Friday Five June 25

 ally, food, pool, revenge, tense

Blood pooled around the victims body, sticky against the floor. Oliver gave this a curious look. Part revulsion; part fear? Anaximander wasn’t certain.

“It’s Peter Hargreaves,” Oliver said quietly.

“You know him?”

“Who doesn’t?”

I don’t, Anaximander thought but he didn’t answer. It was obvious that a reply wasn’t needed. This was nervous talk. Chatting to cover up the shock and fear of stumbling across a dead body in the library. Back when he’d been alive, Anaximander done a radio drama with the same plot.

“It doesn’t make you hungry?”Oliver asked.

“You mean the blood?”

“Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t do anything to you?”

“No.” Oh, it draws me, but not hunger. Anaximander felt his shoulders tense. If he was a newly turned vampire he’d be on the ground lapping up blood like a beast and feeling sick afterwards. You were predator and everything else was food.  If you had a sire to train you, a vampire quickly learned that not all blood was the same. That there were strains and you could only get strength from the blood of a thrall. Like Oliver. And he’d never get a thrall like Oliver if he couldn’t control himself.

“It has to be payback,” Oliver said out loud but in a whisper. There were other people downstairs. A few were even other vampires and thralls with good hearing.

“What makes you think that?” Anaximander replied.

“One member of the Gossick family dies last week with gunshot to the head. A member of the Hargreaves family dies right here also by a gunshot to the head.”

“People get shot all the time.”

“If this were average down on your luck Joe’s sure. But the Gossick’s own half the town, including the bank. The Hargreaves own the other half, including the the real estate company. It can’t be coincidence.”

He had seen the signs all over Hargreaves Development. It was a picture of a smiling older man in a hard hat and a suit who, now that he thought about it, looked much like the dead older man lying in the pool of blood.

Anaximander existed for decades and seen all manner of family turf wars and gang fights. Once the revenge train got started barreling down the tracks it was impossible to stop. 

“Fudge,” Oliver said. Well, not actually ‘fudge’, but is summed up how they both felt at the moment.

 But he knew speaking up wouldn’t help. His handsome future thrall had a criminal record. Not only that, he was right in the middle of committing a crime. Granted, a non-violent crime. And Anaximander didn’t really consider art thieves to be real criminals. Museums were full of stolen art if we wanted to be truthful.

But the reality was that Oliver had an incredibly expensive rare book tucked in his backpack, along with the standard breaking and entering gear. And he felt rather certain that his human hottie had a record somewhere along the way. None of these facts would work in his favor should the call the police.

What would they think if they knew he was allied with a vampire? 

copyright 2021 Echo Ishii