“Oh, right. Did you tell Tom I need twins?” I completely forgot about the time I tried to put two souls in a single crab, but I was still interested in what would happen if I tried it with two near identical souls.
“Kind of forgot.” Hannah admitted, putting a few mana stones into a rather small metallic box.
“Likewise …” I muttered, distancing myself from the machine a little as it started humming loudly and it began its work. We were in the underground laboratory once more, a few weeks after I had started feeding that ghoul with my own blood.
That blue eyes twenty five year old hadn’t changed much and was still driven by his thirst for blood and other instincts.
But hey, after a month of living in this torture room without any way to clean himself, we could finally put one of Albert’s invention to good use. He called it the water hose … or something along these lines. What it did was rather simple though. It turned the energy in the mana stone into usable clean water, just like my kitchen in purgatory could. Well, this water got out of something like a tube and spewed forwards, which allowed Hannah to hit the ghoul hiding in a corner rather easily.
It wouldn’t take that long though before the aggressive side of the ghoul took control again and he charge at Hannah. The sounds of chains rattling over the floor resounded through the lab for a few seconds until the chain was lifted into the air.
The ghoul was stopped by its collar a few metres before Hannah and tried to reach her with his fingers to no avail. Instead, Hannah mercilessly splashed his face with water which was a bit too much for me to bear. Swiftly, I started fumbling with the machine and flipped a switch which saved the ghoul from further harm.
“And now to the really disgusting part.” I said, already taking out the knife from underneath my skirt.
“Why are you feeding him personally anyway?” Hannah asked as I walked into the range of the ghoul. He directly tried to grab me with his wet hands which I honestly didn’t care about.
“Because …” I muttered, pressing my hand onto his forehead and my thumb into his left eye. “of that.” I said in satisfaction as the wet hands finally let go of my shoulders and he stumbled back in pain.
Smiling brightly, I stabbed myself into my arm while kicking him lightly. He reached the wall quite fast and collapsed leaning against it. Pressing my high heels into his thigh, I grabbed his hair and forced him to look upwards. There was still a little bit of resistance to my blood left whenever we started, but he quickly opened his mouth drawn in by the probably more than thrilling smell and started to drink every drop dripping from my hand.
It still felt completely disgusting to feed him. He was like the stray dog I usually kicked away when nobody else looked, or the mosquito sucking on Hannah. Unwanted. Distrusting. Sickening.
I didn’t show that on my face at all though, but rather kept a gentle smile the whole time. I never knew what he would remember after all.
Turning around to Hannah, I didn’t care at all as he started robbing after me and rather left the room without saying anything.
“So … want some Hamburgers?” I asked in the way up and looked backwards towards a more than exited Hannah.
The very next night, I went back to the laboratory to check on the ghoul again, and was pleasantly surprised as intelligence had returned to his eyes. He didn’t show it though, and rather took broadly the same actions against me as he did the nights before.
A bit interested, I feigned to not have noticed his awakening as a vampire and fed him my blood just like the times before. He didn’t attack me which I had hoped for though, but chose to stay passive the whole time, even as I walked through the door.
“He really wants to play that game …” I muttered, picked up a wooden chair and the vampire book from the other room and returned to the ghoul right away. After putting him down, I sat upon it and crossed my legs.
We both watched each other for several minutes. He looked at me warily, while I looked at him amused.
“I have the whole night. And the next one … until you speak.” His eyes opened a bit wider, a clear indicator that he understood me very well. “Or I could read you a little story.” I opened the book by Mot Backwards and flipped to page three. “Vampire society was build upon the seniority principle. The highest ranking vampires, sometimes also called nobles, were the first generation vampires. They were the only ones who ever saw their origin vampire, with the exception of the brave heroes who stayed him of course. Can you follow?” I asked, looking up to the newly born vampire who seemed to be a bit afraid of me. But there was vastly more defiance in his eyes than anything else. “Anyways. These noble vampire of the first generation produced offspring as well, their very own servants bound to them by their blood. Interestingly enough though, these second generation vampires had less strength than their creator, which meant that less and less blood of the origin travelled down the family tree. This all resulted in the sixth generation, the lowest of the servants to have very few benefits in comparison to humans, with all the drawbacks of being a vampire of course. They also couldn’t create any vampires as well, and were stuck with ghouls as their supporters. Still following?”
Finally, I got a reaction out of this vampire who I didn’t see as my creation at all as he nodded weakly. It wasn’t just my feelings though. I also lacked the bond I had with Tom, meaning he wasn’t mine.
“Great. In conclusion, every vampire with the exception of a few are servants to someone. Which leads me to you. Who is your creator? Who turned you into a ghoul?” Once more, I looked up from my book. He did look back at me, but still remained silent.
“It’s definitely not me. It wasn’t my blood that was used to turn you into a ghoul, otherwise you would have healed far quicker in the beginning. I would say you are … a fifth generation vampire? Maybe sixth? It’s hard to gauge for me …” Still silence.
“Look, I have nothing against you. I even fed you for a month, so at least give me your name.” I said sweetly. Finally, he seemed to warm up a little and stepped a bit closer before stopping right as the collar threatened to hurt him.
“Leonard.” He said, looking down on me.
“Leonard? What a lovely name. I’m Lucinda. Nice to meet you.” I said and extended my hand. He didn’t took it though and so I was left with no other choice but to put it behind the book once more. “I assume you are a loyal servant to the demon king as well?”
“There are no other vampires in the demon king army.” Oh? His information might be outdated and maybe even false, but it was still nice to know that.
“Oh, I didn’t mean I am in his army. We deal with them on a regular basis, so I’m kind of used to you guys.” I said which wasn’t even a lie.
“You know what it means to imprison someone like me?” Nope. Not at all. What did the demon king want to do? Tickle me?
“Someone like you?” I asked a but interested in his position.
“… you don’t know anything about the demon army.” Except that they were filled with a bunch of dumb demons, there wasn’t much intel circulating around. So he was kind of right. We didn’t know much about our enemy.
“Oh, come on. I’m nice to you, so stop doubting me already.” I said and smiled gently. I even showed him my teeth a little which was rare for me.
“Then tell me, why does a schoolgirl keep me prisoner?” That question stunned me a bit, but it was to be expected.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come down here in my school uniform. But I kind of like it these days. It’s handy, the blazer has two pockets and it feels really nice in the skin.” I said, patting my uniform affectionately.
“…” He didn’t say anything, probably because I hadn’t answered his question at all.
“Okay. Truth to be told, I am the only origin vampire still alive, which also enabled me to save you from your misery. I’m sorry but I cannot let you go willy nilly, and so I have to ask you to remain where you are for the time being until I manage to strike a deal with the demon king … I presume he is your creator?” I asked in a nice and soothing tone.
“He gifted me this power.” He growled back, as if I had bullied him in any way. I probably did the last month, but that was all in self defence.
“Okay … but why not turn you into a vampire?” I asked and watched in glee how he looked away frustrated. “Oh … he couldn’t. I presume you were a human before, right? Creating a vampire is rather tricky, you know? First of all, you need to change a human into a ghoul and then feed him until he becomes a vampire, but the demon king apparently thought that his little experiment was a failure, no?” I presumed and watched his reaction very carefully the whole time. Apparently, I wasn’t too far off from the truth because he really couldn’t look me in the eyes.
“I am not telling you anything.” But he was? Just by looking at his body language, I could guess a lot about him.
“A human serving the demon king … how interesting. I assume you were living in the north eight years ago as well? You were captured and raised as a loyal subject … how interesting.” I said, noting the very fact that he didn’t seem too put off by the blood on the walls.
“Stop reading my thoughts.” He said and glared at me.
“Oh, my dear. I can’t read your thoughts. I merely observe how you react to every single one of my words.” I said and chuckled happily.
“You know nothing about me!” No I didn’t. But I could listen to the words he didn’t utter, but still conveyed.
“I’m not claiming that? You are just too easy to read.” I said and smiled brightly.
“Monster.” He said, slowly backing off warily.
“Oh my. In my four hundred and elven years of living, nobody else had managed to hurt me that much.” I said, touching my heart in apparent pain.
“You think you are safe at the royal academy? No wall will stop the demon king from crushing you all.” I blinked a few times, and then looked downwards on me. There was no logo or anything on my school uniform, which made it very odd that he knew where we were. Unless…
“So you do recognise this uniform? Well, that was to be expected after I found out about your friend at the academy.” I tried to bait him into telling me everything about this person, and his eyes flared up a little which was a good sign.
“Impossible. Nobody can find … no. You are lying. I won’t tell you anything.” Well then, at least I could be a hundred percent sure that this person was definitely one of the higher ups in the demon king army.
“Don’t be like this. You can tell me everything.” I said, but had to wait for a reply for far too long. In the end, I even began to read from the book again.
“Vampires have three known weaknesses. Holy silver, created by the church of light, blessed holy water by any church and most importantly, the sun. The race of vampires died out because they couldn’t overcome their inherent weaknesses and could be trapped during the day easily. Especially noteworthy is that the sun had effect on vampires no matter where they were. Weakened and unable to flee, they were easy targets for professional vampire hunters, a profession that died out … three hundred years ago. Now, I wonder what I should start with.”
“You are desperate. You haven’t found our assassin at all.” Sadly, his assumption was more than correct. Despite my best efforts to search for him, we couldn’t find anything.
“Admittedly, I didn’t. But I am far from desperate because frankly speaking, he didn’t get anything done so far.” I said and grinned haughtily. Whoever hid in the academy, he was wary after the necromancer didn’t do his job and rather fled the scene.
“She will slay those future heroes from underneath your nose and without them, you will have no chance but to surrender to the demon king.” He said, strangely proud of his king. Shaking my head in disappointment, I stood up and began to make my way back to the door.
“Does the word reincarnator tell you anything? No? What a pity.” I asked, just as I had my hand at the handle.
“Get out of my head!” He shouted, but I didn’t even listen to him and rather strolled out of the room quietly.
“Oh, right. Did you tell Tom I need twins?” I completely forgot about the time I tried to put two souls in a single crab, but I was still interested in what would happen if I tried it with two near identical souls.
“Kind of forgot.” Hannah admitted, putting a few mana stones into a rather small metallic box.
“Likewise …” I muttered, distancing myself from the machine a little as it started humming loudly and it began its work. We were in the underground laboratory once more, a few weeks after I had started feeding that ghoul with my own blood.
That blue eyes twenty five year old hadn’t changed much and was still driven by his thirst for blood and other instincts.
But hey, after a month of living in this torture room without any way to clean himself, we could finally put one of Albert’s invention to good use. He called it the water hose … or something along these lines. What it did was rather simple though. It turned the energy in the mana stone into usable clean water, just like my kitchen in purgatory could. Well, this water got out of something like a tube and spewed forwards, which allowed Hannah to hit the ghoul hiding in a corner rather easily.
It wouldn’t take that long though before the aggressive side of the ghoul took control again and he charge at Hannah. The sounds of chains rattling over the floor resounded through the lab for a few seconds until the chain was lifted into the air.
The ghoul was stopped by its collar a few metres before Hannah and tried to reach her with his fingers to no avail. Instead, Hannah mercilessly splashed his face with water which was a bit too much for me to bear. Swiftly, I started fumbling with the machine and flipped a switch which saved the ghoul from further harm.
“And now to the really disgusting part.” I said, already taking out the knife from underneath my skirt.
“Why are you feeding him personally anyway?” Hannah asked as I walked into the range of the ghoul. He directly tried to grab me with his wet hands which I honestly didn’t care about.
“Because …” I muttered, pressing my hand onto his forehead and my thumb into his left eye. “of that.” I said in satisfaction as the wet hands finally let go of my shoulders and he stumbled back in pain.
Smiling brightly, I stabbed myself into my arm while kicking him lightly. He reached the wall quite fast and collapsed leaning against it. Pressing my high heels into his thigh, I grabbed his hair and forced him to look upwards. There was still a little bit of resistance to my blood left whenever we started, but he quickly opened his mouth drawn in by the probably more than thrilling smell and started to drink every drop dripping from my hand.
It still felt completely disgusting to feed him. He was like the stray dog I usually kicked away when nobody else looked, or the mosquito sucking on Hannah. Unwanted. Distrusting. Sickening.
I didn’t show that on my face at all though, but rather kept a gentle smile the whole time. I never knew what he would remember after all.
Turning around to Hannah, I didn’t care at all as he started robbing after me and rather left the room without saying anything.
“So … want some Hamburgers?” I asked in the way up and looked backwards towards a more than exited Hannah.
The very next night, I went back to the laboratory to check on the ghoul again, and was pleasantly surprised as intelligence had returned to his eyes. He didn’t show it though, and rather took broadly the same actions against me as he did the nights before.
A bit interested, I feigned to not have noticed his awakening as a vampire and fed him my blood just like the times before. He didn’t attack me which I had hoped for though, but chose to stay passive the whole time, even as I walked through the door.
“He really wants to play that game …” I muttered, picked up a wooden chair and the vampire book from the other room and returned to the ghoul right away. After putting him down, I sat upon it and crossed my legs.
We both watched each other for several minutes. He looked at me warily, while I looked at him amused.
“I have the whole night. And the next one … until you speak.” His eyes opened a bit wider, a clear indicator that he understood me very well. “Or I could read you a little story.” I opened the book by Mot Backwards and flipped to page three. “Vampire society was build upon the seniority principle. The highest ranking vampires, sometimes also called nobles, were the first generation vampires. They were the only ones who ever saw their origin vampire, with the exception of the brave heroes who stayed him of course. Can you follow?” I asked, looking up to the newly born vampire who seemed to be a bit afraid of me. But there was vastly more defiance in his eyes than anything else. “Anyways. These noble vampire of the first generation produced offspring as well, their very own servants bound to them by their blood. Interestingly enough though, these second generation vampires had less strength than their creator, which meant that less and less blood of the origin travelled down the family tree. This all resulted in the sixth generation, the lowest of the servants to have very few benefits in comparison to humans, with all the drawbacks of being a vampire of course. They also couldn’t create any vampires as well, and were stuck with ghouls as their supporters. Still following?”
Finally, I got a reaction out of this vampire who I didn’t see as my creation at all as he nodded weakly. It wasn’t just my feelings though. I also lacked the bond I had with Tom, meaning he wasn’t mine.
“Great. In conclusion, every vampire with the exception of a few are servants to someone. Which leads me to you. Who is your creator? Who turned you into a ghoul?” Once more, I looked up from my book. He did look back at me, but still remained silent.
“It’s definitely not me. It wasn’t my blood that was used to turn you into a ghoul, otherwise you would have healed far quicker in the beginning. I would say you are … a fifth generation vampire? Maybe sixth? It’s hard to gauge for me …” Still silence.
“Look, I have nothing against you. I even fed you for a month, so at least give me your name.” I said sweetly. Finally, he seemed to warm up a little and stepped a bit closer before stopping right as the collar threatened to hurt him.
“Leonard.” He said, looking down on me.
“Leonard? What a lovely name. I’m Lucinda. Nice to meet you.” I said and extended my hand. He didn’t took it though and so I was left with no other choice but to put it behind the book once more. “I assume you are a loyal servant to the demon king as well?”
“There are no other vampires in the demon king army.” Oh? His information might be outdated and maybe even false, but it was still nice to know that.
“Oh, I didn’t mean I am in his army. We deal with them on a regular basis, so I’m kind of used to you guys.” I said which wasn’t even a lie.
“You know what it means to imprison someone like me?” Nope. Not at all. What did the demon king want to do? Tickle me?
“Someone like you?” I asked a but interested in his position.
“… you don’t know anything about the demon army.” Except that they were filled with a bunch of dumb demons, there wasn’t much intel circulating around. So he was kind of right. We didn’t know much about our enemy.
“Oh, come on. I’m nice to you, so stop doubting me already.” I said and smiled gently. I even showed him my teeth a little which was rare for me.
“Then tell me, why does a schoolgirl keep me prisoner?” That question stunned me a bit, but it was to be expected.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come down here in my school uniform. But I kind of like it these days. It’s handy, the blazer has two pockets and it feels really nice in the skin.” I said, patting my uniform affectionately.
“…” He didn’t say anything, probably because I hadn’t answered his question at all.
“Okay. Truth to be told, I am the only origin vampire still alive, which also enabled me to save you from your misery. I’m sorry but I cannot let you go willy nilly, and so I have to ask you to remain where you are for the time being until I manage to strike a deal with the demon king … I presume he is your creator?” I asked in a nice and soothing tone.
“He gifted me this power.” He growled back, as if I had bullied him in any way. I probably did the last month, but that was all in self defence.
“Okay … but why not turn you into a vampire?” I asked and watched in glee how he looked away frustrated. “Oh … he couldn’t. I presume you were a human before, right? Creating a vampire is rather tricky, you know? First of all, you need to change a human into a ghoul and then feed him until he becomes a vampire, but the demon king apparently thought that his little experiment was a failure, no?” I presumed and watched his reaction very carefully the whole time. Apparently, I wasn’t too far off from the truth because he really couldn’t look me in the eyes.
“I am not telling you anything.” But he was? Just by looking at his body language, I could guess a lot about him.
“A human serving the demon king … how interesting. I assume you were living in the north eight years ago as well? You were captured and raised as a loyal subject … how interesting.” I said, noting the very fact that he didn’t seem too put off by the blood on the walls.
“Stop reading my thoughts.” He said and glared at me.
“Oh, my dear. I can’t read your thoughts. I merely observe how you react to every single one of my words.” I said and chuckled happily.
“You know nothing about me!” No I didn’t. But I could listen to the words he didn’t utter, but still conveyed.
“I’m not claiming that? You are just too easy to read.” I said and smiled brightly.
“Monster.” He said, slowly backing off warily.
“Oh my. In my four hundred and elven years of living, nobody else had managed to hurt me that much.” I said, touching my heart in apparent pain.
“You think you are safe at the royal academy? No wall will stop the demon king from crushing you all.” I blinked a few times, and then looked downwards on me. There was no logo or anything on my school uniform, which made it very odd that he knew where we were. Unless…
“So you do recognise this uniform? Well, that was to be expected after I found out about your friend at the academy.” I tried to bait him into telling me everything about this person, and his eyes flared up a little which was a good sign.
“Impossible. Nobody can find … no. You are lying. I won’t tell you anything.” Well then, at least I could be a hundred percent sure that this person was definitely one of the higher ups in the demon king army.
“Don’t be like this. You can tell me everything.” I said, but had to wait for a reply for far too long. In the end, I even began to read from the book again.
“Vampires have three known weaknesses. Holy silver, created by the church of light, blessed holy water by any church and most importantly, the sun. The race of vampires died out because they couldn’t overcome their inherent weaknesses and could be trapped during the day easily. Especially noteworthy is that the sun had effect on vampires no matter where they were. Weakened and unable to flee, they were easy targets for professional vampire hunters, a profession that died out … three hundred years ago. Now, I wonder what I should start with.”
“You are desperate. You haven’t found our assassin at all.” Sadly, his assumption was more than correct. Despite my best efforts to search for him, we couldn’t find anything.
“Admittedly, I didn’t. But I am far from desperate because frankly speaking, he didn’t get anything done so far.” I said and grinned haughtily. Whoever hid in the academy, he was wary after the necromancer didn’t do his job and rather fled the scene.
“She will slay those future heroes from underneath your nose and without them, you will have no chance but to surrender to the demon king.” He said, strangely proud of his king. Shaking my head in disappointment, I stood up and began to make my way back to the door.
“Does the word reincarnator tell you anything? No? What a pity.” I asked, just as I had my hand at the handle.
“Get out of my head!” He shouted, but I didn’t even listen to him and rather strolled out of the room quietly.
