Zara's Curse (Empire of Fangs) Read online

  Zara’s Curse

  Empire of Fangs: Book One

  ANDREW DOMONKOS

  ©

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  http://andrewdomonkos.blogspot.com/

  1.

  Abby looked up at the church from the cab window. “This is the bar? Tell me you’re joking. Ashton Kutcher better be hiding in the bushes.”

  They had come to a nightclub known simply as The Church, a giant stone and stain-glassed structure on the corner of a downtown Denver street. The building, several stories tall, was topped with a sharp spire that cut into the dark sky. It was once a real church, where people went to pray and sometimes get married, but some eager young club owner had found a way to buy it and convert it into a Gothic nightclub. Everyone kept telling Zara she had to check it out, so here she was.

  Zara sighed and paid the taxi driver. Abby had much more money than Abby, yet Zara always seemed to end up paying whenever they went out together. She often referred to Abby’s purse as Fort Knox.

  After some playful shoving from Zara, Abby finally got out of the cab. A light rain was falling, and Abby started freaking out about it. The taxi driver gave a half-hearted thanks for the meager tip Zara had given him.

  “Ugh, that guy stunk,” Abby commented, spritzing herself with perfume.

  “I wouldn’t know, all I can smell is Kardashian,” Zara quipped; always ready to defend the poor working class, herself included.

  Abby spritzed Zara a few times, “It’s better than whatever you’re wearing.”

  “Okay, okay,” Zara pleaded. “It’s burning my eyes.”

  Abby did her famous eye roll and gave the old medieval-looking church another once over. “Looks like Castle Date Rape to me. Look at these people. Dorks much?”

  It was a Friday night—all the clubs were packed. Zara looked at the long line of Goth kids that snaked around the church. She preferred her hipster brethren and their ironic mustaches and neon fixie bikes to the Goths—vacuum sealed in their faux leather, fishnets, and uncomfortable and complicated-looking Victorian dresses that left far too little to the imagination. But the Goths weren’t so bad, she thought. They were a far cry better than the fist-pumping juice-heads in LoDo where Abby usually wanted to go.

  “C’mon, give it a chance,” Zara said, tugging her friend to the back of the line and under an awning that shielded the long line from the rain.

  They stood behind a short guy who wore a trench coat and glasses. He had horrendous case of acne. When the girls approached he became visibly agitated. He took quick drags off his clove cigarette, and mumbled to his friend in front of him, a lanky guy clad in shiny bondage pants and a mesh shirt of some kind.

  Abby made a disgusted face, waved the clove smoke away and asked Zara once again: “Really?”

  The two girls couldn’t have looked more mismatched. Abby wore her usual come-get-it-boys pink miniskirt, a white schoolgirl shirt and a pair of pink Christian Louboutin heels, with her blonde hair flowing in curls down her back. Zara wore her usual black skinny jeans and Converse hi-tops, a dark grey Vans hoodie, and her straight shoulder-length black hair, with a few strands of platinum blonde in it all swept to the side.

  Abby looked her friend over and said, “I have to take you shopping. Something must be done about this,” and swept her hand in the air to indicate Zara’s clothing.

  “And then I’ll be able to land me a big strong Chad with three functioning brain cells. Oh joy!” Zara said as sarcastically.

  The trench-coat kid overheard Zara’s zinger and began to laugh, but when Abby shot him death eyes he got very quiet, averted his own eyes to the pavement, and began to nervously fiddle with his phone.

  Abby started to say something cruel, but the line moved again and suddenly they were standing before a hulk of a man with a ponytail asking for I.D’s. Zara had hers ready in hand. It was taped up and looked like it had been mauled by dogs.

  “Gawdd…” Abby said, shaking her head at Zara’s ragged card while handing hers over, which was, of course, immaculate.

  The big towering man looked over the I.D’s for a long time and furrowed his brow. “No kidding?” he finally asked, “Same birthday?”

  “Uh-huh, last week,” The two girls said mechanically.

  They had been going out together for their birthdays since they met in middle school, back when Abby was as shy as a scared kitten and found in Zara a friend who would tell her not to worry about what those guys said about her crooked nose, that she was pretty, and to hell with them anyway. But by senior year, Abby had a new nose, courtesy of Doctor Swartz—her mother’s longtime hatchet man—as well as a new set of cartoonish breasts. But the physical transformation paled in comparison to her change in attitude, which had become quite obnoxious.

  A few days before, they both had their actual birthday celebrations at their respective family’s houses.

  Abby’s birthday celebrations were always a much more extravagant affair than Zara’s. At the Winters estate there would be a mountain of expensive presents, volleyball games were played on her sprawling backyard, there was catering by Maggiano’s, bad pop music and worse karaoke, and lots of guys showering their undying affections on her. Zara thought of it all like appeasing a volcano so it wouldn’t be angered. Instead of being destroyed by lava however, Abby’s enemies would simply be exiled from her illustrious circle of friends—a fate much worse than death for some of the silly girls who latched on to her.

  At Casa De Zara’s—a small apartment Zara shared with her dad—Zara would eat something that resembled cake that her father would attempt to bake himself, despite his repeated previous failings to make it look like the cake on the box. He would also buy a few cheap plastic party favors from the dollar store on his way home from one of his jobs.

  Still, she loved how he tried. He would stay up late with her even though he had to be up early (he always had to be up early) and they would watch her favorite movie, Labyrinth, on the couch, and he would usually fall asleep when David Bowie began to sing at the very end. This year, he had really surprised her and gotten her the twine and silver Etsy bracelet she been recently obsessing over. She was floored.

  For Abby’s birthday, her father had gotten her a 2013 Lexus I350. After several tantrums her dad had it sent back, so that they could send one in the right color. Powder blue—not Baby blue.

  The two girls entered the dark interior of the church, where thumping industrial music was pulsing along with red and blue lights, and a sea of Goths were gyrating to the rhythm on a checkered dance floor. The room was huge, with pillars reaching high up to a vaulted ceiling. Along one wall were enclaves with red pleather booths in them, and electric candles lighting up young and pale faces.

  It reminded Zara of the last Halloween dance she been to in high school, when they converted the gym into a hokey haunted house. Only in here, you would be kicked out for not drinking, she thought, taking a moment to observe the irony. She looked around. It was dark, except the bar, which was haloed with multicolored lights.

  Whatever Abby said was lost in the noise. Zara assumed it was something snotty. Zara was already eyeing the bar like an alcoholic that had just been released from prison. Being around Abby anymore made her agitated and anxious. She touched Abby’s arm and pointed to the bar, and Abby nodded in agreement. At least we can agree on a few things, Zara th
ought.

  At the bar, Zara shouted Kamikaze several times until it finally registered with the heavily-pierced bartender. Abby was speechless and wide-eyed, and she stared at the shirtless man’s nipple ring. Zara held up two fingers and the bartender nodded and got to it. He made the drinks quickly and put them in front of the girls.

  Somewhere in the room, a machine was pumping out a cloud of fog that made the dancing Goths look like floating torsos. Abby tried to wave the fog away with her hands, annoyed that it was obscuring the view of her perfectly tanned legs. Finally she plopped down on a stool next to Zara. Zara looked at her friend and thought: Well, there is still plenty to see up top, calm down miss silicone…

  Zara slammed her drink and gave the empty glass right back to the bartender. “That was weak!” she hollered playfully. The bartender looked offended and with a determined look on his face, set to making her something that would peel paint.

  He put the new drink down in front of her and mouthed, “Fifteen.” Zara dug deep and found a crumpled twenty hiding in her pocket. After the cab, the door charge, and these drinks, she was officially down to ten dollars. Soon she would have to get tough with Abby and demand she break out the plastic. She took a sip of the new drink and gave the bartender the double thumbs up, who simply chuckled as he walked away to help other customers.

  There was a stage on one end of the room, just a little area only a foot or so higher than the dance floor, and a few tall and shrouded guys were setting up their instruments on it. The moody industrial music was turned off so that they could do a sound check. Everyone seemed to disperse to go smoke or pee, anything to get away from the guy saying “1, 2, Check!” into a microphone over and over.

  “And now I’m deaf,” Abby complained the minute the music stopped. A few sips into her drink, Zara noticed a more pleasant tone in Abby’s voice. The Ice Queen was melting a bit.

  A few more drinks and she would become as close to “fun” as Abby could get these days. There was a fine line though, between “fun Abby” and “puking, stumbling Abby.” One had to watch her like a hawk or they’d have to spend the night carrying her from bush to bush and apologizing to strangers with ruined shoes.

  The band began to play a slow, murky song and some strobe lights kicked on. Those who had remained on the dance floor started writhing again, and the strobe lights made them look like stop animation. Zara scanned the room and noticed a few guys leaning against the wall, sipping their drinks in the shadows, and she tried her best to pull one in with her cuteness tractor beam, but they stayed tightly glued to the wall.

  The band played a song—a moaning tune about being kissed by a raven—and then they took a break because someone had alerted them that their van was being towed. The house music came back on and a softer, whispery song played. Zara nodded her head to the beat and sipped on the paint-peeler drink. She was starting to enjoy herself despite Abby’s constant whining. It took her a moment to notice that a lone jock had materialized at the bar, in a blindingly yellow Abercrombie shirt, and had begun oh-so-obviously hitting on Abby. The scowl Abby had worn all night vanished and she began giggling and batting her eyes at him.

  Zara turned to get a better look at him. She was taken aback by his good looks. He had bleach-blonde hair that hung carelessly to his shoulders like a surfer’s. He wore designer jeans that probably cost more than Zara’s entire wardrobe. He was in shape, but not overly buff. His teeth were two perfect rows of white, and his eyes were a piercing shade of green. He leaned on the bar with a casual assurance—that aura of invincibility reserved only for those who coast through life without ever getting their clothes wrinkled. Usually when Zara encountered such a hunk, she would become a stammering, nervous mess, but something about the guy’s smirk…it just screamed “Tool.”

  “Making friends?” Zara asked.

  The jock aimed his smirk at Zara for a moment and then turned and shouted “Three Jay-mo’s” to the bartender. The bartender sighed and went looking for the bottle of Jameson. Abby was already asking what kind of car the guy had. Zara cringed and wondered why Abby didn’t just ask to see a recent bank statement.

  “2013 Mustang. Muscle cars all the way. None of that foreign crap,” he said, while setting a shot down for both girls and himself.

  “No…I’m okay. Thanks though,” Zara said, already peeved at the guy’s obvious intent to get them both hammered. She would get herself hammered thank-you-very-much. And why couldn’t, just once, the guy come and talk to Zara and not Abby? Even if he was a tool, the attention would be nice once in a while.

  Abby picked up the proffered shot. “I’ll take mine,” she said, and she threw it back. She swung her golden locks around whipping Zara in the face with her hair and shouted “Woooo!” A few of the Goths couldn’t help but look over and shake their heads.

  The jock liked this war cry though, and threw his shot back as well and grunted apishly and slapped the bar hard a few times, shaking the whole bar. Even the bartender jumped. Zara was surprised at the sound it made, this guy was pretty damn strong, she thought.

  The back and forth flirting was more obnoxious now that the whiskey had been introduced into the mix. It was a very boring mating ritual that Zara had witnessed umpteen times before in every hallway of her high school and now her college. A guy tells a bunch of lies and the girl eats it up or vice versa. Cut to a month later and at least one of them is usually bawling their eyes out over the messy break up.

  “We’re doing woo noises already?” Zara asked. “Can’t we work our way up to those?”

  Abby was locking eyes with the jock and oblivious to Zara’s existence.

  “It’s cool. My name’s Drake,” the newcomer said, “What’s your guys’ names?” He flashed his perfect teeth and swiped a few strands of hair from his eyes.

  Abby replied with lightning speed. “Abby Winters,” she said. She always said her full name like that, and it irritated Zara to no end. Abby offered a limp hand to him, as if she wanted him to kiss it. And when he actually did, Zara got slightly nauseous.

  Zara excused herself to the bathroom without giving Drake her name. He seemed annoyed for a second but then shrugged and went back to hitting on Abby, who she could hear say, “Oh, that’s just Zara.”

  Zara didn’t really have to go to the bathroom, she just wanted an excuse to go have a smoke and get away from Abby and her new friend. She was trying to quit, but the combination of the sweet sugary booze and awkward flirting was just begging her to light up. Also, she had a paper due for her history class on Monday that she hadn’t even started yet, which was gnawing at the back of her mind relentlessly.

  She went down a long dark hallway with painted red walls and giant mirrors framed in ornate chrome, and came upon a metal staircase that spiraled upwards to the next floor. As she climbed the stairs, she thought of how cool it was that she was partying in a former church. Well, at least her version of partying, which at the moment, was quite lame. She told herself it would get better. She had only been 21 for a few days. She needed time to turn on the awesome. She needed to go out with her other friends too, friends who were on her same wavelength.

  On the old stone walls there were old sepia-colored pictures of people from long ago, the kind of photos Zara sometimes found at her grandmother’s house, and would ask “Who is this?” to which her grandmother would always squint long and hard at the picture before saying: “Beats me.”

  The dapper men in the pictures wore fancy suits and had handsome faces and devil-may-care hairstyles. Zara gazed at one picture of a brooding heartthrob, leaning on some old tank of a car, with his hair slicked back and eyes as dark as crude oil, and thought: “Oh vintage cutie, wherefore art thou?” before dreamily continuing her trek upwards.

  She came to another hallway and looked at more pictures on the wall. She passed a few more doors, then stopped at one when she heard a whimpering sound coming from inside. The door was ajar. She pushed it open a little more. She saw a guy’s back. He was leaning
on a girl who, judging by the look on her face, was in the throes of ecstasy. The guy seemed to be giving her a hickey.

  Zara tried to close the door quietly but the guy, in one swift motion, jumped up and grabbed hold of the door handle with his hand, keeping it open and looking straight at Zara with an angry look on his face. He had blood on his chin and wild eyes. “Just two people making out,” he said, before slamming the door.

  Zara walked down the hall towards a sign that said “Smoking Patio.” She felt slightly embarrassed about walking in on the lovers. Embarrassed and a bit jealous. How exciting it must have been for them, two lovers sneaking off to quench their untamable desires for each other. Zara definitely couldn’t relate. Her last boyfriend’s idea of spontaneity was ordering mushrooms on his pizza. She sighed heavily at the thought.

  The door to the smoking patio was heavy and it took her a few hard shoves to open it. She went through and onto a stone patio slicked with rain. She was only a story up, but it was a high story, and there was a nice view of downtown Denver. Along the edge of the patio was an iron fence, with jagged, churchy spikes on it. A few groups of people had been braving the rain and sitting at some of the iron tables, while some were standing huddled together and chatting about underground Goth bands, trying to trump each other with obscure musical knowledge.