The Fall of Club Noctus

I sold the idea of Club Noctus to Roman under the sales pitch of the perfect, profitable hunting ground. But the truth is, the second I set foot in one of these colorful establishments back in the seventies, I needed to make it my own. I loved the pounding music, the spectacle of lights, the dancing, and most of all the buzz of human energy and glistening sweat. But* I *could make it so much better. I did make a venue so much better than any of its rivals. It has been the most popular club in this city for over three decades. People visit one time, and they’re addicted. Club Noctus was the first thing that was truly mine, completely separate from Roman, and it brought me everything I’d ever needed.

It brought me Julian, and then Leah.

This business should have stood forever as a monument to entertainment, constantly changing with the times but never losing its unique, neon-gothic identity.

Pulling up to my club tonight and seeing what that brat, Gracen, did to it… I want to kill him. More than ever. I am going to reload that revolver for Julian, then unload it right into that ungrateful threat’s stupidly perfect face.

“It’s just a building, Luc,” Julian tells me, squeezing my hand.

“No, it is a travesty,” I correct. “And it is going to be worse inside. Can’t you smell it?”

He wrinkles his nose, and neither of us mention it aloud to Leah: the putrid stench of what has to be dozens of rotting human corpses.

“Stay here with Ben,” Julian orders our bride, but she instantly shakes her head.

“You think sitting here outside is a good idea with packs of feral vampires roving the streets? Especially in this neighborhood.”

“It is far more dangerous in there,” I predict, still glaring at the graffitied, blood and shit stained walls of my once beautiful business. “We will leave you the keys, and if anything approaches the car, you drive off.”

“No,” she stubbornly insists. “I need to see Gracen--”

“You need to protect that bundle of joy in your hands,” I correct, feeling suddenly delirious with love, as little Ben opens his eyes and starts staring at me wide-eyed. “We should all of us just stay here with Ben…”

Julian gives a distant nod, and Leah rolls her eyes. “Fine. I will trade you.” She takes the empty revolver out of Julian’s hand and passes him the newborn halfbreed in its place. “Are you lucid enough to watch him?”

“I’ll never take my eyes off of him,” Julian swears. “I’ll guard him with my life. God, I love him so much. I wish he was mine.”

Leah visibly flinches at those words. Then she staggers off toward the night club entrance, her wedding train turning into a mess of yellow-brown as it drags through the filth of the gutter.

Ben instantly starts crying, and Julian distractedly notes that one of us should really go after Leah… “Ben’s worried about her, and it’s dangerous for her to go in there alone…”

He can’t seem to let go of the child in his arms, regardless of that fact, but the second I looked after Leah, I felt my own coerced attachment to that baby ebb.

I keep my eyes on Leah, hand Julian the car keys, and force myself to follow her.

The second the car door closes, and I’m facing away from Ben, I instantly break free of my trance. I have the urge to enforce once again in that moment how much I hate that fucking kid of hers, but I take note of her already devastated expression and for once censor my complaints. “You’re in no state to be pushing yourself, my dearest wife,” I whisper, slipping my hands gently around her waist to lend her support, as she nearly loses her footing. It’s not just the drag of her dress. She gave birth just a handful of days ago, and she is still having difficulty moving.

She squeezes shut her eyes. “Hearing you call me your wife just feels… hilariously wrong.”

“Because you feel guilty of how Gracen will react?” I fill in, with feigned sympathy and most expertly hidden smugness. “Seeing you in this dress, and hearing why you’re wearing it…” She swallows. “Stay in the car, Leah. Stay there with Julian and your son, and let me handle this.”

“Let you kill him, you mean?” she hisses, and I arch an eyebrow. “I’m not an idiot, Luc. I know that’s what you want to do. It’s what you’ve always wanted, to get him out of the way--”

“He is basically already dead,” I hiss. “He keeps saying he is dead. He is not the person you knew. That person is gone. His father destroyed him--”

“You destroyed him,” she savagely corrects.

“Then why ever did you wed me?” I snap. “Why ever did you spare my life, twice--?”

I’m interrupted by a rabid vampire charging out of the alley, dropping the carcass of the rat he was forcing down his throat in favor of seizing himself a much more succulent dish. I step out in front of Leah and seize him by the throat before he can lay a single scratch on her of course, snarling in his face, “Keep your hands off of my fucking prael.”

“That is still all I am to you, now isn’t it?” Leah spits.

“No.” It was simply the first word that came to my mind. She is my prael, after all. Much as I do want to keep her by my side forever, I am still going to be drinking her delicious, magical blood, and I am going to do it every day, forever, because I can do that with zero negative consequences now. Still: “I love you, and I respect your willful freedom. Prael is simply the term we use in this coven for any human--”

The newborn in my hands tries to claw my eyes out, so I rip his head off, as in the car behind us, Julian hastily covers Ben’s eyes. “And this boy should have stayed a prael,” I conclude with an exasperated smile. “He had zero potential to be my enforcer, clearly.”

“You really are a monster,” Leah murmurs, forcing herself stubbornly onward toward my club.

“When did you lose all sense of humor and become such a drag?” I snap, seizing her arm once again to catch her as she stumbles. “I knew this is what married life was. Nothing but nagging.”

Her eyes flood with tears, and I turn my eyes up to the heavens. “Punch back, my dearest spitfire,” I plead. “Otherwise it’s no fun.”

“It’s no fun being an asshole? Really? You seem to find it endlessly entertaining.”

I force back my smile, as genuine and dazzling as I can make it. “There she is.” She can’t help her responding, smallest grin. “And I will never be so hypocritical as to ask you to trust me…”

“I should hope not.”

“But at least let me carry you.” I scoop her up into my arms. “Let me carry it all, what happens tonight and beyond. I know…” I force the words past the sudden lump in my throat. “I know it’s my fault, alright? Whatever’s down there…” It is Gracen’s fucking fault.

But I did make him.

I made him everything that he is.

Shit. The guilt came back with my emotions while I was sucking on Titania. Of course it did.

That’s why it’s not just selfish loss twisting my heart when we step inside my nightclub, and Leah clutches a gagging hand to her mouth, futilely trying and block out the stench. It’s not the torn up dance floor and broken liquor bottles that have the both of us disturbed. It’s the dozens of rotting, exsanguinated patrons packed tight in every corner and covering every square inch of the floor.

I don’t even take the time to rebuke Jason, sitting on the balcony above us in **my** chair, in **my** VIP booth. I leave him and the other three blood-crazed newborns to their meal: a naked, barely living, sheet white, and far too plump woman, covered neck to heel in bite marks, as Jason and the other men finish fucking her and sucking her dry.

I take Leah to the elevators in a blur of speed before they catch wind of her scent, fob us passage to the lower levels, and mournfully note, “A kiss this time won’t help distract, now will it?”

“No. I'm too nauseous for kissing," she confirms. "Those animals… they were regular people, just a couple of months ago,” she gasps, reeling from the horrifying scene of my massacred club. “Does losing their souls really make them that…?”

“It’s the hunger mostly,” I offer. “But at the end of the day, it is Gracen’s fault.”

“You’ve turned hundreds of people throughout the centuries. You told me that--”

“And I have practice in doing so,” I retort. “I am ancient and qualified to create new vampires. But newborns, like Gracen, should never turn anyone. Not for at least a decade or two. A newborn is still dealing with their own burning dregs of human blood and appetite. Giving that blood to someone else has a much higher chance of killing them, not to mention driving them utterly mad, even if they do awake.”

Leah falls silent for the rest of that elevator ride, keeping leaned against my chest and trying to process everything she witnessed.

The elevator doors open, and a pair of vampires instantly lunge through to drain her.

I have them pinned to the wall in an instant with my hands around their necks. “Master Luc!” Zoe gasps. “You’re back! And you brought your prael! Will you share? I really need you to share--”

“Be silent,” I order, and she gives a shaky nod – just to resume her rambling. I am not her sire after all, and she has no compulsion to obey me.

“Okay. No words. Do you want to fuck me? You never wanted to fuck me before, but Gracen wouldn’t take me tonight, and I need it. Bad.” She starts unbuckling my slacks. “I’m good. Real good. I promise--”

“Me too!” the woman in my left hand whines.

I don’t have enough hands to keep them both from groping me, so I clench my nails around their necks with the snarled order, “Cease touching me, before I end you both.”

“Sorry master.”

“Sorry master,” the other repeats, hands quickly raising in surrender. “But…” Her eyes dart to Leah. “Just a little sip?”

They’re too weak with hunger to overpower me. I throw them against the elevator wall, lock it down, and haul Leah out before they can recover, ushering her down the hallway. “You must be glad you didn’t come down here alone, now aren’t you, love?”

“We should have asked them where Gracen is.”

“I know where he’ll be,” I insist. “And I can check the cameras, if needed. But a quick pitstop first.”

We head straight to Julian’s room, and I dig a spare box of bullets out of his nightstand, slipping on those lovely silk gloves I gifted him and reloading his dangerous, blessed gun.

“I am not going to let you execute him,” Leah once again enforces, and I exhale in irritation.

“This is just for your protection, love--”

She snatches the gun right out of my hands, snapping shut the fully loaded chamber. “If that’s the truth, then it’s better I hold it.”

I simply cannot argue with this woman. She sees through my every ruse.

She really is the only person fit to be my wife, and I am in sore need of at least a week long, fiery consummation of this marriage with both my wedded partners.

“What was that look?” she mutters, and I push a hand through her hair.

“Just thinking of our honeymoon,” I admit, and she blushes. “Just you and I and Julian, and you will forget all about this awful night, I promise. Just stay here on the bed, and I’ll be back before you--”

“No.” She stalks right over to the door, headed on a straight course for Roman’s rooms where Gracen will surely still be cowering.

My intuition was right. He is indeed still cloistered right inside that chamber I assigned him, staring blankly at the wall. The only surprise is seeing those hands clenched tight around his throat.

Here I thought I was going to have to blow his brains out before he even registered our presence, but no. I had nothing to fear from this broken mess. He couldn’t give an order if he tried, not at the moment. His vocal chords are in ruins, and his head is almost half-way severed by the time we open that door. Brett’s dead on the floor at his feet, and I guess Gracen decided that was the last straw. Now he is ever so slowly digging his nails into his neck, severing every ligament, and just millimeters from punching through his spine.

It would have been a perfect, brutal ending. He would have spared me the trouble of killing him and antagonizing Leah, but my troublesome wife just could not accept that destined fate.

She shoved herself away from me, screaming his name and hurling herself against him. He didn’t react to the call. Didn’t acknowledge it at all, but he did flinch at the feel of her fingers clenching around his wrists, her bared clavicle nestled right by his mouth--

He bit down in an instant, entire body vibrating with an agonized groan.

I hiss in disgust, stepping to pry him right off of her--

Leah holds up the revolver -- pointed not at her assailant, but right at my fucking chest! “Don’t.”

“He is going to suck you dry, before he passes out at the rate he's drinking!” I snap. Her eyelids are already fluttering.

“Just… wait,” she gasps, the gun dropping limp to her side, as Gracen’s bloodied hands clench against her back, thrusting her up all the tighter against the ruined mess of his neck.

They both fall to the floor, and I fear I am too late to help either of them.

I should have killed this brat the day he was born. I could have easily framed someone else for the crime and escaped all reprisal from Roman.

He has taken everything from me: my coven, my nightclub, and my Leah.

Some people do not deserve to be saved.