The Aresan Clan is published four times a week (Tue, Wed, Fri, Sun). You can see what's been written so far collected here. All posts will be posted under the Aresan Clan label. For summaries of the events so far, visit here. See my previous serial Vampire Wares collected here.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Vampire Wares pt 69

Lina exited her room in the direction of the kitchen.  As a first pass, she simply walked by the room, slowing down somewhat and looking inside to see what was happening inside.  There were two vampires in there.  Neither appeared to be doing anything at the moment, both sitting back and relaxing.  They didn’t raise their eyes to look at Lina, and she simply walked right by.

Lina then gathered her broom and began to sweep through the hall outside the kitchen, again looking inside as she stood before the opening.  The room contained an assortment of cauldrons, jars, bowls and barrels, scattered around the room, and none of them had any apparent labels on them to help her sort one from another.

Finally, Lina decided to step inside with her broom in hand.  She looked around the room for a few moments before one of the vampires looked up to see her.  Several bowls were spread out on a table in the center of the room and one of the vampires was ladling out the thick red liquid into the bowls.

The vampire looked at Lina, who was simply standing there, motionless, with her broom in hand and the vampire asked Lina, “You here for food?  You can take one.  It saves me the time of taking it to you.”

She gestured with her hands towards the bowls, and Lina picked up one nearest to her and raised it to her lips.  As the warm liquid slid down her throat, she realized how much she’d been thirsting for it, as a sense relief and pleasure spread through her body.

Lina raised her empty bowl as if to ask where she was supposed to put it, and the vampire gestured to a large pot in which whole stacks of dishes were already sitting.  Lina set the bowl inside.

The vampire then asked her, “Lina?  Right?”  She nodded and the vampire said, pointing to herself, “Suma.”  Then she gestured behind her where the other vampire was sitting down and staring vacantly off into the distance and said, “Tor.”

“You want me to sweep in here? Lina then politely asked Suma.  Suma turned back to look at Tor to hear his response. “This isn’t really a place for young vampires,” Tor replied, in a noncommittal and lethargic tone.

Suma decided to ignore him and told Lina, “Go ahead.  It’ll save me some work.  He doesn’t care since he does nothing anyways.”

Lina thereby started to sweep the already quite clean floors of the kitchen.  They were tiled a rather striking white that showed every tiny stain that touched them, yet, despite this, seemed quite pristine.  As she moved around the room, she could see the various pots where their food was prepared.  Seeing the various stages of the process, she intuited that the humans were slaughtered, separated, and left to dissolve in some sort of formula, which turned them into a virtually liquid mush; this was then blended into the blood, which they kept and processed separately.  The images of these partially processed bits of human parts, did nothing to make the mixture she drank as food more pleasant, and she tried to push the images she’d seen out of her mind.

Suma noticed Lina looking into the pots and said to her, “Vampires way in the past used to just eat the blood.  But if you do that, you have to kill many more victims.  We no longer have the luxury of throwing the whole body away.  We consume every part of it and can now afford to feed much greater numbers with fewer kills.”  Lina nodded her head at this piece of information and then continued to sweep.

While she swept she watched Suma out of the corner of her eye and noticed something quite interesting.  After filling all the other bowls with liquid from one pot, Suma took another bowl of a distinctly different pattern and then filled that bowl from a separate pot.  She filled this bowl quite generously and then, since it was the last she could fit on her tray, she set down the ladle.

Tor spoke up at this moment, ordering Suma, “Fetch Mir.  We need to start preparing another human.”

Suma looked at him, irritated, and said, “I’m delivering.  You do it.”  She then picked up the large tray filled with the bowls and began to walk out the door.  Lina assumed that Suma would be away for a while, leaving just her and Tor.


<-- Go to Part 68         Go to Part 70 -->

You can see what's been written so far collected here.

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