“Can I help you?” one of the muscle freaks standing guard questioned Darren.

“I’ll Beat Your Ass Raw!” was scrolled across the black tee-shirt the two bouncers were wearing. The tops also displayed the club’s insignia of a neon outline depicting a blond woman sucking a thumb. Pretty much copied from Madonna’s Erotica album.

Darren stepped back and sighed. He was resisting the urge to stomp and yell, “Do you know who I am?” Then again, no one really knew who he was. It had been twenty-two years since he and Daniel went underground. Anyway, that just wasn’t the type of person he was. That was more Daniel’s style…

“I just wanted to come in and get a drink,” Darren responded.

“This doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” the other bouncer joined in.

“Yeah, you look like a fucking Sesame Street motherfucker.”

The two brayed and Darren felt mortified.

“You got a name, toots?” the biggest one asked and Darren couldn’t resist the face he made. Toots?

“Darren. Darren Hayes.”

“Darren.” Tiny, only because he was smaller than Gigantor, smirked. “Darren, yeah. Like Tuxedo Mask.”

The two guffawed and Darren felt like turning around and fading into the darkness. He could do that, but…eventually, he would have to get in there if he wanted to perform on stage.

“I know Pigglewid…Piggles.” Darren tried to act professional and not show that their comments bothered him. “He actually hired me to put on some shows.”

The two looked at each other and Tiny nodded. Darren watched as he looked off to the side and knew he was telepathically communicating with someone. Darren turned to the other guy and started a bit as his face was too damn close for comfort. Now, he didn’t care for huge muscle-headed men, but he also wasn’t stuck up and believed any man with the right personality could make a great partner. However, these guys, with their childishness coupled with their humongous biceps which must have made it hard for them to wipe their asses when they were human, just were not doing it for him.

“Piggles likes them sweet.” Gigantor smirked. “He wants to keep all the hot little bitches to himself.”

“All right, let him in and stop trying to fuck him,” Tiny said out of the blue.

“Dude, I wasn’t going to fuck him,” Gigantor replied as he stepped aside. “Make him think I was going to fuck him…”

Darren just rolled his eyes and stepped into the club. He was surrounded by the frenzy of flashing lights, blaring music, thrusting bodies, and the scent of alcohol and blood. He skirted around the dance floor not wanting to get caught up in the mess and made a line straight for the bar. Every now and then a belle or beau sang would aim for him and try to get his attention. They wore tee-shirts that read, “Fuck Me Raw” with that same club insignia. They had their sang marks on display which was a black rose with a drop of blood running down its petals in the form of jewelry or a tattoo.

Belle and beau sang were vampire fanatic humans kept as a reliable food source by vampires. Belle sang were females and beau sang were males. They all started the same, watching vampire movies, wearing all black, drinking animal blood, and hanging out at cemeteries. Eventually, they found their way to capture clubs. Capture clubs were clubs run by vampires that were open to the public. Their purpose was to capture belle and beau sang, servants, and gather food.

Some of the sang in Raw looked too young to be working there though Darren had to remind himself that he came from a country where the age of consent was seventeen and, in some places, sixteen. However, he was sure these kids were at or above the eighteen-year-old mark. It was just the look about them and how they projected themselves that turned him off. They were still too young for him, not that he ever bothered with sang. He didn’t need a pet. He needed a man at his side. He thought he had that.

There was one belle sang working the bar and Darren frowned at her. She was very pregnant and wearing a midriff tee-shirt with the company slogan and insignia on it. He had to blink a couple of times to make sure he was seeing what he saw. He was all for a woman’s right to do what she wanted, but Jesus, the girl looked like she needed to be in her second or third year of college working on a better future for her and her kid. He then picked up the conversation she was having with the trio standing in front of her. She was a breeder and had been bred to the couple’s beau sang. Focusing on the trio, he could feel their age weighing on him.

One of the first things that McGregor taught Darren and Daniel was how to carry the weight of an older vampire. It was like an invisible force that could knock a person down if they didn’t know how to handle it. This weight allowed vampires to know each other’s age so they could use the correct mannerisms when interacting.

The two vampires at the bar were dressed to the nines in black and red leather. The woman looked severe with a dominatrix braid hanging to her waist and Darren was sure she had a strap-on just as long. The guy was an obvious bitch, a richy rich, snooty hooty bitch with his pencil nose in the air and his sharp chin jutting forward. With them, the third member of the party was a lycan slave. Lycan was short for lycanthrope also known as a werewolf.

Darren could smell canine on the slave and looking up, he met his gaze. He was a beautiful boy, possibly in his mid to late twenties, but it was hard to tell with lycans. He damn well could be two hundred years old. He was beautiful and tall with a muscular build. He wore a black knit duster with a large fur collar, black slacks, and boots. He was topless, tan, and gorgeous. Around his neck was a leather spiked collar. His hair was inky black, long past his chin, and got shorter toward the back with tapered hair on his neck. He wasn’t trying to, but damn, Darren was blushing. The lycan gave a soft smile and Darren looked away.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Donny, what are you doing?” the woman snapped viciously.

“Nothing, Mistress,” the lycan replied in a strong Italian accent and looked away.

Darren looked up guiltily and caught the woman’s glass-shard gaze. She stared at him for a moment before dismissing him. Though he should have taken that as a cue to fuck off, he instead cleared his throat and dared to say, “Excuse me, I just want to get a drink.” The only attention he got was a sidelong glance from the prissy gimp boy toy.

“Christ,” Darren muttered and leaned his back against the bar. The pregnant sang was the only one working the bar and she wouldn’t dare step away from the vamps who owned her unborn child. He just had to wait.

Darren folded his arms over his chest. He had half a mind to jump over the damn counter and pour his drink. The nerves of this place. There were times in the nineties when people would break their fucking necks trying to wipe his ass. Not that he would have let them. Now, he was nobody. Simply a child vampire. Whatever was before meant nothing.

Darren was getting ready to call it a night when a twink came dancing out of the crowd toward him. He wore his sang tee-shirt and from his ear hung a black glass rose. It hung from three small rubies with a ruby blood drop dangling from its petals. The boy had stretched the collar of his shirt so that it would hang off one shoulder and he had ripped the bottom off to make it a midriff. He wore tight leather pants, high-top black sneakers, and a ton of belts slung around his narrow waist. He got an A for an eighties vibe effort. He was close, but still no Seabiscuit.

“Oooo,” the boy cooed at Darren. “Do you want to dance with me?” He continued to make pretty batting eyes at him and did little twists and turns to be sexy.

“Ah, no,” Darren said.

The kid must have taken Darren’s answer as indecisiveness because he dared to walk up to him and thrust his head back to display his throat. “Hungry? First sip is five bucks, second and third are three, then…if you fuck me, you might get another sip for two depending on how I feel, like if I’m worn out,” the boy explained.

Oh, God, Darren thought. Solicitation. “I’m…not inter…”

“Well, we don’t have to fuck,” the boy cut him off and continued to chat about all the other things they could do. Darren just shut down and kept watching his mouth as his lips flapped about nothing whatsoever. Darren wondered how someone could just talk about absolutely nothing at all and more so, how they could ignore the fact that the person they were talking to didn’t want to be bothered with them.

“Hey!” Darren snapped alive. “Can you get me a drink?”

“Huh?” The boy blinked and slowly he realized that Darren had finally spoken to him. It settled in what Darren had requested and the boy grinned saying, “Yeah, sure!”

“A glass of junior blood wine. Sauternes. Vintage doesn’t matter,” Darren ordered.

“Oh, you like them sweet!” The boy perked up and then darted behind the bar.

Darren smirked and glanced over at the snobby couple and their slave. They were still chatting with mother of the year, and they must have chided their lycan slave because he was standing like he was afraid to look in Darren’s direction.

“Here you are, love.” The boy bounced back to Darren and handed him the glass of wine. “Hehe, that’s what they say in England, right?”

“What?” Darren frowned as he took the glass from the boy and sipped it.

“Love, you know, Britain. That’s an English accent, right? I just love…”

“Yeah, hang on.” With his drink now in hand, Darren zipped away from the boy vanishing in the crowd. He made it to the other side of the club without spilling one drop of his sweet blood wine. He wasn’t bothered by the boy mistaking his accent for English, most Americans couldn’t tell the difference. However, he had no more use for the boy.

Settling at an empty table, Darren relaxed. It was nice. Being alone. It was a bit strange going to a club for peace and solitude, but after living with Daniel’s alcoholic abuse this was heaven.

Looking at the glass of blood wine, Darren smiled and ran his finger around the rim. He had tried several times to do the trick where a person could make a glass of water chime, but he was never successful. The only thing he was ever successful at was singing. His marriage had been a failure, and he took full responsibility. Now his relationship with Daniel was falling apart. Again, his fault. He should have left him dead.

Taking a deep sip of blood wine, Darren closed his eyes, but when he did, he saw Daniel at his ramshackle keyboard banging out “Two Beds and a Coffee Machine” butchering the lyrics just for his sadistic merriment. He knew what that song was about, he knew what type of father Darren grew up with and everything that happened to him. Everything his father did and everything he took away.

“Two beds and a coffee machine. One decaf, and one with caffeine.” The words kept pounding in Darren’s head in Daniel’s voice laced with spite and drunkenness. Things only got worse. The image of Daniel morphed into a little blond curly head boy in his school uniform being held down by a foot on the back of his neck. The boy’s peers crammed maggots into his mouth. They called him the F word, kicked, and beat him, spat on him, and told him that semen tasted like maggots. That always seemed like some weird shit for them to say. No matter, for a long time, Darren believed it and he had a hard time performing oral sex on Daniel because of it.

Darren pulled down his sunglasses and ran the back of his hand over his eyes. He wasn’t crying but he wanted to make sure he wasn’t. The little blond curly-haired boy in his memory was him. He had thought about wearing his natural hair texture and color, but he was sure that Daniel wouldn’t like it, so he abandoned the idea.

Darren just wanted Daniel to be happy, but he never was. So why was he still hanging on? Maybe, some sick rationale stated that because he had nothing to hang on to, then he should keep on because that was better than having nothing to let go of. Totally fucked up rationale and flawed logic.

Darren was doing just fine waddling in self-pity and pathetic rationale until a horrid scent rolled across his nostrils. It smelled like someone was shitting cherries and setting them on fire. He gagged and looked up as a red flaming eye jutted in his face. He jumped up from his seat knocking it over and clamored against the opposite table.

As he calmed, Darren realized that the flaming eye was attached to a cigar that was protruding from a fat roast beef head with a bald spot at the top. The person chuckled with his corpulent form jiggling much like Jabba the Hutt. He was bent so far back under the weight of his stomach that Darren thought he might accidentally slip and disappear up his ass.

“Christ, Piggles,” Darren exclaimed. “Those things smell like shit.”

“Yeah, so you’ve said.” Piggles kept laughing and as he did, his many chins jiggled. “You all right now there, Hayes?”

“Yeah,” he replied as he walked back to his table and took a sip of blood wine.

Darren was about to sit back down but Piggles stopped him. “Don’t grab that seat too quickly, now. The owner wants to see you,” he informed.

Darren blinked and frowned.

“What?” Piggles asked.

“I thought you were the owner,” Darren voiced.

“Oh, shit no.” He laughed. “I’m just the manager.”

“All right,” he replied, grabbed his glass, and followed Piggles. As he walked, he tried to keep his eyes off his ass with its cheeks pinched close together. Darren wondered how he took a shit when he was human.

Darren did not like Piggles and didn’t know how anyone could. He was just…gross and it had nothing to do with his weight. He just reminded Darren of the vampires in some movies that ate shit like cockroaches, worms, and centipedes. A fucking regular ol’ Oogie Boogie. Besides, Darren hated when he looked at him. His beady eyes ran all over him from head to toe like he was undressing him. Damn, he knew how women felt.