They knew better than to kill him, since it was more than likely he had some type of information that could lead to finding the cousin they had almost completely forgotten about, seeing as they had been only five years old when she was born and taken away. Laina, who was usually the responsible and observant one, was the one to point out to her counterparts that the tech-mage was not just a scrumptious snack someone had bundled up and left for them to find. No, he was much more than that. She had long suspected dear old Aunt Hildegard wasn’t as insane as she led everyone to believe. And if the mage was left down there in the open for someone to find alive, then he must know something. Logically speaking, why else would he even be down there? If the other two hadn’t been so busy salivating over the smell of his blood, they might have been able to put those facts together for themselves. Sort of like how the two hadn’t realized one of their teachers in high school, Ms. Nita P. Usar, was actually a Rasputin until it was practically too late.
Laina was thought of as the geek of the three. She didn’t mind, not really. It was a long-standing joke among the three of them she sucked up most of the brain stems while they were still in their mother’s womb.
But Laina was gifted with more than just that of her overly large brain. She could also see the darkest secrets of whomever she fed upon. Which was why she would usually only feed from the willing donors living in the castle instead of the prisoners they kept as feed bags. She needn’t visuals of the nightmarish deeds the scumbag human prisoners had done to end up trapped in her brain then revisiting her in her own nightmares. But that was the reason she had wanted to bring the captive to their quarters, to see what he knew, only things didn’t quite go the way she had planned.
Laina didn’t bother telling her sisters what it was she was about to do. They were too busy getting their jollies out of poking at the poor bastard, each getting a small electric shock as they did so. That should have been her warning sign right there. But she paid no heed. There was only the thought of getting some type of answers as she knelt, grabbed his slightly muscular brown arm, and bit into his wrist.
At first, she began seeing random images that made no sense to her, because two of the people she saw should have been dead and the building they were in was unrecognizable and looked like nothing she had ever seen in Underlayes, all broken and dilapidated. Once she saw him and others of his ilk on the roof of this castle, the images started coming into her head way too fast for her to handle, then came the shockwaves. Laina got a sensation as though someone was zapping electricity directly into her brain. Then her body began to seize up.
Gigi and Jenna noticed something was wrong at the same time and pulled his wrist out of Laina’s mouth right as her body began shaking uncontrollably. Neither of them knew what the fuck to do. They instinctively held her as still as they could on the floor so at the very least, she couldn’t hurt herself. After about two minutes, the shaking finally stopped on its own. That was when the real fun started.
For one full second, Laina’s body went ramrod straight, and her eyes opened as wide as they possibly could with her pupils nothing more than tiny pinpricks. Her alabaster skin went stark white, her fangs fully elongated, and her raven hair became a hot mess all over her head. She looked like a demented Snow White on crack. All of a sudden, she started zooming all over the place, so fast at first Gigi and Jenna thought she was flashing until a breeze ruffled their hair each time she sped past them. Laina was zipping around from one corner of the vast room to the next, even up and down the stairs; she was quite literally bouncing off the walls.
Then she did begin flashing, something they were usually only strong enough to do together, back and forth to the donors’ quarters, taking a sip or two from each one of them so fast they thought it was nothing more than a mosquito bite. When they went to slap at their necks, she was gone before their hand could even connect with their skin, let alone her.
Laina then did something she never would have done had she been in her right mind, but right then she was, as they say, high as a damn kite. She flashed herself down to the human dregs who had not volunteered to be donors. The ones who had spent their worthless lives preying on other humans; using, abusing, and some even murdering their own kind for nothing more than sport. Now they were the prey. Usually she never strayed down there because seeing any of their memories was the last thing she wanted, but she did hear talk of what each of them had done to end up in their predicaments.
This one in particular she had heard the female guard whispering about right before they had learned of the kidnapping of her cousin. This formerly arrogant, piece of shit human was much worse than just a womanizer, but a user and an abuser in the worst way. He preyed on single mothers who were slightly overweight, with self-esteem issues and a little bit of money, building up their confidence, making them fall madly in love with him while convincing them he felt the same way, tricked them into believing they would be together forever.
