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themarginalthinker · 2 months

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Dear Fellow Traveler

There are other vampires in the world, and the world itself is a big, big place. David takes a little trip.

Sooo......this is an odd one. Basically so far outside of Lost Boys canon it almost isn't anymore, but it's also a small look into some vampire worldbuilding Berd and I have done. David knows people outside of his pack, and they know him. (They certainly know Max, and that's not a good thing.)

Anyway, here you go. Enjoy?

It's not hard to find what you're looking for if you know what to look for.

David meanders down the streets of a late-night San Jose. The place hadn't changed too much since his last visit, a couple years ago. Marko and Paul hadn't been wrong - it was a city of many people, from all over. Most of California seemed like that.

San Jose was not Santa Carla, however. Few places were, David would give it that. Further inland, the air didn't hold salt and brine anymore, wasn't thick with humidity that gripped the scent of whatever organic life passed through it.

The blood here was of a different kind. Smeared on concrete thick with grit and dust. In the ash of smoke from things rolled into cigarettes that even Paul likely hadn't had the time to try all of.

David follows it. It makes no attempts to hide itself.

Humans couldn't smell it, after all.

It takes him past downtown - predictably. Hunting grounds for those with the charm, the grace to stalk the nightclub and bar, and for those without, plenty of pickings in the back alleys and unfortunates sleeping on park benches and bus routes. But one never mixed supper with sleep, and David veered off that path, following the one laid out. He glances up, to the side of a bricked up building. There were less businesses here, tucked away in second-story lofts and between condemned flats. He finds what he expects to see:

A tag, small enough to not draw the eye, in faded brown, sealed below disguising black paint. A calaveras, its grinning teeth showing points at the canines, and the moon in pretty, decorated swirls at its bone forehead.

He'd been following the trail for the last hour. The blood was getting fresher.

The streets are darker out here. Less cars, and those that do pass him are beaters at best. Spaces between buildings are trash heaps, massive junk piles. Sometimes, he thinks he sees something darting out of view when he looks up to the glassless windows of a building. Senses a shift in the air as he passes along a certain way, avoiding the scattered streetlights.

Finally, he comes to a stop.

A warehouse, utterly dilapidated, stretching along before a huge chunk of abandoned manufacturing factory property. Surrounded on all sides by the rusting, decaying waste of metal, the exoskeleton of a once-great beast twisted and scattered to and fro. The back end of it even caving in - but.

If one looked, one could see details in the dark. If one could see in the dark.

Certain places in the roof, patched over with welded bits of sheet metal. Open spaces in the sides, to same. Holes stoppered up. David himself stood before a door to an entryway that used to lead to offices inside, or at least a coatroom of sorts - but the door wasn't just barred with lock and key, no. The hinges had been welded shut to match the patched holes in the roof. To the side, little windows, and behind them nothing but a wall of cinderblocks. One couldn't force their way inside if they tried.

Etched into the glass of one of those windows, another little sugar skull design. Sharp teeth. Moon at its forehead.

"It hasn't been that long, Williams. Can't have forgotten where the front door is."

David smiles, and it's sharp.

"No, it hasn't, and no, I haven't. I was just waiting for a proper welcome, is all."

David doesn't know their real name.

Vampires who headed clan hubs rarely needed them, or kept them for long after they took the position.

The vampire who greeted him outside was shorter than David, thinner shoulders, smaller over all, but their face hard set. Copper skin warm even in the darkness, their crow black hair cut short up the back, held in a wolftail with a leather cord.

The leather wasn't animal.

Their clothing was a little more familiar style - not quite the wild fancies of the Boardwalks and the coast with its warm winds and wiles, but something that seemed to fade into the mechanical park above them. Faded denim jacket, bleached into curling, skeletal markings. Lines of fine beadwork amid the torn jeans and hole-riddled long sleeve shirt. Thick boots that had seen more wear and repairs than any sane person would think to use to keep them in working order.

Some of that leather wasn't animal either.

They had brought David down in a new way. A way David, in truth, didn't know. He'd been correct in saying that he'd known the literal doors to the building weren't the way inside, but apparently the real entrance had moved since last he'd come to San Jose. Just before the entrance to the warehouse wasteland, there was a small, unassuming grate laid into the foundations of what would have been a runnoff channel. It came out with only a small application of superhuman strength, and the pair had slipped down - guests first.

The crawl space of a concrete pipe had turned into a constructed tunnel, leading to a basement room where they came up through the floor. Into the clan grounds proper.

David had asked about that, as they climbed the stairs up to the main level, the floor of the half-collapsed warehouse - an aesthetic choice, or a necessity?

"Just young idiots, making noise," the Clan Vamp said.

"Bad enough to warrant a doorman?" David had asked with a raised eyebrow.

The Clan Vamp's smile is thin. "Enough to know you were here when you crossed city limits.

Well, shit.

"This place really has gone to the dogs," David tuts.

"Was it ever anywhere else?"

They exchange smiles - with teeth. Not full teeth, for David's words were not said with malice, and the reply not given in offense. But a flash of fangs to let the other know a boundary had been met. Eye to eye.

They finish climbing the steps from the basement level, and step out into the clan grounds.

In the center of the huge, open space, three fires in low bins flickered. Enough to cast long, dark shadows on the tall walls stretching high above. All around, curtains hung from rafters, some still in their original place, and others torn down and twisted about to form more private quarters. Strings of fairy lights wound through it all, here and there, in mismatched areas of pillows and mattresses, true nests. Further back, in the darker corners, hung bodies, close together or further apart. Those who preferred to roost rather than sleep flat.

Around the fires, similarly were a few groups of couches and chairs and lounges, scattered messes of more places to lay and sit.

And people were sitting. Voices filtered through the air now, shifting like the firelight. Low tones, among groups of twos and threes, occasionally someone taking off to roost in the rafters, or return to the privacy of a nest. Snatches of music came and went, as someone somewhere in the mess tuned a radio.

David takes it all in.

"Is the party over?" He asks the Clan Vamp, nodding at the...somewhat quiet night. He remembers what it was like the last time he came.

They glance at him, a long look full of many emotions, before walking forward, David in tow.

"Sure. Since el caballo de caza decided to come around."

David braces himself.

"How many lost?" He asks quietly.

The Clan Vamp didn't answer right away. They come to a couch, low slung in the age of its use, and they sit themselves down, sinking into a corner of it with familiar ease. They gesture for David to take the opposite end, and he does. Above their heads, in the rafters, the radio is finally tuned, and something slow, melodic and heavy in the bass guitar plays.

The firelight dances across the Clan Vamp's features as they reach into their pockets, pulling out a paper carton. They take two hand-rolled cigarettes, and light one in the flame of the bin fire. They use that to light the other. They hand one to David, who takes it, and draws.

It's not fully tobacco, and David recognizes the taste of familiar drugs, and something unique he's not likely to find anywhere else.

It's a few long minutes of silence, between them. Enjoying the smoke, the amiable air.

Finally, with a flick of a finger to rid the tip of the fag of ash where it puddles on the concrete floor, the Clan Vamp speaks.

"Three packs gone, all come here from Reno. One because they both wanted the same hunting ground, wouldn't listen to negotiation. Other two because the fighting drew line of fire from Hunters."

Loud, young idiots indeed.

The Clan Vamp's unoccupied fingers drum a steady beat on their own thigh. They lick their teeth.

"Lost a childe."

David blinks.

He looks to them. Their dark eyes weren't on him, or the rest of the clan grounds. Rather, they'd focused on the fire, almost transfixed. Their mind elsewhere. Distant.

"Shit," he says flatly.

"No one you knew," they say with a shrug.

David takes another draw of smoke, holding it, letting it curl through him. Watching his own long exhale billow upwards into the dark ceiling. A pair of bodies flitted through the space, unnaturally fast, unnaturally quiet. The pair of vampires above giggling to themselves as they moved about. David's eyes came back down.

As if the knowing mattered.

David thinks about Paul, staying back with Marko, despite the two of them knowing he was going tonight. Wanting to come. Knowing they couldn't.

He thinks about them being here, if...something happened.

"You gonna stay long?" They ask him at length.

David's mouth twists into a grimace he can't quite pass off as a smile.

"Daddy would get worried," he answers.

The Clan Vamp barks a laugh, low and humorless. "Damn. Thought you might'a come out here to tell me some good news, Williams."

"Nope," David drawls, popping the 'p'. "Same as it always was. He's opened a fucking business."

"No kidding."

"Mm. Actual, legitimate thing. Videos and TVs and all that junk. Makes a killing, apparently."

Another laugh between them, only a little bit lighter.

"How long you think he's got?" The Clan Vamp asks, sucking down the last of their cigarette.

David huffs, leaning further back into the couch.

"For as long as the Devil's got patience."

"La bendición."

David grins. It's only a little dulled.

#the lost boys #drabbles #vampire worldbuilding #vampire culture #xenoculture #this one is such an excuse to do gratuitous scenery description it's not even funny lmao

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