blend in, and he had to learn quickly in order to locate more witches if he wanted to find Drake’s lost pet. It had been a long time since he had been around so many people, and all of his normal human experience had ended at fourteen. From then until he became a vampire, he was nothing more than cattle in a cage. He held no ill-will towards his captors, as that experience had led him towards his elevated state; a vampire. It did, however, make blending in with other humans particularly challenging for Noah. After being turned his vampire conditioning consisted of only how to kill and torture, which he greatly enjoyed, but was also not a huge help in blending in with his prey. This experience gave him a chance to watch the humans, as well as hunt them, and to work on his ability to focus and control himself. All while not having to have too much interaction with his prey, it was clear that no one came to The Pit to make conversation. This realization made Noah see The Pit as a new training ground, rather than the dreadful place he had thought.
Time: Evening
Location: Ember Grove University-Art Exhibit
Interaction with: Shay
@PotterElias continued with his attempt at understanding the whole art scene, carefully studying each painting as he wondered around the rest of the exhibit. The only one he’d found to be truly interesting was the one that had apparently been vandalized earlier in the evening with a moustache drawn onto the woman and horns and a tail on the baby. That one made him chuckle slightly, and he wondered if it was some sort of protest against the artist. He found himself more interested in the people watching than he did the art appreciating though, and at least the people walking around looked far less miserable than the one’s inside the portraits. He caught sight of a redhead who shot him a wink and while his first impression would’ve been ‘vampire bait,’ with the blood red hair and eye-catching outfit, he noted that she moved with the fierce determination of someone on the hunt. Possibly another hunter, or judging by her clothes, vampire seemed pretty likely, but his attention was soon drawn elsewhere.
A nearby pair engaged in a heated bidding war over one of the paintings, heated enough that it ended in the older man being escorted out of the exhibit. Eli certainly hadn’t expected an art showing to need security, or even be all that exciting, but apparently the art crowd was rowdier than he thought. The other half of the bidding war, a college aged woman, returned just after the man was led out of the building, to try and by the ridiculously expensive piece of art. From what he overheard it was a staggering eight thousand dollars for the thing, which was a whole hell of a lot more than his beat-up old truck had cost him. Seeing as how she seemed more than eager to drop that kind of dough on one painting, he figured she’d be the one to ask about the art.
“Interesting choice of dorm décor, college isn’t depressing enough?” He said jokingly as he approached the woman who was intent on purchasing a painting.
“But to be fair I can’t say I know a thing about art. Hey, since you seem like you’re here to buy, maybe you can help enlighten me on what the appeal is of dozens of paintings of people who look so sad? I’m trying to broaden my horizons and all, but not sure I really get this particular horizon.” He asked, though as he rambled on, wine tended to make him rather chatty, he noticed she seemed on edge and maybe he’d picked out the wrong art fan to chat with.