Damned Straight to Heaven

Nick

I like it when it rains, makes the stains wash out quicker. Cools you down, when you’re running hot and your heart is pounding so hard your head is throbbing and you can’t even think straight. I never told the guys I was scared shitless my first time on the job at just fifteen years old. I sure as shit never tell them I’m still scared shitless even now, at eighteen, a full grown man.

I walk out into the rain all calm and collected, and I ask the guys which bar they want to swing by on the way home. They do that to celebrate after a job. I do that, because I hate what I just did, and I need a damn strong drink.

“Cicero’s,” Louie declares, overriding all other suggestions. “Who’s driving?”

“Think I’ll walk,” I counter, turning my face up to the downpour. “Nice night for it, don’t you think?” Forty degrees and cold as hell, perfect, punishing, pneumonia inducing weather.

Jimmy gives me a playful shove, and calls me a crazy prick, but no one offers to walk those ten blocks with me. I didn’t want company anyhow. It’s not like I’m in danger. We own not just this neighborhood, but the city at large. Any bastards dumb enough to even try to pick a fight with a member of our Family, they disappear real quick.

The guys pile into Mike’s Cadillac and say they’ll meet me there. “We’ll save you a seat at the table. Better hurry though, hothead. Your ma’s gonna kill me, if you catch a cold in this shit,” Mikey warns.

My ma will be passed out beside an emptied out bottle of gin, trying not to worry about me, or even think about just what it is I’ve been doing all night. I don’t say that aloud of course. I just keep on smiling, give the boys a little wave, and set off strolling down the block.

The second they’re out of sight, my smile vanishes, and I check my hands and coat for bloodstains. You can’t see anything against the pitch black material of my trench coat and suit, even if something did splatter, but I can still feel myself starting to hyperventilate. I lean my forehead against a brick wall and breathe in deep, trying to calm down. “Fucking pussy,” I curse at myself. “Just walk it off, Nick.” I wipe at my eyes, straighten up, and start moving toward the bar. However much I tear up, I can just say it’s the rain and no one will think twice about it.

I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead and try to walk like a real enforcer, a man on the in, someone who owns this city. A low, throaty moan draws my gaze to an alley and I see two figures – one with their back to the bricks and their head thrown back in ecstasy, the other one sucking on his neck. The catch is – they’re both men. That would make the boys angry. They’d pull out their pieces and be moving to break it up.

I don’t even look at it twice, turning away my eyes and wishing them luck in softest murmur beneath my breath. They’re idiots of course, doing this out in the open, in a city like this, where taking it farther is straight up illegal. Homosexuals caught doing more than kissing – They’re sent straight to the church inquisitors, and that is worse than a jail cell, trust me.

I’m not about to go reporting these poor deviants though. I’ll just keep on walking, pretend I didn’t see… Kind of hard when that man is already lifting his face from his partner’s throat though, staring right at me with a pair of slate gray eyes that cut right through me, stripping me bare. He smiles in an instant, seeing my expression. His shivering partner is just gazing up at him dreamily, but this idiot dares eye me up and down and call out salaciously, “Care to join?”

“The fuck did you just say to me?” I pull my gun in an instant and go stalking right up to them. The younger guy bolts, and the gray-eyed trouble maker lets him go uncaringly, never taking his eyes off of me; Still leering, and smiling, as I make my approach. I grab him by the shirtfront and press my gun right to his forehead. “You got a death-wish?”

“If you were going to do anything, you would have already opened fire,” he boredly deflates my bravado. He peels my hand from his shirt. “And be careful. That’s Italian silk you’re man-handling.”

“You got any idea where you are, buddy? You got the faintest idea who you’re messing with right now?”

He pushes aside the gun barrel and leans in closer toward my ear, breathing in long and deep. “Mmm. You’ve got the smell of St. Christians, that joking excuse for a mafia who thinks they run this city just because their theocracy has a lean on all the law makers. But there is a world outside this city, love, and some of us have been around a whole lot longer than your impudent...” He looks pointedly between my legs. “...regime.”

I shove him back from me and go to pistol whip him. He catches the blow with barely an effort. I try to kick him back against the far wall, but he dodges out of the way with impossible speed. I thought the rain just blurred his movements, but suddenly he is right up behind me, ripping the gun from my hand as his forearm snaps around my neck in tease of a choke-hold. He’s barely applying any pressure, after all, but no matter how I shove and thrash and try to throw him off, there is no getting free of that iron hold. “Stop struggling,” he breathes against my ear. “I’m just trying to have a conversation here, a proper introduction. What’s your name?”

“Fuck you.” I drive my elbow into his solar plexis. It feels like hitting concrete. I groan, and I feel his pelvis pressing up against my backside, his breath hot upon my neck…

“As you’re probably figuring out now, I could take you easily, right here, and now.” He smooths a suggestive hand right down my stomach, but stops before he comes in contact with my crotch, as I’m terrified he’s about to. Though that throbbing ache against my zipper... “Seems we’re not impudent after all,” he laughingly notes, eyeing that sudden sharp tent pressing out just below his palm.

“You fucking touch me, I will--”

“Relax. I’m not a monster. I would never need to use force.” He shoves me away. “Just thought you’d be into it.”

“Like fuck would I ever--”

“You were ogling us, enforcer,” he cuts me off pointedly, and I feel my cheeks flush. “Not in a threatening ‘get off my streets, you filth’ type manner either. No… I could see the longing, the wistful envy. That is why I so politely asked, if you wanted to join.”

“Fuck. You.” I pointedly, stubbornly repeat, fishing my gun off the pavement and pointing it right at his chest.

“I can’t get fucked tonight,” he sighs. “At least… not as I intended, seeing as you’ve sent my date scurrying off into hiding who knows where. But you…” The evil smile returns. “Well, you’re a big, strong top, now aren’t you, stranger? Don’t lie and say you wouldn’t like to head down to my bedroom, strip off this soaking wet clothing--”

I open fire. He doesn’t even dodge, because my aim was shit. I tell myself it was an accidental miss that sent the bullet streaking right by his ear, instead of into his forehead. “This noise, it’s gonna bring attention. Then you’ll be headed to the inquisitors by night’s end, you fucking--”

His hand snaps around my throat. He was meters away. Now he’s right up against me, pinning my gun hand and lifting me clean off the ground, despite being what looks to be two thirds of my weight class with none of the obvious muscle. His eyes are glowing bright red instead of that sultry, silvery gray, and I stiffen in alarm. “Vampire? That’s what I am, darling. As for any other slur… Keep it off those soft, wet lips, else I might get angry and feel compelled to tear this pretty head off, kapish?”

I can’t breathe at all, my face starting to purple from lack of oxygen. He sets me down in an instant, striding off toward a door in the side of the rundown building beside us. “Last chance to come inside and let me taste you. I do love a good hate-fuck, every now and again.”

I rub at my throat and feel my gun-hand starting to shake. I thought vampires were just a rumor, an ancient evil the church was said to have wiped from the map centuries ago.

“Scared you too much?”

“I ain’t scared of you,” I hiss, “and be assured, if you are still here tomorrow, you are a dead man.”

“A dead, undead man,” he jests, eyes sparkling with mischief, as the last of the red fades from the iris. “But just before you send your outraged mob of angry troglodytes to kill me, I’m Christian, by the way.”

I tense up all the further. He’s naming himself the same as the founding martyr of our church just to pick at me. It’s a full on blasphemy. “That’s not fucking funny.”

“I look like I’m joking?” he returns. “And if you won’t tell me your name, handsome…” He smiles. “I’m just gonna have to make one up for you.”

“Fuck--”

“I know! That’s the only name you’ll answer me with – the man who’s going to fuck me.”

I fire another shot, directly at him this time, but he dodges behind cover of the steel door and slips inside, long before it can hit.

My shaking gun-hand drops to my side, and I stare after him for an instant before forcing myself to turn my back, get to Cicero’s, and get some back-up for what I now know is going to be a vampire hunt…

I spend the night drinking, and I don’t wind up telling them shit about what happened. I return to that alleyway alone instead, sloshed out of my mind, and set on stupidly searching that building solo for answers from that blasphemous, beautiful blood-sucker who somehow uncovered my most closely guarded secret the second our eyes met.