Chapter 4

Jim receives a little "homeschooling" about a couple of the different species of demons in his world, after derailing it from a history lecture.

Jim sighed softly, nibbling on the end of his pencil. The pink thing was soft and perfect for chewing, though it could taste a little better, he mused.

He’d heard the younger scientists back at the lab complain about school, about how glad they were to get into the lab away from school, but he hadn’t quite been able to picture how boring it was until now.

Okay, sure, he’d been restricted from leaving a room while someone droned on and on about technical stuff, medical stuff, this and that, blah, blah. The thing was, he’d never been safe there. He was always living in fear, wondering when they’d take more of his blood or what the effects of the next injection would be, trying to ignore the droning because it usually meant more testing, more bad news for him.

Never before had he learned of the true horrors of...history.

At the front of the small room, Hiko had donned a more teacher-like appearance--or, what she called a teacher-like appearance; Jim had never had another teacher that he could compare Hiko’s current style to, that he could remember.

Hiko was a girl today. Her hair was spun around in a bun, with the bell she usually wore substituted for a pair of small jingle-bell earrings. Her kimono had been swapped out for a red shirt, sky-blue blazer (or whatever it was called), and a matching blue “pencil skirt”.

How the skirt was anything like a pencil escaped Jim.

She had on a pair of glasses and was pointing at a map of what she called “your up”, at a little landmass that looked a lot like a foot kicking a weirdly-shaped ball.

“Here in the Vatican,” she was saying, “the original sanguivores, the ‘true vampires’ as they call themselves today, first introduced themselves. They met up with the humans in charge and negotiated a treaty; that they would only feed on willing humans, and in exchange they’d be allowed to live among the people without fear of--Jim, honey, what are you doing?”

Jim blinked. He quickly put his hands behind his back and said, “Nothing,” even as he flicked clumps of dirt from his fingers. He’d been drawing patterns in the dirt on the floor of the room, absently thinking of the girl who’d rescued him and trying to draw her face in the dirt.

“These ferns weren’t here before,” Hiko said sternly. “We’re not working on phytokinesis right now, we’re learning history. Don’t you want to learn where the sanguivores came from?”

“I’m still not sure what a sanguivore is,” Jim pointed out, glancing at the ferns growing on either side of his drawing. Hadn’t they been there before? He was sure he’d used them as the borders of his drawing.

Hiko gasped audibly, putting a hand over her mouth. “I forgot to explain the etymology! I’m sorry, kiddo. It’s the term for any demon that eats blood. ‘Sanguine’ is the root word for blood, while ‘vore’ means to eat.”

Jim must have looked disgusted, because Hiko giggled and patted his head.

“Well, now we know you aren’t a sanguivore!” she giggled. “But there are a few different kinds. All of them are sustained, at least in some part, by feeding on blood. It’s a wide misconception that human blood is more nutritious than animal blood to a vampire or dracopire, when really, humans have pumped their own systems full of such nasty things like monosodium glutamate and high-fructose corn syrup that--”

“What’s a...those things?”

Hiko blinked. “They’re stuff that’s bad for you that humans have slowly built up a tolerance for. But animals, especially wild animals, are much more wholesome and nutritious. Some sanguivores prefer human blood anyway, but they get their supply from willing donors. Sometimes they’ll just get bagged blood, other times they’ll let a human enter employment--er, start working for them. They’ll do normal housemaid stuff, and every other week or so the sanguivore will take a meal from them. A lot of humans like this kind of work, because it pays well and the vampire will often feed them very well because...well, if you’re going to eat a steak, you have to make sure it tastes how you want it to, right?”

Jim nodded. “You’re not a sa...sane-guh-vore, are you?” he asked.

“Me? Goodness, no,” she giggled. “I told you, I’m a kitsune. We’re nature spirits. But since you turned history class into sanguivore class, let’s stick with that, shall we?”

He nodded. Hiko went on,

“So, there are many different kinds of sane-gui-vores. They’re usually diverged--separated--into two categories: those that are made, and those that are born. True vampires are the kind you hear about in the old stories. They’re created by a vampire biting a human, taking their blood, and giving some of their own blood in return.

“Now, they have two kinds of blood-bonded servants; a human who’s been bitten, but not had any vampire blood, is called a thrall. This is a human donor, so when the vampire bites them without taking blood, they’ve essentially freed the human from the blood bond. At any time the human can decide to become part of the family, and take the blood of the vampire to become one themselves.

“The other sort of servant is called a ghoul. This is where it gets weird. A human--usually one terminally or mentally ill, meaning they have some kind of debilitating brain sickness or a physical sickness that’s going to kill them--will enter servitude under a vampire. However, a human isn’t made immortal by becoming a thrall. So this human will enter an agreement of the opposite kind--they’ll drink the vampire’s blood to become blood-bonded, and once this happens, the vampire cannot turn them into a vampire, because, essentially, the human will have died in the process. And a vampire can’t drink a dead human’s blood; it’s more poisonous to them than garlic. Which, by the way, isn’t actually poisonous; it just has such a strong smell and taste that vampires, as well as other demons with elevated senses, that they just can’t handle it.

“But, anyway, a ghoul, unlike a thrall, is easily identified by its appearance. The skin will change color to a pale grayish-silver, and their hair will change silver. The eyes will remain the same, but for a ring of red around the pupil. Not a whole lot of people want to turn into a ghoul, and will ask the vampire to turn them into a vampire instead, and it’s mainly because of the appearance.”

“What does a vampire look like?” Jim asked.

“Oh, much the same as a human. The only differences are: pale skin, because of their sensitivity to the light preventing them from getting a tan; sharp fangs, which drip with the venom necessary for blood-bonding; and their eyes, which usually remain the same except that when they are hungry, emotional, or attempting to hypnotize their prey--to make the bite less painful--their eyes will glow red.”

“Oh.” Jim was finding this lecture far more interesting than the history they’d been talking about before. “So...what’s the other san-gi-vore?”

“Sane-gui-vore,” Hiko corrected again, smiling behind a hand. “There are actually a bunch of different species and sub-species with sanguivores, but the most divergent--the most different--from the other kinds are dracopires. This isn’t their actual name, but it’s what everyone knows them as. They’re dark-gray-skinned with white hair, and like true vampires their eyes glow red occasionally. But what strikes people most about their appearance, what gives them their name, is that while they have mostly humanoid features, they will usually have the legs, tail, or wings of a dragon. They’re born--well, hatched--rather than bitten, and their weaknesses are not the same as a true vampire’s. A dracopire can go out in the sunlight and some of them enjoy garlic despite the strong scent. They have thralls and ghouls, but the blood bond is often stronger than a true vampire’s, and they can’t create new dracopires by biting them...Is something wrong?” Hiko asked suddenly, crouching in front of him.

Jim blinked. He felt at his face, realizing his brow was all wrinkly and his lips were pinched together. He couldn’t unpinch them, either.

“I met a dracopire,” he said. “In the lab. His name was Graham. He said he was from a long way away, and he had a funny accent. But they called him ‘Subject E-2’ and they took him far away from me because once I let him bite me when he said he was hungry.”

Hiko’s brows perked. “So you are a thrall?”

“I guess so, if that’s all he had to do,” Jim said. “What’s it mean?”

“To be a thrall, usually you will feel some sort of emotion from your vampire master, some kind of pull toward him. You’ll know when he’s hurt and when he’s in danger. But...if he’s experienced, he can put up a shield that prevents you from feeling all that. Do you feel any sort of pull to the lab?”

Jim frowned. “I mean...a little bit,” he said quietly. “But I don’t want to go back.”

“What about Graham?” she asked. “What about the girl who helped you escape?”

Jim’s brow wrinkled a little more. He suddenly realized that they’d still be in there. No one else had escaped with him. The other prisoners, subjects, lab rats...they didn’t stop existing once he’d gotten outside.

“I don’t want them to be in there,” he told Hiko. “They’re going to be hurt...Hiko, we need to break them out!”

Hiko opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, something crashed into the wall of the structure.

“Run out the back,” Hiko said quietly, waving a hand. Behind them, a few of the trees that made up the wall broke apart from each other, crumbled bits of moss falling to the ground. Jim hesitated.

“But, what’s going--”

“Don’t argue,” she interjected. “You need to run. Don’t let this red bull find you.”

Hesitating a moment longer, Jim backed up, toward the hole in the wall. The other side of the home received another loud thud, making him flinch and speed up a little.

Where his feet had been planted on the ground inside, several black, thorny vines twisted around his footprints.

Author's Note

Let me know if the end seems rushed to anyone but me.