Chapter 38 First human meal

They all took their vamscren and started out of the hotel. They boarded a taxi, and although it was a struggle to fit all of them into one, they all managed. The taxi drove them off and stopped at a street along the outskirts of the town, these streets less populated, there were plenty of buildings packed into each other, and instead of the skyscrapers that were in the business district, these areas were filled with the traditional courtyard homes, the ones you see in those Chinese historical movies, the homes were tucked away in the city’s alleyways.

They continued walking until they reached the more deserted parts of the area, the housings here were less sophisticated, some were even abandoned. The commoners that inhabited the area looked at the five of them as they walked through, this wasn’t one of the places tourists liked to visit, maybe they should have dressed in rags, Dana thought. She just hoped that they would be able to get away with this.

Who would have known that behind those shining, large, pretty high-rise buildings in the mega city, there were slums like these?

They stopped when they noticed a group of gangsters on the side of the road, they were drinking, gambling, smoking weed and speaking mandarin, all at the same time. They were the perfect target. Joana saw them, their minds were so easy to read, some were drug addicts, some were murders, some were even alcoholics. You could tell that these people didn’t have much of a life. It felt really bad to use them, as they were easy targets, and no one would care in case any of them died mistakenly by their hands, but they didn’t have much of a choice.

Derick was the first one who walked up to them, while the others stayed behind.

“Do any of you speak English?” He asked them slowly.

They all looked at him. Derick had already gotten his answer by the puzzled look on their faces. He had no choice; he would have to use his powers.

He walked to the one who appeared to be the ring leader who was seated and watching the strangers who had just come, he grabbed him by the hand, much to the surprise of the other guys, he then held him at an eye-level position, and began to hypnotize him with his voice.

“Tell the rest of your boys to gather themselves where no one can see us. I have a business proposition for all of you. Interpret it to them in mandarin.”

The leader, in a daze, but still had his eyes wide open, turned to the gang and told them what Derick had said in mandarin.

The boys, who should have been more concerned about the fact that a stranger grabbed their boss like that and gave him orders in English which he never understood before, were more excited they were about to make some more money to gamble with.

The leader led them all to a small room in one of the buildings, they all entered, the vampires with about ten other gangsters and Edmund then closed the door behind them. The door didn’t have a lock so he used a chair to hold it so that no one would be able to come in.

After the door had been locked, he gave a signal to Hillary who then reached into her pocket and brought out a bottle of sleeping gas they had bought earlier. She unclogged it and threw it on the floor. The gas then began to seep out very quickly and within a matter of seconds the whole room was filled with fog and all the human gangsters lay on the floor, unconscious. The vampires, who remained standing, were unaffected by the sleeping gas.

“Let’s start before anyone comes here. We don’t want to have to erase the memory of the whole village,” Dana said as she picked up one of the men.

“Joana, since you’re the one with the least experience, you’ll go first,” Dana said to her. “You’ll give him a small bite by the side of the neck, don’t put your fangs in too deep else you might kill him. And remember what you learnt during your training, don’t let the hunger control you, you have to be the one to control it else you might kill him. When you’ve drank a little, you stop so I’ll suck out the venom and erase his memory. There are ten men here and we get two each, it’ll be enough to keep us until tomorrow.”

She handed the sleeping man to Joana who then did as she was told. She penetrated her fangs into his neck and tried not to go in too deep. This was the first time she was drinking from a human, and it felt too good to stop. She kept on drinking, forgetting what Dana had said, and when Derick noticed life seeping gradually out of her prey, he stopped her and retrieved the human from her.

“I’m sorry,” Joana said, realizing what had happened. “Did I kill him?”

“You would have if I stopped you a second later,” he then placed his fangs in the area where Joana had drunk from to remove the venom, before closing the wound with a bandage Dana handed to him. Thank goodness she remembered to get them from the first aid box in the hotel reception.

“I think you’ve had enough to drink for now,” Dana said to her after checking for his condition. “Let’s just be glad he’s still breathing.”

Joana wanted another one, but she knew Dana would refuse. They had taught her during her lessons that a vampire’s desire for the blood of a human was far greater than the ones they had for animals, but one had to be careful when hunting humans for fear of exposing the secrets of the supernatural world. This is why many vampires preferred to hunt animals.

If it weren’t for Derick, she would have killed this man. She felt terrible.

“It’s ok,” Dana told her. “We understand it’s because you don’t have any experience with human blood, so don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Thank you,” Joana responded. Sometimes she wanted to yell at Dana for spying on her thoughts, but somehow, she felt glad about it because there were a lot of things she wanted to say, but just couldn’t put into words.

She watched as the rest of them began choosing their prey one by one, drinking their blood, removing the venom and sealing the wounds before erasing their memories. It didn’t take long before they finished and when they did, they left the men unconscious in the room. Dana left a fat wad of cash for each of them in their pockets to thank them for their services. It didn’t feel right to just use them like that without any compensation. Hillary removed the sleeping gas bottle and any other evidence; she was the last one to leave so she closed the door behind her.

They went outside the building one by one and began looking around them to check if anyone had seen them coming out. Thankfully, no one did so there was no need to wipe any more minds.

They took long strides before they reached the point where the taxi had dropped them off. A lot of taxi’s didn’t come here very often so they had to wait a long time before one would show up. Dana regretted why she didn’t think of that before and collect the number of the driver who dropped them here. The vamscren they took was already beginning to wear off and Dana was almost tempted to call Mirabelle, as she was the only person they knew here who could call a taxi for them. The only thing they would have to think of was how they would explain to her what they came to do out here.

Thankfully for them, a taxi driver, who was passing by and carrying some goods to the city from a farmer who lived near the village, spotted them where they stood.