2
Kat slept, Ansel planted a kiss on her forehead and pulled the covers over to keep her warm. He dressed, taking care not to wake Kat, and made his way back down the train to the main dining carriage.
They had been on the train for a week now, traveling eastward across the country. Located on a private network owned by powerful vampires, the line transported blood, slaves and goods across the northern tip of America. They’d boarded at a blood town, a vampire settlement which didn't appear on mortal maps, and been on board ever since then.
Slow and heavy, the old steam engine took its time getting anywhere. It appealed to Ansel, and he enjoyed its romance and adventure. They made routine stops at other blood towns, known as 'Sanguis' to his kind. All vampire settlements bore the Sanguis name, followed by a unique number. They embarked at Sanguis 11, a small and dirty town one hour south of Dead Rest. The last week consisted of traveling eastward at a slug's pace, snaking around mountains, winding through forests, and veering around lakes. On the way, they’d made frequent stops at many vampire settlements. According to Milo Prince, the head conductor on the train, the Belmont family owned this line in particular. Rural vampire settlements depended on the line for blood and supplies, without it, they would perish.
On an average night, the train stopped at two or three towns. At each stop, staff loaded goods on and off the train, and passengers had an hour to explore the local area. Most Sanguis towns offered little for the eye, and passengers rarely disembarked for the sights. Though comfortable, the train's cozy compartments became claustrophobic after a while, and most passengers just wanted to stretch their legs.
On board, Kat found herself outnumbered by vampires.
The staff, and the rest of the passengers were all vampires. Kat had been afraid at first, thinking every other vampire on board was dangerous. She assumed every vampire had powers like Edmund and Ansel.
“Very few vampires have super strength and speed.” Edmund explained one night as Kat and Rubago utterly trounced him at cards. “Most vampires are mostly like humans. They have a slightly longer life expectancy, they can go into daylight, and perhaps have a little more strength. Vampires like Ansel and I… we’re not so common.”
Why? Who could say? Mystery shrouded vampire and their origins. Ansel swore he would find an answer one day, determined to understand more about his kind. Only a small percent of vampires had heightened powers. On the surface they all looked the same, but the eyes held all the answers. Bright red eyes indicated a vampire had power. Regular vampires had dull red eyes. Few vampires had those bright reds. To his knowledge, only one other traveler on the train had bright reds, and he didn’t seem bothered at associating with them at all.
The rest of the vampires were regulars, and they kept to themselves. They seemed fearful of Ansel and Edmund, avoiding their gaze and keeping their distance. Regular vampires didn't like attention. The bulk of interaction from the other vampires came as wayward nods of respect. This suited Ansel just fine.
He walked into the carriage, finding it was mostly empty. Milo Prince, the conductor, smiled at seeing Ansel and walked over to greet him. Milo had the dull red eyes of a regular, shiny black skin and silver hair cut close to his head. He dressed in the blood red uniform of the train staff, with a white badge on his chest.
“Mr. Draco. Would you like a drink?”
“Sure. Any idea when our next stop is?”
“Sanguis 81. About an hour. It’s one of the last stops before the castle.”
Thank Christ. He'd grown tired of being cooped up on the train. He needed to get out there and stretch his legs. The brief breaks at the blood towns had been nice, but he needed more. The cramped compartments of the train were claustrophobic, he needed to get out and breathe fresh air properly, he needed to stretch his legs. He spotted Rubago sat at an empty table, he settled into the booth to join her.
“Be dawn in an hour.” She said as she slid tarot cards across the table top. “Aren't you cutting it a little fine?”
“These windows are UV tinted.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t a problem the other day.”
There were drawbacks to having heightened powers, and sunlight was one of them. Vampires like Ansel and Edmund had a higher dependency on blood, and a few seconds of sunshine was almost fatal. Direct sunlight didn't effect regular vampires in the same way. The windows of the train had five pressings of UV coating, and it meant that both Ansel and Edmund could sit in the filtered daylight. It was tolerable, Ansel had modified his car in a similar way, but it was still damn uncomfortable.
Watching the sunrise was a worthy enough reward for the prickly skin and cramping hands.
“How’s Kat?” The witch said with a raised brow. She kept her eyes on her cards, which circled through the surrounding air.
“Sleeping. We had a… training session.” Training. Right. Is that what they were calling it now? Head between her legs, lapping her until she could take no more, and then vice versa. He couldn’t deny that he was enjoying it, but there was a burning need to be inside of her.
“I’m sure,” Rubago said with a laugh. “Just remember to take it slow.”
“We are.” Even with their holding back, Kat found their sexual exploration demanding on her body. An intimate encounter with a vampire put a lot of strain on mortal bodies, and had to be approached at a tantalizing and careful pace. Ansel glanced at the witch who was now making the cards move through the air in a figure of eight pattern. As a child, his idea of a witch was an old woman with a hooked nose. Rubago couldn’t be any different. Black frizzy hair, mocha colored skin, a willowy and waif like body. Long blue gypsy dress, luminescent azure eyes—she was quite the picture. “What are your cards saying?”
“I’m trying to communicate with my Elders, but the magic isn’t strong enough. There is another way… but—never mind.”
“You still trying to learn more about this prophecy?”
“Yes.” The witch looked up at him and nodded.
The prophecy. It was part of the reason they were here traveling to this castle. Kat’s sister was still a prisoner, and the witch informed them that helping these families would somehow help in Ruth’s return.
“Have you learned anymore since we last spoke? How do we fit into all of this?”
Rubago repeated the mantra as if it bored her now. “Three daughters, separated at birth. Each of them marked, each of them born with the ability to breed with vampires. If they are all found, a new age will begin for the vampire, if they are not—the vampire will perish.”
Ansel shivered. It was the exact line the witch had repeated time and time again. “But how do we fit into it? You must know something else by now?”
The witch had spent her majority of the train ride trying to use her magic to learn more about the prophecy. Kat didn’t bare the spiral birthmark that each of the sisters supposedly had, and as far as she knew, Ruth didn’t have it either—something that Edmund also vouched—so what was their purpose here?
“I will take measures to find out more before we arrive. It involves… sexual magic. That’s as much as you need to know.”
Ansel lifted his hands as if he didn’t need to hear anymore. The witch used to terrify him, but he found an odd comfort in her company now. The strange creatures were human, but there was more to them beneath the surface. Reputations proceeded them, and most vampires didn't like being in the company of a witch. The other travelers on the train kept their distance. Rubago looked scary, but she was harmless enough. She could kill a person with a snap of her fingers, but that wasn’t the way of her kind. She had become a good friend to the group in the short time they’d been together.
“Say no more.” Ansel said. Milo Prince brought a tall glass of fresh blood over for him a moment later before attending to another table down the carriage.
“I have a feeling that something bad will happen.” The witch said after a few minutes silence.
“On the train?”
She nodded. “I’ll tell you more when I know. But it’s a Cognizant feeling. Something is waiting for us, and it will strike. Soon.”
*
“That’s a thousand.” The girl said from the bed. “You can stop now.”
Edmund pushed himself up from the floor one last time and collapsed on to his back. Sweat dripped from his body, which took up most of the room in the cramped train cabin.
“Why do so many of them, anyway?” The nude brunette asked from his bed. “You’re already jacked.”
Edmund stood, wiped himself off with a towel and threw the girls clothes to her. “Looking like this requires maintenance and being cooped up on this train is driving me mad.”
“Well it’s one of the better rides I’ve had.” The petite brunette shot him a wink and slipped her black knee length skirt over her naked torso. “Most of the time I get bought by wrinkled old prunes with limp dicks. I have to say… it’s been a pleasure serving you.”
The girl was a blood servant on the train, humans whom had voluntarily indentured themselves as walking blood bags for the promise of one day being a vampire themselves.
“How long have you been doing this?” He asked in his tired southern drawl.
She tied her dress behind her back, straightened her hair in the mirror and shrugged. “Just over three years now. I have my review at five.”
“Review?”
“Yeah. I go before a board at the Castle. They evaluate my suitability. How much I’ve earned… how much I’ve donated, what kind of vampire I’ll become if they turn me.”
His eyes flicked up and down her malnourished body. Her blood tasted good enough, but if she was ever ‘lucky’ enough to become a vampire, she’d most likely be a regular. Vampires like Edmund had a way of telling in advance. Most humans wouldn’t make good vampires and turning them simply wasn’t worth it.
Servants were let to vampires hourly. During that time a vampire was free to drink a pint from the servant. Blood transfusions between slaves were a regular thing. Some servants had a lot of clients, others didn’t. Either way, each one gave blood daily, whether to a vampire or another servant that needed to replenish their blood.
“You must feel like a fucking Yo-Yo,” Edmund laughed. “With your blood levels up and down all the time.”
“The first few months are hard. I was dizzy all the time, but you get used to it.”
The girl had a natural beauty about her, but blood letting had taken its toll on her body. Her skin looked gray under the orange gas light, and the white of her eyes looked yellow. She looked tired, and the dark circles under her eyes made her look gaunt.
“Being a vampire ain’t all that great.” Edmund said. “Is this worth it?”
“I’ll be a regular vampire, nothing special.” The girl conceded. “But it’ll buy me a couple hundred extra years on my life. That’s all I want.”
“A middle finger to the grim reaper.”
“Or a temporary one at least.” She raked her eager eyes over Edmund's muscled body. “Want to take another ride? Your time is up, but I’d be willing to give you one for free.”
He shook his head. Servants had no obligation to have a sexual relationship with their clients, but often did, as blood letting and sex usually went hand in hand. Vampires depended on blood more than anything else, and sex came in as a close second. The girl’s company brought temporary relief to his vampiric thirsts, but their relationship ended there. His body no longer ached for blood, and she had served her purpose.
“You’ve been great, but I’ve got things to do. I’m expecting company.”
“Until next time Mr. Volks.”
The girl left, and Edmund jumped in the shower to wipe his body clean from the workout. After showering, he dried and dressed himself, trimming his thick black beard to keep it tidy. 10am rolled around and the usual knock came at his door.
“Come in,” he said.
The door slid open and Kat stepped inside, shutting it behind her. “Nice to see you have your pants on this time.”
Edmund laughed. Last time Kat walked in he’d been halfway through a passionate session with another servant. “I’ve adjusted my schedule to avoid embarrassing you any further. Take a seat.”
Ever since Ruth’s disappearance, he'd formed an inexplicable telekinetic connection with her. Ruth was prisoner at the Red Keep. The Keep was the headquarters of the Red Circle, located on another plain of existence, managed and sustained by a powerful team of witches. The only way to get to the Keep was through special portals, which only opened four times a year. Visions of Ruth’s imprisonment filled Edmund’s dreams, but vampires didn’t dream, and it didn’t take long to figure out he was seeing Ruth in visions.
He didn’t need to sleep more than once a month, but Edmund slept now almost every night. Ruth was his creation, and he felt a sense of obligation to check on her, and make sure she was okay. She was still trapped at the keep, but she’d managed to escape the grasp of her captor. There was no way out, but she’d taken to the sewers in hiding, and so far she’d avoided detection. Every morning Kat came into his room for a report on the previous night’s visions. She took a chair at his desk, wringing her hands in nervousness.
“So?” She asked. “What did you see last night?”
Edmund pulled the notepad from his bedside draw. He’d kept daily logs of his visions, in effort not to forget anything. “She’s still down in the sewers. She’s using them to get around unnoticed.”
“Is she coping okay? Is she getting blood?”
Edmund could tell the question made her uncomfortable. She cared about Ruth, but was still coming to terms with her being a vampire.
“Seems so,” he nodded. “For all its horrors, the Keep doesn’t seem to be short of blood.”
Kat breathed a sigh of relief. “And no one has found her yet?”
“None of the guards, but from what I saw last night—she has a friend.”
She sat up in her chair. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” Edmund said. “As time goes by, the visions are becoming more broken. She seems to trust him though.”
“Do you?”
He thought about it. He wasn’t sure. From what he could tell, Ruth’s accomplice wasn’t a vampire, but he wasn’t human either. So just what the hell was he? “Time will tell I guess. Ruth is a smart girl though, and she’s survived this far. She’ll keep surviving until we get there and rescue her. I promised you that, and I promised her that too.”
He clenched his fists and looked down at the notes in front of him. Ruth’s capture wasn’t his fault, but the guilt still ate him alive.
Kat nodded. “Just tell me what you know so far. I want to know she’s okay.”
“Oh she is,” he said. “Here’s what I saw last night.”