After Hours (VAMPIRES PART 1)

Chapter 12

ROSEANNE

Joan slides a tumbler of vodka across the bar, then pours herself another and takes the stool next to me.

"What the fuck was that last night?" she grunts.

"I think Mother has finally gone and lost her mind."

Joan leans over the bar, her broad shoulders hunching as she swills the vodka in her glass. "Not that. I mean the disrespect she showed you." Her voice is kind of gravelly for a woman, like she ate stones for breakfast.

"Ah. That."

"It was..."

"Unexpected?" I say, taking an excessive slurp of vodka.

"That's an understatement. I thought it was clear. Given your status as one of the original three, I assumed if she ever retired, you'd be the one to take over..."

"Yes, well, it's clear that means nothing to her."

Joan scratches the back of her freshly shaved hair. It's shorn tight and all the way up the sides, the top is longer and slicked back neat. Her mouth pinches. "She's a bit of a bitch, if you ask me."

I snuff out a laugh. "There's not many people who would have the balls to say that about Jennie."

Joan shrugs. "Well, it's true. You'd make an excellent queen."

"You know, over the years she's promised each one of my siblings the title. I think she does it to cause strife. She revels in it."

"Please. You're the only one with the kind of leadership qualities to make it work. I know that from how you run the club and your territory. Fairest territory in the city. Why do you think you have the most inhabitants?" She tilts her glass of vodka towards me, and I clink my glass with it.

"Thank you, but unless the city finds it in their heart to actually accept me, as well as my rule, I don't think I'm about to make queen anytime soon."

"They'll get over the fear."

"They haven't in a thousand years."

"Then you'll have to win the trials," she says, a grin tickling the corner of her thin lips.

"Oh, I'll win. But she should have given me the title of heir. It's mine by rights."

Joan turns to me, stands, downs the rest of her vodka, and stares me right in the eye. "When has anyone ever been given power? The greatest leaders always take it. So what are you waiting for?"

She leaves and heads towards the rear of the club, no doubt meeting the bouncers on shift tonight.

I roll her words over and over. Is she right? Do I need to mutiny against my own mother? No. It's not that. Jennie is up to something. These trials, this rigamarole she's going to put us through, it's not what it seems, but I guess the only way I'll figure out what she's up to is if I play her stupid fucking game.

This whole conversation has irritated me. I know Mother. What she wants is bloodshed. She's always been this way, trying to drive wedges between us and the hunters, drive wedges between her nobles, her children. Pushing us towards her twisted ideals.

Three hundred years ago she almost caused civil war between two factions of vampire nobles because she played favourites. At all the parties and dinners, she would whisper lies of secret alliances and deception. Lie upon lie she wove and all for her twisted sense of fun.

And then there's her children.

Where do I even start. Her eternal favouritism, constantly showering one or another of us with an inappropriate amount of attention and praise just to make the others jealous. Irene has been her favourite for the best part of the last one hundred and fifty years. It's growing tiresome, that's for sure.