Tish Chapter 1

Tampa was the city that sat on the bay. The waters were cool to the touch in March. The weather was chilling most mornings and pleasant in the afternoon. Many of my favorite haunts in Miami did not exist in the waterfront city. It became quite hard to find a wonderful Cuban sandwich and coffee. But freshly made sangria was much more available.

The high rises and apartments facing the hockey arena seemed humble and comforting. There was some life in the city, but many of the clubs were located in Ybor City, even good food that only felt like a memory now.

My agenda was simple, find FBI Agent Gwen Peterson and kill her. But if only it was that simple. Since my family was a family of cursed German nobles from some star-cross fate of the ancient witch Helen Wilhelm and my long-dead cousin. It sunk into deeper despair once we found out she had a child. A child that could be a vampire. It was haunting enough to know that this woman could be the distant love child of a witch, or simply the witch herself. I have known to meet several witches and warlocks whose family lineage spans nearly one hundred years before they crumble into dust.

I scoured some of her favorite hangouts, places such as coffee shops, clothing stores, and other places that she would frequent. But the one thing I found quite strange was the use of a club in the gay district of Ybor City. Could it have been that she was hunting down a lead or was she simply a fan of the similar sex?

Taking blood was more difficult than Miami. I could easily discard a body and it wouldn't be found until it was a barely recognizable corpse. I often found out that sometimes our bodies would be found on the news and that it has become a string of unsolved murders. The only similarity was the two single marks on the throat. Since most corpses don't become vampires after they have been drained of blood, you could say I was lucky that no more of the undead were found in this small city on the bay.

As I was strolling around the streets of Kennedy Boulevard, I wandered by a strip club, or as they call them a gentleman's club here in Tampa. I wandered in and was greeted with stares and awkward glances. But I dashed to the back and found the local girls' dressing room. I went in and saw several women staring at me, some counting the wads of bills that came from their thongs and garters.

"You're not supposed to be here," one woman barked. She had wrinkles on her mouth and forehead, a little over forty and slightly pudgy as if she got knocked up when she was living this lifestyle.

"I'm sorry, I was told to come in. It is my first day," I lied. I held out my hands in guilt and went to the rack of clothes and picked out a two-piece lingerie set, the bra was a pushup, to show lots of cleavages.

"Tony never told us of a new girl that was coming tonight," said another woman. She had brown roots showing and blonde hair. She looked no older than her twenties. Her boobs were fake and dropped slightly over her knees.

"Well, Tony didn't tell you because he thought this new girl was something special," I replied. I undid all my clothing and stripped down to my lingerie. I took off my clothing and looked back at the rack and picked out a simple tube top dress. The fabric was a neon color and with the black lights I noticed in some of the rooms around the stripping poles, I knew that I could easily get a meal. I grabbed some clear plastic heels and headed out towards the floor.

The room had a bunch of men stare at me and back at the women who were gyrating on the poles and removing more of their clothing for better tips. I headed up to the stage and used my fingers to wiggle the DJ around in the booth to play a song that I know would make only the stage be me. I handed him a twenty-dollar bill I was able to stash up into my bra and he eagerly went to his booth and began to play the song.

A soft riffing guitar beat began to perform and the slight chuckle of the singer wafted into the room. I first slid down the pole and began to open and close my legs to the beat, banging my head, and then rode my ass up the pole for the men to stare down at my breast. The supple touch of the body's clothing gave my body a more mysterious shape. Hourglass framed and adorned in black and neon pink. I moved slowly to the beat and hovered over the floor on the stage. I motioned with my hips and got up slowly. The body tube dress slipping further and further up my body.

The men began to pull out their wallets and throw fives and ones in my direction. The other strippers looked up at me and watched from their poles as my body quivered and rippled with the riffs from the guitar. I began to crawl to one man and grabbed a piece of his bun and took my tongue to his earlobe and traveled down to his neck. The man shivered and slipped a wad of singles into my bra.

"Happy Halloween, baby," I whispered into his ear and hung off the stage, my legs dancing in the air and my hands taking the tube top and moving up my body inch by inch. The soft supple glow of the blacklight on my skin was enough to illuminate the pale body I held onto for nearly hundreds of years. I pulled myself back onto the stage and walked towards the pole. I twirled around and turned back to the men. I flung the tube top into the crowd and one of the guys caught it, eager to smell the scent of rose oil and jasmine. It was one of the perfumes my sister Alfie knew about as she was a mistress to Franco. I began to swirl my shoulders in a soft ripple. The light shimmering on the flesh as the sweat from my body wrapped it into tiny beads of pearls.

I grabbed the wad of singles and put it into the thong of my underwear and began to work on the clasps for my bra.

"Why don't you turn around to see those lovely tits you got, sweetheart," one man called from the crowd. I turned my head and let out a soft smile. I threw the bra into his direction and then began to climb the pole until I was near the very top, out of view from the lights. With a smile on my face, I dropped down towards the crowd and bared my fangs. The girls on stage ran away in fright and the men gripped their chairs tighter with fear. I let out a smile and laughed, with my normal teeth showing in the light.

I continued to perform until the song ended and I was lying on the floor with a stash of ones in my underwear. I got up slowly and rose my legs first and then the rest of my body. I got down from the stage and as I was about to head to the dressing room, a man grabbed me by the arm and took me to one of the private rooms. He had a big bunching in his pants and was dying to get to know me a little better. It seemed I finally had my prey for the night.

"You were fantastic," he whispered in a hush. He was kissing down my throat, sliding his hands down into the lines of the underwear. I pried him off and pushed him towards the booth. He stared at me with wonder, awe, and excitement.

"Is this your first time?" I asked in a sultry voice

"Yeah." It was breathless and rushed. He wanted more of me, something I knew that not all strippers did in a club. But yet some do take a little more money when they have some well-paying clients and need a little extra side cash. I climbed onto his lab and began to lick at his neck, the soft shudders from his body told me he was wanting to fuck me, hear me scream and writhe in pleasure, then walk away like it was a normal night. A smile spread across my face, the fangs I hid began to slide out like tiny daggers. He had his eyes closed for the moment, but it was worth all the moments before I enjoyed something as tasty as a man who always gets what he wants.

I looked up before I plunged my fangs hard into his neck. I wrapped my arms around him, gags and gurgles came from his mouth. He had no words to say that he was in pain and being bled dry. I hung on for life. The heavy taste of women and booze lingered on every note of his blood. It was as if I had a huge line of cocaine and started to feel as if I was lying in a bath of roses.

Since my first taste of food in Tampa, the bodies and the blood inside harvested something more sinister. The taste not as refined as sangria, but merely metallic and harsh like the sounds of grinding metalworks along the docks and harbors of shipping ports inside Tampa Bay. The taste of acid on everyone's tongue came from the rain and the water, old sewage was dumped into the Bay because of overflow in the sewers below the streets of Saint Petersburg.

The large murky waters of the bay held mysterious secrets and haunting histories. The infamous amount of murder, sex, and crime that had dawned in the early days of this inlet shipping town was enough to fulfill my curiosity.

Ybor City still had that wonderful smell of Cuban cigars, hand-rolled and pressed, long after many of the factories and smaller shops on the main street were closed down. It was the immigrant neighborhood of many Cubans whom the Russians hired during the early years of Tampa's city beginnings. Russian metal caps and spires on the University of Tampa's buildings showed the large influence of Eastern European lives that flourished all those years ago.

As I pulled away from the dead body of the man, I licked the wounds and left a bloody kiss on his cheek.

"I had a good time, sweetheart," I whispered into his ear. I headed out of the private room and hurried back to the dressing room, washing my mouth and removing the clothes I adorned to find a wonderful meal, even if it was greasy and severely intoxicated to the touch. I was walking out the back of the gentlemen's club when I heard the scream by one of the other strippers in the private room I left my dead, drunk friend.

I headed back towards Kennedy Boulevard and walked to the nearest bus stop. It was nearly the morning hours, if no buses were available, the next best thing I could do was hitch a ride or start walking towards a building and wait for Toby to come and get me. I pulled out my phone and swiped up the screen and began to press the numbers for his cell into the phone. I pulled it close to my ear and heard the line ringing, finally, someone picked up the phone.

"Who is this?" a woman asked, her breath shaking. My newly found heartbeat after that delicious meal stopped all of a sudden.

"This is Beatrice, who is this?" I asked.

"Can you help me?"

"What do you need help with?"

"Someone is trying to kill me, he has these fangs and such. I don't know where I am."

"Shit," I muttered under my breath. Toby has found that it is much easier to play with your food, makes it taste better. But doing this in warehouses and other abandoned buildings around the small migrant population of Ruskin doesn't help with police investigations. I thumbed out for a taxi and pulled out a wad worth of fifty dollars. It was enough to cover the cost and get a little tip from it.

"Where you heading?" the taxi driver asked. I flung the fifty wad in his lap and he turned to look behind him and flashed him the eyes of the devil.

"Apollo Beach motel, gehen," I ordered. The taxi fled off and the spur of the suspension indicated that he was going faster than the speed limit. I looked out over the window and watched as the taxi roved throughout the street and eventually the sign for Riverview and Ruskin appeared over US highway 41.

"Thanks for the ride," I said and ran inside once we got towards the motel. I hurried up the steps and towards the second floor. I fumbled with the keys until I opened the door. The room was silent and empty of any noise.

I looked around and stayed close to the wall, looking around the bed, watching how much the sheets splayed out like a woman's legs towards the curtains. The hum of the air conditioning machine whirred to life. My breath came shuddered and hollow. Then the scent came quickly to my nostrils. Metallic, sugary with sweat, hot and salty...blood.

I followed the smell to the bathroom, a train of blood spilled from the bottom of the doorway like a virgin's first menarche. It was flowing with life, a faint pulse could be felt from behind the door. I became hot and dizzy, the blood from the man at the gentlemen's club no longer stuck to my tongue. I was hungry again. Balling my fists together, I kicked open the door and threw it towards the toilet, which was slightly tilted off the floor. I walked in and found Toby leaning over the poor woman, her makeup smeared and her dress ripped from her body. The bra strap lined with blood from the large gaping wounds on her neck. She struggled as Toby was biting her for food.

"Tobias," I hissed. My fangs getting in the way of my speech. I was hungry, pissed, and horny all at the same time. Toby looked up and his face was smeared all over her blood. She was barely alive, a gurgling gasp coming from her throat, the blood seeping out like a fresh paint slick on the roller.

"Oh Bee, I didn't know you were home," he said. His eyes heavy with the intoxicating smell of blood and lost in the aroma of her fear. Toby was learning how to be the scary kind of vampire. A hunter, born and bred. It didn't help that I saved him from an overdose of cocaine. Many of his frat boys, I drained their blood or left enough that they would die off on their own in hospitals all around New York.

"How many times have I told you not to scare your prey?"

"Several. But I can't get over how much they taste so sweet." I walked over and grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and hauled him towards the bathtub. The tile above split in twain. Showers of subway tile fell off his head, his neck, and gaping scratches from the chips of tiles sticking to his skin.

"Bee, chill out," Toby begged. I grabbed him by the hair and took him towards the bed. I flung him onto the sheets. The overpowering aroma of fear and excitement was messing with my head. I tried to stand up straight, but I was having a hard time staying in control of my body. Could I even be in control with all this blood, sex, and fear tainting the place?

"Bee, you okay?" Toby reached out and I swatted his hand away. I was eager to get this over with and I removed my clothes once again. Climbing on top of his body, I reached for his eyes and shoved my mouth hard over his. The roaming of my tongue on his fangs, cutting and slashing my tongue in the process.

Toby was giving in. His body swelling and getting hot with the mix of blood, fear, and heat pouring out of our bodies. I pulled up his shirt and traced my fangs over his nipple, slightly piercing it in the process. The blood pouring from the small cut on the top of the nipple was enough to make me reach down and suckle. I was eager to feel him inside me and gorge on the fear. I wanted to drink him up and let him take me in the process.

"Bee, wait, hold on," Toby whispered. I didn't wait. I reached down for his pants and ripped them off, literally. I grabbed them by the zipper and shorn the zipper clean off. I wanted this night not to stop, not to end. I didn't have control of my body, I didn't have control of my mind. Where was my mind?

I saw him erect and nuzzled him close to my cheek. Licking his shaft like an ice cream cone. I pushed him on the bed and then I put him inside me. Starting to buck and ebb to the rhythm of the remaining pulse inside this woman's body lying on our bathroom floor, it didn't take me long to enjoy myself. While vampires can get pregnant, it is still possible to enjoy a few moments without any babies in the way. But my cycle had long since run out. Now I was more like a woman in menopause than a woman ovulating. I never had to deal with menstrual cycles once I became a vampire at eighteen, I was no longer viable to give any children. Vampires can reproduce, it is messy, it is awkward, and it requires ancient methods to bring us back to fertile stages in our lives. The great thing was that the reproduction was more like a switch, easy to turn on or off. The harder part was getting the chemical pheromones and smells to link up to it.

He moaned slightly underneath me and I moaned and grind my way to salvation, the longest possible feeling of orgasmic rush. Toby was dripped in sweat and I showered him with kisses. I pried myself from the top to near his side on the bed, disheveled sheets and pillows were strewn about like a harem nest.

"You trying to kill me?" Toby joked. I gave out a small chuckle and we cuddled as the dawn of the next morning rose out to meet us. Tomorrow was the first time I would see FBI agent Gwen for myself. I had no idea how haunting she would become as the months drove on in Tampa.