Free The Violet Hour by C.K. Farrell

 
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    Nathaniel Valour let out an elongated sigh as he sank his athletic, yet languorous looking body into a kidney shaped dining booth made from solid birch veneers. A somnolent expression adorned his youthful and classically handsome visage. He was the perfect epitome of a vampyre lost in the ennui of eternal life.
    With his grey eyes encircled by a faint rim of emerald green, Nathaniel scanned the usual assorted patronage of The Dungeon; a dank, low-ceilinged tavern where vampyres, shape-shifters, werwülfs, and bipedal dæmons of all walks of life dined and drank their fill in the company of likeminded and soulless others. It certainly was a menagerie of the damned, but recently, The Dungeon had become the favourite hangout spot for disporting vampyres more than any other kind.
    Nathaniel shook his head in disgust and then brushed an errant strand of raven black hair off his ashen, unwrinkled face. His hair was cut, but it was kept a little long—long enough to be swept behind his ears. A dark shirt under an even darker three-quarter length wool coat, accompanied by a pair of brown corduroy trousers, imparted an aura of casualness about him, but that was far from the case. The sombre colours lacking vibrant tones found in Nathaniel’s wardrobe were a direct representation of his saturnine temperament and the charred landscape within. A miasma of angst hung in the air around him at all times like a thick cloud of dust.
    It truly sickened Nathaniel to his stomach to sit amongst them, but sadly he had more in common with the degenerate beasts and creatures of the night, or more appropriately, the nasty contingent that warmed the seats within the netherworld establishment, than he did with the teeming human populace above ground. With haunts like this far and few across the city of Boston, Nathaniel Valour had grudgingly become a regular habitué at the nefarious dive appropriately called “The Dungeon”. It was unquestionably a mystical and pandimensional watering hole built on unhallowed ground that professed a monster for every season, and a fresh virgin always in stock to use for every kind of ritualistic sacrifice, or simply for a good ol’ fashioned unholy libation.
    Nathaniel was familiar with many of the vampyre clientele who stirred in the shadowed corners of the tavern—usually a lot of your run-of-the-mill, low-level nasties who had an unmitigated longing for wanton malevolence. But on that particular December night, the sawdust-covered floors were filled with a much rowdier and even more eclectic bunch of brutes and savage fiends than usual, who were there to kill the dark hours with their foul desires. There especially were too many wet-behind-the-ears vampyres with bloated egos on the prowl looking for a notch on their juvenile fangs. Being a vampyre of many vintages, Nathaniel had very little patience for uncouth younglings and their tiresome antics, which often and easily drew his ire.
    Closely he watched the tenderfoot outfit and noticed that some of the males in particular within the group appeared to have their dead eyes fixed on a pack of slovenly werwülfs who were clearly from out of town. From their hairstyles, their garish clothing, and their sheer volume, Nathaniel assumed they hailed from the not-so-distant shores of New Jersey. The werwülfs were disturbing other paying customers around them with their roughhousing and wild carousing. This was not going unnoticed by staff, or more significantly, by Nathaniel.
    Amoral werwülf scum , he labelled, not needing a single shred of definitive proof.
    Even though he had a passionate abhorrence for young vampyres and their arrogance in general, Nathaniel hated werwülfs and their rumpus antics even more so. He had a general scorn for all their canine septs. Nonetheless, he had to show decorum. He was an elder, a leader—somewhat of a statesman within the social order, who possessed a stalwart regard for the stringent rules that had been set in place