Chapter 23: Initiation to Debauchery
The black town car slid to a curb in an alley that smelled of damp brick and distant garbage. The door Matthias held open for her was just a slab of aged oak in a stone wall, marked only by a wrought-iron sconce holding a single, flickering gas lamp.
“Ready for your debut, my little spark?” Matthias murmured, his hand a cool weight on the small of her back.
Liana adjusted the corset, the black satin straining. She felt strangely confident in her new goth outfit despite the fact her breasts were so pushed up by the corset and out in the open, and that the curve of her fishnet covered ass was almost visible under the skirt. The confidence was a new, foreign garment, tighter than the leather, but she wore it. “As I’ll ever be,” she said, and her voice didn’t waver.
He opened the door.
Sound and scent and shadow washed over her. As she stepped inside, it was a whole new level of vampire experience for her. The bass was a physical thing, a heartbeat thrumming through the polished stone floor. The air was thick with clove cigarette smoke, aged whiskey, and the coppery tang of blood underlaid by expensive perfume. Vampires, all gothed up, danced and revel in the night. Velvet, lace, and leather draped bodies that moved with preternatural grace. Their glowing red eyes made the dance floor seem like a sea of crimson candle flames, flickering in the strobe-lit gloom.
And there were humans. Not many, but a few, their eyes glazed with euphoria or fear, pressed against pale throats in shadowed booths. Some partook of willing human partners. It was neither hidden nor brutal; it was transactional, intimate, grotesque. A woman in a silver dress arched her back, a sigh of pleasure escaping her as a vampire drank from her wrist.
Liana froze, her nurse’s instinct warring with this new reality.
Matthias leaned close, his lips brushing her ear. “This is the Gilded Cage. Here, the Concordat’s rules on public discretion are… relaxed. The humans are paid, protected, and leave with no memory and a substantial bank deposit. Here, there are no inhibitions. Do not look so shocked. You wanted to see our world.”
“I did,” she breathed, forcing her shoulders down. “It’s just… a lot.”
They reached a velvet-roped balcony overlooking the swirling dance floor. Matthias procured two glasses of something dark and garnet-red from a passing server. “Not for you,” he said, handing her one. “Just for appearances. It’s cold brew. A cruelty, I know.”
She took it, grateful for the prop. “So this is where the elite undead come to play?”
“And scheme,” he said, his crimson gaze scanning the crowd below like a general surveying a battlefield. “Every smile here has fangs. Remember that.”
Before she could answer, the music shifted. A deeper, more primal rhythm pulsed through the club. Liana felt it in her teeth, in the newly awakened power that hummed just under her skin. It was the same feeling she’d learned to draw from in the training room—a heat that started low in her belly.
“I want to dance,” she said suddenly, surprising herself.
Matthias raised an eyebrow. “Do you now?”
“You said no inhibitions. I feel… good. In this.” She gestured at herself, at the confident woman in the mirror she was still learning to recognize.
A slow, approving smile touched his lips. “Then dance.”
He didn’t follow her as she descended the wrought-iron staircase to the main floor. She knew it was a test. She pushed into the crowd, the heat of bodies a stark contrast to the chill he left in her absence. The sea of red eyes parted for her, sensing something different—a warmth, a pulse of something celestial amidst the eternal chill.
She found a space and closed her eyes, letting the rhythm move her. It was awkward at first, the movements she’d practiced in the stark training room translating clumsily to the decadent chaos of the club. But then she stopped thinking. She let the passion, the sheer aliveness of it, rise up. Her magic responded, not as a weapon, but as an accent—a faint, golden shimmer in the air around her fingertips, a grace to her steps that hadn’t been there before.
She felt them before she saw them. A presence at her back, another before her. She opened her eyes.
Two vampire women bracketed her. One had hair the color of spilled ink, cut sharp at her jaw, the other a cascade of white-blonde curls. Their skin was porcelain, their lips black, their eyes twin pools of smoldering scarlet. They moved in sync with the music, with her, their bodies sinuous and inviting.
The dark-haired one leaned in, her voice a velvet scrape against Liana’s ear. “What a rare vintage you are. All heat and light.”
The blonde moved in front, a smile playing on her lips. Her cool finger traced the line of Liana’s corset, just above the swell of her breast. “Matthias is keeping secrets. This is no mere pet.”
They closed in, sandwiching her in a slow, sensual grind. The world narrowed to the press of cool bodies, the scent of frost and night-blooming flowers, the hypnotic swirl of their eyes. Liana’s breath hitched, not from fear, but from a dizzying, dangerous attraction. Their whispers wove around her, dark alluring compliments about the taste of her aura, the strength of her pulse, the pretty, pretty gold of her soul.
Their whispers wove around her, dark alluring compliments about the taste of her aura, the strength of her pulse, the pretty, pretty gold of her soul.
Their whispers wove around her, dark alluring compliments about the taste of her aura, the strength of her pulse, the pretty, pretty gold of her soul.
She let herself sink into it.
She moved with them now, her body reacting to the cool pressure of their hands, the sinuous guidance of their hips against hers. She let them tangle her in their arms, pressing their pale bodies close, the slick satin of her corset against the lace of their dresses. The ink-haired one whispered into the hollow of her throat, “You were made for this, little sun,” her voice a narcotic hum, “made for the night.”
The blonde one, her curls a cloud of moonlight, murmured, “Let us show you.”
One kissed her.
It wasn’t like Matthias’s calculated, dominating kisses. This was a cool, exploring thing, a tasting of her lower lip, a sharing of the faint metallic sweetness that lingered on the vampire’s tongue. Liana gasped into it, and the sound was swallowed by the music and the dark. The other slid a hand under her skirt, long fingers tracing a deliberate path up the outside of her thigh, the fishnet a rough whisper against her skin.
A bolt of pure, electric heat shot through Liana’s core, so sharp it bordered on pain. It was desire, yes, but it was also something else—that same power she’d learned to draw from her passion in the training room, now sparking. A faint, visible shimmer of red light crackled where the vampire’s hand touched her leg.
A faint, visible shimmer of red light crackled where the vampire’s hand touched her leg. The blonde vampire broke their kiss with a sharp, surprised hiss, her crimson eyes widening as she stared at her own fingers. "Well," she breathed, her voice laced with new, predatory interest. "That's not celestial fortitude."
Liana didn't see it though. She was too busy moaning into the kiss from the dark-haired vampire, whose cool tongue traced the line of her teeth. The hand continued up, around her scant thong, and into her, as her arousal rose. This time, the energy didn't even flicker gold. It flared from her loins, crimson. A hot, shocking pulse of raw power ripped through her, painting the air around their tangled bodies in a brief, violent halo of red light.
Liana bucked against the hand, lost for the moment in pleasure and the terrifying, exquisite surge. From his perch, Matthias smiled. It was a small, satisfied curve of his lips as he watched the scarlet aura bloom and fade on the dance floor below. He took a slow sip from his glass, his gaze fixed on Liana’s arched back.
He took a slow sip from his glass, his gaze fixed on Liana’s arched back.
He was certain now. The seed of darkness he’d worked so hard to plant in Liana was starting to blossom. All those days of passion, of drawing her power from that raw, emotional place, of dressing her in the aesthetic of his world—it had taken root. The crimson flare of her magic wasn’t celestial. It was something far more interesting, and far more useful. Now it was time to nurture it a bit further before she was out of his immediate clutches.
In a flash he was over to the dance floor. He moved with a silence that parted the crowd, a shadow given form. He suavely approached her grinding between the two vampires. A sheen of sweat was on her now, glistening on her chest and throat, catching the low light. Her breath came in quick pants, her green eyes wide and dazed with a potent cocktail of arousal and unleashed power.
“Enjoying the music, my love?” Matthias’s voice cut through the haze, cool and familiar.
Liana blinked, focusing on him as if surfacing from deep water. The vampire women withdrew their hands slowly, giving him respectful, knowing smiles. “Matthias. It’s… intense.”
“I see that.” He reached out, wiping a bead of sweat from her collarbone with his thumb. He brought it to his lips, tasting the salt and the unique, sparking energy of her. “The question is, are you ready to move past the introductory course?”
He leaned in, his lips almost touching her ear. “Would you like to really have some fun on this night of debauchery?”
She looked from him to the two smirking vampires, then back at him. The last vestige of the nurse from Cook County, the girl in practical scrubs, seemed to flicker and die behind her eyes. A wild, hungry grin touched her lips. She eagerly gave a nod.
“Excellent.” Matthias took her hand. His touch was an anchor, a claim. He nodded to the two women. “Selene, Carmilla. With us.”
Matthias and both vampire women guided her from the floor towards a more private part of the club. They moved through a curtain of heavy black beads into a corridor lined with dark wood and crushed velvet. The thunder of the music became a muffled pulse. Here, the air was cooler, scented with aged leather and a sharper, cleaner metallic note.