Bonus Material - A Tour of Vampirerotique Theatre - Episode 1
The sun has dipped below the horizon and the sky is darkening, and the busy London street I’m standing on has become unnervingly quiet. The beautiful sandstone building before me is drenched in warm light that chases up the columned facade, making it appear like many other theatres in the city.
Only this one is very different.
I venture up the broad steps and past the columns to the glass doors of Vampirerotique, London’s premier vampire erotic theatre. My pulse quickens even though I’ve been here many times over the past two years, visiting with the vampires who live a shadowy life behind its walls. The world behind me doesn’t know of their existence, or what happens in this place, and it’s probably best left that way.
The doors open before I can reach them and a sharply dressed handsome man with tousled black hair and emerald green eyes greets me with a smile that thankfully reveals blunt regular canines.
“Callum,” I say in greeting and try to get my racing heart under control when the elite vampire’s gaze drops to my chest and his eyes narrow, the edges of his irises beginning to turn crimson.
“You’re jittery again,” he says, his accent as British as my own, and steps aside to let me into the theatre’s beautiful foyer. “You’re always jittery when you’re here. Drives the big man crazy.”
The big man in question is Snow, the oldest resident vampire and a pureblood with a temper born of his terrible affliction. Bloodlust.
“How is he?” Making conversation while trying to suppress the jitters Callum is always quick to point out is difficult. “Is Antoine still going to be available for our meeting?”
Antoine is Snow’s younger brother by a thousand years, and he is fiercely protective of Snow and liable to refuse to see me if he feels his older brother needs his company to help him through an attack of bloodlust.
“Ah, Snow’s not so bad right now... Aurora has him under control. Antoine suggested I take you to his office.” Callum leads the way across the pale marble of the foyer, to a door built into the wall. He pushes it open and steps into the black corridor that runs down the length of the theatre to the backstage area.
Aurora is Snow’s woman, and I’m going to meet them both in Snow’s room later to talk about their book, which is the reason I’m here at the theatre.
There isn’t much to see in this side of Vampirerotique, but I’ve arranged to have a tour of the theatre with another elite vampire, Javier, and his mate, Lilah, after my meeting with Antoine. My schedule during this trip to Vampirerotique is hectic to say the least, but Antoine was kind enough to pull some strings and make sure everyone was available when I needed them.
We reach the double-height room where staircases lead upwards to other offices and quarters, and corridors lead behind the main stage. Callum pats me on the shoulder in a way that feels too much like ‘it’s been nice knowing you’ and smiles at me.
“Have fun,” he says and then he’s walking away, leaving me alone in a place filled with vampires who don’t really know who I am.
The moment he’s out of sight, I make a quick dash for the open door of one of the offices on this floor. The darkly decorated room is different from how I remembered it, with splashes of colour now in the form of beautiful paintings on the walls. Some of them I even recognise from art books. Antoine has always enjoyed the arts, and has quite the collection of famous paintings.
My gaze scans the room and I find the dark-haired aristocrat male reclining in his black executive leather chair with his feet up on his huge solid oak desk. His ice-blue eyes narrow on the sheets of paper he’s holding.
“I do not have all night. Enter.” He idly waves me in and I frown at him, tempted to remind him that he had promised to clear his busy schedule so we could talk about the theatre.
I hold my tongue and do as I’m bid instead. Antoine doesn’t seem to be in the mood for indulging mortals tonight. Something is bothering him and I know him well enough to know that if I push him, I’m liable to end up with his fangs in my throat. He heaves a sigh that causes the material of his fine tailored silver-grey shirt to stretch across a well-toned chest and dumps the papers on his desk.
His pale gaze slides to me. “I apologise for my greeting. It was rude of me.”
“No problem.” I ease down into a black leather chair opposite him. “I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about the world of Vampirerotique. I thought you could tell me about how it all started.”
Antoine tips his head back and looks at the ceiling, and I note a new set of puncture marks on his throat. His mate, Sera, has evidently been busy in the bedroom with him. He drops his chin and steeples his fingers in front of him, his handsome face turning deadly serious. When he looks at me like that, it’s easy to see that he and Snow are brothers.
“Vampirerotique opened in nineteen-hundred-and-three and quickly established itself as the top vampire theatre in London. Of course, to the outside world, we are not a building open to the public, or a theatre of any sort. That would arouse too much interest.”
I smile. “Not clandestine enough for vampires.”
He doesn’t look amused. “We merely prefer humans don’t end up poking their noses in where they are liable to get their heads bitten off.”
“Makes sense.” I lean back in my chair and glance at the landscape that hangs on the wall behind Antoine. It’s a beautiful piece, and reminds me that this place is all about sophistication and blending two societies together. “Your theatre is the only one that caters to the two different castes of vampire, isn’t it?”
Antoine nods. “Javier and Callum, both elite vampires, came to me with the idea for the theatre. It is their baby rather than mine, although I act as the general manager. They needed aristocrats running the theatre in order to be able to draw that particular crowd of vampires to the shows.”
“In layman’s terms, an elite vampire has turned humans in their bloodline, but aristocrat vampires are purebloods who have only other purebloods in their family trees.” I should have known Antoine would end up talking in a way that may confuse some people who aren’t familiar with this theatre. I have another appointment with both Snow and Antoine this evening to talk more about the vampires that share our world.
“Precisely.” Antoine swings his legs down to the wooden floor and sits up in one fluid motion. He smiles and it’s devastating, wreaking havoc on my pulse. I know he’s dangerous, and powerful, but those two things don’t deter me or make him unattractive. In fact, they only make him more sexy. It’s a shame that he’s spoken for. “If mine and my brother’s names weren’t above the door, the aristocrats would stay away. Because there are, in effect, two elite vampires and two aristocrat vampires running the theatre, we can open our doors to all.”
I’m tempted again to point out something that will likely irritate Antoine, but I’ll save it for later, when Snow is around. Snow will protect me from his brother’s wrath.
“And what shows does your theatre put on?” I ask it in my best innocent voice because he knows full well that I’m aware of the debauchery and decadence of their nightly performances.
“We host erotic shows starring vampires and humans thralls,” Antoine says it with a very practiced smile and eyes that give nothing away. If I’ve embarrassed him by asking, I would never know it.
“Do you kill the humans?” I have to ask.
Antoine shakes his head. “That is not to say it was always this way, but we move with the times. It is much easier to keep ourselves hidden if we don’t leave a trail of bodies in our wake.”
Very nicely put. I can’t help smiling at him again. He always has been the diplomatic one.
“So what I should take away from this meeting is that in the early nineteen-hundreds, four vampire bachelors got together and decided to open a dirty theatre.” I wait to see what his reaction to me putting things so crassly will be. Antoine is all about the refined and the elegant, and it’s always fun, if a little dangerous, to push his buttons. I love to try to make the unflappable male blush.
He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “If you are going to degenerate into this level of conversation... really... I do have an insane schedule.”
Not quite the answer I had wanted. Antoine reaches over and presses a button on a black device on his desk, and leans over it.
“Javier, I do not suppose you can move your tour of the theatre forward?”
The cheek. Antoine is kicking me out. I glare at him and he tosses me a smile. I think I can wipe it off his face. I have to interview him and Sera about their romance at some point during the evening, and I’m not above getting him in trouble with her for being rude to me.
“Is the little female proving too much for you?” Javier’s Spanish lilt to his deep voice makes it ring with his amusement as his voice comes over the intercom. “I will be right there.”
“This isn’t over.” I warn Antoine as I stand and glare again, issuing the challenge. “I still have more appointments with you during which I will make you blush.”
Antoine smiles darkly. “I cannot wait to see you try.”
Javier sighs from behind me and I turn to see him leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded across his chest, causing the black designer suit jacket and shirt to tighten around his muscles. His deep chocolate eyes sparkle with the amusement that was in his voice.
“Ay Dios mio... do not challenge the man. We all know Sera is the only one who can make him blush.” Javier pushes his lithe frame away from the wall, scrubs a hand over his sandy hair, and gestures towards the double-height black-walled room. “Shall we?”
It seems my tour of the theatre is going to start early after all. I toss Antoine a look that warns this isn’t over, and I will shake a blush out of him even if I have to employ Snow to make it happen. Sera isn’t the only one who can make Antoine turn beet red.
“We shall start the tour in the main theatre,” Javier says, composed and calm, but retaining that musical note in this voice that always makes me feel relaxed around him.
“Sounds great.” I follow Javier to the double doors that lead into the theatre, to the place where erotic acts take centre stage to entertain an audience made up of vampires.
Related Bonus Material:
Characters:
Notes:
The Vampirerotique Tour episodes are a series of first person story-style interview pieces written about the theatre and characters featured in the Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series.
