Rules for Feeding
1723 Words
The vampire stepped into the light slowly. Young. Too young. Kael recognized the signs immediately.
Unstable posture. Dilated pupils. Blood staining the collar of his hoodie in dark uneven streaks. Fresh feeding. Fresh killing.
The younger vampire could not have looked older than twenty-five physically, though transformation made age difficult to measure accurately. Hunger distorted people. Time distorted them even more.
His eyes locked onto Kael with obvious caution. “You’re him,” the younger vampire said quietly.
Kael remained motionless beside the corpse. Rainwater dripped faintly from pipes overhead while fluorescent lights buzzed above the parking structure. The dead security guard lay between them like a warning neither acknowledged directly.
“Depends who’s asking,” Kael replied.
The younger vampire swallowed once. Fear. Good.
Fear kept inexperienced predators alive longer than confidence ever did.
“I didn’t know this building belonged to you.”
Kael’s expression hardened slightly. “It doesn’t.”
The younger vampire hesitated. “But you protect this district.”
Protect. Interesting word. Kael had spent centuries making sure his species survived quietly inside modern society, but he never considered it protection. Survival required maintenance. That was all.
“You fed carelessly,” Kael said calmly.
The younger vampire glanced briefly toward the corpse before looking away again.
“He saw me.”
“So you killed him.”
“He panicked.”
Kael stared at him for several long seconds. “No,” he said finally. “You panicked.”
Silence settled heavily between them. The younger vampire’s jaw tightened. “I was hungry.”
There it was. Always the same excuse. Kael had heard it across centuries, languages, continents. I was hungry. As though hunger erased responsibility.
“You think hunger makes you special?” Kael asked quietly.
The younger vampire frowned. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly.” And that was the problem.
Kael understood hunger better than most creatures alive. He understood what it felt like when the parasite inside the body stopped behaving like instinct and became desperation instead.
The dryness in the throat. The overheating skin. The violent sensitivity to heartbeat. The way humans slowly stopped looking human at all. Just warmth. Just blood. Just survival.
Three hundred years ago, Kael once slaughtered an entire fishing village during a starvation episode so severe he remembered almost none of it afterward. The memory returned only in fragments now. Screaming. Saltwater. Blood floating black beneath moonlight. He still carried the guilt despite forgetting most faces.
“You’re overheating,” Kael observed.
The younger vampire looked startled. Kael stepped closer slowly. Instinctively, the younger vampire retreated.
“You fed emotionally,” Kael continued. “That’s why your control collapsed.”
The younger vampire said nothing. Which confirmed it. Kael exhaled quietly. “You were angry before feeding.”
A pause. Then,
“He insulted me.”
Kael closed his eyes briefly. Pathetic. Not the insult. The familiarity of it.
Young vampires always believed emotions justified violence. They confused impulse with honesty. That illusion usually disappeared after the first century. If they survived that long.
“You need discipline,” Kael said.
The younger vampire laughed bitterly. “Easy for you to say.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
That answer silenced him immediately. Kael looked toward the corpse once more. Human blood still spread slowly across the concrete floor. A life ended over wounded pride and unmanaged hunger. Fragile creatures destroying fragile creatures. Some things never changed.
“You’ll help clean this,” Kael said finally.
The younger vampire blinked. “What?”
“You made the mess.”
The younger vampire stared at him in disbelief. “You’re serious?”
Kael looked at him coldly. “Very.”
An hour later, the body disappeared. The security footage vanished. The blood had been chemically cleaned. The victim’s digital records were already being rerouted toward a falsified missing-person case. Efficient. Clinical. Kael had perfected disappearance centuries ago.
The younger vampire stood silently near the far wall while Kael finished wiping blood from his hands beneath a maintenance sink.
“You do this often?” the younger vampire asked quietly. Kael looked at him through the mirror.
“Often enough.”
The younger vampire hesitated again before speaking. “What’s your name?”
Kael dried his hands slowly. “Why?”
“So I know who I owe.”
“You owe the dead man, not me.”
The younger vampire lowered his gaze slightly. Kael studied him for a moment. Beneath the blood and instability, he looked terrified. Not of Kael. Of himself. Interesting.
“What’s yours?” Kael asked instead.
“Adrian.”
Of course it was something painfully modern. Kael remembered when vampires still introduced themselves with names pulled from kingdoms that no longer existed. Now they sounded like university students.
“You’re recently turned,” Kael observed.
Adrian nodded once. “Three years.”
Too recent. No wonder he looked half-feral.
The first decade after transformation was usually the worst. The parasite reshaped instincts aggressively during early development. Most newborn vampires either learned restraint quickly or died horribly.
Sometimes both.
“Who turned you?” Kael asked.
Adrian’s expression shifted immediatelly. Fear gain. Interesting. Kael noticed the hesitation. “Someone you’re afraid of.”
Adrian remained silent, that answered enough. Older vampires often treated younger ones carelessly. Creating new immortals without discipline created unstable predators. Unstable predators endangered everyone.
“Listen carefully,” Kael said calmly.
Adrian looked up immediately.
“If you continue feeding emotionally, you’ll lose cognitive restraint entirely within a few years.”
Adrian frowned. "What does that mean?”
“It means eventually you’ll stop recognizing humans as people.”
Silence. Kael continued quietly. “They’ll smell like heat. Sound like heartbeat. Nothing more.”
Adrian looked disturbed. “That happens?”
“It happens to every vampire eventually.”
The younger vampire swallowed hard.
“You sound like it already happened to you.”
Kael stared at his own reflection for several long seconds. Then,
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised even him slightly. Adrian looked uncertain how to respond. Kael understood.
Humans imagined monsters enjoyed becoming monstrous. The reality was uglier. Most predators simply adapted until empathy became inefficient. Survival stripped softness away gradually. Like erosion.
“You said feeding emotionally is dangerous,” Adrian said eventually. “What does that actually mean?”
Kael leaned lightly against the sink. “When humans experience intense emotion, hormonal activity changes blood chemistry.”
Adrian blinked. “You’re serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
Fear. Adrenaline. Grief. Desire. All altered feeding response.
Most young vampires became addicted to emotionally heightened blood because the parasite reacted aggressively to hormonal spikes. The experience intensified neural stimulation. Which meant stronger pleasure. Stronger dependency. And eventually—
loss of control.
“Emotional feeding rewires impulse regulation,” Kael explained. “The parasite starts prioritizing emotional intensity over nutritional stability.”
Adrian stared. “That sounds horrifying.”
“It is.”
Kael remembered centuries of predators destroying themselves chasing stronger feeding experiences. War zones. Massacres. Public killings. Entire covens collapsing because someone confused hunger with ecstasy.
“Then how do you stop it?” Adrian asked quietly.
Kael looked toward the fading darkness outside the garage entrance. “You make rules.”
Kael learned rules the hard way. Back when cities still smelled like horses and seawater. Back when vampires behaved like gods because humans lacked weapons capable of threatening them properly.
He remembered his maker only in fragments now. Tall. Cruel. Beautiful in the terrifying way predators sometimes were. She taught him survival through punishment. Feed carefully. Hide properly. Never grow attached.
At the time, Kael believed immortality meant freedom. Instead, it became maintenance. Control. Restraint. Distance.
By the eighteenth century, Kael developed personal rules strict enough to preserve his sanity. Never kill while feeding. Never feed angry. Never feed from children. Never feed repeatedly from the same person. Never feed emotionally.
And most importantly: Never become attached to humans. Attachment destroyed objectivity. Objectivity preserved survival.
Simple, at least in theory. Which made Mara deeply inconvenient.
Kael realized that as sunrise approached and his thoughts drifted toward the hospital convenience store again. Annoying.
He barely knew her. Yet her face lingered unusually clearly inside his memory. The messy hair. The tired eyes. The dry humor. Human details should not remain this vividly after a single interaction. And yet they did.
Kael disliked that immensely. The following night, he still returned to the hospital. Of course he did. The realization irritated him enough that he nearly drove away twice before entering the convenience store again.
Rain had finally stopped. The city smelled cleaner afterward. Mara sat near the same window as before, sketchbook open beside a cup of instant ramen.
Kael stopped walking briefly. She looked up immediately.
“There’s the cryptid,” she said casually. Something dangerously close to warmth moved through him.
“You’re still eating sodium in lethal quantities,” he replied.
“Artistic people survive exclusively through caffeine and poor decisions.”
Kael sat across from her automatically. Mara studied him openly for a second. “You look tired.”
Interesting. Most humans never noticed exhaustion in vampires because vampires technically did not require sleep. But fatigue still existed. Just differently.
“You say that like it’s unusual,” Kael said.
“You usually look emotionally unavailable,” Mara replied. “Tonight you look emotionally unavailable with extra murder.”
Kael stared at her. Mara blinked once. “…That sounded less concerning in my head.”
To his own annoyance, Kael laughed quietly. A real one this time. Soft. Brief. Unfamiliar. Mara immediately pointed at him dramatically.
“There! See? You can actually behave like a person.”
The words landed strangely hard. Like a bruise pressed accidentally. Person.
Kael looked away toward the rain-streaked windows. For centuries, no one used that word around him sincerely. Monster. Predator. Immortal. Never person.
Mara noticed the shift instantly. Her voice softened slightly. “Hey.”
Kael blinked once.
“You disappeared again,” she said carefully.
“I’m here.”
“Physically, maybe.”
The honesty in her tone unsettled him. Because she was beginning to notice things she should not notice. And part of him, the most dangerous part, was starting to enjoy being seen anyway.
- Writer
