She remembered her heart stopping, the pump of blood in her ears slowing, fading, ending.
Then the smell of chocolate. A wonderful, deep smell, something that she loved, adored, and liquid was at her mouth. Her tongue licked her lips, tasting that chocolate, though it was bitter and cold. She licked more, and wanted more, and more –
Clara Ann Martin would be forever hungry and thirsty after that moment. Thirsty for thrills, an adrenaline rush that she constantly searched for; and thirsty for blood.
Her mentor – he called himself a mentor – had taught her how to take enough blood to be satisfied, and also how to get rid of the bodies. Within ten years, Gene had given her enough knowledge of the world he lived in, and the world he worked with. It was a world of guns, racketeering, and smuggling. Perfect for her adrenaline search.
This evening began like most of the other evenings. Gene’s valet, Willie, waited outside of the basement that she slept in. “Good evening, Miss Clara,” he said, his Alabama drawl coming out. He tilted his head sideways. “I have a message for you – “
She fell on him, and he shuddered as her fangs tore at the throat. She drank deeply of him, tasting the slight bit of opium underneath blood – he’d probably gone to the den earlier that day. When he went slightly limp in her now-strong arms, she stopped drinking, closing the wound with a gentle lick. She guided him to the chair.
“Why are you here?” she asked, wiping her mouth. She glanced at herself in the mirror. A wisp of a woman, stuck forever around the age of eighteen, she wore men’s clothes instead of the normal flapper dresses expected of a girl her age and station. She looked male if she cut her raven-black hair, but at the moment it had gone down to its normal length of just below her shoulder blades. Sometimes Gene asked her to look male for him, if he didn’t want any of his own boys to bother him.
“Master Gene wants you to attend to him as soon as you are able. He has a job for you.”
Finally, a job, something to prove her worth to him. It had been only, what, sixty years? She’d been chomping at the bit, doing small things, but nothing big, nothing earth-shattering.
She followed Willie through the labyrinth of the Book-Cadillac hotel’s massive cellars, as they got closer and closer to ground floor.
I’m lucky I have a job, I’m lucky I have a job…
Richard (Dick) Parker kept repeating this to himself as he lugged another pair of women’s suitcases across the fine carpeted lobby. He escorted the two people to the elevator. The woman of the pair looked about his age, the man considerably older, probably her father.
She took the man’s hand and pressed herself lewdly against the man. Nope, he thought. Not her father.
He pressed the button for their floor and kept his eye on the numbers as they slowly advanced. “So, sugar,” purred the woman, “when we get to the room, your snake wants to hide in my cave?”
Dick heard the slap of the man onto some part of her anatomy and jumped. The woman giggled. “Jumpy, Johnny?” she asked him.
“No, ma’am,” he said, still looking up at the numbers. Finally, floor 22, and he headed to one of the suites. He let them out first, and carried the bags to their door, unlocked the door and handed the man the key. The man took it absently, and Dick watched as the man went into his back pocket, probably for his wallet. He hid his smile as he opened the door and let them in.
The man had given him five dollars, so he was happy for carrying those damn bags upstairs. The man’s dark and swarthy looks made him think he was part of the men on the thirtieth floor, the men who stood guard near the stairwells and the elevators. He didn’t like going to that floor, not with all those eyes staring at him. Eyes attached to men, with guns at their hips like western gunslingers.
The elevator sped past him, heading up. When it finally got to his floor, he thought he could smell something odd and rotten in the elevator. He’d just come out of it not a few minutes before. As it headed down, he looked around the cab to see if something had fallen and died.
“Ah, Clara.” Gene was nothing if not polite. He took both of her hands in his…
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