(and just a bit more)
"I'm sitting, thank you." Am-Chau was watching Darla. There were things going on between them, a war of eyes. It helped that Am's eyes are so dark; the impenetrability of her gaze seemed to frustrate the blonde woman, who let her own eyes fall.
Dru, smiling at something I suspected no one would enjoy but her, dropped into a chair between Am and myself. She draped one arm around each of our waists.
"Well, then." Angelus' voice was a diluted echo of Mr. Stoker's Irish lilt. "Let's play this game of yours. You begin. What's the help?"
Am-Chau explained. Had I been less agitated by the arm about my waist, by the soft, absent-minded stroking of those long cool fingers against my ribs, I might have spent more admiration on how concise her explanation was. She faltered only once, when Dru leaned suddenly sideways and gently bit her earlobe. Since Am has pierced ears, Dru's teeth - I had not noticed, until this moment, how sharp and perfect they seemed - found the small gold ball of Am's earring, and tugged it. Am's narrative slid into a tiny sigh, and then regained its momentum. When she was done, we sat in silence.
"All right." Angelus picked up his glass. Suddenly, as if my senses had sharpened since walking through the nondescript doors of The Sins, I caught the smell of it, and understood why all the glasses held the same red wine, that wasn't wine at all. As if she had caught at my understanding, Dru tightened her hold on my waist, and nuzzled my cheek.
"Only the best blood," she sang against my hair. "Unlike Jack, who only thinks he knows good blood."
"You and your friend here - Rebecca, is it - want to be journalists. Problem is, you're girls, and the men won't let you play. Only way in through those doors is to get and prove the story none of the men can get. And Brammie-boy, who must be wanting to lift those skirts of yours, to have done this for you - sent you to me, because the best story in all the world right now is the true name of the Ripper. Have I got it right, then?"
"Yes." Dru had turned her attention to Am, and Darla, having emptied her glass, was leaning across the table and playing with the fingers of Am's right hand. Am's voice fluttered a bit. "Can you help?"
"That's the wrong question." He shook his head at Am. "Bad technique for a journalist. Try again."
"Will you help us?" I heard my own voice with surprise. "And what's the price?"
"Very good, Rebecca." Angelus mocked me, a parody of a stern schoolmaster. "You knew the correct question. Looks as though I won't have to discipline the pair of you, after all, at least not now. And here's your answers. Yes, I know quite well who your killer is. And the price?"
Something was wrong. There was something happening to their faces, to all the faces at all the tables in the Seven Sins. Smooth brows were suddenly older, then furrowed, then deeply ridged. Lips lifted, showing small teeth framed by long canine incisors. Teeth, meant not for the chewing of meat, but for the penetration of veins and....
"Vampires," I whispered, and felt the sharpness of a tooth, the coolness of something not quite a breath, as Dru scented my neck.
"The price?" Angelus, his face altered, was terrifying, a sexual engine whose only sure destination was death. "Why, blood, ladies, of course."