The Drinker of Blood

Chapter Eight

The three days stretched into four, at the end of which Freya decided she no longer could put off her commitments. I'd learned much about my sweet friend in the interim, enough to know that she'd never once played hooky in her life. One time wouldn't hurt anything. Four days really wasn't all that much time in terms of an entire life.

My vampirism still was a running joke between us, but her attention to my body continued to be, at least in part, clinical. She examined my every nook and cranny. This was a rational woman, a scientist. That there was something unique about me did not mean I was one of the undead. But I know she sensed there was something. And whatever she suspected she left unsaid.

She finally did, out and out, tell me that I was not as old as she first had surmised. She suspected, I think, that I was younger even than Fallon, who was 21. I continued to stick to my story of being 800 and some years old, telling her the simple truth: I had an unageing body. It did not irk her when I did so.

My tiny FO notebook, now my prize possession, grew more robust and detailed during those days. My friend was a veritable orgasm machine, churning them out as fast as I could record them. I also had begun to take notes, in a shorthand of my own creation, recording the particulars of each engagement, what seemed to excite her and what did not.

It was all quite strange, I know. But I enjoyed doing it. Perhaps it was Freya's influence on me that I wanted to be more scientific in my approach to life. I was going to miss her body, everything about her.

During all that time, I caught not a whiff of Renard or anyone in his crowd. That didn't mean they weren't around. That group sometimes used civilian detectives to do their dirty work. But I didn't fret too much. I could deal with anything they threw at me, and it now was highly unlikely that they could connect Freya with me.

People had tried in the past to blackmail me with threats against my friends. It hadn't ended well for them. But that didn't mean I didn't worry about it now. My enemies were everywhere. It would only be a few weeks until I reached Chicago, but it wasn't clear whether it would be safe for me to see Freya there.

Still, my visit to her city was something about which she and I talked. I promised her that my business in Chicago was not a pretext just to see her. I don't think she cared one way or the other.

Our parting at the airport was an affectionate one, and after I saw her off, I picked up my Kawasaki, attended to a few affairs, and headed north.

***

My first real destination was Houston, where a colleague kept his base of operation. He dealt in various things that someone like me needs. I would remain Tori Hind for the time being, but my next persona was primed and ready for when I reached Chicago, where I would assume the handsome moniker, Amal Creedence.

I had not drunk blood in over a month. Usually, going a long time without swigging the stuff made abstinence easier. But like any addictive substance, there were triggers. Being around it, smelling it, speaking often of it, sometimes did that for me. I jested frequently about my nature and my cravings with Freya. All the while, my appetite was growing.

I pondered what I should do. In the old days, plucking prey off the street was a quick and easy solution to that problem. The downside of a human banquet was that it left a very human corpse. It was one of the reasons that people like me so often lived nomadic lives in days past. Bodies start to stack up in one locality, and the next thing you know ... well, mobs, pitchforks, and all that those represent.

The tragedy is that humans contain quite a lot of blood, and very few vampires that I have met can finish a serving, or anything close to it, in one sitting. But our manner of feeding is messy, not the least bit surgical or precise as you see in movies. To bite someone sufficiently to extract blood leaves a person so badly lacerated that they very soon bleed out. It is death by exsanguination, save only half or less of the body's volume actually is consumed.