“You Benjamin Elderitch’s brother,” he asked locking me with his cold blue eyes. I nodded, my body quivering in the couch. Out of the corner of my eye the ambassador looked bored, but his body was tense. I saw his tongue flick across his lips for only a moment and then he was still again. The General sat back a bit considering me. “He the one?” he asked my captor.
“He smells right sir.”
“That he does,” the General nodded as he spoke. “Smells just like the bastard who repaid my generosity with three corpses.”
He looked at me again and gave his head a little shake as he took me in. “Your brother thought he’d set himself up a right nice kingdom up north.” He watched my face closely, glaring and I tried to remain impassive, but it was as if I’d just swallowed a glass full of home and fear and the hot rush of each were flushing my face.
“Now, I don’t mind him getting his kicks up there in the frozen northland too much. I got more important things to worry about trying to get this country back to what it was. But if he keeps flouting me and refusing to pay me a pittance.” His eyes smoldered as he leaned closer to me and his voice descended into a growl. “We’re going to have ourselves a natural blood feast.” He smelled stale, stale smoke, stale air, and stale flesh. By contrast my own body stank of sweat, and urine. I shivered.
He leaned back into the couch again and puffed his cigar. “Now I figured I’d let him have his little slice of the pie, it being a might too cold up there for me to go traipsing about, and blood supplies being what they are with stupid vampires turning people and killing people left and right, without the future ever registering in their pathetic little minds.” He sighed.
His cigar was smoking down unnoticed as he spoke. “I’ve tried to send some vampires up there to talk some sense into that thick noggin of his and now it’s your turn.” He pointed at the both of us with two thick stubby fingers, and then rubbed the cigar out in the ash tray as he stood. Striding around the room with the curt clomping of his boots he continued in a louder voice.
“I want ten people sent down here to me each year. Man, woman, or child, it doesn’t matter to me. No sick, no elderly. Ten healthy people sent to me each spring and I’ll leave him alone. Of course, the number may increase in the future. But if your brother wants to remain undisturbed then he’s going to have to do as I say and give me what I want, or I’ll have his head on a plate and his people spread to the four winds.” He stopped in front of me as he spoke the last in a hard-even voice and I sat underneath him tight lipped and trembling.
The door had shut behind us as we’d left the General’s office accompanied by the creak of springs as the woman got up and the General returned to his relaxed position, and my captor, the vampiric ambassador to my brother’s “right nice little kingdom,” stormed down the hall away from the direction we’d come in. Remnants of the sweat that had drenched me as the General had railed against the transgressions of my brother ran coolly down the small of my back. We exited through double glass doors out onto an empty parking lot sparkling in the bright lights that were perched atop the building and bordered on its far side by another tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire. A group of camo clad vampires snickered as we passed them, one licking its thin grey lips as it caught my scent, but the ambassador paid them no attention as he strode along. I scurried along after him afraid that he would carry me himself if I did not follow closely enough. He did not look back at me as he glided across the parking lot until we reached the fence and compared to his soft footfalls the slapping of my boots upon the pavement rang out exposing me to the night. Inside the fence another group of humans huddled together in one corner, muddy, emaciated, wide-eyed and even more agitated than those corralled outside the front of the compound. They shoved one another, clamoring over those of their group that just lay or sat at the edge of the group closest to the building that the fence hugged, the tongues lolling and their eyes unfocused. The ambassador unlocked a gate and opened it just enough for us to squeeze through. At the first creaking of the gate long desperate howls that disappeared in ragged edges only to begin again a moment later erupted from the humans and they shoved themselves as one mass against the fence rattling it as if they were holding it and shaking it. Along the platform that ran from spotlight to spotlight down the length of the fence rifles
