Somehow, I slept after that, a luxury that would come more and more rarely the further I passed from the day I was drained and somehow, I survived to the morning. I was awakened early but the touch of the sun on my face and then roused from the bed by the door opening. My brother walked in with Peter at his side. The sunlight flooded in behind him in a bright cascade of white that left me squinting at him. He looked at me closely clearly disapprovingly. “Get up,” he ordered. “I think you need to see what you’ve wrought. I think it will provide an instructive lesson.”
As I followed him out into the morning light the sun cast the outlines of the veins in my eyes across my vision so that everything was overlain with silver lines. He walked ahead talking in a low voice to Peter while Robert fell in behind me mumbling to himself as usual. The air was crisp and fresh, only dimly scented with cows, smoke, and people. The village surrounding the little alley what we walked along was ominously quiet, but the rustle of people and the murmur of voices mashed together into an intelligible wall of sound grew louder as we approached the farmhouse. The whole village was gathered in the square, talking quietly to one another. A narrow lane split in the crowd as we approached, and the tone of the voices grew more frantic like bees buzzing. Most of the crowd looked away from me as we approached but Paul shook his head and another of the men whom I’d worked with scowled. The preacher looked almost worried as he stood shoulder to shoulder with his two sons.
The chopping block stood in the center of a clearing in the crowd allowing its dusky red stripe to absorb the sun’s light. Abdul was laid out on the ground in front of it face down in the dust. No one held him and he didn’t try to escape, he just lay there wriggling and gasping not even able to lift his head. I walked with my brother to the front of the crowd and then stopped as he leapt onto the chopping block and faced the crowd. The rising sun was at his back and haloed him as he spread his arms.
“We all know of the threat to our south,” he shouted, and the crowd murmured with agreement. “This so called General would like nothing better than to have us bring new life to his breeding pits and his blood banks. He’s even gone so far as to kidnap my own brother and then send him north to infiltrate our camp.” Their eyes burned into the back of my skull. I could feel them all and I wanted to turn around so badly and see the accusation there, to meet it with the sadness in my own eyes but I was afraid that I wouldn’t find pity. I was afraid that glares were not all that I would feel, so I remained watching my brother even as my body tensed. “His little ploy has failed,” my brother yelled, and the crowd cheered. “My brother is now safe with us and his minder, this made vampire has given us all the information that we need to crush this general and secure our land forever. No more will we wait for the vampires to push us out of our homeland. No more will we have to keep our eyes to the south each summer. This winter the vampires had better watch to their north for our coming, but they will not, and we will crush them before they even realize that humans can fight back.”
He motioned and two vampires pulled Abdul to his feet holding him up by the armpits and jerking his head back by his failing hair like some kind of puppet. His once fine rusty skin was flabby now. It hung off his face in rolls and was covered with a dry white sheen like frosting.
“He expected us to give him whatever he wanted, to send him men, women and children to protect ourselves from his threats. We will not
