Willow Rose Hardcore

MAJOR WARNING for a distinct lack of sex, violence, and harsh language! I mean really, what the Hell was I thinking?


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"Bonsoir, ma Beauté Rouge," Jean-Claude said as London showed the visitor into his office.

"Bonsoir à vous aussi," Willow replied. She was wearing a shiny black vinyl long-sleeved body suit, unzipped down below her belly button and thigh high black leather stiletto heeled boots. She looked great and was a little miffed that the Master of the City didn't react more to the outfit.

"I trust my request for a meeting did not inconvenience you?" he said, noticing how the outfit gaped as she sat down.

"Nope, Is there something you needed?" Out of all the cool new things in this world, these Kiss the Ring moments sucked the most.

"I have given le Roi de Rats my permission to make any alliance with you that he desires, should he wish to do so."

She waited for him to continue but he just sat there and it became clear that he expected her to say something. Damn politics, she groused. "Umm, thanks? Let me guess, I owe you now right?" She stood up and pulled the suit off of her shoulders so that it exposed her chest. "How ever will I pay you back?" She swayed her shoulders softly back and forth and held her hands behind her back while giving him the 'Innocent' look.

"Yes, well as intriguing as that may be, it is not what I wish from you," he answered as he directed her to sit back down and cover herself. "I received a dispatch from the Council, Belle Morte in particular. She requests more information about you. You are très powerful for no one having heard of you before, and with Rafael's report that your call of rats has a sexual flavor to it, she feels that it might be in your best interest to earn her sponsorship."

"Why would I want her sponsorship?" Yup, I hate all of the intrigue and politics, she thought as she resigned herself to the situation.

Jean-Claude just looked at her for a moment before saying, "Protection, influence, power, do you never wish to become a Master of the City someday?"

"Not really, what does she want to know?"

"Who is your sire?" He took out his quill and dipped it in the inkwell and then held it ready, waiting for her.

"The Master." She knew this was going to go over well.

Jean-Claude took a moment to decide if she was playing with him before continuing on, "And does the Master have a name?"

"Like Helmut or something like that, if it was real. I don't think it was though, really. Look I'll tell you my story but you wont believe me, so what can we put down that she will believe?"

He watched her for a moment again and still could not detect any dishonesty from her, in fact everything about her made it plain that she was uncomfortable about something that she was about to say. "Tell me your story."

"Okay, here goes. I'm from a different world. The Master had unleashed a Hellmouth and captured an entire city in California. I was a school geek until his troops caught me and some of my friends. I guess he liked my taste because after a week of living in a cage as he fed on me, he turned me into a vampire." She waited, looking at him.

His only reaction was to blink a few times before he put the quill to parchment and wrote as he spoke, "You are quite old, your entire family was slaughtered, and because of horrible trauma in your early vampire life, you do not remember clearly most of your past."

She smiled. "Thanks, I really do owe you one for this."

"Possibly even more than one, continue."

"Alright, we made a factory for the human cattle to be drained of their blood, when the resistance, led by a slayer, attacked us. The slayer is a girl given a load of power to hunt and kill vampires. There was a big fight, and one of the slayer's army managed to get a lucky shot on me and I fell into a piece of wood which pierced my heart and ya know, killed me, killed me for the first time anyway."

He just stared at her for awhile before writing again. "Helmut, your master, clashed with a local vampire hunter and you were separated from him in the chaos."

"HEINRICH! Sorry, it was Heinrich Ness, I remember it now. Well after that, I just popped back into life in the same city again, but the Master hadn't opened the Hellmouth and the town was ruled by that same slayer. I also learned that who I was before I became a vampire was still living in that town and working for the slayer. After a huge battle that I ended up losing, but also where I proved to the slayer that I was a worthy opponent, she ordered her magic-users to send me back to my home instead of executing me."

"You were captured and endured horrible tortures by the hunter but managed to free yourself and escape," he answered without missing a beat.

"Okay? Ah, when they sent me back, the fools did it to the moment of my death and I got staked all over again. After that I just showed up in the back kitchen of a cool-ass house over by Florrisant. Vampires aren't demons, and have way more power in this world. I already had a job, a hot young thing to feed on and the urge to roll around in a bunch of rat fur. Oh and some magical English dude appeared in my house but I killed him before he told me what the deal was. I think he wanted me to hunt down the killer of that missing cop in the newspapers."

"How do you know she is dead?" he asked immediately, his ma petite was even now with the search teams looking for the officer.

"I watched it in a dream," she answered. "Forest scene, blacktop road used by semi's, real horror movie stuff, like a tall scary looking bald guy."

He set the quill down and took a deep breath.

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"So then it went all over the place, I mean who would of thought that it could make that big of a mess," she said to the two rats sitting in the front seats of the spotless silver Hummer she was riding in the back of. "Man I was pissed too. All I did was cork the bastard with a water bottle and Narcissus was all threatening to fire me and stuff. I might just quit."

"Sugar, that is one disgusting story," the driver said. "Please don't tell it again, the images in my mind now are likely to be burned there."

She laughed at his response. When Bobby Lee had knocked on her door and blushed when she answered in the nude with Angelica's blood dripping down her chin, she was almost in love. Then when he came in and she felt the strength of his rat when he relaxed a little, she crossed over that last barrier and had started wondering if they somehow managed to have children, if they'd have his cute accent.

"You listenin', Girl?"

His words broke her daydream and she leaned back into the zebra print upholstery. "Nope, sorry about that. By the way, did you buy this truck from a rapper or something?"

"I'll have you know, this is stylish," he said in mock annoyance as Jaunito broke out laughing at her comment.

"Whatever, are we there yet Daddy?" she said, putting an extra lilt in her voice at the end.

Bobby Lee looked at her in the rearview mirror. The girl felt like a powerhouse vampire and he was still waiting for her to act like one, but so far she hadn't gotten the vamp manual on how to be an arrogant bastard. She caught him appreciating how the white and silver silk button-up shirt she was wearing looked against her skin and when their eyes met, he felt the feather-lite touch of her mind calling to his beast and he watched as she stuffed that eager energy back down inside her. "Columbia's halfway to Kansas City, it'll be another hour before we get there Dumplin'."

"Ya know, we could have all fit in my Porsche and probably been there already," she whined. It seemed like they were walking and the rumbling sound the tires on this tank made on the road, was driving her batty.

"Your little car wouldn'ta' fit all the guns." He put a Toby Keith cd into the stereo.

At the start of 'Beer for My Horses' she announced, "Oh God, stake me now!"

"Aint nuthin wrong with Toby, Girl," he said as he turned the volume down a little.

She leaned up between the front seats and ignored Jaunito pulling away from her. Vamps aren't the most loved of creatures in this world, she thought. "Hey. other than Rafael wants me to do this as a test run, can you tell me what this is about?"

"Sure, Columbia has a weak Master and none of the other vamps there call any animals so it's a free-for-all kinda deal. Reylando is a friend of our King and runs a small group of rats out of his BBQ joint and some werewolf bikers are leaning on him, so he asked Rafael for some help. That'd be us, Sugarplum." He glanced at her and flicked the tip of her nose like she was the impatient child she was acting like.

"So we go there and kiss the ring and you losers get to eat a bunch of smoked pork and then we go to the big bad biker hangout and whip the crap out of them, got it," Willow surmised as she sat back in her seat.

"No ring kissin', Rey Rey calls his group 'el clan de Corona Rojo', the Red Crown clan as a nod to Rafael but it's not a real Rodere clan, not enough personnel. But the rest of what you said sure works for me."

"What happens if this takes too long and we can't get me home before sunrise?" she asked as she leaned forward again, putting her elbows on the center console and looking up at him.

"Well, I guess you just have to trust us to keep you outa' the sunlight. But who knows what kinda perverted things might happen to your body while you sleepin'," he told her as a joke.

"Knock yourself out, I wont feel a thing."

Jaunito turned towards her as Bobby Lee laughed, "Are you even a vampire? I mean is this all an act, are you really this...normal?"

She looked at him for a moment to clear her mind, because it was obvious that this was bothering him and she wanted to be friends with the rats, all of the rats. "A long time ago, I was a crazy murdering psychopathic whore but I got a second and a third chance and I changed. At least three of those four things anyway."

He laughed and studied her as she stayed laying on the console, her big green eyes looking up at him. "I never even heard of a vampire that worked for a shifter group before."

Bobby Lee cut in, "Don't kid yourself, Jaunito, there are some badass lycan families out there that employ all manner of people, vampires included. I like her, unless she proves different, I'd say take her at face value." She turned her head at his compliment and smiled warmly up at him and he returned her smile as he meant to just pat her on the head but ended up running his fingers through her red silken hair. Her eyes got a lot more serious and he felt his body respond to it before he pulled his hand away and clenched the steering wheel as he focused his attention on the highway ahead.

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Chamosh Drokk stood at the kitchen table and looked at a newspaper with the headline, Monster Marshal Finds Missing Cop's Body. She knew that it was connected to the reason she was here on a special mission for her boss.

She looked around the room and was underwhelmed, for all her father had warned her about the evils of the upper world, it didn't look that different from her own kitchen. Accept for being about ten times larger, she thought as she opened the refrigerator and marveled at the technology of it. This appliance alone would cost her three years pay down there, and in all of her Da's eleven homes, he only had four of them. She shut the door and continued her tour of the appliances that she was sure that only an angel rock star would be able to afford where she came from. She became enthralled with the...microwave. She mouthed the word as she read it on the outer glass.

The basket-hilt rapier that her father demanded she wear, kept causing her mini-Scottish kilt to pull down so she unhooked the scabbard and laid it on the table. Apparently the upper world was rife with religious fanatic cults and slavers that wanted to kidnap young women so she was stuck with the sword. She had to beg him not to embarrass her by sending one of her 125 brothers as a bodyguard on her first ever mission outside of the Tower. She pulled the blade from it's scabbard and held it loose in her hand as she left the kitchen to explore the rest of the house. She collided with a young blond human female and they both gave startled little girl shrieks. Looking down, she realized that she had stabbed the girl in the stomach.
"Sorry!" she said as the girl finally felt it and started screaming. "Oh Hells, do you have a Medical demon?" she asked in earnest, but the girl just kept screaming.