Rudy was shocked by me walking in naked, but he sent me to the basement anyway. I still held the sheathed karambit in my hand.

“Hide downstairs, Nazril.” He said.

His hair had a lick of green in it now. He gave me a towel to cover my privates. I walked down the stairs and saw what the ring looked like without a fight going on. A few regulars were running out. Arson and Georgia were there.

“The Ox?” Arson’s high pitched voice snapped upon seeing me. She wore a white tank top and punched a heavy bag on the side of the room. Every punch created a loud snap which rippled through the air.

“Why are you naked?” Georgia asked. This time she didn’t wear her colorful vest, she wore an all black hoodie with cut off sleeves and the transgender flag knitted on the chest.

“Long story,” I sighed. “Please tell me you at least have some pants stored.”

Georgia pointed to the lockers, there were clothes piled inside. I grabbed a pair of boxing shorts. I wore these a lot right after World War Two ended. I trained at a temple in Thailand for two years before immigrating to the Netherlands and being reunited with Jan. They trained me in Muay Thai.

The shorts made me feel nostalgic.

The tall fighter approached me. “You obviously got attacked, but why come here?”

“You gave me your number. That would be a sign I’m welcome.” I said while pulling a thin workout shirt over my head. The fabric breathed perfectly and it formed to my muscles. They were all visible through the shirt.

“I actually waited for you to call me so we could fight.” She snickered.

“Maybe some other day.” I said.

“I’ll keep a hole in my schedule for you.”

About an hour passed. I punched against the hanging sandbag with my bare hands. It hurts a lot more than when you use gloves. My knuckles burned. I stopped and looked at them, they were red, but I needed to keep them conditioned.

I then resorted to kicking. This is easier to do on a bag than punching because in a real fight you hit with the front of the tibia for maximum impact. That bone is hard, you do not want it slammed against your head.

I speak from experience.

I kicked the bag on the same level of height as my side. A loud snap traveled through the underground gym. I caught stares from several of the regulars, but Arson approached me.

“Training for a rematch, I see.” She joked.

I now kicked the bag the height of my own head, my tibia crashed against the bag and rattled the chains attaching it to the ceiling. I then stood on two feet and turned to Arson. The smaller girl looked at me with a smug grin.

“Maybe one day, gremlin.” I said with a shit eating grin on my face.

“Don’t wanna throw down now?” She spread her arms in a taunting gesture.

“No, I don’t want to. Not yet.”

Then the door opened.

A shirtless Hans walked in, with him was a girl even smaller than Arson was. She wore a black business suit which was several sizes too big.

I’m all for women wearing suits, but hers was several sizes too big. The jacket almost came down to her knees and her hair was a mess. Her pale skin had several big smudges of makeup on it.

Hans looked fine.

Only when we are talking about physical health.

Judging by his wild eyes, his mental health didn’t fare well.

It didn’t stop him from letting out a sigh of relief upon seeing me. He ran towards me and held a fist out to me. I bumped it.

“What happened?” I asked. I didn’t put too much emotion in my question. It would only scare Hans more.

“An assassin attacked, I was asleep and he just broke in. Your advice wasn’t really accurate.” He said with a disappointing tone.

“Sorry, Hans.”

The look on his face…

It was weird seeing it on such a young boy.

It was not the same, but the look on Hans’s face reminded me of faces of grown men who I shared a sleeping quarters with in the labor camp all those decades ago.

The girl walked up too, I now had a closer look at her. He had a narrow face and big cute blue eyes.

“Marlene, this is Nazril.” Hans said.

She stuck out her hand, “Marlene Maarten.” She said, I shook her hand and responded with my own name.

“Darling, excuse me but I need to go to the toilet. Stay with Nazril at all times.”

Hans left, leaving me with Marlene. She looked a bit weary, but she’s certainly not ugly – see, all Hans had to do was try.

I remained standing in silence, saying something would only make her more uncomfortable.

“Hans says you are a vampire.” Her voice whispered beside me.

That idiot. I needed to bullshit myself out of this one.

“See, Hans has a traumatic experience behind him. I think he is an imaginative boy so he seeks supernatural reasons to justify what happened to him.” I paused a bit to think about how the hell I’d continue lying. “He is obviously in shock, and the brain does weird things when in shock. He needs to visit a doctor or something.”

The girl grabbed my wrist, I looked at her.

Her mouth hung open and two small pointy fangs poked from her upper jaw. They were slimmer, hell, cuter than mine.

Either way, it complicated things to an insane degree.

My eyes went wide. I had to struggle to not let out a scream, and I plastered my hand over her mouth and kept it there. Nobody could see we were vampires. Hans was already one human too many whose eyes had been opened to vampirism.

And now he’s dating one.

“Hide them.” I demanded in a whisper.

She nodded, fear in her eyes. I let go and her fangs turned to regular canines no different from humans. Luckily nobody had seen.

“Don’t you know how much you just complicated things?” I said not louder than necessary. I followed it up with a question, “Does Hans know?”

“Not yet.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Good, keep him oblivious.”

I wanted to add ‘break up with him as soon as this is over.’ but I didn’t. I convinced the awkward youth to ask her out in the first place. Marlene was young, she wasn’t a multiple centuries old woman whose appearance was that of a child. She looked like a teenager, so she was.

Most born vampires stopped aging when they hit twenty-five. Marlene was definitely a lot younger. No older than eighteen.

I am a turned vampire. Those stay the age they were upon turning until their death, which could be forever. On a physical level born and turned vampires aren’t that different, but on a social level we are incomparable.

A born vampire will come from a vampire family, often have hundreds of near immortal relatives and centuries to build a stable life and wealthy family. Marlene is a prime example. She attended the same private school as Hans. She may be richer than him by a long shot.

Then you get to me, a turned vampire.

After my master left, I was all alone. No money, no education, no family.

You get my deal.

Marlene nodded at me, then smiled when Hans approached again.

“So, what’s the plan, Nazril?” He asked. He was more vibrant now, probably splashed some water in his face or puked the stress out of him.

“We leave when the sun’s up,” I said. “I consulted with Georgia, she’ll allow you to sleep here.”

“No,” Hans said. “We were already woken from our slumber by a guy with a giant sword. We slept enough.” He stepped closer to me. “If he could get into Marlene's house he can come here too.”

“At least we’re underground, safe from the sniper.” I said.

“Sniper?” Hans and Marlene said in unison. Their eyes went wide.

“Yup, sniper and some French guy. Even had a little beret.” I snarled.

“I hit the assassin with a car. If he is a vampire he would’ve probably survived. You told me the most sure way is decapitation.”

Marlene eyed me with an annoyed glare.

I should’ve told Hans he was hallucinating. He was being way too carefree with this information.

“Not here.” I said soft, but firmly.

Marlene perked up. “I’m going to talk to Georgia.” and she left.

That left me alone with Hans.

“Pretty girl. I mean that in the least creepy way possible.” I said.

“I know right, she’s amazing.” Hans answered.

“Sooo, did you do the thing?”

“What thing?”

“You know, the thing.”

I made a ring of my finger and thumb, then put the index finger of the other hand inside it. “That thing.” I said.

“Ohhhh,” He realized, laughing a bit. “Well, not fully.”

“Ah, that’s quite normal for the first night together. Granted my first time alone with a girl was in a house that fucking stank like a pigsty. Didn’t ruin the mood for me, though.”

“You didn’t get sick?”

“By some divine miracle I didn’t,” I laughed. “if it wasn’t in secret my parents would’ve disowned me. Sex before marriage was not done in Indonesia. That was when it was still under Dutch rule.”

I got nostalgic just thinking about it.

Dewi. My first ever girlfriend when I was nineteen years old. Met her at the library, a girl with the same interests as me. Very interested in Europe and the turmoil going on there at the time.

She could talk about Adolf Hitler and his revitalization of Germany for hours.

We talked for weeks as friends before love sparked. I loved her, and we were together for a while.

Then the Japanese took over and separated us.

God knows what happened to her, but knowing what the Japanese did to its female prisoners…

Stop. Don’t cry in front of Hans. I swallowed a sob and pushed Dewi from my mind. I thought of the assassins, who were miles more comfortable.

“Are you okay?” Hans asked. I fell silent out of nowhere.

“Yes, sorry.” I reassured him. “I drift off in my own world too sometimes.”

My gaze shifted to Marlene. She was laughing with Georgia. Hans watched too.

“They seem to be getting along. That’s Georgia?” The shorter boy asked.

“Yup.” I confirmed.

“Looks like an androgynous amazonian.”

“Certainly rolls off the tongue,” I snickered. “Aren’t Amazonians androgynous by default? They have muscles and such.”

“Nah, not in the face.” Hans said.

I grabbed his shoulders.

“One more thing, don’t mention I am a vampire ever again to anyone. Marlene asked if I really was and I bullshitted my way out of it.” I lied.

“Got it sir.”

“Don’t call me sir.”

See, Hans was a weirdo, but not an evil weirdo.

If the world had more people like him, it would be a way more carefree place. He didn’t have any existential dread. Not yet anyways, it usually comes later in life. For vampires it’s extra bad. We may live long, but even we have to die one day. Only we will never die peacefully in our sleep. We’d be decapitated, obliterated, and when all humans are gone when the world ends we’ll simply starve.

Starving is one of the most painful things a vampire could go through, and could cause them to lose self control and attack the first human they see.

Georgia pat Marlene on her shoulder. The size difference between the two was simply insane, then again Marlene looked small even compared to Hans. “You’re a little cutie patootie!” Georgia said to a disgruntled looking Marlene. “It doesn’t matter, I am a cutie patootie too and I’m tall. You’re good the way you are.”

Marlene visibly blushed. “Thank you, hon. I just wish I could reach the top shelves, you know.”

Georgia bellowed a laugh but was interrupted by a loud machine revving up in the direction of the entrance to the underground gym. I glanced over quickly and saw sparks flying off the hinges. They were cutting through it. I wanted to call out and warn Georgia, but she was already on it.

She rushed to the crates and called out to Arson and a buff guy I hadn’t seen before. They rushed to put on their combat vests from the lockers. Georgia grabbed her colorful vests with the rainbow and transgender flag, Hans told me what the last one meant. The others had a similar design, with different flags on the back. Arson had one with red, orange, and pink. The three grabbed guns from their crates.

Georgia held tiny machine pistols in each hand. I heard Americans were good with guns.

Arson grabbed a Russian kalashnikov rifle.

The buff guy grabbed a double barrel shotgun.

This was all highly illegal for civilian use.

I grabbed my karambit and unsheathed it. I hid the blade behind my hand.

The doors clattered to the ground with air shaking thuds and a dozen men walked in. They were dressed in all black, leather jackets, patched pants, and motorcycle helmets, some even with spikes on them. They all aimed handguns at us. The guns were smaller than the weapons their opponents used, but we were still outnumbered.

Then four more men entered carrying a large steel crate with a few ]holes in the hull. It was the size of a kennel for a big dog, only you couldn’t look inside. There was a low growling heard from within.

“What the fuck is that?” Hans whispered with a lot of fear in his voice.

“Hide, kid. Shoo.” I whispered back. The boy ran off to where the toilets were. Marlene quickly followed him inside. These youngsters were clearly no fighters.

A man of average height wearing a helmet with a steel skull screwed onto both sides stepped forward. He was the only one in the gang who wore a trench coat instead of a short jacket. He had a brown goatee and didn’t appear armed. He put his hands on his hips and sighed. “Come on, not even a warm welcome with hugs and such?” He said with a deep voice. He stared right down the barrels of the guns.

Georgia scoffed. “I like hugs, only problem is you are crazy enough to actually wear a bomb vest and blow us all up with your embrace. Leave this gym, Bastian.”

Bastian laughed while covering his mouth. “Hah, maybe in twenty years when I’m old and frail.” He walked to the crate and put his hand on it. He pulled it back when a loud barking came out and the crate thrashed around. The men had to restrain the crate so it wouldn’t move too much.

“God, making us kill a dog?” Arson said, then made a disgusted sound.

“Well, that can be avoided. I’m looking for the Julians kid, the Asian guy too if you have…” His eyes drifted to me. “MISTER FABRI!” He bellowed so loud even a few of his henchmen jumped up. “I heard reports of the Minister’s son parading around this place, maybe he is still closeted and is just expressing himself by going to a gay bar. But you? I never expected you to be here. They don’t exactly like the queers where you’re from.”

I squeezed my fingers around the karambit and aimed a nasty frown at him.

He didn’t budge.

“Now don’t give me that look, what you got into has nothing to do with me.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You fight under that name, don’t you? Whoever saw you that night you killed Freddie together with the boy must’ve recognized you.” He put his hand on the lock of the crate. “But, enough chit chat. I want to see what you’re made of.”

Bastian put his hand on the crate’s shutter door, a shadowed form of a creature lurked within.