Gyrfalcon x Club

Intoxicating noise fills the club. The music’s throbbing beat, glittering with crystalline static and the crowd’s excited shouts and bursts of laughter are obvious, but Fel has never found a way to drown out the oceans of blood pulsing just beneath their skin. Earplugs and thick, insulating headphones help a bit, just like the smelling salts and herbs stuffed inside her mask help with the smell, but it is never enough. Will never be enough.

It’s overstimulating, really. If she had a choice she’d be outside in the cold, maybe chatting up a smoker or seeing if there are any takers for the bait she’s put out on the apps, but she doesn’t get to make choices any more. Not since those bastards caught her.

“Any sign, Felicity?”

The downside of wearing headphones, other than the odd looks she occasionally gets, is that it gives her handler a direct line to her. Their voice is perfectly generic, processed to remove any identifying marks; after six years Fel still isn’t sure of their gender. She shakes her head once, certain that her handler is watching; they always seem to be able to see her, no matter that she’s never caught the faintest trace of them.

“Then continue.”

Another loop. Another half hour skating along the edge of over-stimulation. Too aware, too conscious of everything around her—of the clusters of people talking and dancing, the hiss of beer pouring out of the tap to fill another glass, the people flirting at the bar and fucking in the bathrooms. If she could smell them too it would be all over for her; the hormones in their veins and the putrid musk dripping from their sweat glands, the arousal clinging to their necks and the sour stink of their unwashed mouths. Disgusting. They all deserve to die.

Fel feels like a string wound too tight. Her body aches and each moment winds her a bit further, a bit closer to snapping; she can practically hear her bones creaking and the club just keeps on getting louder, keeps on getting more, and why can’t any of these assholes understand that? Why do they get to have fun here when she’s lived five times as long as any of them and still can’t find a moment’s peace? It’s infuriating! Her fists are clenched tight and every step is a struggle; she’s not sure what she’d do if someone bumped into her.

The toilets are quieter. Less music. More disgustingly biological sounds, more horrible smells hanging just outside her mask. Less blood. Bearable, if only just.

She stalks down the row of stalls. Piss hitting porcelain; giggles and sticky moans. A quick inhalation, powder sucked up a narrow tube. Skin breaking. More piss. Blood. Blood.

The vampire’s fangs are deep in its victim’s neck when Fel kicks in the stall door. It’s blood-drunk, slurping greedily, its body shuddering with the ecstasy of feeding. Newly turned, then; careless and arrogant. Fel remembers what that was like.

She does not miss those days.

Its neck is feverishly hot. Swollen. It breaks easily. She slams it into the wall behind the toilet, its victim’s body coming with it, and then down through the porcelain bowl into the filthy tiled floor. Its skull cracks; its victim breaks a bit more. Blunt force trauma is always a good starting place: overwhelm its healing. Disorient it.

Fel’s prey is not wearing earplugs, and of course it’s unmasked. Bastard. It deserves her wrath—it deserves a stake through its heart! To think that something so weak, so careless, should walk free and enjoy the world when she cannot, when she never could—

Someone’s screaming behind her; someone’s trying to pull her off her prey. It doesn’t matter. They’re weak; they can’t stop her from breaking its neck again and grinding its face into the shattered tiles, can’t even help the broken, bleeding human crumpled next to her. Pathetic. Tugging at her shoulder, clawing at her headphones, pulling the cups off her ears—shouting, screaming, vomiting. The noise of the music. All their hearts beating, all their blood rushing, and Fel’s salivating. Her body twitches with every noise. There’s so, so much. How can these creatures be so loud? Don’t they hear themselves, don’t they understand what they’re doing?! She should, she should—!

Fel does not notice the handler’s proxies arriving. They are solidly built, anonymously handsome creatures, like characters from some old copaganda soap opera. To the humans in the restroom they exude calm and certainty; of course the club has private security. Everything is fine, ma’am, just step this way and we’ll handle it. And here’s a bar token for your troubles—your next drink’s on us, ma’am, no need to say thank you. Just move along.

When she was freshly caught, she struggled every time they slipped the hood over her head. She likes to think that she even managed to injure some of them, though their bodies are always curiously solid; they shrug off hits that would break a normal human. The pride she takes in her former resistance is an odd thing; now she finds the idea of struggling utterly unthinkable. Her body goes limp the moment she smells the perfumed leather, before her mind is even able to process what’s happening.

Silence.

Peace.

She feels her body being moved from a distance. The proxies lock her arms behind her back and bind her legs together; one of them tosses her over his shoulder, heedless of the blood coating her front. Probably other things are happening, but she can’t hear them. Doesn’t need to hear them.

“Well done, Felicity,” her handler says. Fel imagines that they purr the words into their distant microphone, but she can’t know that. Can’t know anything about them. “That’s all for tonight.”

She waits for the reward chime to fill her mind with its perfect sound. It doesn’t come; just the click of the audio feed closing. Her handler has been getting more stingy as she’s been getting better at running down her prey. Bastard, she thinks, but there’s no bite to it. Success is no longer enough. She must be perfect.

Maybe next time.