Chapter 3: The New Pet's First Test
The boot lifted from his head. A moment of cool air on his scalp, then the bite of leather around his throat. She’d looped a belt, someone’s discarded belt, into a crude collar and leash. He didn’t flinch as it tightened.
“Up, Spot,” Santanico said, a playful tug on the lead.
He rose, knees aching from the concrete. The bar was different now. Before, it had been a chaos of fleeing prey and sudden violence. Now it was a lounge. Shapes moved in the booths and shadows, watching with slow, reptilian interest. Red eyes gleamed from the dark corners near the broken jukebox, which still hissed out the same warped guitar riff over and over. The smell of spilled beer and blood had deepened, fermented into something sweet and cloying.
She led him forward like a prize won at a county fair. His feet dragged at first, until a sharper yank on the leash snapped his head forward and got him moving in step behind her. The neon glow traced the impossible coil of the serpent on her back, made it seem to writhe with her hips.
“Look what I have,” she announced, her voice cutting through the murky haze of the bar. It wasn’t loud, but it carried to every ear. “A new pet. He was quite… obedient.”
A low chuckle rippled through the room. Someone clapped, slow and sardonic.
“Seems messy,” a voice drawled from a nearby table. A lean vampire with a gaunt face picked at his teeth with a silver toothpick. “Looks like he ate more than he served.”
Santanico stopped, forcing Seth to halt. She turned her head, a slow, deliberate swivel. “He is eager to learn, Carlos. Aren’t you, Spot?”
All he had to do was stand there. But the silence stretched, and the creatures in the shadows leaned in. The pressure was a physical thing, a weight on his lungs. He nodded, a jerky, mechanical dip of his chin.
“He speaks!” Carlos barked a laugh. “A real charmer.”
“On your knees,” Santanico said, her command dropping into a casual register that was worse than any shout.
Seth went down. The floor was sticky.
“All fours. Properly.”
He placed his palms flat in a cold, wet patch. He kept his head down, eyes on the grimy geometric pattern of the tiles, now obscured by streaks of brown and black.
“Now, Spot… what does a good dog do?”
He knew. The knowledge sat in his gut like a stone. He could feel every pair of eyes on him, the heat of their gazes. He heard a glass being set down, the scratch of a chair leg. They were all waiting.
He opened his mouth. A dry, silent crack.
“Louder,” she whispered, her boot nudging his ribs.
He sucked in a breath that tasted of blood and dust. “Woof.”
It was a pathetic sound, thin and human. A snort of derision came from the bar.
“That was a mouse dying, mijo,” Carlos said. “A dog. You know what a dog sounds like. Let’s hear it.”
Seth clenched his jaw. The inside of his mouth was still raw from before. He thought of the boot on his head, the cross clattering away. He thought of Scott’s bulging eyes. He closed his own.
And he barked.
It was sharper this time, guttural. It tore something in his throat on the way out.
“Again.”
He barked again, a series of them, sharp and staccato. He felt the vibration in his skull. The laughter started then, not a ripple but a wave. It was cold, mirthless, the sound of things that had forgotten what real joy felt like. They pointed. They mimicked him with yips and howls. He kept barking, his voice growing hoarse, until his throat was raw and the sounds were just ragged pants.
A tear, hot and traitorous, welled in his eye and splashed onto the tile. He hoped the blood on the floor would hide it.
The leash went slack. “Enough,” Santanico said, her voice slicing through the noise. The laughter died, settling back into a watchful quiet. “He has a good voice. But a good dog also keeps its master clean.”
She stepped in front of him and lifted one boot. It was pristine black leather, but near the sole, a fine spray of dried blood dusted the toe and stitching. Scott’s blood. Or the woman’s. It didn’t matter.
“Clean it.”
He didn’t hesitate. The barking had broken something else open inside him, a final dam. He leaned forward, extending his tongue. The leather was cool and smooth at first, then he hit the gritty, crystallized line of blood. It was iron and salt and something faintly chemical. He licked, a slow, broad stroke. He used his hand to steady her ankle, the feel of her skin chillingly cool through his fingers.
He worked methodically, like he was detailing a car. Around the eyelets, along the welt. He closed his eyes, retreating into the simple mechanics of the task. The bar fell silent, save for the stuck jukebox. He could feel their watching, a collective, hungry fascination. He was a living vignette of dominance. An art piece.
When the boot was clean, he sat back on his haunches, his tongue thick and coated in the taste. He looked up at her, awaiting the next command, the next degradation. A good dog, waiting for a treat or a punishment.
Santanico looked from him to her boot, then back to his face. She reached down, not with cruelty, but with an almost unsettling tenderness. She cupped his chin, her thumb smearing away a fleck of blood from his lower lip. Her touch was like marble.
“Very good,” she said, for his ears only. Then, to the room, “See? He just needed proper training.”
She pulled a small, sharp knife from a sheath at her thigh—a slender, bone-handled thing. Seth flinched, a last ghost of instinct. She didn’t stab him. She grabbed a handful of his hair, yanked his head to the side, and with three quick, efficient motions, sawed through the tangled locks. Chunks of dark hair fell to the floor. She shaved a crude, uneven patch clear over his left ear.
She ran her palm over the stubble. It felt exposed, sensitive.
“There,” she said, satisfied. “Now he’s marked. Now he’s really mine.”
She dropped the knife onto a nearby table with a clatter and took up the leash again. “Come, Spot. The sun will be up soon. Time for you to see your kennel.”
She led him toward a dark hallway behind the stage, past the watching, grinning faces. As he crawled past Carlos’s table, the gaunt vampire leaned over and dropped a single, greasy chicken wing onto the floor in front of him.
“Here, boy,” Carlos muttered, winking.
Seth paused, the leash going taut. He stared at the wing. Then, slowly, he lowered his head, took it in his mouth, and kept crawling. The laughter followed him all the way into the dark.