There is really no such thing as a normal night at the White Rabbit. The club was many things: bar, music venue, strip joint, fortress. It was one of those places where time seemed to fold in on itself and energy welled up from the Earth below and wound up in patrons drinks, food and dripping from the bodies of the dancers. That energy drew lots of attention, not only from everyday people but from the supernatural denizens of the world of darkness. Mages, vampires, werewolves, fae and weirder things were all drawn to the White Rabbit and felt the need to possess it and its power.
For the last year and half it has been controlled by the Mages, one mage in particular who calls himself Gand the Great. Before Gand it was controlled by someone or something else but no one can seem to remember who or what that may have been; such is Gands powerful and manipulative magic only made stronger by his control of the energy node underneath the building.
It was a Friday night, just after sunset. The Rabbit was still closed but Gand was already on site. When he wasn’t holed up in his penthouse he was at the Rabbit. Gand’s office overlooked the main floor of the club with a view of the stages as well as the bar. Its entire wall was a window of tinted glass. Gand sat in an oversized leather chair behind a massive desk, in lieu of a computer or other business supplies Gand had a leggy blonde in a thong with a feather boa gyrating around on top of the desk to heavy electronic house music pumped all through the club.
“I’m sorry sweetheart but I don’t think this is going to work out.” Gand finally admitted after a sip from the world’s sweetest whiskey sour and reason number two why the blonde would not be joining the staff at the Rabbit as a bartender or a dancer.
The girl immediately became modest, covering herself with the feathers as best she could. Gand stood up, both to give her a little space and to dump out the awful drink in the sink of the office’s mini-bar.
“I appreciate the enthusiasm but you just don’t have what we are looking for.” Gand left the glass on the bar, one of his habits that enraged his partner and on-again off-again girlfriend Alice.
The blonde awkwardly climbed down from the desk and picked up her short dress from the corner of the desk. She was halfway wiggled into it when she stopped and gave Gand a pointed look:
“Are you sure there is nothing I could do?” She said with a lick of her red lips.
Gand was tempted of course, the pretty, talentless, immature throwaways were totally his type and yet another thing that enraged his partner. Gand looked the girl over and she made like she was going to drop the dress again.
It wasn’t meant to be, as much as Gand loved to have staff arriving as a wobbly kneed girl ran blushing from his office. There was a dip in the music, an odd alarm from somewhere behind the bar and a loud bang as the front door of the club was burst open.
Gand cursed, the doors of the club had been reinforced, steel core doors made from heavy, almost petrified wood. They flew open like a cheap cardboard box. The girl shrieked and whipped her dress back on without a care for how crooked it looked.
Through the front doors walked a sickly pale man with a wild mane of black hair. He was wearing dramatic Goth makeup around his eyes as well as a dirty looking trench coat. He carried a sledgehammer with a fourteen pound brass head. He bellowed out a challenge as he approached the bar and raised the hammer again.
“Come out, Come out, Little Rabbit!”
Gand groaned as he heard the sledgehammer crunch into the bartop. He stepped to the desk and opened the middle drawer to retrieve his pistol, a full frame 9mm with a fancy pearl grip. The girl stared at him wide eyed.
“You should probably take cover in here.” Gand made the split decision to not send the girl out the back door just in case the wackjob with the sledgehammer wasn’t alone. The last thing he needed was a dead girl in the parking lot or some kind of hostage situation. Things were going to get ugly enough.
The girl huddled against Gand’s desk, it was hard to tell if she was more nervous about the sledgehammer wielding madman or the efficient, practiced manner in which Gand slammed a full magazine into the butt of his pistol and attached a long suppressor to the barrel before racking a round into the chamber.
Gand didn’t ask. He was out of the office and down the steps in a flash, striding out onto the stage where the girl had hoped to be gyrating and working the pole later in the night.
“Who the fuck are you calling a rabbit!?” Gand shouted, just in time to hear that heavy sledgehammer bring down two shelves and a few dozen bottles of liquor.
“You want to not fuck up my club, asshole?” Gand raised his pistol at the man, who turned and flashed a long fanged smile. He stepped out from behind the bar, holding the heavy sledge one handed as if it were just a small ball-peen tack hammer.
“It won’t be yours for long, Rabbit.” the man rasped, rage in his voice.
“Heard that before…” Gand kind of shrugged and squeezed the trigger three times. The slide on the pistol made more noise than the bullets leaving the suppressor. All three rounds entered the wild haired man’s torso with a sucking thunk sound, center mass.
A normal man and most mages would have dropped dead instantly. Even when blitzed out of his mind Gand was a damn good shot. Tonight he was clear and sober which made him twice as deadly.
The man staggered back two steps and did not fall. He grunted with the impact, looked down at the holes in his jacket and back to Gand. His eyes were rimmed with red and he growled.
Gand stepped forward and emptied his magazine. Sixteen rounds of 9mm hollow points ripped into the man’s chest, neck, shoulder, Gand aimed low and pumped rounds into his legs. The man fell as Gand stepped close and put his last two rounds into the man’s face at close range. The slide locked back and all noise in the club stopped save for the slight sizzle of heat from the suppressor and tinkling sound of the brass casings rolling on the hard floors.
“Rabbit that.” Gand said, setting his pistol down on the bar.
Gand looked at the damage the man caused to the bar and groaned. Alice was not going to be happy. No one was going to be happy. He had a body to dispose of and a girl upstairs who saw him go all John Wayne on a guy, so he definitely was not going to be happy.
Gand was just turning to go close the front doors and deal with the girl upstairs when he heard the sound of metal scraping on the floor behind him. He turned to see the man getting to one knee, using the sledgehammer like a crutch. The utter lack of blood splattered all over the club should have been a clue, but Gand had missed it. He wasn’t used to dealing with hostile vampires- usually they just left the Mages alone, too busy with their own blood bathing or sucking or whatever.
“What happened to just ignoring each other?” Gand asked as he started backing up, kicking himself mentally for not grabbing a spare magazine or two from the desk.
“We are well past that, Rabbit.” The Vampire got to his feet and launched at Gand, narrowly missing his skull with the sledgehammer. The brass head whistled past and punched a watermelon sized hole into the stage. Gand didn’t waste any time throwing punches, this was not Hollywood and if a hail of bullets didn’t take the vampire down his bare knuckles weren’t going to do the trick either.
“It’s not like I staked your ass!” Gand leapt onto the stage, turned and soccerball kicked the Vampire right in the face as he was pulling the sledgehammer from the busted hole in the stage. The vampires head snapped back and he snarled, wrenching the sledgehammer free and out of Gand’s reach.
“It’s not like I drained you and the rest of you pathetic wizards!” The Vampire shouted after Gand, who took the opportunity to run behind the stage curtain and jab a few buttons on the control panel.
“Well kiss my ass and call me Harry Fucking Potter you dead bitch!” Gand was pretty creative with cursing, his mouth often got him into situations not unlike this one. His magic usually pulled him out of the fire. Usually.
The Vampire jumped onto the stage, prowling after Gand with the sledgehammer held at chest height, ready to crush the loud mouth Mage’s skull as soon as he got close enough. Gand threw a switch on the control panel and the music came back on, loud bass and electronic screeches flooding the club and the Vampires sensitive hearing. The smoke machines came on full blast, pouring thick mist across the stage, lasers and strobe lights stuttered and flashed with the music creating a distorted and disorienting scene.
The vampire raged and tore the entire stage curtain down with one mighty pull. He raised the sledgehammer to find nothing but swirling mist and blinking lights at the control panel. He bared his teeth and snapped his head back and forth in confusion.
Gand’s voice came from every direction at once: “I really, really hate wasting my energy like this. Why can’t you fang bangers just stay on your side of town? Aren’t there enough diseased hookers and stupid kids to eat in the catacombs or wherever the fuck you sleep?”
The Vampire spun around and swung the sledgehammer in a wide arc. For a second he could see Gand in a bank of machine generated fog but the lasers flashed and he was gone. The music grew louder and more intense, drowning out the Vampires growls and snarls. He stalked the club, taking swings at shadows and putting holes in things out of frustration.
“I said stop fucking my shit up!” Gands voice boomed, amplified by a hundred embedded speakers all over the club. The Vampire shrunk, ears assaulted. The lasers intensified, blinding light bouncing from hidden mirrors and scattering in the ever thickening smoke from the machines. The Vampire bashed the control panel on the stage to no avail, Gand had locked out the controls.
The Vampire yelled but could not hear his own voice over the intensity of the music and maddening cacophony of voices coming from every direction. It was so loud he did not hear the front doors slam closed. The lights and fog were so blinding that he tripped off the edge of the stage and dropped his sledgehammer. When he found his feet he could barely see his own hands in front of his face, he was so assaulted by sound that it felt as if he had a hundred hearts beating to get out of his chest and a wild animal clawing its way out of his skull.
Blood pooled in the vampire’s eyes and leaked from his ears. He fell to his knees and never even saw it coming when Gand appeared behind him with a shiny red fire axe, postured up for a two handed swing and cleaved deep into the Vampires neck, severing his spine. All the music and lights stopped immediately.
“Come on…” Gand grunted, applied his foot to the Vampires back and yanked the axe free. His next swing sent the vampire’s decapitated head rolling across the stage and his body falling flat to the floor where it would rapidly decompose.
“WHAT THE FUCK!?” Gand jumped, Alice must have come in through the back just in time to see Gand dropping the fire axe onto the rotting corpse. She was so beautiful when she was angry and confused, she hated when Gand told her that.
“Uhhh… I don’t think it’s going to happen tonight.” Gand said, instead of explaining the chaos and carnage all through the club. Alice gave him a stern stare. The girl upstairs started screaming bloody murder.
“Shit. Yeah, we have to deal with that too…” Gand smiled at Alice. She didn’t return it at all. She just headed for the stairs to the office to try and calm the poor, terrified girl down.
“Tell her she can have the job! Either job! Fuck.” Gand called after her.
There really is no such thing as a normal night at the White Rabbit.
Rob Wrote That 