"Quiet night."
The observation intruded on Luke's silent rumination. He glanced over to the vampire in the driver's seat and nodded agreement.
Had it really been weeks in this new routine? Working with Jake's retainers one or two or three at a time to patrol the districts that the Ventrue was responsible for had drawn Luke out of his subterranean bolthole, and kept him out. Something about the nightly exercises resonated with him in a way that he didn't fully grasp. He enjoyed canvassing the streets of the city, sometimes on foot, more often in nondescript cars from his benefactor's considerable motor pool. He enjoyed analyzing the traits and skills of whomever he was working with for the evening and figuring out the best way to employ them in defense of Jake's interests. He enjoyed the thrill that accompanied incidents, as he called them, situations where they did not merely observe but intervened. Most of them were resolved easily enough, but a few had been dangerous- the run in with the spider-thing that had been draining humans and animals of blood, and the ambush by the squad of presumed Project Twilight operatives just the week before.
He also enjoyed the camaraderie, which came as something of a surprise. He'd spent his self-imposed period of isolation classifying Jake's subjects as little more than monstrous flunkies- interchangeable parts in the machine that was draining the city dry. Working with them had forced him to reconsider his perspective. Yes, they were monsters- mostly vampires, but there were a few others in the mix- they were also people. Shockingly normal people, actually, aside from the whole drinking blood thing. They had (un)lives- family both chosen and by blood, hobbies, favorite TV shows and books and podcasts, insecurities, quirks, ticks, love lives... Holy hell did they have love lives.
Luke had adopted a fairly strict non-fraternization policy after the Riley incident. He knew he was rationalizing when he explained that it would complicate things while he was working with them in a semi-supervisory capacity. It was true, of course, but ultimately he was afraid. His desire had gotten the best of him. Whatever Project Twilight had put inside him had an easier time taking the driver's seat when his groin-mounted brain got involved. He'd avoided Riley at first, then apologized. He was still avoiding Jake. It was easy to compartmentalize now that their relationship had become professional. He was training the Black Prince's security force. When they interacted, that was what it was about. He got the feeling that Jake had something in the works, though. There had been a question unasked on the Ventrue's full lips for the past week or so.
"Yeah. Not a bad thing." He shrugged, drumming the fingers of his gloved right hand on his thigh. The woman driving rolled her eyes at him. Kyasha. She was clanless, young, a would-be warrior-poet, still coming into her supernatural abilities. He'd been learning about vampires too. The different types, the scope of their abilities, their weird, intricate society. Some of it felt a little deja vu, but a lot of it was new to him.
"You're no fun," she teased. Poking fun at Luke's stick-in-the-mud routine was something of a running joke among the patrol crew. Xavier, his favorite among them, had let slip that they had set up a pool for who would be the first to get him to participate in a variety of social activities, from karaoke to sex, and that the kitty was approaching mid-four-digits territory.
"Look at that," he fired back. "You really are getting more observant." They seemed to enjoy his deadpan sarcasm, and sure enough, Kyasha let out a deep laugh. "Let's call it a night," he added after a few seconds.
She adopted a shocked expression. "Fifteen whole minutes early?!"
"... well it will take about twenty to get back to the garage, and it's not like we'll have our eyes closed on the way."
Kyasha snorted and took the next right.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Luke permitted a modicum of small talk, but since he'd started working with them, some of his seriousness about patrolling had started to rub off on them. They really were getting better, more organized. There were three other teams out on this shift, and he'd stopped being worried about them fucking around on the job.
As they passed through a posh neighborhood, Luke felt himself getting a little stir-crazy. Their progress through the city was slowed by nightlife traffic and pedestrians, and while they crawled down the street he decided he didn't want to be in the car anymore.
"Hey... let me out here."
Kyasha cocked a brow. "Something up?"
He shook his head. "Just want to walk the rest of the way. Clear my head."
That earned him another snort. "Gonna need more than a walk for that, boss man. Your head? You'd better neti pot with a fucking river."
He smiled wryly. "Nice job tonight. Let's do this again next week."
"... and the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after-"
He pulled the door open and slipped out into the night, offering a final left handed-wave through the window before stepping onto the sidewalk and strolling merging into the foot traffic. It was a young crowd, dressed for a night on the town. Restaurants, clubs, trendy little bars - this area had it all, interspersed among the high rises that had driven rents to oxygen-deprived altitudes. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was deep blue, lightweight but weather proof, with long cuffs and shoulder lapels. Beneath it he wore a simple black v-neck tee and a pair of "active denim" black jeans with boots. He was a little under-dressed for the area, but good looks and a weaponized body went a long way, he'd discovered.
He ambled along for a while, taking in the scenery. He wondered what it would be like to participate in the nightly quest for entertainment and meaning in the glittering city. He knew that the people surrounding him probably weren't paying him any attention at all, but he imagined, briefly, that those who did simply considered him one of their own - running fifteen minutes late to plans with friends he hadn't seen in weeks despite living in the same zip code, or sobering up a bit before the next bar, or heading to yet another date garnered from some app.
Why couldn't he be one of them? What was stopping him from wandering into a drinking establishment and hitting on someone, or getting hit on, or just people-watching and then calling it a night?
Nothing. Nothing was stopping him. At least, nothing he wasn't the sole arbiter of.
He scanned the facades with more intent. His gaze landed across the street, a quarter of the way down the block. At first it just looked like the entrance to an apartment, which was conspicuous in its own right given the look of the rest of the block, but there was a name carved into the door- An Tsí- and what seemed to be some curated vegetation. It wasn't necessarily a bar, but his curiosity was piqued. He gauged the flow of traffic and then jay-walked across the street at a brisk jog. Less than a minute after he'd made the decision to pretend to be normal for an evening, he was mounting the stairs, pushing open the surprisingly-heavy door, and stepping inside.
