“Just shut up and follow my lead.”
Sterling rolled his shoulders, his leather jacket squeaking as he did, and he smoothed back his hair. Suddenly he seemed taller, and maybe a bit stronger. Asher and I followed as Sterling led the way to a short flight of steps, down to a door that was hidden just below street level.
“Password,” said a voice on the other side.
“Your mom’s chest hair,” Sterling said. He pounded on the door with one fist, though not nearly strong enough to break it down the way I knew he could. This was his idea of being polite.
“Sterling?” the voice said. “Is that you? Come on, you know the rules. I’ll get in trouble if you don’t say it.” The voice was trying its hardest to be authoritative, but mainly just came off sounding pitiful.
Sterling rolled his eyes. “What feeds in darkness grows ever stronger,” he droned.
“Awesome,” the voice said. The door cracked open, revealing an exceedingly tall and exceedingly pimply youth, dressed in what must have been his idea of vampiric attire. He was fair-skinned, but not quite pale enough to be one of the undead. “Thanks for playing,” he said, ushering us in.
We stepped through and continued to a bare cement corridor, the ceiling lined with industrial piping, the walls lined with a whole lot of nothing. That distant music kept playing, though, and I imagined it coming from the secret underground sex dungeon-cum-dance club that I’d seen in, like, basically every movie about vampires, ever. I chuckled to myself.
“So that guy,” Asher said. “I’m guessing he wasn’t a vampire.”
“Rudy? Nah. Just a hanger-on. Keeps hoping he’ll get turned some day, but that’s up to the vampires in Diaz’s coven to decide.”
I raised an eyebrow, walking faster to keep up with Sterling. “Whoa, whoa. A coven? Is that what you call a gang of vampires?”
“We call ourselves what we like. A clan, a pack, a murder of vampires. Does it really matter? The distinction is that Diaz is a blood witch. It’s why he refers to his family as a coven.”
“Family, huh?”
Sterling stopped at what seemed like a random point in the hallway, turning to me with half a grin on his lips. “When everyone you know and everyone you love is dead and gone, you don’t have much of a choice. You pick and gather your allies, your friends. It’s both a perk and a curse, but when you’re undead – you get to choose your family.”
“Am I part of your family?” Asher asked, all unabashed innocence. He took the words right out of my mouth.
Sterling smiled, ruffling Asher’s hair. “If you want. Sure you are, little buddy.”
Huh. So we were his family? The Boneyard. Carver, Gil, Mama Rosa, even me. Asher chuckled, running his hands through his hair in an attempt to fix it. Sterling turned towards the wall, then rapped his knuckles against the cement. It made a hollow knocking sound.
“Ah. Some things don’t change.” He rested his hand against the wall, and it slid open.
The room beyond was barer than I expected, like the inside of a warehouse, only underground. It looked like a bunker, or an industrial basement. Cement walls, cement floor, cement ceiling, but done up in luxuries that I could only describe as plush.
Nirvana had thick rugs, comfy sofas, and even several tastefully placed potted plants. I admit, I was sorely wrong about the S&M dungeon I was expecting. The only real indication that vampires inhabited this place was the decorator’s overwhelming proclivity towards the color red.
Well, that, and all the coffins. At least the ones that I could see. The absence of windows meant that the vamps living in Nirvana – or unliving, rather – didn’t really need closed caskets to sleep in, but I guess old habits die hard. I didn’t realize that Sterling’s preference for sleeping in an actual bed, you know, the kind meant for human beings, made him more modern and progressive than his brethren.
All of whom were stunningly beautiful. You could tell they were human, once, if only in shape and name, but I was caught like a deer in headlights. Asher was similarly enthralled. Everything about these creatures was heightened, from the sharpness of their eyes and their cheekbones to the perfection of their bodies. Skin, whether black or brown or white, was supple, flawless, lustrous. Turns out that becoming one of the undead was better than any moisturizer.
The vampires milled about, chatting, laughing. A couple were playing video games. One sat in a corner, reading. Among them were humans. Thralls, I assumed, but no one was chained, put on a leash, none of the stereotypes I would have expected from mortals who would serve as human cattle for their vampire companions. There was something, I don’t know, consensual about it all. I guess Sterling was right all along. I did have some prejudices about vampires.
I spotted Connor, the big, bald vampire who’d attacked me in the alley, towards the back of the room, working on weights that no one should be capable of lifting. Salimah turned her head towards us as we entered, balancing a glass of something that could have been blood, or could have been a very rich wine in one hand. She nodded at us, then towards the center of the vast underground apartment.
Sitting there like the still, unmoving eye of Nirvana’s storm was Diaz, a lean, swarthy young man in a loose tank top and fitted jeans. As he approached us, I noted that he was barefoot – vulnerable, yet comfortable in what I could still only perceive as a den of apex predators.
“Sterling,” Diaz said, his smile warm and welcoming. “It’s been a while.”
“Diaz. These are my – companions.” He gestured at us. “This is Dustin, and this is Asher.”
Diaz’s smile went even wider, his eyes crinkling. “Ah. The shadow mage. And this one must be the necromancer. Younger than I expected.”
“Can’t help it,” Asher said, shrugging and offering a smile of his own.
Diaz chuckled. “Come. We have things to discuss.”