“Goooood evening, ladies and gents! This is Dean Davey, coming to you blissful and wishful from my humble little studio, here in the city of sinners! You’ve tuned in to the Lonely Rambler, and we’ve got some of my faaaaaavorite records playing tonight, so don’t you go anywhere! Up next; ‘Til I Waltz Again With You’, by the gorgeous Teresa Brewer!”Nyxvira Bloodbloom sat with one leg folded over the other, plopped down on the tacky couch which stood at the centre of her cramped little apartment. The Faerie took a long drag from her joint, feeling a plume of smoke flood back into her lungs, as the sweltering california heat came rolling in through her open window.
England had its highs and its lows. America just seemed to be hot all the bloody time.
You’ve fallen far, kiddo she thought to herself, her mind wandering back into times gone by, as it so often did. Oak and redwood had given way to fumes and palm trees, and Nyxie had gone from nobility to street trash in a handful of years. She longed to be back in Surrey, back amongst the pure tranquility of her homeland, but her new world was one of concrete and grime. For Nyxie, wanting to go back home was like wanting to be back in a relationship with someone who’d fallen out of love with you. It was pointless and stupid, but she yearned for it all the same, so she kept on clinging to those shreds of her past, hoping that some miracle would fall in her lap and wipe away all her problems.
Pulling the joint away from her plump lips, Nyxie coughed a waft of smoke out into the apartment, gazing down at the bright orange lights which burned out in the darkness of Santa Somabra; like dancing embers flickering over a pile of charred wood.
She could still remember her last night in the grove with complete and utter clarity. Her siblings her come for her in the night, pulled her from her bed, and forced her down into the muddy ground. She could taste the leaves and twigs in her mouth.
“If you were smart you’d have slept with a gun.”Her eldest brother had said to her, before he stamped on her left hand and broke two of her fingers. “You never were very smart.” He’d added.
You never were very smart. That had stuck in her head.
You never were very smart.The Faerie ground her joint into the apartment wall, letting a waterfall of ash and Fairy Dust flutter to the ground, before heaving herself up off of the couch, and turning off the radio with the twist of a knob.
Nowadays, she slept with a gun. A Walther P38 which she kept on her, wherever she went.
Pulling on her chequered blazer, the full-figured young woman made her way out of the apartment, the tinge of fairy dust still fresh in her lunges.
“Evenin’, bitch.” a disgruntled looking she-orc called out as Nyxvira passed her in the corridor.
“Slag,” Nyxie shot her a quick nod, causing her red curls to wobble “taken any good dick, lately?”
“Eaten yourself to death, yet?” The Orc called after her, as the Faerie vanished down the staircase.
Draper’s Saloon had become a graveyard ever since the Nyctari seized control of the Red Light District, so the owner had taken to renting out the girl’s rooms; only after Concetto Nyctari, the runt of the vampiric litter, had pointed a gun in his face and carted his whores off to some ritzy brothel on one of the nicer streets. The Nyctari were not so-subtly trying to drive their competition out of Santa Somabra in every sense of the word, so Nyxie was paying a fraction of the rent she’d have to for living anywhere else in the city. The Nyctari storming in a putting the whole place to the torch was a very real possibility, but there was nothing in her apartment which Nyxvira Bloodbloom couldn’t live without.
After a short walk down tatty hallways with peeling wallpaper, Nyxie made her way to the bar itself, which was on the verge of disrepair. Dust coated everything, clouding the room in a musky sheet of grey speckles, and making the air taste like sickly death. The ceiling was dotted with holes, where clumps of tiling and plaster had given way, and the floor was splattered with all manner of stains; most of which Nyxie prefered not to think about.
“They tell me we won the war,” Draper, a balding man with a face that was hard to look at, grumbled from behind the bar “but here I am, surrounded by Wops, Japs, Gypos, and fucking vampires.”
“Must be the friendly service that’s drawing them in,” Nyxie smirked “or the interior decorating.”
“Up yours, Faerie,” the old man huffed “you gonna buy something, or flutter off and scoop up some kiddies?”
“Not enough room in that shit-hole apartment you’ve got me living in. Might as well have something to drink before I fly back to my toadstool, though,” The Faerie reasoned “Know how to make a Negroni?”
“Does this look like the fuckin’ Imperius to you?” Draper scowled.
“In Baal’raz’s name...I’ll just have a bloody rum, then.”
Not long after, Nyxie was sitting in front of the bar, taking small, self-pitying sips from a grubby glass full of what just about qualified as rum.
Tastes like it was made in a fucking bathtub. Suddenly, the door to the saloon flung open.
A man, crooked and sunken, came stumbling inside, moving with the jagged, unbalanced movements of a marionette that had a drunkard pulling at its strings. Each ragged breath which slipped through his lips seemed to pain him more than the last, and he clutched and fumbled at a dark red stain on his side, which had soaked through his dress shirt and the jacket he wore on top of it.
“Just what I fucking need…” Draper muttered.
“P-please, somebody,” the man wheezed “get me a fucking drink.”
“What will it be?” Draper asked.
The man gazed up at the barkeeper, his forehead soaked with sweat, and his chest soaked with blood.
“Do I look like I give a damn..?” he hissed.
Draper poured him a glass of gin.
The man reached into his jacket pocket, slamming a clump of bloodied and scrunched up bank notes down on the counter.
Nyxie pulled out a carton of Old Golds, offering one to the newcomer with a wordless nod of her head.
“Cheers.” He wheezed, smiling through gritted teeth as he yanked a cigarette free, then lit it by striking a match on the counter.
“You should get that seen to, friend.” Nyxvira laughed nervously, gesturing to the bloody hole in the man’s side.
“I don’t do hospitals,” he said, coughing slightly as he took back a lungful of smoke “and ain’t goin’ anywhere near a mob clinic.”
“You’re gonna be a corpse real soon if you don’t, hun.” Nyxie pouted.
“Who ever wanted to live for ever?” The man replied.
Shrugging her broad shoulders, Nyxie placed an Old Gold between her lips. She cracked her fingers together, and a hiss of bright green flame burst forth from her thumb.
“No magic!” Draper snarled.
The Faerie ignored him, using the flickering wisp of Fae Fire to light her cigarette.
The man turned to her, with a wild look in his eyes.
“Do you think you could..?”
Nyxie sighed.
“Lift up your shirt.”
“Woah, hold on, now!” Draper exclaimed.
The newcomer did as he was told, exposing a deep red gash which was spitting out fat droplets of gore. Sickly red tendrils of flesh ran across the hole like some sort of grizzly cobweb, and small spikes of gunpowder-soaked metal poked out from beneath his skin. The stench of blood wafted up into the Faerie’s nostrils.
“Fuckin’ hell…” The Barkeeper muttered.
“This will sting.” Nyxie promised.
She extended her hand, placing it against the open wound, and as she did so the air around her fingertips began to crackle. In a sudden hiss, her hand became engulfed in a blanket of writhing green flame, searing into the man’s flesh and fusing the bloody crater shut.
“JESUS TITY FUCKING CHRIST!” The man wailed, shaking like crazy, whilst every cell in his body went into spasms of searing torment.
It was over in a flash, and soon there was only a blackened smear where the wound had been, weeping thread-like trails of white smoke.
The room stank of burned flesh.
“Put your shirt down, now.” Nyxie said with a smirk.
“Thanks, miss…” The man stammered, very much out of breath.
“You can thank me in two ways,” Nyxvira said firmly “First, you’re gonna buy me a drink, then you’re gonna tell me why folks are trying to put holes in you.”
“What’s it to you?” The man asked cautiously.
“Sweetheart, I
just patched you up,” Nyxie frowned “it would be a real shame if I had to spoil my handiwork by putting my fag out in your eye.”
“Heh, I do like a bit of moxie in a dame.” the man said with a smirk.
“We’re talking business.” Nyxie growled.
“Alright, don’t bite my dick off.” the man recoiled slightly “I’m in some deep shit with the-”
BANG! A bullet caught the man in the neck, ripping straight through him, and raining blood on to the counter. His corpse went limp, tumbling down from his stool and hitting the ground. Blood pooled out of him, spreading across the floor in a tide of dark red.
Draper was down in an instant, yelping like a frightened child as he made a frantic dive for the ground.
“The man has something of great value to my employer.” A heavily accented Chinese man called out, emerging from the shadows with the barrel of his revolver still smoking. He was dressed in a smart black suit. Far too smart for this part of town.
“You would be wise not to intervene in his business.” He added, cautiously making his way towards the bloody corpse.
Nyxie placed one hand in her jacket pocket, her fingers brushing against the stock of her Walther P38.
“I never was very smart.” Nyxvira Bloodbloom said, before she shot Wei Jun in the chest, and set in motion a series of events that would change her life forever.
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