The Allure of the Damned (Jayde, ask to join)

[Alejandro Cepero]

The corrupted nature of the current generation of young people made Alejandro question why on earth he was struggling so hard to save fools who clearly did not want (or, arguably, even should) be saved. Foolish children, thinking that immortals were "sexy" and that flirting with danger such as this was the greatest way of achieving nirvana. It was fools such as these that had swarmed him and Cosette that dark day so many years ago... It was fools like this that followed dictators into war after war, decade after decade... And yet here he was trying to save them. At least, that's what he planned to do. His contacts on the inside of this little conglomeration better be right on this one.

Wearing his fine all black Armani suit with a light blue shirt with its top two buttons unbuttoned, Alejandro rode through the night on his black and grey Harley Davidson Nightster, his pistol tucked into its holster underneath his jacket. Weaving through the traffic, it did not take him long to find the place they described. All he had to do was follow the scent of his fellow immortals.

Parking his motorcycle on the road, he stepped off and opened the compartment on the side, tossing his helmet and goggles in whilst leaving his black finger-less driving gloves on, and pulling out his sword belt. It was an exquisite example of a light infantry officer's blade, with the coat of arms of the Spanish monarchy on the hilt and silver etching all up and down the blade. Hooking up the belt, he began to walk towards the smell of his fellow immortals. Before long, he found them, along with a small line of less than reputable human males standing next to them, eagerly awaiting their turn to be stupid. Walking up to them, standing tall and proud in the manner he was accustomed to, the guards stopped him.

"And who might you just be?" The first large guardsmen said. A vampire, given his complexion and large canines.
"Does it matter?" Alejandro replied, growling in his thick Spanish accent. "I'm one of you." He said, opening his mouth and showing his teeth.
"Don't matter." One of the large guardsmen said. A lycan by the smell of him. Peculiar. "You ain't on the list, you ain't getting in.
"Oh, but do you not know Jayde is expecting me?"
"Oh really? And who the fuck might you be?" the first asked.
Alejandro grinned a wicked grin as his piercing grey eyes slowly turned red. "La Espada."

Before the guardsmen could react, Alejandro had drawn his blade and sliced the head off of the lycan. Take the larger threat out first. That was always first priority. The Vampire, before he could shout, found the blade had been sunk deep into his chest. As he snarled, Alejandro drew out his silenced pistol and fired a round into the man's skull, then withdrew the blade and decapitated him for good measure. The two corpses dropped to the ground, and as Alejandro re-holstered his pistol the foolish boys all began to flee into the night.

"Bueno." Alejandro muttered, as his eyes returned to their steely grey color. "Go find your high somewhere else, like bath salts. Those are safer for you anyway."

Bending down, he cleaned his blade of blood on the shirt of one of the two guardsmen, then sheathed the blade and opened the door. What he saw within only increased his rage.
"Where is Jayde?" He asked one of the nearby vampires, who did not appear to have noticed what was going on outside. The fool was to drunk off of alcohol and the blood of the young woman under him, because he happily pointed to the back of the warehouse. Alejandro then turned to face the alluring leader of this perverted collection of the damned, his left hand resting on the hilt of his blade.

[Jayde Archer]

It was a test run for the most part. The humans she felt were healthy and decent enough she let a few loyal Vampires have a taste at. The feeling of having a Vampire suck their blood was euphoric and she could tell immediately if they would be up for it again in Eternity. Her precious club could always use some fresh blood, if you're willing to escape the irony of the statement. She had to make sure the product was reliable and top quality. Her club was known as a place where immortals could drink fresh blood without worrying about getting sick or it tasting sour. So Jayde took great care in picking the product. Sometimes it just wasn't easy. There were so many factors she had to consider - so many things that could go wrong. Humans were rather unpredictable despite being the cattle that they were. Despite being a food source, they sure knew how to give a few good surprises. But being as old as she was and having run Eternity for as long as she has, Jayde felt confident in her abilities to read a human.

If a human seemed too nervous, she would jerk her head to the side and he would be forced out the back. A skilled, pure-blood vampire would then either drain them or allure them into forgetting everything. It was usually the weak-willed ones who came to these things anyway. So they were easy to manipulate and turn around. They simply forget everything, thinking they had been dragged to a crazy party. Jayde made it a point not to let the pure-bloods kill too many of them. She didn't need any attention from the authorities. So they left few dead bodies. It was too much of a risk, one she wasn't willing to take. Anything that compromised her club was too much of a risk.

Jayde was looking over a particularly scrawny human. He looked nervous and he was fidgeting. It seemed like he was going through withdrawal. Probably crack or heroin. They were probably hoping that the money paid for their blood and time at Eternity would be enough to pay for their addiction. But the last thing Jayde wanted was tainted blood in her bar. She wanted healthy humans. Humans who didn't have drugs coursing through their veins. It was easy to taste a drug addict, too. The taste was sour and rotten - like old milk. Jayde shuttered at the very idea of it. She shook her head in disgust and waved her arm and the human was led away, with much complaint to the alley outside. The pure blood wouldn't want to drink him. He would probably have him forget everything.

That was when Jayde spotted the Vampire she did not recognize enter her warehouse. Her cold eyes narrowed dangerously and she saw the blood on his shirt. He killed her men? For a moment, Jayde considered waving her arm and having all her men flood the man and slaughter him there, but that was hardly the diplomatic thing to do. She had been lounging on a crate of supplies, surrounding by burly men when she slowly and gracefully came to a stand. Her short black, V-neck dress clung to her body and fell down to her mid thigh, revealing her long creamy legs. She wore a pair of black high heels and her hair fell in curly waves around her shoulders. She sauntered closer to the man but kept a safe distance between them. She eyed him up and down.

"You could have just knocked," she said cooly, raising an eyebrow at him in an attempt to seem aloof.

[Alejandro Cepero]

Walking through the warehouse, Alejandro could not help but notice the oddness of the place. All three races; vampire, werewolf, human; they were all present here. Odd. It appears the supernaturals here were all following the will of this one woman, Jayde.

"You could have just knocked." The woman said, as she approached him. Shapely woman, clearly one who was used to using her beauty and power to get her way. It was also clear she had a lot of both, and that she was very used to having her way. Alejandro calmly looked around the room, sizing up each and every guardsman with a cold, steely gaze of eyes that have seen battle since before these men had been suckling from the teats of their mothers. He knew individually, he had nothing to fear from any of them. Together? A challenge. Best not to be overly hostile as of yet (though he may have already burned the ships on that one...).

Keeping his left hand on the hilt of his blade, he placed his right hand inside his pocket, he took a moment to respond. In a calm, emotionless voice laced with his Spanish accent, he spoke clearly.

"Knocking is difficult when two fools think they can stop my call Ms. Archer. I am Alejandro Cepero, but aside from giving you my name I shall skip all other pleasantries, for I can tell most of your followers here clearly don't know what those are. I will only ask you once. Shut this place down, and don't you dare let me catch you doing something like this again, or I promise you it will be the last time any of your followers, or you for that matter, will taste blood that is not your own."

Alejandro could hear the angry, offended growls growing around him, but was completely unfazed by them. His eyes rested on the woman directly in front of him, the twisted ringleader of this corrupt circus. A circus that, if it were up to Alejandro, was performing its last act.

[Jayde Archer]

Jayde placed a hand on her hip as the man greeted himself. His accent was thick and she quirked an eyebrow at him as he spoke. The name sounded familiar and she was immediately reminded of the man she was thinking of. He was known for killing his own kind, hating the Vampires and their ways. He was a betrayer. He turned his back on his people. Jayde didn't particularly care about the politics when they didn't involve her getting her hands on something good. So this man never really put a blip on her radar. He didn't come into Eternity for obvious reasons. If he hated his kind, that would be the last place he would go surely.

She smiled at him. "Ah... Espada de la Noche. Sword of the night. I have heard of you. The rumors of your deeds travel far and wide." She smirked again, turning her back on him and walking back toward her crates where she took a seat. She looked him over, examining the man and seeing if the man lived up to the myth. He slaughtered her two guards without so much as breaking a sweat, and those men weren't wet behind the ears. They were trained professionals. It was no wonder he had made a name for himself.

"Of all the things you could be spending your time on, you come here to threaten me?" she asked with a quirked eyebrow, motioning her hand around her, emphasizing her establishment. "I wonder just how much you adore humans or whether or not it's the mere principle behind your actions. I'm curious... is it revenge? Pity? Redemption?" Jayde shrugged and brushed her hair over her shoulder, revealing her long, slender neck. She put herself in a languid position, not threatened by the man nor worried if he would attack or not. She was confident in her logic.

"But let me explain something to you." Jayde turned her head and motioned for a slender looking Vampire to approach her. He did as she ordered. His eyes were crazed and he was obviously thirsting for blood. He was about to be fed, too, until the Sword of the Night made himself known, uninvited she might add. "This is Jeremy." Jayde came to a stand and wrapped an arm around his back, holding onto his waste. He didn't seem to notice. His blackened eyes were locked on Alejandro. "He came here because he was starving, and he didn't have enough money to buy blood from Life Line Corporations. Now, I could turn him away, put him onto the streets where he would feast on the first defenseless human, sucking them dry and leaving a rotting corpse in the middle of the city streets. Or I could feed him with a willing and knowledgeable human while he is supervised the entire time. The moment he takes a drop too much and endangers the human, my men are on him faster than you can blink. The human is safe, paid handsomely for their blood, and given the chance to never return on come back again." Jayde removed her arm from around Jeremy before approaching Alejandro again. Her face had grown serious.

"The moment you threaten to close my establishment down, the moment you have hundreds more rogue and frenzied immortals out there preying on humans. The way I run things keeps the world stable. You think the ones out there now are difficult to deal with? What happens when you cut off a safe supply of food. You may hate your own kind, but you cannot change the fact that what we need to survive... what you need to survive is blood."

[Alejandro Cepero]

Alejandro stood his ground the entire time the vampiress spoke. The man appeared unflinching, un-moving, even as he could sense the other supernaturals circling him as she spoke, getting into a position to attack should this woman so much as bat an eyelash. But what they were doing wasn't troubling him in the slightest. A physical fight... Child's play. What the woman was saying though...

"My reasons are entirely my own." Alejandro spoke in a voice as cold as a blizzard. He stayed quiet as she continued on her little speech, but the fact was she had hit the nail pretty much on the head. His reasons for what he did were all the above. To protect those he had endangered. To redeem a soul he had long thought lost. To avenge Cosette...

Then she brought forward Jeremy, and Alejandro met the boy's gaze. As she spoke, he did not take his eyes away from the boy's. His eyes were dark, hollow, and slowly turning crazed. He had seen that look in the mirror a few times when he tried for as long as possible to avoid having to drink the blood of a human. And unlike many of these people, he had been fortunate enough to have the patronage of a king, and given a steady supply of condemned prisoners to feed from. But this was a time before blood packs he tried to rationalize in his head. What else was he to do? It wasn't like he had a choice.

His eyes shifted back to Jayde as she stepped away from the lad, and as she spoke he tried his hardest to contain his anger. For the most part, it didn't show aside from his nostrils flaring. It took a better part of his willpower to make sure his eyes didn't turn red or his teeth sharpen. But damn it all... She was right. The price of blood packs from the Lifeline corp. was excessive. That was something he'd need to discuss with their leaders as soon as he was given a chance (if he was given a chance. Let's face it he wasn't on the best of terms with the senior leadership.).

While it was no doubt what this woman ran was evil... Luring foolish humans to be used as nothing more than cattle... It served a necessary function. Were it not for what this woman was doing there would doubtlessly be far more deaths on the street than there were now. Damnit all... This place was the only choice they had... And Alejandro knew it. It was perverse... It was twisted... But it was the lesser of two evils.

Visibly angry not only with her logic but with his own understanding that she was very much right, he looked at the woman with cold, steely grey eyes. "There is a certain evil to your logic that leaves an awful taste in my mouth, but it is sound. Using humans as cattle, no matter how well they are treated and protected, is still degrading and morally wrong. However, it is better than the alternative."

He was about to suggest they switch to having blood packs instead of human cattle, but he realized that would not work. One, he was already in less of a position to argue after conceding that her main point was valid. Still, he wasn't about to walk out with his tail between his legs. He was too proud for that.

"But I will leave you with this warning. You walk a very dangerous road Ms. Archer. You must make sure you don't have people amongst your ranks creating more of us. Since your club has opened there has been a consistent rise of new vampires in the city. Enough that it cannot be mere coincidence. Many of the humans you are bringing in are foolish enough to be transformed by the more foolish of your patrons, and that is something that must be stopped. You and I both know it will not take long before the secret is slipped. And once that secret is loosed there will be no way to control it. We no longer live in an age where an isolated incident can simply descend into local legend. Word of your place reaches a reporter, reaches a government official, and it will undoubtedly make front page news all over the world. You will endanger not only our kind, but all of human society as well. For what do you think will happen once the general public learns of us? Some will demand violent action, others will seek to imitate. And then what? You will have more bloodshed then you can possibly imagine."

He stopped and looked around for a second. These vampires and lycans... They were fools. Every last one. But her... Alejandro took minor comfort in the fact that someone as intelligent as her was in charge. She clearly was trying to cover her bases, even if she was playing with fire.

"Bloodshed would be bad for business." He finished, fixing his gaze on her pale grey eyes, which happened to be very similar to his own. By now, he had removed his hand from the hilt of his blade and out of his pockets, as his arms were crossed as he studied the vampiress one more time, waiting for her response.