The wash of warm, coppery lifeblood flowed in a delicious wave over Katerina’s tongue. The vital pulse of it pressing into her mouth, down her throat even without her needing to do more than have punctured the vein. She could drain this poor human dry with so little effort it would be laughable.
She flinched back, releasing pressure on the wound so some of the blood spilled out over the human’s skin.
Katerina licked a stripe over the wound, encouraging it to close with the inherent magic vampirism granted. She checked the human’s pulse. Still strong. She settled them against a wall and snuck away into the shadows.
There Katerina waited until one of the human’s friends stumbled upon them. Until they called emergency services. Until the blue flashing lights of an ambulance that left Katerina shading her eyes had appeared and disappeared from the street with Katerina’s meal inside.
She leaned back against the wall, wiping at her own face, swiping away the remnants of blood that lingered there.
Her sire would be disappointed in her.
Katerina’s sire had been particularly enamoured with the monstrosity that vampirism allowed. She had revelled in the freedom of it when compared to her upper class life as a human where every single aspect of her day had been watched and planned an criticised. Unlike Katerina, she had delved into the monstrosity as a rebellion against that.
Katerina, on the other hand, had been working class. Vampirism had come as a challenge of its own. Katerina would be worried for her family except that her sire had torn through her entire village and wiped out the vast majority, including Katerina’s family. Not that Katerina had known that at first. At first, Katerina had been too much a sucker for her own instinctive survival needs to really think about who she was and where she had come from.
Almost fifty years later, Katerina had left her sire’s care. It had taken the full admission from her sire. The admission that she had been avoiding. The admission that she had killed Katerina’s mother and father and siblings with no remorse before Katerina had left.
Walking back to the crypt she’d set up an un-living space in – go figure, poor family and no income left Katerina squatting where her sire had enough familial wealth to stay in. She missed the big family home. She missed the rest of the nest. It was lonely out here.
But it was worth it. She couldn’t stand behind somebody who could do something like that.
Her sire had said that the monstrosity would increase over time. That everybody became their sire eventually.
Katerina had refuted that. Had said she couldn’t believe that to be true.
And yet here she was. Having just nearly drained someone dry. Worse still, someone who had actively consented to be a snack – there was always such a thing as a vamp-lover, go figure.
*
May Theme: Vampires
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