The Vampire’s Feeder

Poser

[Victor]

I looked at the girl again. Humans were not something I found worth sustained examination. They were livestock, and I was a picky eater by necessity, one who preferred his healthy and well-fed, which this one emphatically was not.

The smell of them had always been the worst tax of my nature. Blood. For something I required to survive, it had always struck me as an extraordinarily unpleasant thing to need. The stench of it preceded every human I had ever encountered whether I liked it or not.

This one had smelled terrible the first night. I remembered it specifically. The hand on my boot, the smell of blood loss, festering wounds, and an ugliness that did not approve of any of its components.

But…

She did not smell that way now.

I noticed that during my second real glance at the fragile looking thing and that sequence of realisations was not one I enjoyed having.

I turned the word over. A species so rare that they had crossed from endangered to mythological in the span of a few centuries. They carried the sweetest blood amongst all other living creatures and sang with a voice that depending on the song, was capable of bewitching its audience.

I had only ever met one in my life as a little boy. My father’s little display thing that he used to keep the court in check and his enemies twiddling their thumbs.

My memories from that time were blurry now, but I recalled that even as a boy—I’d been in awe of the siren’s looks.

This… girl, didn’t fall too short of that ethereal look. But that was all she had going for her.

Back then, sirens were more than a mere source of entertainment. They were as valuable as they were rare. And Reynolds was telling me that one just crawled into my doorstep and on a mountain at the farthest edge of a kingdom?

Impossible.

But…

Reynolds would not have said it if he did not believe it. Whatever else he had done, he would not risk his neck over nothing, knowing my… current temperament.

Still. No one had seen a siren in two hundred years and if she was one, she would be the rarest thing on this wretched continent. A trinket of considerable political value, particularly for someone in my current position, which was not the position I intended to occupy permanently.

I was not a man who cared for songs. I was, however, a man who understood leverage.

Something that might have been amusement moved through me briefly. The smell alone should have confirmed it sooner, and it hadn't, which was its own kind of testament. She was three feet from me and producing none of the olfactory punishment that had defined every human interaction of the last five centuries.

Still. A test was needed to gauge her worth.

I set her down.

She found her footing without stumbling, took one hand briefly to the wall, and then removed it, which told me she did not want me to see that she had needed it. Her eyes came back to mine immediately. That watchful, assessing quality, still present, still unreasonably steady for someone whose throat bore the fresh impression of my fingers.

I looked her over. "Two categories," I began, watching her face the way I watched most things, with the detached interest of someone observing rather than caring. "Every human that has ever had the misfortune of crossing my path belongs to one of two groups. Those that serve as food." I tilted my head. "And those that serve as food for the vultures, which are not picky creatures. They eat whatever I leave them, and they are grateful for it."

She lifted her chin in an attempt to look me in the eye, her brows knitted closely together.

"You see… I have a sleeping problem," I exhaled, trying to sound dramatic. "I have not slept in a very, very long time and it makes me…" I paused. "Disagreeable."

Reynolds, peripherally, said nothing. He was good at that.

"If you produce a song that gives me actual sleep," I leaned lower, "I will spare your life. If not." The corner of my mouth lifted without warmth. "Well, let’s just say I sometimes finish my meals at a single sitting.“

The girl looked at me defiantly and with such spite that I thought she might fight the options. To my surprise, she dropped to one knee.

It was not the fumbling collapse of someone terrified into courtesy but the delicate movement of someone choosing it. Her head inclined.

"I would like," she spoke calmly, "to be one of your feeders, my lord. Not the vultures."

That caught me off guard. It wasn’t the laughable begging I’d expected from a poser trying to save her skin.

I frowned, displeased for some reason. “Good. Clean up that filth," I stepped back, gesturing at the floor without looking at it.

"Reynolds."

"My lord."

"Do not disappoint me again." I half glanced at him then turned and walked back the way I had come.