Unworthy [Jasmine]

[River]

A year was supposed to make a difference. She was supposed to grow, to find herself and to become something whole. Instead, she found herself once again walking a nearly deserted street in the middle of nowhere - alone. Tucking her hands deep into the weathered pockets of her jacket, she kept her head down, gaze counting the cracks in the ruined cement. There had been no change. She was still invisible, unnoticed. She still stammered over her words and hid at the first sign of social interaction. She couldn’t stand to be touched, she could barely function in a crowd. The only real change had been her death - and then, of course, her Obsession. He was the only thing that kept her from fading into the night.

Now, there was also Jasmine.

The woman had been a mistake, one she had never intended to make. Her focus had been an entirely different being, one that deserved death of the most painful kind. She had never felt such rage as she had that night, and yet, she had ended up with the honey haired stripper. Of course, because nothing can ever go right for you, she thought bitterly as she gave a stray, frozen leaf a kick. It crumbled beneath her sneaker as most everything did when she touched it. Closing her eyes for a moment, she breathed in the cold air and released it on an exasperated exhale. The need to pull oxygen into her lungs was one out of desire, to feel as if for a moment, she could belong to this dark, desolate world. It never worked, and instead, it reminded her of her immortality.

Nearing her destination, she gave the abandoned, decaying building a critical once over. The bricks were shattered and falling to the ground, the windows broken and boarded up with weathered two by fours. The plastic covering was nothing more than strips, and the roof was missing half of its shingles. The place was utterly useless, and yet, she saw a beauty in it that so many others would overlook. Reaching up a hand, she knocked off a few vines and dusted away the dirt that covered the door before pressing her hand against the knob and swinging it open. Dust and debris rained down on her, coating her hair and blocking her vision with a dense grey cloud before she waved it away. The inside looked even worse than the out, the workout machines all but extravagant paperweights now.

Thankfully, she had no use for those.

Instead, her focus was the large ring in the middle of the room. The ropes were hanging low, the mats covered in dried blood and sweat, and it was the perfect scene for what she needed. Curling her gloved fingers over one of the decaying, frayed ropes, the slender shadow leapt over the barrier and landed on the mat with ease. She had found this place by mistake, and something about the abandoned, forgotten gym spoke to her on a level not many things did. Perhaps it was the way the walls could barely keep themselves upright without swaying beneath the weight of the world, or the fact that the ground was littered with dust, plaster and ancient paper scrawled with words that would never be memorialized. There was a beauty to the gutted building that many would overlook. It was hidden in the shadows, tucked away in the corner of the city where many cared not to venture. No one would care when it finally collapsed into nothing but shattered cement and splintered wood.

It had been written off long ago.

Brushing her fingers across the grey and weathered mat at her feet, she drew a design in the dirt with a quiet sigh. She hadn’t intended to bring anyone to this place when she had found it, but once she realized that her progeny was useless in everything outside of selling herself, she found herself without a choice. She hated the spotlight, she loathed crowds, and there weren’t many places in the city she could escape from prying eyes. Except here. It was the best place to train the woman, and the only place that offered what they both needed. Settling her back against the ropes, she dusted her hands off and swept her mismatched gaze across the room.

Of course, none of this mattered if she didn’t even bother to show.

[Jasmine]

Music. Music was the life’s blood of Jasmine’s world, whatever was left of her soul after the night that she had met River. The thrum of a heartbeat against the supple flesh of a living woman’s throat, the ache-inducing scent of the blood that pumped through her veins, it was all music in her soul. The beat of the bass was a poor comparison, but even it was a rapture when she tried to remember what all of this was like before. She exhaled, the breath a long, even sigh permeated with a thin stream of smoke, the cigarette between her fingers burned halfway to the filter, a long cap of ash still dangling from its end as she watched the redhead on stage.

The girl moved like a natural, the way her body moved made Jasmine wonder if her bones weren’t made of rubber. She knew better, though. Knew better from experience. The woman on the stage only let her eyes settle on the vampiress’s blue-green glare for a moment, but that fraction of an instant was all it had taken for the woman to be shaken, fearing to displease her master. With a noncommittal shake of her head, Jasmine flicked the butt of her cigarette with a long, lacquered thumbnail, gaze moving away from the show with a lazy, uninterested manner as Skittles’ top fell away, leaving her naked breasts bared to the room. Whistles filled the air, sharp as knives against her ears, but sharper still, she knew, against the self worth of the girl on stage.

All the better, you fat cow. You’re as worthless as you think you are.

She fought the urge to grit her teeth, and instead gave the man across her private table a pleased smile, even as the woman next to him slipped her stocking-clad foot up her shin. The woman had been making eyes at her since the couple had taken their seat, and for the sake of this deal, she had gone through the motions with her as well as she could manage. Before, she would have played. She would have revelled in having her way with this woman behind her husband’s back, but now... everything was different. Sex was passionless; pleasureless; meaningless. She had tried only a handful of times shortly after she had been turned, and every experience, even with the enhancement of her senses, had fallen well short of the expectation she had set. There had only really been one reason that she could understand.

River. River is that reason.

Just thinking about the woman made her give a wistful sigh, her heart, could it still manage, would have fluttered with the thought. Even as it was, she felt like butterflies flitted about in her stomach. Her moment of distraction over her sire over, however, she felt her cheeks aching with the wide smile, and her eyes came into focus on the man in front of her. He was a small, beady-eyed man. His hooked nose had a crooked lean to it, suggesting that it had been broken more than once, the glimmering gold of several replaced teeth supported the theory. His thinning hair was slicked back, more salt than pepper these days, and greasy with pomade, it had a sheen that, on the Russian, was quite unattractive. He was hardly the sort she would have kept company with, and still wouldn’t have, had she not needed his... services. The woman at his arm, his wife as she had been introduced, was more her speed. Petite, soft, her platinum hair done up in ringlets that fell to her ample bosom, she was a sultry vision that, these nights, were little more than an inviting snack for the upjumped stripper.

She let her eyes slide from the woman, who she only realized she was staring at in her distraction, and gave the man a smile. “I of course understand the realities of your business, Andrew, but I paid you good money to have those weapons here on a very specific timetable, you understand? I paid a substantial sum, for services that were rendered unsatisfactorially. The delay has already cost me an untold fortune, having to delay the grand opening of my project by another week already, and you come here, into my temple, into my world, and you tell me that I am being unreasonable? That I simply must wait for your ships? No, Andy. No. I don’t think so.” She lifted her cigarette and took another long drag as she steadied herself. She was hardly nervous, the pair in front of her were little more than common underworld pissants. She’d dealt with dozens of their caliber, and come out on top every time. What concerned her was the future of her empire, with all of the money sunk into the Colluseum already, it threatened to be a hole into which her fortune would quickly disappear forever.

“Andrej, please, Miss Montoya. If you wouldn’t min-”

“Now, Android,” she continued over him, cutting him off with an impatient flick of her cigarette. “I am a reasonable woman, I like to think.” She took the remainder of her cigarette and ground it angrily into the glass tray on her table as she stared the man dead in his small, dark eyes as she leaned forward, glossy lips glimmering in the flickering light of the club as she gave him a cruel smile. “So I have decided that you can keep your life, after sinking sixty eight million dollars of my money off the coast of Cuba. I am, however, going to be required to exact a certain price for this incident. I’m afraid that letting you walk away from this table unscathed will send the wrong image.”

The music had ended during their conversation, and Skittles had disappeared from the stage. Likely, she was slipping back into the little scraps of cloth that passed for coverage in the club as Jasmine was finishing up her business. She cocked a fine brow as the toes that brushed along her calf had risen to her inner thigh, pushing between her legs as she let her hand fall to the seat at her side, shifting her weight. “So you will understand, Alejandro, the necessity of what I’m about to do.”

She felt the warmth of Skittles’ stomach against her bare shoulder as she moved to stand behind her master. Without another moment’s hesitation, Jasmine pulled the pistol from her bag, and pointed it at the woman across from her beneath the table. The motion was lost beneath the black marble tabletop, the heavy stone and curved booth, as well as the suppressor locked onto the mouth of the Baretta’s barrel made the pop of the shot almost silent in the volume of the club.

The blonde’s blue eyes shot open wide as her mouth made the most perfect ‘O’, red lipstick matching the scarlet stain that spread across the abdomen of her white dress. Blood gushed up her throat and she vomited scarlet into her glass that sat next to her on the table. “Oh, Christ! What the **** did you do?” she sobbed, her foot clenching tight before it fell away from Jasmine’s thighs. The vampire glared into the pain-stricken, terror-filled blues of the woman across from her with a cold indifference. “In your next life, try keeping your ******* bits to yourself.” Without another word, she flicked her finger again, and emptied the magazine into the woman’s gut. She was dead long before the gun clicked empty, and that happened long before the blonde had stopped pulling the trigger. The man at her side sat frozen in fear as she glared into his eyes, hand finally sliding the pistol back into her bag.

Without looking over her shoulder at the redheaded thrall, she clicked her tongue. “There you are, you worthless slut. Stop flailing your ugly tits around my club and take out this trash.” She waved her hand at the corpse slumped over her table, and slipped from the private booth, her eyes moving to the man again. “Cross me again, Andrej, and you will join her.”

Without another word, she turned on a stiletto heel and worked her way to the back door of the club. She was running so late, her sire was going to kill her. She pulled her phone from her bag and tapped at the screen, bringing it to life. Her thumb moved in a blur as she used the single digit to tap out a text.

Hey, I’m sorry. I know. I’m late.
Got held up at work. I will be there
in just a minute. Leaving now.
Have my workout things in a gym
bag in the car. We’ll be underway
in ten minutes, I promise.
Luv ya, Riv. Sorry, again.

She tapped the send key, and locked the screen as she stepped out the back door and into the alley. In the dark background of the screen, she could see a reflection move across her field of vision in the light, and she snapped her head to the side, turning to catch the movement, only to glance a dull flash of grey before it cracked her skull across the temple, the world going dark with that sickening crunch and an explosion of pain that felt like someone had lit her brain on fire.