Page 2 of Immortal Bastard (The Order of Vampires)

It had been a slow day, one where she upcharged every service not spelled out on their menu, and she’d barely made any progress. The few random customers helped but weren’t enough to keep Delilah’s greasy landlord off her ass.

Desperation and panic truly set in as the streets grew quiet and the shop shut down for the night. Until, lo and behold, in walked a man asking for not only an enormous piece of Christ on the cross going up his spine but an entire sleeve as well.

Can you say down payment?

The man, a beautiful, chiseled work of art, left two grand in cash as a deposit, saving her ass and making it possible for Delilah to breathe without pinching anxiety for the first time in weeks. She’d been so convinced her shop was dead, her change in fortune still hadn’t fully sunk in.

Things had gotten so bad, she’d hardly slept from the stress of it all. Her worry about her mounting debt and the cost of operating Skin Deep left her constantly tense and unsure of what to do. But now, she had work. The kind of work that would take weeks to finish and cover at least a few months of rent.

She’d had to temporarily lay off her staff in hopes of salvaging some much-needed money for the bills, but even that seemed too little too late. At least now, she had a client to hold her over for a while.

As soon as she got the cash down payment tonight, she wrote a check to her douchebag landlord and caught up with the utility companies. A stack of sealed envelopes waited on her counter for the postman as sweet relief slowly settled in.

Post-stress-euphoria pushed her to the bar directly after closing. She needed to celebrate—or intoxicate. Adrenaline had driven her past burnout and rubbed the last of her nerves raw. She might have the rent handled, but her anxiety was still jacked up from the panic. She needed to blow off steam.

Pushing through the remaining throng blocking the bar, Delilah growled as an over-bearded hipster made eyes at her and lifted his IPA. Not now, puppy. She wanted nothing to do with the juvenile college crowd that dominated their town.

Frowning, as some tit cut in front of her, Delilah elbowed her way up to the bar. Tribeca needed more servers. The wench working the tap played favorites and struggled to keep up with orders. Waving a twenty did nothing to flag down a drink.

One quick skim of the packed club, and Delilah assumed her friends weren’t coming. No shock there. But she still suffered a pinch of disappointment all the same. Of course, her friends were mostly her employees. It made sense that they might be a little bent over the recent downsizing, but Delilah hoped they could still keep things cool.

After letting her staff go—a call she’d been forced to make due to economic hardship—her social life grew more and more isolated. She didn’t want to examine the loneliness creeping over her too closely. Her life was not a fucking Instagram reel of inspiring boss lady posts. Hashtag goal-getter! Hashtag boss babe! Hashtag fuck off.

Owning a business was hard, lonely work and when the chips were down, people bailed to worry about themselves, even though she’d constantly worried about taking care of everyone else. Fuck Lance and McGuire if they couldn’t come out and celebrate with her. She didn’t need their commentary anyway. It wasn’t hard to find someone else to keep her entertained—someone better than those two Lurch-looking motherfuckers.

Waiting for the bartender to get to her, Delilah glanced at her newest piece popping against the inside of her wrist, reminding her of… nothing. She really thought the memory would have come to her by now.

She loved being a tattoo artist, loved the adrenaline rush of marking herself with something new, loved the bite of pain that slowly numbed out as the needle pegged over her skin. She also loved inflicting a little of that pain. It helped release some of the inner bitch that built up over her early adult years.

She based her life on a simple philosophy of you get what you get. People waste too many years trying to fit some shitty mold proper society valued when the majority of the world was broken and struggling just like her. Fuck society. Fuck the rules. And fuck anyone who tried to lump her into a group. She valued individuality above all else.

She would never survive working some crappy nine-to-five job, knee-deep in paperwork, scrimping by making small talk with co-workers she hated just to appear pleasant. Nope. Put her in that fishbowl and it would only be a matter of time before she snapped.

When clients were on her table, she was in charge, just as she liked it. With minimal tolerance for stupid people and no patience for entitlement, she called the shots and worked for herself. Yeah, it was hard and there wasn’t always money when she needed it, but she managed to make ends meet each month. So far, so good, as long as she didn’t let the stress get to her.