Innocent Vampire Gals

1

My name is Valerie Malone. According to The Sunset Heat, a local newsletter, I'm "The 24 year old, dark haired, sexy part owner, of the Beverly Hills nightclub; ‘The Peachpit After/Dark’."

We serve drinks and we have live entertainment on the weekends. On weeknights, 25 year old David Silver is in the D/J booth.

Around 9 P.M. on a Tuesday night, business was slow. Less than half the tables were occupied. The recorded music blared, but not loud enough to drown out any conversation.

I was seated at the bar, going over some paperwork, when a guy sat on the stool beside me.

"Evening Valerie." He spoke with a cheerful cockney accent. "Can I buy you something to drink?"

He was Spike; a mean looking dude in his late 20s, wearing a black leather jacket. He had a firm build and curly, light colored hair. He'd been showing up almost every night for the past two weeks, with a ditzy blonde chic named Harmony. She also had a mean look to her, but neither of them had caused any trouble. Tonight he was alone.

"Thank you Spike." I told him, "Maybe you haven't heard, but I'm part owner of the Club. I'm the one who buys drinks for customers. Not the other way around."

"Then I'll have my usual."

I said, "That was slick, but you're the one who has to pay for the drinks first."

Then I asked, "So where's your girlfriend, what's her name? Harmony?"

"She's on ice."

"'On ice'?" I said scornfully, "You mean you haven't broken up with her, but you're now on the prowl?"

"That's partly correct."

"What part?"

"When I said 'She's on ice', I meant that literally. Right now she's hanging upside down and naked, inside a freezer, with the lights off."

I laughed. "If that's what dating you leads to, forget it. I don't mind a little bit kinky, but risking death..."

"That wasn't a joke Val."

"Yeah. Right."

"You see, our employer doesn't take any lip from any of their employees."

"Don't you think that's kind of excessive? Every now and then I have to give somebody a good talking to, and that's enough."

"I said I wasn’t joking. We are employed by the Legal Department of Wolfram and Hart. Our employer enforces Company rules, in a way that we employees never forget."

I said, "Legal Department? You don't look like a lawyer to me; and Harmony just doesn't seem like someone who could pass any kind of a bar exam."

"Harmony and I aren't lawyers." He told me, "She and I enforce company policy, in a way that our clients never forget."

I said, "Enforcers?"

He said, "Wolfram and Hart wants me to explain Company policy to you Ms. Malone, in a way you'll never forget."

I looked at Spike's face. That night he looked more than mean. He looked dangerous.

I told him, "You get out of here right now, or I'll call the police."

"Go ahead." He told me, "I'm sure they'll be interested to learn about the time, when you pretended to be pregnant by a married man who you had a fling with. You then got him to pay for a fake abortion, along with hush money. The law calls that fraud and blackmail, for which you can do an unhealthy amount of jail time."

I told him, "You can't prove that."

"Wolfram and Hart can, along with providing evidence of your involvement in a murder."

"Murder?"

"Maybe more than one."

"What's this all about?"

"We know for a fact, that you allow gambling and drug dealing inside this club, with you getting a percentage of every transaction."

"Oh I see." I said, "And your employer wants a percentage too."

"Meet me outside in the parking lot in 15 minutes," he said, "and be sure you come alone."

15 minutes later I was out in the parking lot, with a loaded pistol in my handbag. Spike stood beside a car, at the dark end of the parking lot furthest from the street. I came over to him.

He opened the front door on the passenger side, and told me, "Get in."

"Forget it Mr. Tough Guy. I'm not getting in a car with you."

"All right cautious lady." He shut the door. "Stand there."

"Good enough." I told him. "Now tell me, what's the deal?"

"You're a very bad girl Valerie." He said, "I come from Sunnydale, which is full of very bad girls."

"Sunnydale? Vampire Town?"

"Now you’ve probably heard the saying, ‘If you’re a bad girl, the ‘something’ will eat you’; and do you know what happens to very bad girls in Sunnydale?"

"I've heard that the ‘something’ that kills and eats them is vampires."

He said, "Exactly."

Suddenly his arms were around me. He pulled me up against himself, and put his cold mouth against my neck. He had a pair of sharp, heavy fangs, which he stabbed inside my neck.

Then my mind vanished.