Blood Ties

Of Violent Delights and Violent Ends

Blood red lips turn down as she studies the dance floor below, watching bodies writhe against each other in the low light. From the balcony above, it's nearly impossible to discern their individual costumes, but it's clear enough that they are celebrating the dark holiday with great style and little clothing. Not that the masses of the twenty-first century need an excuse to get wasted. It seems to be their preferred pastime—or perhaps she's jaded as the owner of the nightclub Bloodlust. Despite that, Felicity Smoak can't help but a pang of sadness in her cold, undead heart for the way they treat her precious All Hallow's Eve.

With a sigh, she internally chides herself for her antiquated foul humor. Sometimes she can't separate the world of her birth from the one she must navigate today. In those days, opium was the drug of choice and a woman was scandalized for showing her ankles in public. Despite being two hundred years removed from that time, part of it sticks with her, she realizes with a glance down at her costume for the evening. Even now she finds herself wearing a steel-boned waist corset emblazoned with three red dragons, over her black blouse. Its flowing sleeves hang about her elbows, trimmed with red satin. Her skirt is black with red laces ending just below her backside, flowing out from there.

She might have left the era of her birth, but it has yet to leave her.

Dismissing the thought, she turns her attentions back to the chaos below, sweeping her curled, blonde hair over one shoulder. New faces enter the club, sober enough to glance upward, squinting in hopes to see her figure on the balcony. Felicity's blood red lips twist up in a dark smile. It's part of the lure to her club in the heart of the Glades: everyone wants to see the vampire empresaria who lurks in the shadows of the upper floor.

The popularity strange in some ways; once, humans wrote of her species as creatures of nightmare, but now they flock to see vampires in the cold flesh. When the media found her name on the liquor and donor licenses, it became a front page story. Despite the unwanted publicity, it has helped her business considerably. Everyone wants a look at the sole legally-recognized vampire in Starling City.

Though vampires have been declared a recognized sentient species in the world for the last four decades or so, only in the last five years have they had the right to be citizens listed as their true race. Some of her kind still hesitate to change their status for fear of retaliation by radical human groups. Felicity figured she had little to lose. Absently, her fingers run across the side of her left thigh, flattening atop the marred mess of flesh beneath her skirt. It isn't as if they hadn't tried to burn her at the stake before.

But Felicity is a survivor.

She smells the new presence a moment before she hears the soft shuffle of footsteps. Their relative silence to her heightened senses mean it could only be one person. He speaks just after his heartbeat comes into her hearing range. "Looks like a good turnout tonight, Felicity."

She turns to face him, the smile on her face genuine for a change. "We always have a good turnout, Mr. Diggle," she corrects while adjusting her red, cameo pendant with a raven's skull over the top. "It seems everyone wants to mingle with vampires." She frowns down at the party raging below. "Or get a Kiss."

One of the most fascinating things about humanity is their desire to lose their senses for a while. Once vampires became common knowledge, humans discovered that, when bitten by a vampire, they're left with a sense of blissful euphoria, not dissimilar from a drug-induced high. Effects last longer when feeding durations increase, and it quickly became known as the Vampire's Kiss. Due to the lack of complications—no overdoses, no unwanted side-effects, and vampires remain in control during feeding—it also became a legal drug, provided businesses have a donor license.