Page 2 of Damian’s Conquest

“Hey, Wei, what did you want to speak to me about?”

The short Chinese man with the full black hair pointed to a manila folder on his desk. “I want you to check something out for me. We got reports that there might be something odd going on at one of the nightclubs South of Market.”

Naomi raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by going on? Drug dealing?”

To her surprise, Wei shook his head. He tapped on the folder. “Neighbors are reporting that people are coming out of the back entrance of this club covered in blood.”

“Are you saying the neighbors witnessed a crime at the club? Have you asked Katrina what info she can get from SFPD about that? Because I haven’t seen anything like that come across my desk.” After all, she handled mostly entertainment news.

“That’s because the neighbor who saw this, a Mrs. Zhang, says the police dismissed her claims. And she couldn’t give them any definite proof that a crime happened there. Apparently, she’s previously lodged noise complaints against the club, so the police think she’s just stirring up some shit again.”

“So why are we looking into it then? I mean she’s probably doing just that: complaining about the club because she’s annoyed about the noise. And since the police aren’t doing enough about it, she’s escalating.” Naomi shrugged.

Wei rubbed his neck. “That’s probably what it is, but what if there’s something to the story after all? What if there’s some kinky BDSM shit going on down there? Or some satanic rituals? You know, like those fraternity societies. Why would she invent something so outlandish like people with blood all over their clothes and their faces? We could do with a juicy story. Our subscription numbers are down. Find something. Just go there, and look around.”

“Why me?” Naomi asked. “That’s more a story for Katrina. She works the crime beat.”

“Yeah, and she’s pushing fifty and not the right demographic for the club. If she goes there, she’ll stick out like a sore thumb. You’re the right age. You’ll blend in.” He handed her the folder. “Club’s name is Mezzanine.”

“The Mezzanine?” Naomi asked. She’d heard of it. Everybody who was anybody went to the Mezzanine. “How am I gonna get in there? They’re pretty choosy about whom they let in. I mean the bouncer—”

“Wear something sexy, and they’ll let you in. Just like any other nightclub,” Wei claimed. Then he pointed to the folder in her hand again. “Mrs. Zhang’s contact info is in there, as well as who owns the club. Look into it, and let me know if there’s anything to her claims.”

Wei Guo turned to his computer, and Naomi left his office.

The large newsroom was half-empty not only because some of the staff had taken off early to go trick-or-treating with their kids, but also because there’d been layoffs. Naomi still had a job, because she was one of the young staff members whose salary was low. Some of the senior and much better paid staff had either been laid off or been lured away by online news blogs or cable news outlets.

In her cubicle, Naomi perused the thin file Wei Guo had given her. There wasn’t much: the contact information for Mrs. Zhang, a neighbor living in an apartment building behind the club, a summary of her rantings about bloody clubbers and seemingly clandestine meetings behind the club, as well as information on the ownership of the club.

According to the public records, the club was co-owned by two individuals: Samson Woodford and Amaury LeSang. She couldn’t find much about the two men on the internet. They had no social media accounts. The only time she found the two men’s names mentioned anywhere was in a report about security companies. It appeared that both men were associated with Scanguards, a nationwide security company providing bodyguards for personal protection. However, their website was bare-bones, only giving an address in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco and a telephone number. By the looks of it, they didn’t advertise their services anywhere Naomi could find, leading her to believe that they relied mostly on word-of-mouth to grow their business.

Luckily, the Mezzanine had a website. According to the About Us page, the club was run by two managers, Damian LeSang and Patrick Woodford. The same last names as the owners. She guessed that the two managers were sons of the owners. She knew what that meant: the owners had bought their sons a business to run. Yeah, rich kids who wanted a toy and got it in the form of a successful nightclub. To confirm her assumption, she googled the two managers, but neither of them had a social media presence. Odd. However, she dug a little deeper, and found that Damian was mentioned in several social media posts. She clicked on the first post and saw a photo of a gorgeous redhead with a model figure who fairly clung to a tall hunk with dark hair and blue eyes. According to the post, this was Damian LeSang. He looked like sex personified.

Her heart began to flutter at such perfect maleness. She quickly closed the tab on the browser and went back to the nightclub’s homepage. There she looked closer at the colorful banner announcing a Halloween party at the club tonight. She read through it, until she came to the end, where two lines were bolded.

If you’re not wearing an awesome or sexy costume, you won’t be admitted tonight. Impress us!

Naomi’s breath caught. There might as well have been a third sentence: We mean you, Naomi.

Well, she wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. Maybe checking out the club during a Halloween party would actually be a good thing. She would be disguised, and the club would be so busy that nobody would notice her sniffing around. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea.

She glanced at the clock. She had to hurry to find a suitable costume before everything was sold out. She needed to find one that would guarantee her admittance to the Mezzanine.

2

In the secret room behind the manager’s office at the Mezzanine, Damian LeSang put the finishing touches to his costume. He was dressed in black slacks and a white ruffled shirt with poofy sleeves and a necktie befitting a gentleman from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He draped a large black cape with red satin lining over his shoulders and fastened it with a bejeweled clasp in front. He could have gone full Interview-with-the-Vampire style, but he found the gold embroidery on the coats the actors had worn a bit too garish. The cape was much more his style.

He’d always loved Halloween, because it was the only night of the entire year where he was allowed to flash his fangs in public, without having to worry about exposing what he was. Everybody would know that the costume he wore identified him as a vampire, and assumed that the fangs that peeked from beneath his lips were fakes made of plastic. If only they knew that those fangs could pierce a vein without effort and suck a human dry. Of course, he’d never go that far. He was civilized.

As a hybrid vampire, a child born to a full-blooded vampire and his blood-bonded human mate, he could sustain himself on human food and human blood alike. While he enjoyed human food, and San Francisco offered some of the best cuisines in the country, he loved drinking human blood. It gave him strength. As a child, he’d grown up on bottled blood, but later as a teenager, he’d developed a taste for blood coming straight from a human’s vein. And as a healthy thirty-one-year-old male, he particularly enjoyed drinking from a human woman, while having sex with her. He loved the heightened sexual arousal that the bite brought with it.

His gaze drifted to the double bed in the room. Maybe he’d come back here later tonight, accompanied by a woman before the night was out, because tonight he was in the mood for not just sex, but also a bite. There would be no shortage of women tonight. Just like on other nights, plenty of women would throw themselves at him, attracted by his charm and good looks, not knowing that beneath the surface, a barely-restrained vampire lurked.

Damian grinned. Tonight would be fun. But first, he had to make sure everything was ready for the party. After all, he was one of the two managers of the club, and had responsibilities.

He left the room and closed the door behind him. From inside the manager’s office, the door to the secret room wasn’t noticeable, unless one knew what to look for. There was no door handle, no obvious grooves, no hinges, nothing that indicated that there was a door. It opened only by pressing at the right spot on the outside.

The office itself overlooked the dance floor, allowing the manager to look down into the club via a two-way mirror. Right now, the club was still empty. Only staff members were rushing around, getting ready for the party. He glanced down to the long bar lining one wall of the club, and saw several bartenders preparing for the onslaught of drink orders.