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Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

Last night's movie scores became tonight's Broadway Soundtracks. Allie wasn't sure if she should be surprised that Tiny knew the words to everything the DJ played. It wasn't too bad, until he started caterwauling along to a song about midnight and the moon losing its memory.

It was almost enough to make Allie miss being a bat.

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"Well, why don't you tell him you'll do that?" asked Éponine, as if this were perfectly reasonable. "You don't have to mean to, so long as he thinks you do."

"I would. Except he knows Eric would be pissed if anything happened to him. And he knows I don't want to piss Eric off. The DJ on the other hand..." Allie's voice trailed off as she remembered Eric's opinion of DJs.

"Might be persuaded not to encourage him?" Éponine was kind of an awful person.

"Might be persuaded to change musical themes entirely," she grinned evilly. "Give me a minute."

Allie stalked over towards the DJ, somehow managing to look intimidating despite her tiny frame. A short but intense conversation later, the music abruptly changed to classic rock

"Much better," Allie said once she strolled back.

"Lordy, that was quick!" Safe to say Éponine was duly impressed. "It's a bit loud for me, this music, but so long as Tiny isn't trying to drown it out . . ."

"It's just a matter of being very clear and direct about what you want." And an impressive flash of fangs.

Allie tipped her head and considered the music. Pinball Wizard, the DJ's sneaky way of sort of sticking to his theme. "It was loud for me as well. At least at first, but now I kind of like it."

"Well," Éponine said contemplatively, back to peering at her reflection in the glass, "it's a different kind of loud than an inn full of drunken men singing, that's for certain. It sounds interesting, at least."

"Drunken men singing. Now that's a scary thought." She watched the other girl for a moment. "Do you want something to drink in that glass? Or do you just need it as a mirror?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind," Éponine said, distracted. "I am a bit thirsty. Though it does make a decent mirror. Look how clean it is!"

Not so much any more now that she'd gotten fingerprint smudges on it, but shh.

"Hot water does wonders." If Allie was honest with herself, it was the one creature comfort she going to miss if she ever got herself home.

"What would you like?" she asked, going behind the bar and ignoring a pouting Tiny. Allie picked up the soda nozzle and debated the choices. "Coke? Sprite? Water?"

"You look like a small child," Éponine informed Tiny, and never mind that she wouldn't hesitate to use a pout to good effect if she had to.

To Allie she added, "A Coke, if you don't mind. I've gotten awfully fond of those." Because picking up a new caffeine addiction: that was just what her life had been missing. "The bubbles tingle, and sometimes they tickle my nose and I sneeze, but I don't mind that at all."

Allie filled a clean glass and slid it across the bar. Tiny would be washing the glasses after all.

"They tickled my nose the one time I sniffed a glass. But I prefer the smell of coffee. It's so rich."

"That's such a good smell, isn't it?" Clearly, from the way she perked up, Éponine was enthusiastic about coffee. "I don't think I could stand it if I could only smell it and never get to drink it, though."

Vampirism: not an aspiration of hers.

Vampirism wasn't really one of Allie's aspirations. But when you were on the verge of death, becoming a vampire wasn't such a bad idea.

"I don't have much choice. Getting violently ill gets old after a while," Allie pointed out. "I try not to think about what I can't do. And just enjoy what I can."

Given the options, the one that involved possibly living forever was not the one Éponine would have picked.

"Just enjoy what you can," she repeated as if it were a new concept to her (in a way it was). "Like going off on long nighttime jaunts?"

A pastime they had in common, albeit for different reasons.

"I don't have much other choice. Once the sun rises, I have to sleep," she explained. "I can delay an hour or two if I force myself, but after that, I don't have a choice. It's just something my body does." Which was frustrating, to say the least.

"The roaming, well, right now the causeway is closed to my world, so nothing can get across. But I worry that it might open one night and a rabid will wander over. That's the last thing this island needs. I roam and check and make sure everything is safe."

"Not like me, then. I do it because I like it."

Or because it had become force of habit after doing it for so long because it was easier to hide then, and sometimes it was too cold to sleep anyway. Close enough.

"But going about at night, that was how you found me," Éponine said after a moment, then snorted. "How were you so sure I wasn't dangerous?"

"Back home, before I was turned, it wasn't safe to be out at night. That was when the vampires roamed." By that point Allie was usually safely tucked up in her room at the abandoned school.

"I could tell you were human and you were too hurt to be any sort of threat," Allie shrugged. "At least to me."

"We may not have vampires at home, but Paris is hardly -- well, like this place after the sun goes down, either," Éponine answered, and something in her eyes suggested she was speaking from ample personal experience. "And just because we're human don't mean we can't be a threat, just as much as anything with claws or fangs."

She looked down at the bar, tracing erratic invisible patterns on it with a fingertip. "You weren't wrong. All the same, I can't help thinking it was a bit foolish of you."

"The Fringe was the same. Some of the other gangs, in some of the other sections. They were just as bad as the vampires."

Reaching into her back pocket, Allie pulled out her knife. It was small but up until the rabids, it had protected her. "I carried my claws before. Even now, as a vampire, this saved my life once." She shuddered, remembering the psychotic vampire Sarren, holding her close and moving in for the kill. Until the moment Allie buried the knife in his eye.

"It wasn't foolish. Not here in this place. Life is worth something."

"It wasn't before. Not to me," Éponine said, then, as if she realized she'd said that out loud, leaned forward to inspect the knife.

"You don't need much bigger than that if you know what you're doing. A boy I knew taught me how."

"Maybe it can be now," Allie said simply.

"Lucas taught me. I didn't have to use it too often. i preferred not getting caught in the first place."

"Perhaps," she replied -- noncommittally, unwilling to put too much hope in anything. "It's not so bad, anyhow. But you're right, much better to slip away before they catch you -- and that goes for the cops, too."

"You mean the ones who are supposed to help you?" They didn't have police in the Fringe. They had the pets of the vampire prince. They were supposed to help. If you were registered. Allie never wanted that kind of help.

[zzzz....]

"As if they'd ever help someone like me," Éponine scoffed. "Hardly! I'd just as soon they ignore me than notice me at all, the kind of attention I ever got from them."

Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

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