The Vampire's Bodyguard (Shiva x romansoldier)

[Shiva the Cat]

A job interview at the Paramount Club was the rotten cherry on the dumpster fire that had been Thea Lazaro's life for the past two years, but nonetheless, there she was, sitting at the bar with her back turned to the various burlesque dancers that wandered throughout the establishment, drinking tequila and soda while fuming over the various misfortunes that had brought her to such a point.

Things had been so simple when her mother was alive. Celia had been the lynchpin of their quartet of hunters, a veteran vampire slayer who raised her children to fight back against the monsters in the dark practically from birth. Dante, the son from her first marriage, had been the brains of the operation, with his encyclopedic knowledge of vampiric history and biology, and if he hadn't fallen love with a city police officer no doubt he would have gone on to become an exorcist of the holy church. Celia's daughter Dorothea (better known as Thea) was the fighter, quick with a stake and a keen shot with a blessed bullet, maybe a little short on temper but with more than enough nerve for the job. Thea's husband Brian had the money and connections to keep everything up and running and wasn't half bad in a fight himself, having come from another long line of hunters.

Then the Cadogan job went horribly wrong. Thea was never sure if it was Brian or Dante's intel that had been off, but in either case what should have been a pack of hunters taking out a lone fledgling had resulted in the group stumbling into the middle of a goddamned coven convention, with more vamps gathered in one place than any of them had ever seen before. It was only thanks to Celia's sacrifice that any of them got out alive, but Thea would never forget the last sight she had of her mother: fangs sunk deep in her neck and wrists, just before the leader had ripped the veteran's heart right out of her chest.

Three hunters had escaped the Hotel Amande that night, but only two made it all the way home. Thea would never forgive herself for not taking Dante home after the disaster, but he had been so insistent he was fine, and that they shouldn't all travel together just in case they were followed. But when she and Brian had stopped by his house a few days later to check on him, they learned from his tearful wife and children that he'd never made it home.

Maybe it was because she felt so responsible that Thea's life turned into a quickly rotating wheel of revenge and redemption. If she wasn't focused on helping raise Dante and Amy's children, she was hunting down each individual vampire who'd been at the Hotel Amande that night, regardless of whether they'd been one of the ones who'd torn Celia apart. Brian had tried to keep up with her, but on more than one occasion Thea had set out on her own, a dangerous tactic even for an experienced hunter like her. Was it any wonder then that her husband's eye began to wander?

Thea might have forgiven him if he'd had a fling with the next door neighbor, or even some barfly bimbo. But no, he had met a girl on The Network, a hunter, or so the little bitch had called herself. Nicole might have thought she was the next Buffy, with her heavy makeup and blonde hair, but when it came down to it all she knew about vampires were the rumors and viral posts shared on the internet. While The Network had been started in good faith by a real hunter with generations of training, these days it was nothing more than a Craigslist for wannabe occultists at best, and at worst a barely-moderated market for hitmen.

Anyone could post a bounty on a suspected vampire, which had at first resulted in at least three innocent humans with a fondness for pale makeup and dramatic clothing being killed in the process. After that the mods made it absolutely clear to the users: if you kill a vampire, a real vampire, there won't even be a body left behind, just dust (if anything at all). Of course this was one of the conveniences of the job for real hunters, considering it would be difficult to be accused of murdering a falsified identity without a dead body to prove it. It had made bounties on the Network a bit more rare however, until someone thought of the idea of demanding a "totem"; an item that could be recognized as belonging to a vampire, that would most likely only be obtained if its owner had been killed.

Serious hunters took such items as trophies on occasion, and after he'd filed for divorce from Thea, Brian admitted that was how he had met Nicole. She herself had posted a bounty on a vampire that Brian and Thea had taken out months earlier, and had named a particular ring belonging to the victim as her desired totem. Brian, ever the businessman, had reached out to her to collect on the bounty, agreed to meet up in person to make the exchange, and the rest was history.

The divorce had been final for almost a year now, and Thea hadn't seen Brian in more than six months, although when she was in a particularly masochistic mood she would check social media to see what the man she had loved and his twenty-four-year-old new wife were up to. It seemed like a lot of trips to Grand Cayman and Aspen, and Thea hoped they both choked on it.

Maybe if Nicole hadn't been a Network hunter Thea wouldn't have been so hostile towards the platform. Now that she was a solo hunter, it seemed like her usual channels of work had dried up completely. Ever since her mother's death, her brother's disappearance, and her husband's abandonment, the other hunters she knew either seemed to think she wasn't stable enough to hunt on her own, or that with the advent of the Network there simply wasn't enough prey to go around anymore. Maybe Thea could have lived with the latter idea, but she knew damn well there were still other vamps out there who had been at the Hotel Amande, and until she'd dusted every last one of them she knew she couldn't give up the lifestyle. Not yet.

In the meantime, there was still rent to pay on her sad little one-bedroom apartment, not to mention her tab with the church (why they couldn't just give people blessed stakes and bullets for free she'd never know). And even though Amy insisted she didn't need any help taking care of DJ and Aisha, Thea knew the childcare bills were a stretch on a police officer's salary, and tried to contribute whenever she could. But with a spotty legitimate career history, work for a woman in Thea's position was hard to come by.

Which was how she ended up at the Paramount Club. Thea would have spat on her own mother's grave before her pride allowed her to advertise her services on The Network, but she was tech-savvy to know of other less-than-savory sites where she could make herself available. Not as a burlesque dancer at the club, of course. At thirty-three, she considered herself too old for a gig like that, even if she did have the tall, lean body, large breasts, and tight ass for the job. Her face might have been pretty, with the golden brown skin that was a perfect blending of her Haitian mother and Mexican father, her large curiously pale green eyes, and small straight nose, but a deep scar ran from the left side of her wide mouth to the middle of her chin and ruined the effect of beauty. These days though, Thea couldn't care less about her appearance, forgoing makeup and dressing in functional jeans and t-shirts. Unless she was particularly drunk and sad, she wasn't remotely interested in attracting anyone in a romantic sense, not after what Brian had done to her.

It was a good thing then that she wasn't applying for a job as a dancer, or even as a waitress. For today's interview she did have the sense to wear a jacket over her tight jeans and plain white t-shirt, but it was a black leather motorcycle jacket, worn more for protection than anything else. She'd tied her thick, wavy black hair away from her face mostly to keep it out of her drink, revealing multiple silver piercings in both of her ears that sparkled in the colored lights of the club.

Fuck it Thea thought to herself as she drained her glass, ready to walk out the door. She hated this club, she hated the half-naked boys and girls dancing around, she hated the stupid cheap tequila that was all she could afford at the moment, and she wasn't in the mood to tell anyone why they should hire her as a bodyguard, least of all some stranger from the internet who wasn't even the actual client. But as she reread the text message she'd received that morning inviting her to meet the representative at the club, she lingered on the suggested pay for the job. God, for that much she could send DJ and Aisha to the best boarding school in the country and take Amy to Hawaii for a month. Shit, she could probably even afford to have Brian and Nicole killed if she wanted. Not that she would, but to have that much money would definitely give her the peace of mind she needed these days.

The clock on her phone flipped over to 9:00, the exact time that Thea was supposed to meet her contact. Looking around the club, she tried to see if there was anyone among the patrons who might be threatened enough to need a bodyguard, yet shady enough to hire someone like her for the job.

 

[romansoldier]

A vampire arranges to meet an acclaimed huntress in a dodgy after-hours club. It was like the set up to a bad joke. Then again, many things were turning into bad jokes, Aubrey thought. Creatures who were once feared and admired, were now hunted for sport. Their numbers that had not so long ago been staggering, were nothing anymore. The family he had pledged his life to was being forced to watch their power slip through their fingers... without a chance to stop it.

All too worried about the bounty over necks, they couldn’t spare a second on the vampires beneath them. Aamon was the only monarch who ever truly cared about the real problem. About the hunters who dedicated their life to nothing more than the slaughter of his people. He was kind, giving, and he sacrificed what was necessary to save his few followers, who were left to roam an unfamiliar world. Sadly, like many of his heirs and brothers, he too had fallen victim to ”The Network.” The society of hunters who somehow managed to track down and behead a King.

Thana, a Queen left widowed and bitter, had taken the responsibility of a coven. She did what she could to protect herself, and watch out for what family she still had. The death of her husband and sudden stress of ruling, however, twisted her into an unforgiving, selfish leader. She cared only for watching her back. Several vampires guarded her life. As if she was a goddess, they isolated her from the world and swore to keep her alive.

Leaving the only heir to the throne unattended and unprotected. Prince Parris took the death of his father just as horridly as his mother. He had never truly cared about his position, only about the power it brought. Though as threats and danger began to increase, he soon turned his attention to the hefty bounty that gloomed over him. It was enough to set the entire Network for life. None of them would ever need to hunt another mark again... making him the perfect target. Untrained and practically alone, he entrusted a family friend, Aubrey, to find a guard of his own.

Word in The Network seemed to get around fast. The only good things to come of it. When he heard there was a huntress at odds with the system, he sprang at the chance to meet her. Perhaps it would be foolish, a terrible mistake that could lead to the downfall of Parris and an entire Coven.

Or, perhaps, it could secure their species just a little more time to recover from the damage thus far.

If only he were punctual enough to find out.

9:05 and Aubrey was just setting foot into the dim club. His hands clutched tightly inside the pockets of his black jacket as he nervously scanned the area for anyone who matched the huntress’ description. It was more than clear that he hadn’t had a meeting quite so serious before, where so much rested in his palms alone. He was so unqualified, it appeared, that it would be impossible to ignore the man who awkwardly stood in front of the entrance, with brown eyes that darted through every booth and across every face that surrounded him. His clothes didn’t match the scene, too formal, too expensive, and his skin was a sickly kind of pale.

 

[Shiva the Cat]

Thea's face was beginning to burn in rage and embarrassment. It was bad enough to get called out for an interview at night, but even worse to get stood up on one. The bartender, believing her rendezvous had been more of a romantic sort, looked pityingly at her and poured her another drink, assuring her it was on the house. After growling a "thanks" towards the young man, the hunter took a deep swallow and an even deeper breath, then pulled her phone out again. Her ad had instructed any interested clients to contact her via a secure messaging app, but the representative she'd been communicating with until now had insisted on texting, despite the potential security concerns. At least the messages had been relatively innocent so far, but Thea was unable to keep a little bit of passive aggression out of her response.

Hey, I've been waiting for a while and I'll need to get going if you don't show. My time is valuable.

After hitting 'Send,' her dark eyes scanned the room looking to see if anyone's phone suddenly lit up. Of course there were several people with their faces illuminated by the white light of small screens (which made her feel a little bit bad for the dancers), but one in particular caught her eye. He was a youngish, nervous-looking guy standing near the doorway and glancing around as though he were searching for someone. Or maybe he was just wondering if he'd come to the wrong place. The club was part of the sprawling Grand Sapphire Hotel and Casino and drew a lot of tourists to the city, but there was always that certain part of the population that had a hard time dealing with the scantily clad dancers and cocktail waitresses.

Judging by his clothing though, the guy wasn't a regular tourist. His clothes were high, but didn't seem to fit him well. Either that, or his posture and movements were so erratic that they seemed to carry over to the rest of his appeareance. For a moment, Thea wondered if the man was ill. He looked awfully pale...

Oh you gotta be shitting me. Only one thing made people look that pale. Grabbing her purse, she glanced inside to make sure her pistol was still ready, and felt the hidden pocket on the inside of her jacket, where a long, sharp, blessed spike of rowen wood was concealed by easy to grab if needed. Her first plan was to lure the guy out, figure out who sent him, then take him out as quickly and painlessly as possible. But then she remembered the amount of money that had been included in the offer, and stilled her hand. Would she really consider selling out, possibly sacrificing lives in exchange for a few (well, several) Gs?

She might as well listen to what the guy had to say before deciding.

After tipping the bartender, Thea strolled over towards the nervous looking man and moved directly in front of him. "Hey, you looking for me? Thea Lazaro," she held one brown hand out to him, a slight mark on the finger that had worn a wedding ring not so long ago. Her voice and hand were both steady, but her eyes seemed to glitter in the gloom of the club as she stared into his face. "You want to do this here, or find someplace quieter to talk?"

 

[romansoldier]

Aubrey nearly jumped as Thea posed herself before him. She was blunt, as was expected, and clearly not too fond of his tardiness.

He only offered his hand in response. “Well, there’s no need to shirk the formalities,” he added, “considering I plan to know you for the predictable future.”

Aubrey was not a man to be described by his punctuality or how versed he was in conversation. He was rather awkward when meeting a stranger and he had little practice in setting up affairs with the outside. However, when he did anything right, he did it to a T. He didn’t understand the manners of most people. As he looked around, spotting the different kinds of people, he already knew he was in over his head.

There were dancers and those who gawked at them. Those who seemed unbothered. There were those who buried themselves in corner booths and found their screens more entertaining. Friends, strangers who avoided each other fervently, people either too afraid to speak to one another, or too eager to do so. There were so many variations and personalities that he simply couldn’t grasp.

At least he didn’t pretend to.

The vampire smiled and gave a gentle nod toward his outstretched palm, waiting for his potential client to shake it.