Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Eventide
Herald Thomas got up from the table and walked through a door down the short hallway without another word, and Luke took that as his permission to leave.
Luke picked up the photo and stopped himself from haphazardly stuffing it into his pocket. He shut the cottage's door behind him and walked out into the dusky courtyard to his apartment building. He checked his watch; it was already six o'clock, so he didn't know what sort of rest the Herald imagined he could get before he had to report to the seedy bar.
Luke wiped over his face with his hands, insides tight with stress. He didn't want an assignment with the Herald's unreasonable expectations and he didn't want to hunt a half-vampire alone, certain that he would fail. He would have been much happier getting chided by Herald Thomas for missing almost every service that month and screwing up on his vampire hunts.
Instead, the shadow of his father's prolific hunting legacy swallowed him again.
It felt like a slow poison through his system every time he was forced to remember his father: the man who hunted and killed more vampires than anyone else in The Faith and who tragically lost his life during a vampire hunt. He'd died when Luke, his only son, was four years old, and his legacy had plagued Luke ever since.
He'd lost his mother to an illness the Doyens refused to speak of when he was only a baby, so the loss of his father left him as an orphan. He'd been raised in a group home with the wives of the Doyens and given favorable treatment at every turn by them. It was suffocating, having the elders single him out and dote on him his whole life in hopes that one day he would grow up to be a carbon-copy of a man who he barely even remembered.
Fate rebelled against his father by making Luke struggle to hunt vampires. Growing up, he'd earnestly toiled during hunts; he spent night after night disparaging himself, wondering why he couldn't be a legendary hunter like his father, and why he had to endure the increasingly-disappointed looks from his elders as the years passed.
Luke's only option after failing for so many years was to give up. Whatever vampire-hunting-genetics his father had died along with him. So, Luke faded into the background at hunts and stopped going to the services where the Herald and the Doyens condemned all vampires and anything else "impure": homosexuality, gambling, sex before marriage, wearing immodest clothing, consuming drugs and alcohol, using contraceptives, listening to vulgar music, watching R-rated movies—a list that seemed to grow longer and pettier every time Luke heard it.
Now, he had to work an assignment from the Herald himself. He couldn't imagine a worse punishment for missing services.
Luke spent an hour at his lifeless apartment—beige walls with beige countertops and beige carpets that'd aged as poorly as the saggy building itself, no hint of the personalities of the two young men living between its walls, just the standard lily of the valley canvas hung up in every apartment near the church—where thankfully his roommate, Rob, hadn't returned for the day. He grew frustrated with every passing minute; he didn't know what he was supposed to wear to the new "job", what he was going to do there, and how much of his life had to be wasted on a task he didn't want to do.
Still, at the right time, he set off towards the busy downtown New Orleans strip, his plain gray sweater and jeans not suited to the neon signs down the mismatched buildings of the French Quarter: modern, industrial cinderblock storefronts across from graceful arched doors and ornate balustrades. The several-story buildings had string lights twined around the balconies that flickered around the movement of the people on them, and the live buskers competed with the music from the bars' speakers to create a cacophony that rattled around Luke's head.
He grumbled to himself the entire way to Eventide.
Eventide was a rundown little bar adjacent to two more rundown little bars on the downtown strip. It was the worst-off of the three in the row; its neon sign always had letters burnt out, its windows were cloudy with dust, and the drapes inside yellowed from cigarette smoke. It was a place that Luke had never been interested in entering, even less so at the request of the Herald.
"Are you Luke?" came a voice as soon as Luke walked into the front door.
Luke's head whipped around to see a middle-aged woman with a high ponytail, a tight black shirt and jeans, and sharply drawn black eyebrows. "Yeah," he said, nervous under her appraising expression.
"Come with me. I'll get you started behind the bar," she said, waving him to the crowded bar.
"Wait, I don't have a bartending license or anything," he protested.
"And?"
He didn't know why he thought it would deter her. Deflating, he followed her.
She gave him a quick, condensed lesson on pouring beer from a tap and mixing simple drinks. She told him what shape glass went to which drink—Luke didn't even know that such a thing mattered—, how to dispose of dirty glasses, and finished her spiel with, "Actually, just tell me if you need a drink made and I'll show you what to do."
Luke nodded, the overhaul of information making his head throb. "Uh—what is your name?" he asked.
She looked at him like she was considering what answer to give. "Call me Miss R."
Luke was already exhausted. "Okay," he said, and wished there was a way to surreptitiously rub his temples.
Luke stood at the bar and took in everything with more attention; the quicker he found the half-vampire from that unfocused photo of a child, the quicker he could move on with his life.
Luke hid a laugh behind his hand, imagining the luck he'd have to have to spot the half-vampire his first night at the crowded bar.
For a place that smelled like stale cigarettes and spilled alcohol, with crimson damask wallpaper that was peeling at the edges and a ceiling marked with water stains, everyone inside of Eventide seemed pretty normal. Most of the tables were small, with a couple of people across from each other with beers or cocktails and plates of greasy fries, burgers, or mozzarella sticks. There was a bigger table of guys around Luke's age in the loudest corner of the room, and at the bar sat some middle-aged men with beers in front of them cracking open peanuts.
No one bothered Luke. No one seemed to even notice him with the charismatic Miss R next to him. She whizzed around the bar making drinks with incredible speed, her thick Louisiana accent carrying across the room as she pleasantly called, "Sweetie, your drink's done," or "Want to close out your tab, hun?" to customers. She held jaunty conversations with the besotted men at the bar without pause, laughing at their jokes while mixing cocktails and pouring beers from the tap like she didn't even have to think while doing so.
Luke observed the patrons undeterred, in the back of his head wondering when he'd get to go home.
"Excuse me, can I order something?"
Luke turned to a customer he hadn't yet noticed, and his stomach filled with cold nerves.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone