2 Chapter 2 - Flesh, Blood and Regret

Darrien had felt nothing like this before, his flight or fight instinct was ravaging his heart like a cat clawing at the curtains, he felt almost like he had came into the lions den, though his mind was racing it was only for a few moments, coming to the idea that he was not truly in danger in such a public setting as this.

The office was a rather lush space, the crimson mixed paper with splashes of darker colors with mostly black across them all. The desk made of some mixture of ancient teak with small embedded dark gems. It gave the entire room a darker look like a dungeon then an actual office. He had yet to figure out if this was intentional design to scare people or was just her taste. He had yet to also figure out why the woman was so unnaturally close, he had heard of some incidents with vampires losing control and biting people, causing mass panic and hysteria. Very harsh laws came into place to protect people, one of them was the Vampire Feeding Act. It was designed so that people would know exactly where vampires went for meals and humans going there knew they would be asked countless times to feed, though due to the same act they also knew that refusal of feeding provided safety to the other races much to the annoyance of vampires.

"So, Please take a seat. I'm Vanessa, the owner of this fine lovely bar and club that I call home, before you begin, we are indeed vampires" she said after a few moments, her entire body being naturally close to the male, her face almost drunk on the smell of his blood, something was causing her to almost lose herself, hypnotized by such a smell. Though as soon as she tried to close the gap, the male moved rapidly into the seat across, her lips curling into a frown.

"Tsk!" Vanessa hissed.

Her body slowly moving around, though instead of sitting across from the man, her body moved between his chair and her desk, sitting on the edge as she spread her legs lightly, tongue pressing against her lower lip. "I'm looking for someone reliable, you seem to have a good attitude. Id love to give you a trial run, if you pass then I will hire you full time. I need more bartenders, my last few have become less active recently."

She was smiling, though her nature of hiding the truth was not so easy to see. Her bartenders tended to become the meal during slower evenings, thus leading to days of downtime, double so when it came to her own clan picking favorites from the staff, leading to her favorite orc holding the ford by himself.

Darrien's eyes lowered slowly as he found the woman sitting right infront of him, eyes slowly skirting down to her thighs and then up to the same skirt, all he had to do was sink a few inches down and he would see everything. He knew that it was a trap, once he did this it was his ticket to becoming food, he would have to make his stance clear, even if he could give verbal rejection, he knew some vampires had some sort of power, some stronger vampires even had something closer to manipulation types of magic which caused havoc, In law it was illegal to use this magic to alter someones will, though it was hard to test for it due to the price tag of the kits used to test its presence.

"Ms Vanessa, thank you so much for the offer!" he said standing up, slowly pushing the chair back as he took a step back, putting space between them both.

"I promise that you will be not be disappointed with my services" He said slightly bowing his head as his eyes would keep an eye on the woman for any movements, though all he could hear was a light sigh of regret and disappointment.

"Fine, come tomorrow wearing something smarter, clean and shaven with a mind ready to learn. Drax will teach you"

She would exit her office with the young man, watching him scamper off as her small smile and kind nature that she had tried to elude slowly evaporated, her frown growing into anger as she slammed her fist into the wall, some of the remaining human patrons jumping like scared rabbits as the other vampires in her family simply chuckled.

In a distant seat a human blinked to the vampire male. "Why is Mistress Vanessa so annoyed?" she said blinking, clearly drunk and under some sort of spell, the male chuckling as he placed the mana blow into a small pot by the side. "Simple, someone escaped her grasp. No one had escaped her grasp in more then fifty years. I wonder if shes lost her touch... Shit" He would curse as he watched Vanessa's eyes lock onto his, clearly her touch was as sharp as ever and his neck was going to be on the line tonight.

Darrien started to walk home with a small spring in his step, while he knew that the location of his work had some dangers to it, his mind was clear as he had searched online after on his phone. Pay, treatment and hours tended to be all in the good category, it was rated a very good place to work. While the boss seemed to be slightly on the more... thirsty side. He could simply just back away from all the attempts, when she found someone new he would be forgotten and allowed to do his job, vampires tended to be creatures of long life but short attention, as long as one did not piss them off, they would go unnoticed.

He would enter into the store next to his home, the ringing of the bells as the sliding doors opened, body moving into the store as the sun had already went down. He had walked for almost an hour to get home as he had very few funds to actually pay for transport all the time, since he saved on the transport he would have some actual funds to buy some junk food for today, maybe a drink and some snacks.

Pulling a few packets from the shelves, his hand would reach into the fridge as he pulled out Cen-Spring, it was a type of water that was formed in the natural springs in the north, it was said that centaurs tended to the water with water magic to purify it. This naturally caused the price to be almost three times the cost of other brands, though he still liked to treat himself to it, he swore it tasted much better then the other brands though it might be because of the rose tinted goggles of having to spend more money.

The items then got placed onto the counter, scanning across by the clearly bored, underpaid woman, her pointed Elven ears twitching lightly as she would sigh loudly, clearly thinking this job was beneath her. She even raised an eyebrow to the expensive water though cheap sneaks combo, clearly wondering what this person was doing with such choices, either one or the other.

"Thirteen Crystals" she said shortly as Darrien had pulled out a small card, it was half the size of a credit card from the prior age, after the Dawning. Paper money became useless and people had to pay using a barter system till the whole world got back onto its feet after the change. Crystals was a simple used currency that most people learning magic used, Each crystal was filled with a certain amount of magical power, most new tools used such a crystal and they were easy enough to forge but only certain people could actually fill the magical crystals with the correct energy. Sadly Darrien had no common magical abilitys and thus was only using crystals which were made by the government. Currently there was a standard price for crystals which when slotted into a machine would analyze them and give a price, then the banks would issue small devices which would allow people to spend the said crystals at stores like this.

After grabbing his items, bagging them himself as the Elven woman clearly had no interest in customer service or really any type of interaction at all, he would exit the store and walk towards his flat.

In the distant, a dark figure stood on the roofs watching down at the male, her smile cracking to a grin as she looked down on his figure, fangs poking out of her bottom lip.

Vanessa had followed him home.