The Vampire’s Feeder

Useful Little Thing

[Victor]

The castle had forty-three rooms above ground and eleven below. Or so Reynolds had said.

Forty-three rooms, eleven below, and one unexpected variable crawling on the floor of the west corridor with her hand outstretched toward a creature I had purposely squashed.

I looked at her first, because she was the anomaly and anomalies deserved the first assessment. Then I looked at Reynolds, crossing the corridor in a blink and had him by the throat before he finished opening that sorry mouth of his.

I'd been in a foul mood for days, much more foul than usual. So I had little to no patience with incompetent subordinates.

He didn't struggle. That was the only intelligent thing he did at the moment. He went still, both hands loose at his sides, his feet lifting from the floor as I raised him, and he met my eyes with the expression of a man who had made a decision and was now living inside its consequences.

"I gave you an instruction," I started.

He said nothing, or maybe he just couldn't, with my hand where it was.

"So why is this... human... in my home?"

"My lord..."

The voice came from behind me. I turned my head slightly to find that the girl was now on her feet.

Auburn hair, long and tangled from what looked like several days of neglect, catching the light in a way that would have been striking if I were the kind of man who was struck by such things. Small features; nose, mouth, all in an arrangement that would have been considered attractive by anyone with fewer centuries of reference material.

Her eyes were deathly blue, like staring too long might pull you into some sort of trance. She was thin. Extraordinarily thin and I found myself briefly calculating whether that frame contained enough blood to fill a glass, and whether a firm wind might resolve the issue before I had the chance to harm her.

She was, in summary, the least promising food source I'd seen in a while. And now, such a frail, little thing was standing with her chin up and her hands at her sides and every instinct she possessed visibly telling her to stay down while she ignored all of them.

"Please spare him!" She bowed in fear.

I looked at her for a moment, then a low laugh escaped my lips.

"What's this?" I looked down at her, "livestock speaking on behalf of their keepers now? How progressive." Then my eyes glowed at her in their compulsive light. "Go and stand over there until I'm done with this one."

She did not step back and my smirk immediately dropped.

I released Reynolds, who began to massage his throat.

My quick movements must have startled her as she gasped when we were suddenly face to face and eye to eye.

"Go over there and stand next to the wall."

She still didn't move, but her gaze averted for a moment as she gripped the hem of her blouse. "I can't do that. I'm sorry..."

I moved to her before she could recalibrate. My hand closed around her throat and I lifted her the way I had lifted him, and she grabbed my wrist with both hands, which was instinct rather than strategy.

There was nothing in those hands. Nothing that would matter.

"What's this? A human that can withstand my compulsion?" I said it casually but the instance seemed far from plausible. The minds of humans were susceptible to all manner of mind control and in all my years wandering the human continent, I had only stumbled across a handful that were resistant to it. All with different instances.

In other words, they were special humans.

I looked back at Reynolds over my shoulder.

'Special humans?' I scoffed mentally. 'If only that meant something'

"I will show you how to dispose of trash properly, so that next time you will not require... assistance." I turned to snap her little neck, but his voice stopped me:

"She sang a song of the sirens!"

My grip eased slightly at that single word "siren."

Reynolds was looking at me with the focused calm of a man who had placed his only card face up on the table and had not yet looked away from it. His throat was marked where my hand had been, bobbing with each gulp, but his voice had not changed at all.

“I think she can be useful, my lord.” He rushed to add, lowering his head.