Strange Nights Series - Episode 5 Part 1

“Strange Nights”

Season One
Episode Five
PART ONE
"Down in the Dumpsters"

By: B.A. Holland


Production Notes:
Started: 8/11/2011
“Air Date” 8/13/2011


Published by: Abyssalbooks
www.abyssalbooks.com
Copyright ©2011
All Rights Reserved



Disclaimer

This series is a work of fiction. Characters, names and incidences are either productions of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter One
Angry Movers

         335 West End Avenue, the 18th floor. At first, Jordan thought that this was going to be great. That is, until she realized that the movers didn’t do elevators without complaining. She found herself stuffed in a corner with Anna’s fifteen year old Orion CRT TV set that was 20", and weighed seven times more than she did. Whenever the movers tried to get their van up onto the sidewalk, pedestrians would yell at them, then of course, the movers would bitch at her. Nero would have called it the revolving circle of bitchyness. Since her mother of course had to relocate due to the slight problem of killing everything important in the life of a mob boss; that is, both her and her mother took part in killing the sons of a mob don, they obviously had to move. The US Marshals wanted them to move to the other side of the country but luckily for Jordan, the other side of the city was just fine; or so she thought.

         So, that television, the lamps, the shelves, her box of books, and a fat guy in overalls with astronomical BO and his skinny friend... Both bitching about where they had to park, why they had to work with them after sunset, and how her brat daughter was in the way — Jordan might have called one of them a jerk, too; that didn’t help. Right now, all she wanted to do was find the nearest basketball court. Home schooling was going to be great now that she could suddenly read faster. The petite young girl wisped her chin length blonde hair out from her blue eyes and smiled at the man now that she realized that life as a Vampire was going to have it’s ups. Of course, the fat man, whom she endearingly called Mario, and his sidekick Luigi looked down at her as if she were some sort of ameba in desperate need of a dose of isopropyl rubbing alcohol for appearing so happy when their night of drinking was spoiled by a few thousand dollars that went into their companies bank accounts and not entirely into their pockets.

         “What’s so funny kid?” Asked Mario. She still liked to think of him as Mario even though the name on his stained blue coveralls was clearly Terry.
         “Nothing!” She squeaked. I’m just so excited about moving into a new place!” She bounced on her heels. “Do you guys live around here?”
         “Nah kid.. We ain’t paid enough to live round here.” Said Luigi or, that was, his real name, Mike. “You should just stay in your room and let us big boys do the heavy lifting, eh..”
         The slow elevator crawled to a halt on the 18th floor. Jordan shrugged her shoulders. “I got the TV.”
         “No kid!” Mario imagined lawsuits as the petite ninety pounder pulled out her back. He was even more terrified when the blond girl picked up the TV with ease. She looked up at them, not in pain, and smiling as she walked out of the elevator with a TV in her arms that should have taken a dolly and two men to carry.

         “Oh! Okay... If you insist.” She outstretched her arms with the TV in her hands like it was nothing. The two movers’ eyes widened like dinner plates. “It’s really not that heavy!” She shook her head while blinking up at them. Her blue eyes seemed so innocently cute as they were the only things that could peak out from above the top of the television. Mario reached out and attempted to grab the TV and she heard bones popping.

         “Fuck lollies!” The fat man wheezed as Luigi jumped over some Pier-1 Imports to help. The little girl giggled a bit as she watched the movers control the television into the dolly. Out of breath and in desperate need of a glass of water, they leaned over various pieces of furniture as the elevator doors closed automatically and began it’s journey down to the ground floor.

         “Damn it...” Mario said, knowing that they would have to wait another minute for that elevator to return to the top of the building so that they could begin moving their stuff. It then occurred to them that this girl lifted something that took the both of them to even control. He looked back to the smug look on Jordan’s face and shook his head. “... want a job?”

         The blonde girl promptly skipped away from the agitated coverall clad movers and giggled like the kid she was. The movers watched her skip away into her new abode while waiting for their elevator to come back to the top of the building.

         “Did you see that, Terry? She just... Picked up the TV like it was nothing!” Mike said.
         “We’re just getting old... It’s the only way about it...”
         “You think?”
         The movers kept their dumbfounded expressions present until the chariot filled with cheap-ass furniture dinged their presence. 
         “Come on... Lets get this in here.” Mario ordered

         *

         
                             5th Precinct

         Zak was getting agitated as he did his third turn around on a one-way street. The police precinct was across the street from a Jing Fong Chinese Restaurant on Elizabeth street; the same street that Zak was cursing about. Aside from the only space not taken in the street being filled with discarded office chairs, and merry bundles of trash, there was virtually nowhere to park near by the police station. Anna was sure that she was seeing smoke come out of her tall muscular partners ears. It had been a week since the incident with the mafia and her daughter and she was simply happy to settle into a new spot in New York without losing her job altogether. She still had some loose ends to tie up – Chrissy, her old friend and once, a good detective, was obviously no good friend at all. The problem with the situation was that she couldn’t convict her without sending her daughter into a courtroom; that would require Jordan to walk in the sunlight during government hours – and since that would cause her loved one to spontaneously combust, there was simply no way of convicting Chrissy of doing anything. If anything made the both of them seem equally agitated for different reasons, that would do it.

         “Goddamn it!!! Goddamn IIITTT!” He yelled. “That black and white took my spot! MY SPOT!” He leaned into the horn. The whites of his eyes beamed at the police officer that got out of the vehicle on the one way street’s only ex-vacant parking space. There were cars piling up behind their unmarked cruiser who were now honking at him in return. It reminded Anna of a blood clot. She quickly reeled him in by his arm. The tall black man was pulled into his vehicle once more to do another round on the one way street in an effort to find a suitable parking spot.

         “Our last precinct had parking lots!” Zak said while taking his foot off of the break. He then leaned his head out of the window to the cars behind him and yelled “PARKING LOTS!” Anna was quick to pull him back in again.

         “Calm down... Deep breaths...” Anna simulated breathing slowly. Zak always made her smile.

         “Gotcha...” He let out a breath and turned the next corner. Luckily, around the block, he did manage to find a spot and parked. “Mess with one mob boss and we end up working in Chinatown...”

         Anna hit him on the shoulder. “Come on... Things could be worse.” She said as she got out. The nighttime air was filled with florescent lights, and the scent of various things cooking. The air was actually pungent with mixtures of trash, Chinese food, and shit. Since the Chinese restaurant that also had a main entrance on the other side of the block, they undoubtedly used the police station side of the restaurant to throw everything out. Anna held her nose while she noticed a place that her daughter might enjoy; there was also a video game store across the street from the station.
         "Take a look..." Anna pointed her arm at the neon lights that said video games and she smiled at her partner.

         "You know Jordan don't like no video games man!" Zak looked at her from her feet to her head as if telling her that she should have known better.

         "She has to find some new hobbies. I didn't see any basketball courts nearby the new house." Anna replied. "Don't look at me like that."

         The two detectives walked into the station together and were met by a counter with bullet proof glass facing the open door. The station had been built in the seventies so there were parts of the interior that didn't make much sense. The partition between the main lobby and the station within had indentions in the walls where pay phones used to be; with the invention of cell phones, and "throw away" phones -- the pay phone was a relic of the past; too expensive to upkeep by the telephone company that didn't get paid enough to support the archaic contraptions. These wall indentions continued on beyond the barricade partition between the lobby and the offices.

         "This place looks old as shit," Zak whispered in her ear as they waited for the desk sergeant to approach them.

         "Detective Anna McKenzie, this is Detet..."

         "Yeah yeah... Go on in. Nobody in this town dresses like you guys unless you're a cop or a lawyer that got terribly lost," Said the uniform at the front. He buzzed the door open and allowed them to walk through. They walked through and were met by a cool blast of air conditioning provided by multiple window mounted air conditioners that ran on full tilt to keep the department cool. Obviously the central heating and cooling didn't work very well. She was glad that the cold wave of the past week wasn't upon them anymore. Anna instantly had doubts at the building's albeit to stay warm in the winter.

         The tile floor was scratched beyond belief and some parts of the floor felt as if they wanted to take claim to the soles of their shoes as they walked past parts where blood or coffee had landed. Zak didn't want to know what it was exactly but he noticed Anna paying attention to the sticky tactile characteristics of the floor as well. A door opened near them. This door had a few bullet holes in it and it looked as if it needed to be replaced. An older man in his mid fifties stepped out. He had grey hair but he didn't look out of shape by a long shot.

         "I'm Captain Tom Garand," he nodded to the detectives and shook their hands. “... takes some real guts to stay in the city after all that I heard happened to you. I know this probably isn’t the type of department that you are used to. We’ve been around for a while but I assure you, it grows on you. Any of you speak Chinese?”

         Tom didn’t seem too disappointed when both detectives shook their heads. He gave them a nod and pointed to a desk that looked like particle-board hell. Actually, it looked as if it was either the surface of the moon, or a miniature World War Three had broken out upon the surface of the desk because there were few flat spots that anyone could rest a piece of paper on without stabbing the pen through the surface and into one of the atomic bomb sized craters underneath that were either dug into the desk by their predecessors, or eaten by termites.

         "Here's your spot. If you wish to replace the desk with your own cash at some point, that is fine but unfortunately this is the best that this department can do." Tom explained. "Goodness knows, it's hard to find a pair of detectives that actually want to fill the night-shift – I'll do what I can to better accommodate but our budget is screwed."

         Anna and Zak took a collective look at the desk. It looked like someone had spent a lot of time carving a hole into the surface of it in one corner with Rambo's knife. The drawers were mostly intact, but one side of the desk had a drawer that didn't match the rest of the desk because at some point, the particle-board panel that the box on wheels slid into was pulled off, leaving nothing but exposed screws.

         "If we get tetanus from this desk, we'll get covered, ight?" Zak was instantly elbowed by Anna as soon as he popped the question. Tom smiled and shook his head.

         "I would expect such a reaction. I understand." Tom said. "Well, I'll leave you two to it and line up some cases for you. In the meantime, I guess it's time to get you acquainted with your desk. By the way, detectives..." Tom handed them a pair of thumb-drives. "... Your computer aren't compatible with your I-Pad's so you're going to have to start transferring information between the thumb drives if you want to continue using those. These computers run MicroWord 97'."

         "Ninety Seven?" Anna raised an eyebrow.

         "Yeah... They aren't networked either. We have our I.T. Man working up a printer for your desk. All files go into the folders, and you are encouraged to keep everything backed up on the thumb drives as well as the hard drive. Every system has a dial out port for internet but they don't work very well."  Tom quickly walked away from their desks before they had any more questions; he seemed more ashamed at their condition than to be actually playing a joke on them. Before Zak could put together one of his snappy remarks about the shitty desk, Tom was already gone.



         Jordan was having a good time with the movers now. She realized that aside from her super-human strength, she had the ability to re-arrange the apartment so quickly that when the movers arrived to arrange the apartment, it looked livable. Actually, it looked as if everything was put perfectly in it's place. Jordan managed to move equipment that no normal human could have moved without additional help. Mario and Luiji couldn't keep their jaws up as they looked at the apartment. They had left all of the furniture in the middle of the room and promised to come back to talk about where to position the place.

         Instead of getting the extra money to arrange the furniture for a helpless 90 pound teenager, they were duped by a wonderfully organized apartment.

         "No way..." Luiji marveled in disbelief with a touch of irritation.

         "Girl... Where you hiding the crew? This isn't funny.." Mario said.
         "What crew?" Jordan said while dusting her hands together happily. She was getting too much entertainment off of the movers.

         Mario brushed passed her an checked the rooms, all of them. He found no mysterious extra crew that could have moved all of the equipment for them. He was beginning to feel as if he was on some new episode of Candid Camera as he walked back into the living room having only found all rooms, straightened up --- beds made, shelves in place; even the obsolete 200 pound TV was on the TV stand.

         "You find anyone comin to da elevator on your way in?" Mario asked.
         "Nah boss... I came in with you." The dumbfounded Luiji confirmed.

         Throughout all of this Jordan did her best to hide her smile. The young blonde stood behind the sofa with her hands behind her back, portraying the most innocent look that she could muster while the movers continued to contemplate whether or not they were in the Twilight Zone.

         "Well ah, I guess our work here is done... That'll be seven hundred dollars," Mario said.

         "Seven hundred?! Mom said that she paid four hundred in advance and was only supposed to pay another two hundred depending on the extra hours it took for you to help move in. A hundred per hour, in fact." She said.

         "We always require the extra fee for installation and positioning of the furniture." Luiji leaned over the fat man's side as if hiding behind him when he said it. He was afraid of the pale little girl. Jordan could sense their heartbeats; one out of fear, one out of anger and contempt.

         "Look here, girl... I don't know what kind of circus show you got runnin' up in here but no matter who you hired to move this furniture, you hired us. It's in the contract." Mario's face was starting to look like a red tomato as he leaned over her.

         "Man, maybe we should just get..."

         Mario slapped Luiji's hand off of his shoulder when he put it on him as if to hold him back. He turned back to Jordan, who was getting out her cell phone.

         "What are you doing kid? Just give us the money and we'll go!" Mario practically spat at her.

         "I'm calling mommy..." She said. "... Gonna tell her you were cursing at me in the elevator and got all mad at me when I moved the furniture."

         It was then that Mario's demeanor changed slightly; especially after telling him that her mom was a Cop.

         "Nah, nah kid.. Just -- keep the money... Keep it." Mario spun on his heels and stomped away. He never noticed that Jordan had already slipped a hundred dollars to the both of them throughout the moving ordeal. She giggled slightly as she watched them walk out with two benjimin's hanging out of their back blue coverall pockets. She was going to giggle even more when they got to their moving van.

         In the darkness, Jordan found a drain pipe that guided her into a controlled feet-first fall from the kitchen window. The sidewalk cracked at the mammoth impact with the ground and Jordan put her hands out in front of her to keep her face from slamming into the dirt at sixty miles an hour. Her petite body bounced and she almost fell on her back but a running stumble kept her on her feet. She felt her toes pop through her socks causing instant discomfort but she knew she only had an extra minute to scare the hell out of the movers. She threw a note into the van that said I put your extra money in your pockets... Did you know that you two look like Mario and Luigi, only the pissed off versions? And then she left the vehicle to meet them at the bottom of the elevator.

         The moving employees practically jumped toward the other end of the elevator at the sight of the strange pale blonde girl waiting for them at the foot of the elevator.

         "Jesus Christ kid!! What the --- but you were..." Mario felt his heart pounding harder than it should and he was in serious need of an antacid from the stress. He broke out in beads as Luigi held onto him.

         "How'd you get down here, kid?!" Asked the skinny one.

         "Oh I'm her twin!"
         As she stepped into the elevator, the Mario Brother's wasted no time running from the confined space. She giggled as she hit the button for the eighteenth floor.

         The movers hightailed it to the van and Luigi found the note on the dash. He shuddered as a shiver went up his spine when he realized that there really wasn’t a twin.
         “That girl was just plain weird...” Luigi said while reaching into his pocket and pulling out one of the hundred dollar bills that they tried to get out of the kid. Mario did the same and found his hundred dollars. He shook his head at Luigi and stepped on the gas. The moving van peeled out of the sidewalk and blew through a red light on the street corner. They would undoubtedly be using some of their newfound money to play for a traffic ticket once the street view camera’s caught their transgression. 

         
         

         Chapter Two
         A night spent down in the dumps-ters...

         Nero sat patiently at the head of a table while the chairs around that table slowly became filled with Vampires that decided that they were in charge of his life now that he was more or less dead. Nero knew that he shouldn’t piss them off beyond a certain degree and pretend to be diplomatic. After all, he wasn’t sure what all they knew about what he had been engaged in recently and he wasn’t about to tip his hand; Nero was glad that Vampires weren’t psychic – like some movies led people to believe. The vampires around him all appeared relatively young. Margot, or  the uppity vampire bitch of the Sanctum, he liked to call her, was in the room as well. Nero observed the desk. It was heavy, marble, with engraved lettering along the edges that probably meant something that they thought was somewhat epic, but he could still, care less.  They all sat around quietly for a moment in the dismal archaic looking chamber and looked down upon him as if their decision even mattered. Nero was taking the time to wonder if the US Marshals could ever be thorough enough to actually hide a couple of Vampires, family, and a family friend from people that had all the time in the world to find them. If it were a few days ago, he would have thought that Pedro would have ratted him out to the Sanctum for sure; now, he was having different thoughts. He actually doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, Nero thought to himself before someone finally spoke.

         “It has been four days since your investigation came to a close and you’ve given us nothing. How do you feel about that, Nero?” Came the voice of a man with long blonde hair, striking blue eyes, and a muscular frame. Nero guessed that since he talked first, he was the ringleader of the so-called Sanctum. 

         “The police department would have let me by with at least twelve unsolved cases a year. It happens.” Nero said honestly. “The addition of superhuman powers doesn’t negate the reality that we are not going to have a one hundred percent success rate. Not unless you wanted some sort of witch hunt. Is that what you want, Fabio?” He replied in reference to the man from the I can’t believe it’s not butter commercials that he remembered. The man stood up from his table but Margot waved him off ever so lightly by lifting her hand off of the expensive meeting table shortly after she sat down.

         “Nero... We understand that not everything can be solved but this was your first task for us and you failed. We want your assurance that you will at least work as hard as you did as a mortal police investigator as you should now.” Margot shrugged and the knobs of her slender shoulders threatened to pop out of her tank-top. Nero always thought that she was fairly pretty but right now wasn’t the time to ogle. “We want to help you with anything that you might need assistance with. If there are ever any problems, please bring it before this table, whenever you like, and we will do everything within our powers to provide it for you.” She said it with such compassion and emotion. Her voice even had that cute upward inflection of a person that was doing her best to lie as convincingly as possible. Nero couldn’t help but give her his trademark shit-eating grin that screamed you are such a liar.

         “Yes.. Well put, my dear.” Fabio said. “Well put...”
         Nero always inwardly cringed when he heard someone repeat things. He watched this Fabio guy get up from a King-Like chair and slowly walk around the table. His blonde eyebrows seemed to be stuck high on his forehead as if he were in constant surprise over something as he held his hands behind his back.

         The out-of-style cloak from the 18th century seemed to scream douschebag to to Nero as he observed his swanky behavior. He placed his hands upon Margot’s shoulders as if she were his prized pet, the ultimate brown-noser of vampiric society; the fanged yes-man of the underworld. Horrifically, cubicle style white collar behavior carried on beyond life, and it made him want to die, again...

         “So... Are you guys just going to put on a show for me or did you actually ask me here for some reason?” Nero sat back in the comfortable chair that threatened to lull him to sleep. He planned on buying a chair just like it with his stolen bank money whenever he managed to get home. There was so much to do. Jordan would be having a craving for blood sometime before dawn but he couldn’t tell everyone in the sanctum that he had an urge to go home and share blood packets with someone he sired as a vampire. No, that would probably cause a bunch of vampire white-collar’s to shit bricks. They would probably come up with odd consequences that involved the loss of his head.

         There was a silence for a moment but eventually the I cannot believe it’s not butter man flung a black 5x10 envelope to Nero, frisbee style.

         “Fan mail from some flounder?”

         Nero opened it. There was a gestapo-style dossier enclosed, complete with the picture of a young slender framed brunette that didn’t seem a day over thirty-five. She was smiling in the photograph and the background had a hint of the very table that Nero was sitting at; it was in the frame of the picture, mere inches from the edge of the photo.

         “Amy Ryder... Thirty-Four,” Margot started to explain the highlights to Nero. “... at least, thirty-four at the time of her crossing over. She was born in 1976. She used to be a lawyer until she met Austin Reese, one of our elders.” She reached up and held onto the blonde man’s hand; she even looked up to him mournfully, but done in such a way that anyone with a decent bullshit detector could tell that she was only interested in making her nose a little more brown. She shot her gaze dramatically to Nero. “Find her, kill her, and report in to us.”

         “Killing eh?” Nero sighed. He tucked the photos back into the envelope and looked at the various members of the sanctum before paying his full glance toward Margot and butter man. He stood up and flopped the envelop on the table. “I don’t kill.”

         “You think you can drink the blood we provide you and claim that you’re not a killer?” As the long blonde haired man laughed, the various members of the organization laughed with him. “Humans kill cows... Anyone who eats a cheese burger at McDonalds can’t claim anything more than ignorance of the fact.”

         “Yeah, well, McDonalds sucks so you would use them as an analogy. I suppose I have no choice?” Nero didn’t even look for a reaction as he picked the envelope off of the table and flopped it back and fourth between his fingers and made his way to the door. “Don’t call me Margot... I’ll call you.” He said in a near sing-a-long voice. The door’s slam echoed throughout the marble hall of the sanctum meeting place. 








         It took a while for Jordan to find a basketball court in the section of New York that she lived at. She had looked up places to play sports. Aside from a rather large dockside football field only a few blocks away, there was nobody willing to play Football with her. She took the bus to the Roosevelt National Library and from there, walked to a basketball park on the river. It was dark and she was there after-hours. The hoops seemed to be illuminated despite the darkness that engulfed her.

         Bouncing a basketball in the middle of New York City was like turning on a beacon, however. She wished that Zak was still on mid-shift at the police department; now that he was working with her mother all the time, she knew that she would eventually have to find someone else to take her to a basketball court or play with her. The sound of Jordan’s dribble easily made it’s way to the street. She could hear the sound of a few bums hiding out in the park respond to the basketball. They probably assumed that she was a seven foot tall musclebound dude, because as she dribbled, she could hear heartbeats in the park rise.

         She threw the ball in pitch black and the soothing sound of chains from the net rattling signaled one victory after another as Jordan found that she was nearly undefeated; well, she was, since she had nobody to play with. Her confidence level reached the stars by the time the pinging sound of a basketball against the pavement inevitably brought on some attention. Jordan heard the sound of people talking. Her eyesight was momentarily blinded by a pair of flashlights. The light hit Jordan and she raised her hand in front of her eyes while adjusting her basketball shorts and her t-shirt. She pulled her hair into her I Love New York baseball cap and pulled it on backward.

         “Who are you?” She said in a squeaky questionable voice.

         “Sup?,” a young man’s voice replied. “Yo, how old you?” Said another man’s voice.
         “Is she for real?” Laughed a female voice behind the light.
         “Yo, dawg – she got balls bein’ out here...” That voice was most certainly Latino.
         “Shudup..” A deeper voice rang but she couldn’t tell if the statement was to her, or this man’s friends..

         She could hear another heartbeat behind the blinding pair of lights but there wasn’t a witty retort or a statement of any kind from the fifth person.

         “We just out lookin’ for a party,” Said the Latino voice.

         “I was just shooting some hoops, really.” Jordan replied. She felt a little unsettled that they didn’t really introduce themselves. She didn’t feel scared though. She felt more in control than she would have been if she were just a human girl out in the park; alone in the dark.

         “How you hittin’ the damned hoop– yo, can’t see shit!” He was obviously African American. Jordan smiled a little now that several people were laughing. Jordan turned and threw the ball. Her slender figure jumped off of the ground in perfect form as she released the ball. Shortly after touching back down, the chin-link swish sound erupted, followed by the landing of the basketball on the pavement. She turned to the light and smiled cutely.

         “I’m Jordan!” She said.

         “How old you is girl?!” Asked the white man that was so vocally strained that Jordan could naturally tell somehow, was disguising his voice to sound more ethnic. Once the lights were out of her face, she could see that the white man, indeed looked like he was the poster boy for fake-jewelry-R’us.

         “Fourteen,” she lied. She hoped she looked it; by the sound of things though, she would eventually have to be lying about her age all the time. She didn’t want to think about the fact that she was going to be a teenager for eternity.

         “Gina... You just took second place in the gang...” Said the Latino.
         “Shut up, Juan!” Said Slim Shady. “I’m Nathan,” Said the bling-master.
         “Tyler,” the dark skinned boy said as he lifted his chin to the stars.
         “Juan, And I’m single.” the Latino said with laughter following.
         “Bitch, I ain’t givn her my name!” the oldest girl in the group proclaimed.

         “Who you calin’ bitch. I got your stuff, member dat!” Tyler pushed at her and pulled a bag with a white substance out of his pocket. “Tell her now or you ain’got nun tonite!” Tyler’s eyes widened and he swung his head from side to side like a snake ready to strike.

         Jordan was unsure about this crowd, but now that she saw the drugs, she was imagining what her mother would say about these people. She had thoughts of Zak and her mother pulling up beside her on the street with this group. Oh hi mom! Guys, these are my friends... She could just imagine the trouble she would be in, and that was the only reason she picked up her basketball and started v-lining the group. They all wouldn’t let her leave though.

         “Dat be Tina... She ight so once you get know her...” Tyler assured her in his broken ebonics. He put a hand on Jordan’s shoulder and turned her to another girl that looked almost about her age. She had brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles. She looked entirely too young to be out with a group like she was in. It flashed in her head that maybe she needed some sort of help. “And dats Gina... Second newest to da crew. Where you be goin night?”

         “What?” Jordan shook her head. She couldn’t understand much of what Tyler was saying.
         “He said, what your plans?” Nathan said as he encroached on her personal space. He practically hugged up on Jordan in an immature, too-personal fashion. Jordan flinched a little out of feeling alone. She still wasn’t scared, but she wanted to play this group as if she were normal. She pretended to feel disturbed by what was going on around her a little by hugging the basketball to her chest.

         “I should get heading home,” Jordan said simply.
         “Ahh, come on!” Nathan said. “We got a club da go to!”
         “Club? No club around here’ll let us in.” Juan stated.
         “We got hookup down at the Proton. Come on... Don’t leave Tyler hanging...” Nathan pushed Jordan into Tyler who wrapped his arms around her in a hug that she didn’t necessarily want. Jordan found herself driving across the bridge to manhattan in a flashy BMW that must have been one of these kids’ parents car; she also had another question in mind.

         “What is proton?”
         “Club proton,” Tina said in a dismissive tone. “Got the green?”
         “Green?” Jordan shook her head slightly and raised her eyebrows.
         “Money.. Cash...” Tina responded.
         “Why?”
         “You ain’t gonna go da Proton dressed like that...”

         Jordan’s eyes widened at the hostility in this woman’s voice. She checked her watch, it was coming on 11:30PM. There was plenty of time to get home and she could easily slip past these people. She knew it. She felt the fear from the girl beside her though. She whispered in her ear.
         “I’m Jordan.”
         “Hi,” Gina said in a low whisper.
         “Where are your parents? Do you know these guys?” She whispered back.
         “I’m friends with – Juan, but... I’m new here.” She glanced up at the other occupants of the car. Juan was on the other side of her in the rear passenger seat looking at them oddly.

         “In’t nothin yous cant talk ta each other bout that you cant talk wit me.” Juan stated.

         They stayed quiet for the rest of the trip. They stopped at a clothing store. Jordan still had nearly two thousand dollars in her wallet that she dared not tell anyone else about as she found what they considered to be appropriate clothing for both herself and for Gina. Less than twenty minutes later, they found themselves slipping by the bouncers to Club Proton.




         At midnight, Anna and Zak rushed back to Anna’s apartment for lunch break; or at least, their version of a lunch break. Nero was supposed to meet them at the apartment and give them something that Jordan apparently needed in order to survive. Anna entered the complex and tapped the elevator button for her floor. She wondered if Anna was doing alright by herself. Her worries about arranging the apartment were put to rest when she saw that all of the furniture, in all of the rooms were put into place. It then occurred to her instantly that Jordan wasn’t home.

         “Jordan?!” Anna did one last look just in case Jordan was playing a trick on her.

         Zak began to fidget and his fists balled.
         “I don’t like this one bit.”

         Nero arrived without knocking after Anna’s third or fourth attempt to call Jordan went unanswered. Before Anna could respond, Nero shook his head and held out his hand as if he knew what she was going to say.
         “Wherever she is... She’s not in danger.” Nero assured her.
         “She’s still thirteen! She can’t just run out on us in the middle of the night!” Anna yelled.
         “Dats right,” Zak said.

         
         Nero gave Zak a quick glance but then moved his eyes over to the direction of the distressed mother.
         "She can only get out at night now. Your midnight, is her mid-afternoon. No mortal can harm her now that she understands a good bit of her potential."
         "I still don't like it," Anna stated.
         "Yeah, bullshit." Zak finally said it again.
         "Look," Nero did a 360 and ran his hands through his long brown hair while he processed what he was about to transfer to his lips. "... Jordan has a higher capacity to protect herself and care for others now if she so chooses. In a way, she has taken some of the burden off of our shoulders, Anna."

         "My child is a Vampire! How is that taking a burden off of my shoulders?!" Anna leaned over the kitchen counter at him.

         "She's stronger, more apt to understand when trouble has entered her life, and she now has the innate ability to survive." Nero looked like he was about to say something else but he stopped. Anna and Zak, being detectives, knew that expression; this was why Anna slowly walked around the kitchen counter and teamed with Zak  in cornering Nero between the TV stand and a large potted plant in the corner of the room.

         "Please," Zak said. "... Continue."

         Nero took a deep breath and looked into Anna's eyes.
         "Before I continue... Let me remind you that if I didn't take the precaution I did, Jordan would be dead when Anthony drowned her in your bathtub; she wouldn't be around at all."
         "Nero!" Zak yelled.
         "Alright," Nero held his hand up between himself and Zak. "The tradeoff at being immortal is that Jordan won't be able to have children."

         Nero and Zak watched as Anna's shoulders slumped slightly. She found a bar stool next to the kitchen divider, sat down, and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. Nero decided it was best to keep talking.
         "... But she will live on, forever -- just as long as she is careful with herself. I can tell you this... Jordan is a very resourceful girl and I think she's going to be just fine. She's also going to be immune to disease, colds, viruses... Nothing can touch her now." Nero could see that Anna was weighing this new information in her mind. It was obviously a lot for a parent to take in.

         "This is just... So unbelievable. How am I supposed to deal with this?" Anna asked the question more for herself than for anyone else in the room.

         "It's going to be alright." Nero said. "I know that you don't believe it right now but given time, you'll be okay. All this stress should be off your back once you realize how quickly your daughter is going to learn and grow; she'll always be able to defend herself."

         "I don't want her to grow up this fast though!" Anna wheezed through her tightened throat. "I didn't want this." Her hands shook as she put her face into them.

         "I think you should just leave right now," Zak said.

         Nero sighed and put his hands into his jacket pockets. He pulled out two red pouches. She put them into the completely empty refrigerator and turned to them.
         "I hope you understand that it wasn't me that did this." He reminded them.

         Anna wiped her eyes and nodded to Nero.
         "I do... I don't blame you." Anna said. "It's just the change. Someone actually murdered my daughter. But, because of you I still have her -- I understand that." She forced a smile, a grateful smile. "Please, stay a while, Nero..."
         




         Club Proton was one of the largest clubs in Manhattan. The music was playing, the catwalks as well as the main floor was filled with people dancing to the beat in unison; between those people were others’ attempting to get by from one place to another, a bar full of people attempting to pick up chicks, and the usual wallflowers. Jordan held tightly onto Gina’s hand as they were forced like hostages through the crowd. Nathan, Juan, Tina, Gina, and Jordan were pulled through the crowed by Tyler like a freight train clearing a track to the main stage where DJ Jaime Jax, otherwise known as DJ-J-Jay was up on the keyboards doing a live performance that sounded like a plugged toaster trying to crawl it’s way up a flooded metal drain pipe with a running hair dryer in tow.

         Gina tried to ask Jordan where they were going but Jordan didn’t know. She felt that nobody else would have heard Gina’s response. She felt that familiar tingle up her spine as they advanced near the stage. Jaime looked up for a brief moment and locked eyes with Jordan. In turn, Jordan noticed the slender brunette DJ glancing over to another DJ that was running the mixes off of his keyboard; a Latino man with spiked hair and a very expensive suit. The song faltered slightly Jordan recognized this man.

         It was Pedro.

         He continued on the mixer to help Jaime as he shook his head at Jordan as if a sign that they shouldn’t be there. Jordan felt a wave of relief flow over her. For some familiar reason that she couldn’t place, she felt protected by these Vampires; one of which she didn’t even know. There was a familiarity about these people that made her feel as if everything would be okay – for both her and poor Gina Roth. She had the courage to talk just loud enough for Gina to hear her over the crowd as the men around them danced to the music and looked at nearly naked women on the dance floor that may as well have been dry humping while passing their XTC pills.

         “Don’t worry. I’ll get you home soon okay?” Jaime assured the other girl. She felt pressure on her hand as Gina squeezed her palm and smiled. Jordan hoped that she conveyed the sudden feeling of shelter to her. The next song came on and the DJ’s switched out. There was a roaring thunderous clap-fest after the track was over and that’s when several beefy men that could only be defeated by Chuck Norris, himself, surrounded the small group.

         Jaime looked up while Tyler beat his chest like a caged animal in desperate need of a Tums after a large meal. He kept saying things like Don’t fuck with me! You don’t know who you’re fu–,” and that was about the time two thin metal wires flung through the air and attached to his chest. Tyler tried to fight it but all that happened was that his eyes got so big that the white orbs began to extrude from their sockets. He had a plan to walk forward and rip the bouncers head off but all he managed to do was generate a very bad example of dub-step to the wrong type of song as the jolting electrodes brought him to his urine soaked knees.

         The ladies were not impressed...

         Jordan was swooped away from the group by a few bouncers. She protested as she saw the horrified look on Gina’s face. She promised that she wouldn’t leave her behind. The bouncer that had her was quickly surprised by the way that this tiny young girl flipped over his head. It felt like a long drop to the ground for her but once she had sight of his feet, she gave truth to the saying the bigger they are, the louder they fall. She jumped over the dazed bouncer and ran next to mister twitchy; she grabbed hold of Gina in a way that when she got overtaken, she would bring Gina with her.

         As the rest of the horrid crew were shown out of the club via kindly, and very gingerly throwing them into a dumpster, Jaime Jax and Pedro stepped into the catwalk viewing booth where it was quiet and secluded away from the club. Pedro wasted no time shutting the door and walking straight to the two young kids that were forcibly pushed onto the sofa next to all of the overhead viewing equipment that kept an eye on the party-goers. Pedro shook his head at the girl.

         “Jordan?! What the hell are you doing here?” Pedro was at least happy that she was dressed for the occasion this time. He wouldn’t bring up the circumstances of their first meeting with Jaime if he could help it. Jordan let out a sigh and smiled.

         “Thanks for saving me, again. I was out playing basketball in the park and that group picked me up.” Jordan brought her legs inward and crossed them Indian style on the sofa. Her silver club-pants fit her like a glove and her tank-top outlined everything that she didn’t have to offer the world underneath. Gina was in a similar situation but she at least still had a pulse and had the ability to get on with her life. “This is Gina Roth. We need to find out where she lives so we can get her home.”

         Pedro sighed and looked to Jaime.
         “Look... I have a club to run. I don’t need Nero’s stupid bullshit landing on the club floor! I’ll take care of it later. Just do what needs to be done and get them out of my hair.” Pedro turned to Jordan while not even acknowledging Gina’s existence. “... no offense Jordan. This isn’t your fault.” His voice raised as he pointed toward the windows behind him and knelt down a moment to emphasize his point. “Nero just needs to know when to quit screwing around with shit. I’m nobody’s nanny! I’m Pedro! I’ve got a respectable business, a place to run! And I’m not going to lose my head over what happens here tonight, or any other night.... Jaime... Deal with it, please.”

         Pedro stomped to the door that exited onto the overhead catwalk and slammed it shut behind him. The door opened and Pedro stuck his head in again.
         “Tell Nero he still owe’s me money.”
         Slam...


         The young woman appeared to be about twenty. She knelt down and smiled at Jordan.
         “Don’t mind him. Nero just knows how to set him off. I’m friends with the both of them.” She then turned to Gina. “Well Hello there...”

         “Hi...” Gina managed to whisper.
         “You know Nero too?” Jordan asked.
         “Oh yeah... We’re very well acquainted.” The pale woman said as she handed Jordan a throwaway phone. “... there you go. Keep it when you’re done. It has three thousand minutes on it. I’m surprised that your parents don’t give you cell phones.”
         “I um.. Left it at home.” Jordan admitted.
         Jaime smiled and shook her head at Jordan. She took the phone out of Jordan’s hands and gave it to Gina.
         “I bet this is your first Cell Phone. Go ahead... Call your parents. I’m sure they’re worried sick.”

         It only took ten minutes for Gina’s parents to swipe the girl away from the dance club. Do doubt, poor Gina would be grounded for quite some time. Jordan was sure to write down the number to Gina’s first cell phone as she left.

         “So,” Jaime started. “How’s life as the undead so far?”
         Jordan sighed and smiled at Jaime.
         “Interesting...”

         “I personally find it odd that they make club outfits in your size... Pedro brought you up in conversation. You’re an unsanctioned Vampire so make sure not to bring way too much attention to yourself. There are laws in vampiric society that Nero totally broke. Pedro is keeping the secret but we need to keep you away from other Vampires.” Jaime sat down next to Jordan. “No doubt you are the source for all the debauchery that was going on with Nero earlier this week,” the Vampire DJ giggled slightly.


         

         At Jordan’s apartment, her cell phone rang. Nero was the only one there now that Anna and Zak went back on the job. Nero walked to Jordan’s room and looked at the text message from an unknown number.

         JORDAN HLP ME PLZ! NATHAN & TYLER FOLLOWING ME IN THEIR CAR!



         ... to be continued.