Undesirable Chapter 6
TITLE: Undesirable (A vampire novel)
RATING: NC-17 (This chapter PG-13)
GENRE: Porn with plot -- heavy on the plot. Action/adventure, some black humor, some romance.
PAIRINGS: George x everyone. Mostly Slash, some het, three and moresomes. Vampire sex.
WARNINGS: (this chapter) none.
WORD COUNT: 4546
A/N: Chapter 10 is kicking my butt, but at this point I can't see why I'll need to make any changes to chapter 6, so I'm going to go ahead and post it.
CHAPTER 6
I woke to sound of a plane taking off. My eyes flew open and I sat up, sucking in a deep breath and thinking that I'd missed my flight. Which, of course, I had - some eighteen hours earlier. Patting the sheets blindly, I tried to make sense of my setting. After a couple of blinks to get the crud out of my eyes, the world settled out, and I found myself placing the gem colored velvet furniture and papa-bear bed.
I was still in Lord Jeffrey's feeding room. From the short angle of the light through the large, tinted windows, it had to be close to noon. I was horribly hungry, my body ached and felt sticky and chafed in sensitive areas, and I really needed to pee.
The "airplane" turned out to be no more than a very loud, possibly defective industrial vacuum cleaner being wielded by a very small, middle-aged woman in a grey jumpsuit. She had her back to me, running the vacuum in repetitive paths back and forth in front of the main entrance. After a few seconds, she turned off the motor, and began to shove some chairs up against the wall. Then she swung her huge vacuum around for another pass.
Belatedly I yanked up the sheets to cover more of my nakedness. The movement must have caught her eye because she stopped and stared at me.
For a second there was an impasse, both of us just staring at each other with what I imagine was identical looks of embarrassment on our faces. Then she blushed and held a hand up to cover her eyes. "Sorry, sorry, sir. Didn't realize you were there."
Without letting the sheet drop I fished around the huge bed for my shorts. They had to be somewhere. It took a bit of floundering but I found them twisted up and caught between the mattress and one of the posts. I yanked them on quickly.
"Okay, I got my pants on," I called to let her know I was decent - more or less.
"There's a bathroom over there," she said, gesturing without looking. "If you'd like to get cleaned up."
"Yeah," I said, awkwardly. "Yeah, great idea. I won't be long." I could feel the dried sweat on me, and the residue of sex and semen, both my own and others. I could smell myself, rank and musky in the worst possible way.
"Take your time," she said, turning the vacuum back on. She gave a glance my direction, sizing me up with eyes before twisting her mouth to stop a guilty smile. I knew where her thoughts had gone. I'd like to think the blush was because she thought I was an attractive hunk and not because she was just embarrassed for me.
I showered and made use of the amenities, trying to pretend that I was in some luxurious hotel room and not a vampire's bedroom. The curious thing was that it wasn't that hard to deceive myself. Maybe it was a gift from Lord Jeffrey but I actually found myself fairly pragmatic about what had happened. Not happy by a long shot, but not nearly as humiliated and debased as I worried I'd be. Weirdly enough, I was more traumatized by Lady Dingaling, and all she'd done to me was toss me across the room and yell at me. I could almost imagine it as being some kind of sex-club experience.
Or maybe it was simply that I was still in the lion's den, and the moment I was home and safe, all this would hit me. I couldn't tell. For now I wasn't going to push at it, because the last thing I needed was to fall apart. I had the paranoid feeling that if I didn't leave Jeffrey's premises quickly, they might change their minds and make me repeat my performance.
Shuddering, I dropped the towel on the tiled floor and donned my dirty underwear again. I gave my teeth a quick finger scrub and a rinse with water from the tap, then smoothed my towel ruffled hair into something that resembled street acceptable. I left the bathroom, most evidence of my debauchery erased.
The maid was cleaning up around the chartreuse settee when I came out. "Okay," I yelled to her over the vacuum. "I'm going now. The bathroom's yours." Without waiting for an acknowledgement I went through the still open closet door and starting putting on my clothes. I shoved the tie in my pocket and loosened the collar. Although I couldn't even see the scars from where Jeffrey and Marc had bit me last night, I could still almost feel them. I didn't want anything touching my neck or wrists too hard. At least it wasn't obvious to an outside observer what had happened to me. As soon as I got out of this venus fly trap of an apartment, I'd become another anonymous person in the crowd.
On the heels of that thought, the first barrier to getting home reared its inevitable head. My eyes locked on to the inner door, and noticed, for the first time, a slot at the bottom of the knob. It was the perfect size to swipe a security key card - a key card I didn't have.
I stopped one shoe on, and one in hand, and stared at my escape route. Well… shit. All those damn security doors. And even should I get past them somehow, the place was a freaking labyrinth. Without a guide I had no hope of getting out. It was physically impossible. I was trapped in the damn feeding room until someone remembered to come get me. That could be hours from now.
Goddamn it, at this rate I'd be getting home just in time to jump on a plane to my next assignment. My weekend was shot, I was starving, sore in odd places, and this was all just craptastic.
In the other room, the vacuum cleaner mercifully turned off. Wait a minute, I thought.
Slipping the second shoe on, I turned around and went back out into feeding the room. The maid was jerking the sheets off the bed and bundling them into a large wheeled hamper. I got her attention by clearing my voice. "Uh, ma'am, I hate to bother you, but could you help me find my way out?"
The maid straightened up. "You don't have a card?"
I shook my head. "They seem to have forgotten to give me one. Actually, I think I've been kind of just forgotten period."
"One minute," she called as she pushed the cart to the side of the room. Then she fished one of those plastic keycards that hotels like to use from her jumpsuit pocket. She pushed it into the lock of the main door and I heard a brief buzz. A moment later she ushered me out into a fancy hallway.
The route she took was nothing like the path that my guide had taken earlier. The corridor was wide and straight and well lit. Best of all led directly to the elevators. It hit me with a shock that this was the public part of Lord Jeffrey's abode, and the maze been ushered around in earlier was akin to servants corridors. Evidently the maid considered me a enough of an honored guest that I didn't need to be hidden from view. I wondered how Lord Jeffrey would feel about that.
And then I didn't care, because I recognized the elevator as the one that had taken me from the underground parking lot up to Jeffrey's lair. The maid put her keycard into a slot again and pressed the button labeled L. She then stepped out of the elevator and back into the hall.
"Have a good day, sir," she said, then turned around and headed back down the hall towards the feeding room. The elevator doors closed.
When they opened a minute later it was on the main lobby of the building. I could see the street out through a single glass door at the end of a long hall, and all there was between me and my freedom (finally) was a long shiny expanse of empty black marble flooring, and a single high-sided desk.
The man at the desk watched me approached with a slightly puzzled look on his face. He was fiftyish and balding, propped up so that even sitting he looked down on me. The top of the desk was about level with my shoulders, making me feel a bit like a child. "Excuse me, sir," he said. "May I help you?"
"I was told that I could go home," I said tentatively.
"Your name?" His eyes were cast down and I could tell from the clicking and the slight jiggle of his upper arms that he was typing something into a computer.
My gut tightened up. What if this guy had orders not to let me leave? After the false starts last night I didn’t trust that I would be free until I walked out the door.
"Name?" the man repeated.
"George Handle."
The man typed it in. Then nodded and straightened up. "Ah. Lord Jeffrey left some instructions."
"Instructions?" My stomach sank.
There was a high pitched screech behind the wooden desk, the man bent down and then pulled a page up and handed it to me. "You have an appointment to have your hair styled tomorrow at noon."
Wait, what? Lord Jeffrey had made an appointment to have my hair cut? Why the hell would he do that? Unless it was a parting insult made to my own sense of style, or lack thereof -- No, that wasn't it. There was no doubt in my mind that I was nothing but a meal to Lord Jeffrey. A rather bothersome, uncooperative meal, but a meal. He wouldn't stoop to insulting me on my way out.
… But he might want my hair cut if he planned on using me again. And if he planned on using me again, then he was expecting me to be here to be used. But I wasn't going to be in Chicago a minute longer than I had to be. I was going home.
Oh god, they might not let me go home. But they had to. They promised. Five fucking minutes. But oh they lied about that. When was this going to end?
"I'm afraid the drivers aren't in yet, but I'll be happy to call you a cab." The man at the desks voice cut through my inner monologue and brought me back to the present.
"A cab?" I repeated. "I can go home?"
The man looked sympathetically at me. "This must be your first time, son. Of course, you can go home. Shall I get that cab?"
"No… no that's okay," I said. He's going to let me go back to Portland? Why would he do that?
It occurred to me that the doorman might not actually realize I didn't live around here. Come to think of it, my guide last night seemed to think that I could be driven home. With all the layers of people I'd been passed through, it would have been easy to let a detail like my home address slip. Perhaps even Jeffrey didn't realize I wasn't properly his.
Fucking-A, of course, he didn't know! He didn't even know my name, why the hell would he know my address. He must have assumed his people had pulled me from the local pool, and why would he have reason not to think so? Chicago is a huge city.
And there was my out, all I had to do was get out of Lord Jeffrey's territory, he lost all his temporary rights to me. I reverted back to being Fancy Trouser's exclusive toy, and with any luck there, he's satisfied with his harem, and would continue to ignore me. But I had to move fast, because if I was still in the city come nightfall, I was cooked.
"Mr. Handle?" the Front Desk asked. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," I said, giving him a huge smile. "Is there any place near by that sells coffee?"
The man smiled. "There's a Starbucks out the door to your left and three blocks down."
"Thanks."
He nodded. As I walked towards the dazzling glass door I heard a faint buzz. I pushed quickly and let myself out into the sunshine. The street outside was bustling with Saturday traffic and there was a crisp breeze off the lake. I flipped open my cell phone and felt reassured to see the bars that meant I had reception. Being as casual as I could, I walked down to the Starbucks and called myself a cab. Ten minutes later I tossed the dregs of a grande Americano in the trash and stepped into a blue and white Flash Cab. "Airport please."
Good bye, dear Lord Jeffrey. So long. It was really… something.
Getting my luggage turned out not to be that difficult. Jim and Ted had thoughtfully had Airport Security remove it from the plane and it was waiting for me in the baggage claim security desk. It contained two more suits, a t-shirt and jeans, three paperbacks, and a random assortment of left over flyers, freebies and paperwork from the workshop I'd just held.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have left it. Not only was it massively annoying to drag around, it actually played a small but pivotal roll in the horror to follow.
But I didn't, and I was still at the point where material possessions meant something to me. So I headed back up to the lobby, dragging my luggage behind me with a practiced tug and twist of my hand to prevent the unbalanced load from tipping from one side or the other.
I figured I had until nightfall to figure things out. Vampires were mostly nocturnal after all, and the day crew didn't seem to be on the ball if they just let me walk out of the place. Plenty of time and tons of options -- or so I thought.
There were no direct flights from Chicago to Portland within a comfortable window, but there were plenty of flights to SFO. From San Francisco to Portland was a simple commuter flight. I had a credit card for just these types of emergencies. I confidently sauntered into line to buy the tickets.
Fifteen minutes into the shuffling crawl towards to ticket counter something caught my eye and reality checked me hard. It was something so ordinary I didn't even consciously recognize it at first. A dozen places farther ahead in line a man slid a card into a reader, waited a moment then retrieved the card back and put it back in his wallet.
I'd forgotten something rather important.
My Bloodtrust card.
Fuck.
Of course, there was no way I was going to board an airplane without sticking my Bloodtrust card into an automatic reader. Hell I knew I'd have to do that. I'd done it so many times before I just hadn't really thought about it.
Up until now the step had been simple, because as an Undesirable I didn't require any further permits to travel. But I knew I wasn't Undesirable, and now Lord Jeffrey knew that, too. The machine was not going to notice the black band across the top of my card that said I was good to go. It would read the magnetic strip embedded in it, and log onto a computer somewhere and check my file.
Had Lord Jeffrey updated my file? A little voice in my mind quickly assured me that Lord Jeffrey was much too busy and important to bother with such a detail, and that if it were going to happen, it be done with the slow pace of bureaucracy, perhaps waiting for Monday.
It sounded reasonable, but this was the same little voice that also told me that sneaking out of Lord Jeffrey's feeding room while his back was turned was a good idea. I was coming to realize that this voice was full of crap. No, I couldn't trust it.
If my file had been changed, I would need to have some level of approval to fly, something I could only get from Lord Fancy Trousers. Knowing Wally's troubles in that regard it could take days to get approval. The longer I hung out in Chicago, the more likely I'd be stuck giving an encore of last nights performance.
A surge of adrenaline hit my bloodstream, and I grabbed my luggage, wanting to run. But no, I had to be cool. I was in a fucking airport and twitchy people got lots of unwanted attention. So instead I made a show of looking for one of the restrooms, then left my space in line with a calculated expression of annoyance, and casually wandered in that direction.
This was insane, no one was paying any attention to me. But, shit, I couldn't trust that. That's precisely the attitude that had gotten me in trouble the night before. I needed to be more careful than that, especially since I really was running away at this point.
I dipped for a minute into an empty men's room - just long enough to cool my expression in the mirror, then wandered over to a café where I bought an hours worth of internet access for a couple of bucks. I found an uncomfortable stool and pulled out my lap top. By then I noticed my hands were trembling. The keys felt slick under my clumsy fingertips and it took me forever to log onto my own Bloodtrust account. Though I was raised Episcopalian, I'm not very religious. But I prayed then. I prayed hard, while the screen loaded up.
I knew at a glance something was wrong. The familiar black stripe that signified my Undesirable status was conspicuously gone from my page. Instead I had a white stripe. My gut clenched, and I could taste that coffee in the back of my mouth. Swallowing hard I forced myself to stare at the stripe, hoping that it was a hallucination, and it was in fact some other color - any other color.
It was the worst-case scenario come true: White is the most restrictive of all the classifications. It meant that my Patron Vampire had to personally authorize any travel outside of his territory. Any travel. Even a fucking trip forty miles south to Salem or over the river to into Washington had to personally approved every fucking time.
Even Wally didn't have to put up with this kind of bullshit.
Well congratulations, my job was now officially fucked. Three fucking years polishing my seminar/workshop mojo down the fucking drain. Never mind getting home in time to turn around and go to my next class, there would be no next class for me. I might not even have a job at all. The major reason they hired me in the first place was so they wouldn't have to fuck with the whole Vampire approval rigmarole. As good as I like to think of myself as a teacher, it was nothing that any monkey with four weeks of training couldn't do. Damn it. I liked my job. I don't want to ride some crappy-assed desk. I certainly don't want to be unemployed. It was fucking unfair.
I wiped my face, and tried to get a grip. My chest shook a little but I was able to breathe deeply and let the moment pass. Only then did I notice the two other changes.
The first was that my address was utterly wrong. Instead of saying I lived in the Portland suburb of Beaverton, it said I lived in Chicago at a wholly unfamiliar address. For a moment I wondered if I'd managed to tap someone else's account, but then I saw the second change.
My patron Vampire was no longer Chauncey Towers. It was Jeffrey Bruins.
That bastard.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. He couldn't do that to me! It can't have been legal - or whatever the code was that Vampires worked under. Lord Chauncey would have to sign off on it, wouldn't he? I mean otherwise that would be tantamount to poaching. And besides it was a lie, I didn't live at that address, wherever the hell it was. You can't just claim someone lives somewhere they don't and that they are yours when they aren't. That would lead to chaos!
Well if Jeffrey was going to play fast and loose with the rules, so could I, and I highly doubted any other vampire would blame me. I was getting out of there, and screw him. But clearly I wasn't going to be able to do it by airplane.
The problem was that I didn't know anyone in Chicago who'd be willing to drive me home. I could do something silly like hire a cab, but that would cost more that I probably had in my bank account. Not to mention looking suspicious as fuck. I needed something low tech and normal. Buy a bike?
No, wait, bus. Greyhound, baby. My least favorite way to travel, no insult meant to the company. I've been on one three times now, a there-and-back in college and once when my boss was being an ass (I bought my own airline ticket home), and each time it was a long, grueling, dull experience I swore I'd never repeat. Oh ha, ha fate.
But they didn't use those damn automatic card readers, at least they didn't as of last year. You handed your card to the person when you picked up your ticket. In my case all they did was look at the black stripe and send me on, because there was always a line and the clerks weren't paid nearly enough to care.
I used the last of my internet time to get a reservation, and then I went into action, because time was suddenly very tight. The only bus before nightfall took off in an hour and a half, which may sound like a lot, but it really isn't if you consider getting there and waiting in line for the ticket. Moreover I was totally unprepared for a bus trip. I needed to hit some kind of convenience store and stock up on things to eat, because hunger, thirst and crappy sleep were the trifecta of bus riding. Actually that's not true. Body odor, nosy seatmates and crappy sleep were the real trifecta, but only because most people are smart enough not to board a bus empty-handed.
Luckily, the Airport had a magazine stand which had a cooler with sandwiches, soda and chips. I threw down a fifty and loaded up with enough to get me through the first night at least. Hopefully, there'd be enough of a delay between reboardings to stock up again tomorrow. That and a quickie mart, because bus stops were notoriously placed in the middle of industrial parks and other out of the way areas and their own stores were apt to charge you five bucks for a can of coke. Jesus Christ. Two freaking days on a bus, what did I do to deserve this?
I tossed in a souvenir canvas bag to hold all the crap together, then with my laptop slung over one shoulder, the bag of food over the other and pushing my luggage like a rickety stroller, I made my way out the doors to where a cab conveniently idled.
Even moving quickly, I managed to eat up all but twenty minutes of my time. I was sweating bullets by the time I paid off my cabbie and stepped into the diesel perfumed station. It was just as crowded as my memory remembered it being. I crossed the vast expanse of a lobby, up the escalators and past the vendors selling those damn five-dollar sodas and forty buck Chicago Bear's shirts. I dodged the rows of molded plastic and metal seats bolted to the floor, almost all containing an exhausted traveler. Finally, I raced to get into a slow moving line, glancing at my watch every ten seconds. Fifteen minutes. Shit!
Everything fell apart if I missed this bus.
With all the speed of ice melting, I moved up the shuffling line until I reached the clerk. With terror building, I watch her process the thirty-something guy ahead of me. He offered up a wad of cash and his Bloodtrust card - so far normal.
I nearly sobbed when I saw her shove a card into a reader. Goddamn it. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Time held still while I considered getting back out of line. My options spread in front of me like a pair unpleasant little turds.
I could just hide out in Chicago until I had a chance to get a hold of Lord Chauncey. Beg him to get my information changed back, or at least give me the damn travel permits to get home. Meanwhile, Lord Jeffrey would be on my ass with a righteous wrath as soon as he realized I was gone. And if I got dragged back to his place, I wouldn't be able to even contact Chauncey if they didn't want me to - damn that cell phone jammer. I could end up stuck in Chicago forever, incommunicado, never able to see my home or friends again.
Or could just chance it and look innocent when the reader came up with that crazy restriction. Worst-case scenario, I'd step sheepishly out of line and find some other way out of the city while the clerk got something to blog about when she got off work.
Put that way, it wasn't a hard decision.
The clerk yawned, glanced at me with world-weary eyes, then handed back the guy's card along with a ticket. "Next."
The pressure of expectation had me stepping up into place. "Juh- George Handle. I've got a -"
"Card?" asked the bored clerk, typing my name into her computer.
I handed her my Bloodtrust card, gritting my teeth. She glanced at it and handed it back. "That'll be $150.00," she said.
I fumbled and gave her my credit card, and she swiped it and typed something into her computer. A moment later a machine at her side made a loud buzz and then spat out a ticket. I grabbed it with a hand so damp it practically dripped, terrified she'd ask for my Bloodtrust card again.
But she didn't. "Next," she said in the same bored tone.
I stumbled out of line with my ticket and a feeling of shell shock. Then slowly it dawned on me: I was actually going to make it. The bus had already pulled up and was waiting for me. I dragged my stupid, worthless luggage to where the outside storage bins stood open. Flashing my ticket at the driver, I heaved that thing inside, turned and joined the line to find a seat.
I gave Chicago one last shit-eating grin, and, never minding the annoyed reaction it caused the people around me, offered up to Lord Jeffrey my middle finger. Take that. I was free.
Back to Chapter 5
On to Chapter 7
RATING: NC-17 (This chapter PG-13)
GENRE: Porn with plot -- heavy on the plot. Action/adventure, some black humor, some romance.
PAIRINGS: George x everyone. Mostly Slash, some het, three and moresomes. Vampire sex.
WARNINGS: (this chapter) none.
WORD COUNT: 4546
A/N: Chapter 10 is kicking my butt, but at this point I can't see why I'll need to make any changes to chapter 6, so I'm going to go ahead and post it.
CHAPTER 6
I woke to sound of a plane taking off. My eyes flew open and I sat up, sucking in a deep breath and thinking that I'd missed my flight. Which, of course, I had - some eighteen hours earlier. Patting the sheets blindly, I tried to make sense of my setting. After a couple of blinks to get the crud out of my eyes, the world settled out, and I found myself placing the gem colored velvet furniture and papa-bear bed.
I was still in Lord Jeffrey's feeding room. From the short angle of the light through the large, tinted windows, it had to be close to noon. I was horribly hungry, my body ached and felt sticky and chafed in sensitive areas, and I really needed to pee.
The "airplane" turned out to be no more than a very loud, possibly defective industrial vacuum cleaner being wielded by a very small, middle-aged woman in a grey jumpsuit. She had her back to me, running the vacuum in repetitive paths back and forth in front of the main entrance. After a few seconds, she turned off the motor, and began to shove some chairs up against the wall. Then she swung her huge vacuum around for another pass.
Belatedly I yanked up the sheets to cover more of my nakedness. The movement must have caught her eye because she stopped and stared at me.
For a second there was an impasse, both of us just staring at each other with what I imagine was identical looks of embarrassment on our faces. Then she blushed and held a hand up to cover her eyes. "Sorry, sorry, sir. Didn't realize you were there."
Without letting the sheet drop I fished around the huge bed for my shorts. They had to be somewhere. It took a bit of floundering but I found them twisted up and caught between the mattress and one of the posts. I yanked them on quickly.
"Okay, I got my pants on," I called to let her know I was decent - more or less.
"There's a bathroom over there," she said, gesturing without looking. "If you'd like to get cleaned up."
"Yeah," I said, awkwardly. "Yeah, great idea. I won't be long." I could feel the dried sweat on me, and the residue of sex and semen, both my own and others. I could smell myself, rank and musky in the worst possible way.
"Take your time," she said, turning the vacuum back on. She gave a glance my direction, sizing me up with eyes before twisting her mouth to stop a guilty smile. I knew where her thoughts had gone. I'd like to think the blush was because she thought I was an attractive hunk and not because she was just embarrassed for me.
I showered and made use of the amenities, trying to pretend that I was in some luxurious hotel room and not a vampire's bedroom. The curious thing was that it wasn't that hard to deceive myself. Maybe it was a gift from Lord Jeffrey but I actually found myself fairly pragmatic about what had happened. Not happy by a long shot, but not nearly as humiliated and debased as I worried I'd be. Weirdly enough, I was more traumatized by Lady Dingaling, and all she'd done to me was toss me across the room and yell at me. I could almost imagine it as being some kind of sex-club experience.
Or maybe it was simply that I was still in the lion's den, and the moment I was home and safe, all this would hit me. I couldn't tell. For now I wasn't going to push at it, because the last thing I needed was to fall apart. I had the paranoid feeling that if I didn't leave Jeffrey's premises quickly, they might change their minds and make me repeat my performance.
Shuddering, I dropped the towel on the tiled floor and donned my dirty underwear again. I gave my teeth a quick finger scrub and a rinse with water from the tap, then smoothed my towel ruffled hair into something that resembled street acceptable. I left the bathroom, most evidence of my debauchery erased.
The maid was cleaning up around the chartreuse settee when I came out. "Okay," I yelled to her over the vacuum. "I'm going now. The bathroom's yours." Without waiting for an acknowledgement I went through the still open closet door and starting putting on my clothes. I shoved the tie in my pocket and loosened the collar. Although I couldn't even see the scars from where Jeffrey and Marc had bit me last night, I could still almost feel them. I didn't want anything touching my neck or wrists too hard. At least it wasn't obvious to an outside observer what had happened to me. As soon as I got out of this venus fly trap of an apartment, I'd become another anonymous person in the crowd.
On the heels of that thought, the first barrier to getting home reared its inevitable head. My eyes locked on to the inner door, and noticed, for the first time, a slot at the bottom of the knob. It was the perfect size to swipe a security key card - a key card I didn't have.
I stopped one shoe on, and one in hand, and stared at my escape route. Well… shit. All those damn security doors. And even should I get past them somehow, the place was a freaking labyrinth. Without a guide I had no hope of getting out. It was physically impossible. I was trapped in the damn feeding room until someone remembered to come get me. That could be hours from now.
Goddamn it, at this rate I'd be getting home just in time to jump on a plane to my next assignment. My weekend was shot, I was starving, sore in odd places, and this was all just craptastic.
In the other room, the vacuum cleaner mercifully turned off. Wait a minute, I thought.
Slipping the second shoe on, I turned around and went back out into feeding the room. The maid was jerking the sheets off the bed and bundling them into a large wheeled hamper. I got her attention by clearing my voice. "Uh, ma'am, I hate to bother you, but could you help me find my way out?"
The maid straightened up. "You don't have a card?"
I shook my head. "They seem to have forgotten to give me one. Actually, I think I've been kind of just forgotten period."
"One minute," she called as she pushed the cart to the side of the room. Then she fished one of those plastic keycards that hotels like to use from her jumpsuit pocket. She pushed it into the lock of the main door and I heard a brief buzz. A moment later she ushered me out into a fancy hallway.
The route she took was nothing like the path that my guide had taken earlier. The corridor was wide and straight and well lit. Best of all led directly to the elevators. It hit me with a shock that this was the public part of Lord Jeffrey's abode, and the maze been ushered around in earlier was akin to servants corridors. Evidently the maid considered me a enough of an honored guest that I didn't need to be hidden from view. I wondered how Lord Jeffrey would feel about that.
And then I didn't care, because I recognized the elevator as the one that had taken me from the underground parking lot up to Jeffrey's lair. The maid put her keycard into a slot again and pressed the button labeled L. She then stepped out of the elevator and back into the hall.
"Have a good day, sir," she said, then turned around and headed back down the hall towards the feeding room. The elevator doors closed.
When they opened a minute later it was on the main lobby of the building. I could see the street out through a single glass door at the end of a long hall, and all there was between me and my freedom (finally) was a long shiny expanse of empty black marble flooring, and a single high-sided desk.
The man at the desk watched me approached with a slightly puzzled look on his face. He was fiftyish and balding, propped up so that even sitting he looked down on me. The top of the desk was about level with my shoulders, making me feel a bit like a child. "Excuse me, sir," he said. "May I help you?"
"I was told that I could go home," I said tentatively.
"Your name?" His eyes were cast down and I could tell from the clicking and the slight jiggle of his upper arms that he was typing something into a computer.
My gut tightened up. What if this guy had orders not to let me leave? After the false starts last night I didn’t trust that I would be free until I walked out the door.
"Name?" the man repeated.
"George Handle."
The man typed it in. Then nodded and straightened up. "Ah. Lord Jeffrey left some instructions."
"Instructions?" My stomach sank.
There was a high pitched screech behind the wooden desk, the man bent down and then pulled a page up and handed it to me. "You have an appointment to have your hair styled tomorrow at noon."
Wait, what? Lord Jeffrey had made an appointment to have my hair cut? Why the hell would he do that? Unless it was a parting insult made to my own sense of style, or lack thereof -- No, that wasn't it. There was no doubt in my mind that I was nothing but a meal to Lord Jeffrey. A rather bothersome, uncooperative meal, but a meal. He wouldn't stoop to insulting me on my way out.
… But he might want my hair cut if he planned on using me again. And if he planned on using me again, then he was expecting me to be here to be used. But I wasn't going to be in Chicago a minute longer than I had to be. I was going home.
Oh god, they might not let me go home. But they had to. They promised. Five fucking minutes. But oh they lied about that. When was this going to end?
"I'm afraid the drivers aren't in yet, but I'll be happy to call you a cab." The man at the desks voice cut through my inner monologue and brought me back to the present.
"A cab?" I repeated. "I can go home?"
The man looked sympathetically at me. "This must be your first time, son. Of course, you can go home. Shall I get that cab?"
"No… no that's okay," I said. He's going to let me go back to Portland? Why would he do that?
It occurred to me that the doorman might not actually realize I didn't live around here. Come to think of it, my guide last night seemed to think that I could be driven home. With all the layers of people I'd been passed through, it would have been easy to let a detail like my home address slip. Perhaps even Jeffrey didn't realize I wasn't properly his.
Fucking-A, of course, he didn't know! He didn't even know my name, why the hell would he know my address. He must have assumed his people had pulled me from the local pool, and why would he have reason not to think so? Chicago is a huge city.
And there was my out, all I had to do was get out of Lord Jeffrey's territory, he lost all his temporary rights to me. I reverted back to being Fancy Trouser's exclusive toy, and with any luck there, he's satisfied with his harem, and would continue to ignore me. But I had to move fast, because if I was still in the city come nightfall, I was cooked.
"Mr. Handle?" the Front Desk asked. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," I said, giving him a huge smile. "Is there any place near by that sells coffee?"
The man smiled. "There's a Starbucks out the door to your left and three blocks down."
"Thanks."
He nodded. As I walked towards the dazzling glass door I heard a faint buzz. I pushed quickly and let myself out into the sunshine. The street outside was bustling with Saturday traffic and there was a crisp breeze off the lake. I flipped open my cell phone and felt reassured to see the bars that meant I had reception. Being as casual as I could, I walked down to the Starbucks and called myself a cab. Ten minutes later I tossed the dregs of a grande Americano in the trash and stepped into a blue and white Flash Cab. "Airport please."
Good bye, dear Lord Jeffrey. So long. It was really… something.
Getting my luggage turned out not to be that difficult. Jim and Ted had thoughtfully had Airport Security remove it from the plane and it was waiting for me in the baggage claim security desk. It contained two more suits, a t-shirt and jeans, three paperbacks, and a random assortment of left over flyers, freebies and paperwork from the workshop I'd just held.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have left it. Not only was it massively annoying to drag around, it actually played a small but pivotal roll in the horror to follow.
But I didn't, and I was still at the point where material possessions meant something to me. So I headed back up to the lobby, dragging my luggage behind me with a practiced tug and twist of my hand to prevent the unbalanced load from tipping from one side or the other.
I figured I had until nightfall to figure things out. Vampires were mostly nocturnal after all, and the day crew didn't seem to be on the ball if they just let me walk out of the place. Plenty of time and tons of options -- or so I thought.
There were no direct flights from Chicago to Portland within a comfortable window, but there were plenty of flights to SFO. From San Francisco to Portland was a simple commuter flight. I had a credit card for just these types of emergencies. I confidently sauntered into line to buy the tickets.
Fifteen minutes into the shuffling crawl towards to ticket counter something caught my eye and reality checked me hard. It was something so ordinary I didn't even consciously recognize it at first. A dozen places farther ahead in line a man slid a card into a reader, waited a moment then retrieved the card back and put it back in his wallet.
I'd forgotten something rather important.
My Bloodtrust card.
Fuck.
Of course, there was no way I was going to board an airplane without sticking my Bloodtrust card into an automatic reader. Hell I knew I'd have to do that. I'd done it so many times before I just hadn't really thought about it.
Up until now the step had been simple, because as an Undesirable I didn't require any further permits to travel. But I knew I wasn't Undesirable, and now Lord Jeffrey knew that, too. The machine was not going to notice the black band across the top of my card that said I was good to go. It would read the magnetic strip embedded in it, and log onto a computer somewhere and check my file.
Had Lord Jeffrey updated my file? A little voice in my mind quickly assured me that Lord Jeffrey was much too busy and important to bother with such a detail, and that if it were going to happen, it be done with the slow pace of bureaucracy, perhaps waiting for Monday.
It sounded reasonable, but this was the same little voice that also told me that sneaking out of Lord Jeffrey's feeding room while his back was turned was a good idea. I was coming to realize that this voice was full of crap. No, I couldn't trust it.
If my file had been changed, I would need to have some level of approval to fly, something I could only get from Lord Fancy Trousers. Knowing Wally's troubles in that regard it could take days to get approval. The longer I hung out in Chicago, the more likely I'd be stuck giving an encore of last nights performance.
A surge of adrenaline hit my bloodstream, and I grabbed my luggage, wanting to run. But no, I had to be cool. I was in a fucking airport and twitchy people got lots of unwanted attention. So instead I made a show of looking for one of the restrooms, then left my space in line with a calculated expression of annoyance, and casually wandered in that direction.
This was insane, no one was paying any attention to me. But, shit, I couldn't trust that. That's precisely the attitude that had gotten me in trouble the night before. I needed to be more careful than that, especially since I really was running away at this point.
I dipped for a minute into an empty men's room - just long enough to cool my expression in the mirror, then wandered over to a café where I bought an hours worth of internet access for a couple of bucks. I found an uncomfortable stool and pulled out my lap top. By then I noticed my hands were trembling. The keys felt slick under my clumsy fingertips and it took me forever to log onto my own Bloodtrust account. Though I was raised Episcopalian, I'm not very religious. But I prayed then. I prayed hard, while the screen loaded up.
I knew at a glance something was wrong. The familiar black stripe that signified my Undesirable status was conspicuously gone from my page. Instead I had a white stripe. My gut clenched, and I could taste that coffee in the back of my mouth. Swallowing hard I forced myself to stare at the stripe, hoping that it was a hallucination, and it was in fact some other color - any other color.
It was the worst-case scenario come true: White is the most restrictive of all the classifications. It meant that my Patron Vampire had to personally authorize any travel outside of his territory. Any travel. Even a fucking trip forty miles south to Salem or over the river to into Washington had to personally approved every fucking time.
Even Wally didn't have to put up with this kind of bullshit.
Well congratulations, my job was now officially fucked. Three fucking years polishing my seminar/workshop mojo down the fucking drain. Never mind getting home in time to turn around and go to my next class, there would be no next class for me. I might not even have a job at all. The major reason they hired me in the first place was so they wouldn't have to fuck with the whole Vampire approval rigmarole. As good as I like to think of myself as a teacher, it was nothing that any monkey with four weeks of training couldn't do. Damn it. I liked my job. I don't want to ride some crappy-assed desk. I certainly don't want to be unemployed. It was fucking unfair.
I wiped my face, and tried to get a grip. My chest shook a little but I was able to breathe deeply and let the moment pass. Only then did I notice the two other changes.
The first was that my address was utterly wrong. Instead of saying I lived in the Portland suburb of Beaverton, it said I lived in Chicago at a wholly unfamiliar address. For a moment I wondered if I'd managed to tap someone else's account, but then I saw the second change.
My patron Vampire was no longer Chauncey Towers. It was Jeffrey Bruins.
That bastard.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. He couldn't do that to me! It can't have been legal - or whatever the code was that Vampires worked under. Lord Chauncey would have to sign off on it, wouldn't he? I mean otherwise that would be tantamount to poaching. And besides it was a lie, I didn't live at that address, wherever the hell it was. You can't just claim someone lives somewhere they don't and that they are yours when they aren't. That would lead to chaos!
Well if Jeffrey was going to play fast and loose with the rules, so could I, and I highly doubted any other vampire would blame me. I was getting out of there, and screw him. But clearly I wasn't going to be able to do it by airplane.
The problem was that I didn't know anyone in Chicago who'd be willing to drive me home. I could do something silly like hire a cab, but that would cost more that I probably had in my bank account. Not to mention looking suspicious as fuck. I needed something low tech and normal. Buy a bike?
No, wait, bus. Greyhound, baby. My least favorite way to travel, no insult meant to the company. I've been on one three times now, a there-and-back in college and once when my boss was being an ass (I bought my own airline ticket home), and each time it was a long, grueling, dull experience I swore I'd never repeat. Oh ha, ha fate.
But they didn't use those damn automatic card readers, at least they didn't as of last year. You handed your card to the person when you picked up your ticket. In my case all they did was look at the black stripe and send me on, because there was always a line and the clerks weren't paid nearly enough to care.
I used the last of my internet time to get a reservation, and then I went into action, because time was suddenly very tight. The only bus before nightfall took off in an hour and a half, which may sound like a lot, but it really isn't if you consider getting there and waiting in line for the ticket. Moreover I was totally unprepared for a bus trip. I needed to hit some kind of convenience store and stock up on things to eat, because hunger, thirst and crappy sleep were the trifecta of bus riding. Actually that's not true. Body odor, nosy seatmates and crappy sleep were the real trifecta, but only because most people are smart enough not to board a bus empty-handed.
Luckily, the Airport had a magazine stand which had a cooler with sandwiches, soda and chips. I threw down a fifty and loaded up with enough to get me through the first night at least. Hopefully, there'd be enough of a delay between reboardings to stock up again tomorrow. That and a quickie mart, because bus stops were notoriously placed in the middle of industrial parks and other out of the way areas and their own stores were apt to charge you five bucks for a can of coke. Jesus Christ. Two freaking days on a bus, what did I do to deserve this?
I tossed in a souvenir canvas bag to hold all the crap together, then with my laptop slung over one shoulder, the bag of food over the other and pushing my luggage like a rickety stroller, I made my way out the doors to where a cab conveniently idled.
Even moving quickly, I managed to eat up all but twenty minutes of my time. I was sweating bullets by the time I paid off my cabbie and stepped into the diesel perfumed station. It was just as crowded as my memory remembered it being. I crossed the vast expanse of a lobby, up the escalators and past the vendors selling those damn five-dollar sodas and forty buck Chicago Bear's shirts. I dodged the rows of molded plastic and metal seats bolted to the floor, almost all containing an exhausted traveler. Finally, I raced to get into a slow moving line, glancing at my watch every ten seconds. Fifteen minutes. Shit!
Everything fell apart if I missed this bus.
With all the speed of ice melting, I moved up the shuffling line until I reached the clerk. With terror building, I watch her process the thirty-something guy ahead of me. He offered up a wad of cash and his Bloodtrust card - so far normal.
I nearly sobbed when I saw her shove a card into a reader. Goddamn it. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Time held still while I considered getting back out of line. My options spread in front of me like a pair unpleasant little turds.
I could just hide out in Chicago until I had a chance to get a hold of Lord Chauncey. Beg him to get my information changed back, or at least give me the damn travel permits to get home. Meanwhile, Lord Jeffrey would be on my ass with a righteous wrath as soon as he realized I was gone. And if I got dragged back to his place, I wouldn't be able to even contact Chauncey if they didn't want me to - damn that cell phone jammer. I could end up stuck in Chicago forever, incommunicado, never able to see my home or friends again.
Or could just chance it and look innocent when the reader came up with that crazy restriction. Worst-case scenario, I'd step sheepishly out of line and find some other way out of the city while the clerk got something to blog about when she got off work.
Put that way, it wasn't a hard decision.
The clerk yawned, glanced at me with world-weary eyes, then handed back the guy's card along with a ticket. "Next."
The pressure of expectation had me stepping up into place. "Juh- George Handle. I've got a -"
"Card?" asked the bored clerk, typing my name into her computer.
I handed her my Bloodtrust card, gritting my teeth. She glanced at it and handed it back. "That'll be $150.00," she said.
I fumbled and gave her my credit card, and she swiped it and typed something into her computer. A moment later a machine at her side made a loud buzz and then spat out a ticket. I grabbed it with a hand so damp it practically dripped, terrified she'd ask for my Bloodtrust card again.
But she didn't. "Next," she said in the same bored tone.
I stumbled out of line with my ticket and a feeling of shell shock. Then slowly it dawned on me: I was actually going to make it. The bus had already pulled up and was waiting for me. I dragged my stupid, worthless luggage to where the outside storage bins stood open. Flashing my ticket at the driver, I heaved that thing inside, turned and joined the line to find a seat.
I gave Chicago one last shit-eating grin, and, never minding the annoyed reaction it caused the people around me, offered up to Lord Jeffrey my middle finger. Take that. I was free.
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On to Chapter 7