The Vampire's Apprentice

Kitty couldn't help but to laugh. "Maybe sonething a tad more sensible, but I could ask something strange if you would like."
 
"Hmm." Clancy sat back. "I suppose that is highly dependant upon your definition of 'interesting,' but perhaps... no, that tale is far to long. Maybe... no, that is only 'vampire interesting.' It could be..." He hesitated. "I will have to consider this question further before I can accurately answer it."
 
Clancy shrugged. "Very well, then... This was before I was turned by a couple of years. Ireland was still staggering along from the potato famine, though they were slowly recovering. My family immigrated from Ireland to America, and all immigrants went through New York at the time." He paused, his eyes growing dark as he looked back over two centuries. "Times were hard. There were many, many immigrants of many different nationalities, and they all tended to band together against the Americans, who were still highly English despite their attempts to distance themselves from their parent country. Both were even more racist than they are now. For the English, it is simply a way of life. If you were white and could lose your accent, you had a decent chance of disappearing into the crowd, but even the Irish were persecuted. The difference was while other races like the Chinese and the Africans tried to keep their heads down, the Irish had been raised in the harsh stones of Ireland when food was scant and fighting was life. So we fought back. Some tried to stay out of it, but a movement began underground of those disgusted with the way of things. Thus began the Irish Mafia in Hell's Kitchen New York."

As he spoke, his Irish accent crept back stronger, tinging his natural tone with the lilt of his mother country. He had not been back to Ireland in over a century, but blood was not so easily thinned.
 
It sounded like a history lesson; something to be listened to and not experienced. Something to note and not repeat; not a harsh fact of life. But she understood. A little.

"And this was the most interesting thing to ever happen to you? Or is it more specific than that?" All the details were to be hers, somehow.
 
Clancy glanced at her and tapped his finger on the table as he organized his thoughts. "You need to know the setting and how things began if are going to understand the rest. You are fortunate enough that everything is done and you can look back. Living through the beginning was... unsettling.

"My family consisted of my parents, myself, and my five siblings of which I was more or less in the middle. The eldest was my brother, the rest girls. We lived just outside of Hells Kitchen in a little third floor, two-room apartment. By two rooms, I do not mean two bedrooms. It was two rooms. The bedroom was for the girls, and the boys slept out in what consisted of a kitchen and a living room area heated by a tiny wood stove. At night, my father slept on the kitchen floor on a thin mattress that we rolled up during the day, and we boys slept on the couch. We kept each other warm, even if it was crowded.

"We were desperate to get out. So desperate! But my father was a staunch Catholic even though I don't think I ever once saw him set foot in a church of any denomination. He refused to do anything that could even be considered slightly immoral, and many people took advantage of that. He was a big man, a strong man, and my brother took after him while I was the runt of the litter and took after my mother. My brother did not hold to the same morals as our father, and when he saw how the stevedores mistreated him and all but stole his wages by lying and manipulating him, my brother branched off on a different route and got involved with the Gophers. Well, it wasn't called the Gophers as of yet, but later that is the name the history books knew them by. He told my parents he got work as a driver. My father accepted him at his word. My mother knew he was not telling the truth, but she said nothing. I was five years younger, and all I knew was my paper route in the morning, school until the afternoon, and then I worked in a factory until late. Sundays I had off, but the rest of the time, I was far too busy to pay attention to what my siblings were doing, only that my brother sometimes did not come home at night, and neither did my oldest sister. My younger sisters were employed in the same factory I worked in as schooling was not considered important for them. We'd walk home together sharing whatever small treat we had to eat that day."
 
Kitty was quiet, now, listening with rapt attention. She gnawed thoughtfully on her thumb, elbows resting atop the table; her expression, placid. There was a certain spark within the dark brown color of her eyes while he mind slowly began to picture what it must have been like back then. She could hardly fathom it, but tried fervently anyways.
 
"It was a difficult life, but we managed," Clancy said, his voice growing softer. Then he stopped, his brow creasing. "Then one day... I walked home with one less sister."
 
One less? "Why?"
Maybe she shouldn't have asked, but the word was out of her mouth before she had a chance to think. Kitty bit at the inside of her cheek.
 
"Because the factory killed her," Clancy said softly. "She was the littlest of us, perhaps seven at the most, and she put her arm where she shouldn't have. The machine took it, and she bled to death before anyone could help."
 
Kitty had heard of this happening, though she tended to spare herself from history books. The details were often muddled in the text, and hearing them vividly from Clancy gave the want to discontinue the conversation entirely. She groped for another question to ask—anything to change the subject—but found nothing. So there was silence.
 
Clancy tapped his finger again as if to bring himself out of his reverie. "And that, you might say, was the most interesting thing to ever happen to me, for it was that event that changed the course of my life. I was going to be a doctor, or at least, that was my plan, and even if I never achieved that, I was going to do something great and scholarly. Instead, I dropped out of school and joined my brother in the Irish Mob and the ripe age of thirteen. My eldest sister also joined - I am sure you did not realize women were in the mob, did you? In an active, gunslinging way! I do believe the other mobs were more terrified of Annie Walsh and her Lady Gophers than they ever were of the rest of us!" He smiled fondly at the memory. "We stood for the downtrodden. Oh, we were by no means the romanticized Robin Hoods some would have you believe, but in a tarnished world, we at least had a bit of shine showing through. Unions tended to hire us a lot for help, and we took on more than a few charity cases that never made it into the annals of history. And I was a part of it." He cleared his throat. "For a time."
 
There was still silence, as she wasn't quite sure what to reply with. It was so... interesting, yet somehow it hardly seemed real. Having such a short lifespan in comparison, Kitty could hardly fathom these described events happening that far back.
Oh, wait, where had her thoughts gone? She was staring blankly at something across the room while she considered things; hardly something polite to be doing. She came back to the moment and looked at Clancy, having heard what he'd been saying.
"You've been around for a dreadfully long time, haven't you?" She spoke finally.
 
Well that put things into stark perspective. Kitty contemplated this for a second. "Who's the oldest vampire you've ever met?"
 
"Well, it is not something we exactly wander around comparing at social events," Clancy pointed out dryly, "but the older the vampire, the more powerful they are. The most powerful vampire I ever met I would have guessed to be close to a thousand years old."
 
"Scary...." She mumbled, her stare beginning to drift across the room again. Kitty caught herself, and her gaze returned to him. She needed sleep, and her intent was to find some afterwards; this was her last question. "Vampiric abilities alone, what sorts of things can you do?"
 
"The usual heightened senses, claws, night vision, heightened pain tolerance, hypnosis, climbing, and levetation," Clancy said casually.
 
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