by Kitty Thomas
In our city, I’d known things were bad. I’d felt the helpless despondence around me, contrasted with the panic of those who hadn’t yet given up but were about to. And I wasn’t aware of a resistance forming.
I straightened my clothing. I had the sense that it was important not to look too much like I’d been fucked and fed from—to not look like prey. At least my clothes weren’t ripped. He’d spared me that indignity.
Santo dropped us off at the front door where two burly, fanged guards blocked our way. Gabriel raised a brow as if their attempt at menace was nothing more than a child’s costume.
“I’m the leader of the first city.” He said it like one who was used to wielding power, one who knew no other way of being in the world. I’d noticed it on his own turf, but I hadn’t realized how strongly it extended into any space he occupied.
“The king?” one of them asked.
I could almost feel his eyes rolling. Gabriel passed the queen’s letter to the guard who’d spoken. He looked it over, inspected the seal, read it, then passed it to his companion for a second opinion.
“And why isn’t Her Majesty with you?” the first guard asked.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “As I’m sure you’re aware, the queen asked for my help in reining in her rebellious subjects. Am I to leave my city without a leader because Amari can’t manage her own affairs?”
“And who is this?” the second one asked, staring at me as if the dinner bell had rung.
“This is my dinner and entertainment.”
“We could have provided…”
“I follow an exacting diet,” Gabriel said.
The second guard passed the letter back to Gabriel and opened the door. “As instructed by the queen, the palace and city are at your disposal while you are here. Someone inside will direct you to her chambers. You may want to keep the letter in case you are questioned by anyone else.”
Gabriel slipped the paper into his pocket.
Inside the palace were an uncountable number of blood drinkers, many of them feeding on humans. The humans wore bracelets with numbers and bar codes. It was jarring to see the blatant technology after being in Gabriel’s world. I’d expected Amari’s home to be more like his.
Machines beeped and whirred as bar codes around wrists were scanned and statuses were announced by a mechanical recorded voice.
“Citizen 30987, last fed on seventy-five hours ago. Available for feeding and other play. Memo: Citizen pleads to be spared the dungeon due to slow healing times. Medical note attached.”
“Citizen 45329, last fed on twenty-five hours ago. Unavailable for feeding. Available for play. High pain tolerance. Avoid bleeding for at least fifty more hours.”
“Citizen 17320, expired. Do not consume. Remove to retirement center immediately.”
The humans were herded through the palace like cattle. Suddenly, the queen’s special pleading that she made life uncomplicated for them and gave them everything was doubtful. Maybe they were well fed, but this hardly seemed better than the version of life I’d been used to. I rubbed my wrist, as if surreptitiously checking that I hadn’t been tagged and coded in my sleep on the way to the city.
Someone who looked official strode up to us from the general direction we’d entered from. “Your Majesty, what an honor it is to have you with us!” The official’s bow was comically deep. “They said at the front that you brought your own meal. Surely you’ll want fresh and vital blood. As you can see, we date and tag all of our food. We don’t eat them past a certain age, and we rotate them out so they have rest days to heal and produce more blood for us.”
“Helene is always fresh and vital. I heal her with my own blood,” Gabriel said.
The scanning and citizen status announcements stopped. Everyone looked our way.
Shock. Horror. Disgust. A few nearby blood drinkers raised their heads, the fresh, vital, rotated, barcoded, and scanned blood dripping off their fangs.
“You would give one of these animalistic pieces of filth the gift of your blood?” He lowered his voice, clearly afraid the humans might hear what he was about to say. “You know it can stop their aging. You could have a revolt on your hands with that kind of policy.”
I felt stupid. I should have realized if he could heal people, he could stop aging. Wasn’t aging a type of disease?
Gabriel growled. “I’m not the one who forgot the code of discretion. It doesn’t matter how powerful we become. We keep our secrets because everyone has weaknesses. Or have you forgotten all the Tutelary War cost us?”
The official glanced at me as if I carried bacteria lethal to his kind. I felt autonomous compared to the rest of the people here. There were degrees of enslavement, and my version had been somewhat posh and personal by comparison—a master who at least pretended to care.
“I wouldn’t worry about my human,” Gabriel said. “I’m not the one who decided to inform my entire city of their food chain status. We’re going to Amari’s chambers to rest. Do not disturb us.”
“Y-your Majesty, we don’t allow the unclean humans into the queen’s quarters. They are only allowed in the common areas and their own homes and spaces outside the palace.”
Gabriel growled. “The queen is running things for me in my city at her discretion.”
It took real strength of will for me not to burst out laughing at this. He continued, unperturbed by my near slip, “I will be running her city the same way. I’m here to determine the extent of the queen’s mess. Do not interfere.”
“We will need to tag her, at least,” the official said, his tone placating.
The wristbands looked to be of a hard plastic-like substance. Not immediately harmful. Not impossible to remove. Still, the idea of being tagged like an animal caused me to shift closer to Gabriel. At least the collar at my throat was beautiful. At least it signified some sort of specialness and protection. With Gabriel, I wasn’t a number. He’d never called me human—unclean or otherwise. He’d mostly called me Helene.
I clung to Gabriel and gripped his hand, not even sure if he could protect me if they insisted on this protocol and decided to turn on him. Sure, he was one of the royals, but that might not stop anything. After all, their queen was locked in a dungeon at the moment. What stopped them from carrying out the same measures against us?
Gabriel growled. “Absolutely not.”
The official led us away from the crowd where conversation could remain more private. He lowered his voice. “Your Majesty, with all due respect, if it is your will that she be protected, she’ll need to be tagged. We will, of course, put in any special rules and protections you request so that she remains unharmed.”
A beat.
“Very well.”
The official smiled and led us into a private chamber, separating me from Gabriel immediately. Although he was just on the other end of the room, he felt worlds away, and it sunk in that the gold at my throat was nothing more than a pretty decoration here. No one knew what it meant, nor did they care. They had no loyalty to my master.
Gabriel and the official whispered next to a screen while a technician input the desired information. A different female technician led me to a chair and guided my arm into a glass sleeve. She maneuvered it until my wrist was just underneath a wide vertical tube that stretched up beyond the ceiling to whatever was above.
“It won’t hurt. And it’ll be over in just a couple of minutes,” she said, soothingly. I knew she was one of the blood drinkers because when she touched me and spoke that way, holding my gaze in her own, I felt the push against my mind. It was as if hands had reached inside my skull and wrapped around my brain, molding and kneading it like soft clay. Like an art project.
“Do not do that to her. Stay out of her mind,” Gabriel said.
Both the technician beside me and the official across the room seemed surprised Gabriel could tell so easily and with such certainty what had been done. He’d looked up sharply the moment she’d touched me, seconds before she’d start
ed pushing into my mind.
“I-I’m sorry, sir,” she said, stepping away from me.
“This is the king of the first city,” the official said, annoyed that she didn’t just magically know this.
“I-I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” the technician said, dropping her gaze.
“Sir is just fine,” Gabriel said. “Just stay out of her mind.”
She nodded quickly.
A rushing sound like a vacuum suction began. An immense heat filled the glass sleeve my arm was in, but it happened so fast, it didn’t hurt. Maybe it hadn’t been enough to actually burn me, and if it had, the white cloudy smoke that filled the sleeve immediately after was cool and soothing.
When it cleared, the band was sealed around my wrist. It was heavier than I expected, and I was sure it couldn’t be removed easily. Though I was confident it could be removed. I suspected the humans in the city didn’t dare take them off, since they were likely scanned everywhere they went.
My lip curled at the vile thing. I couldn’t believe the queen was shocked by a revolt.
The technician tentatively came forward and helped me up from the chair, careful not to mentally impose her will upon me, while Gabriel watched like a bird of prey from across the room. She picked up a sleek black device with a laser light emanating from it and ran it over the bar code.
The voice I’d heard in the common area spoke over a nearby speaker. “Guest 352. Personal property of the king. Unavailable for feeding or play. Touch on penalty of death. Only bar code scanning allowed. Guest 352 has no restrictions and may occupy the same spaces as the king. If lost, return to the palace immediately.”
I felt like labeled leftovers in a plastic container. It would have been easier to tattoo “Gabriel’s Dinner” to my forehead, but I doubted such an act would match his aesthetic. And if anything, his distaste for the barcoded band was as much to do with his aesthetic as any personal moral qualms. In fact, Gabriel seemed satisfied by the message on my wrist to a degree that I worried he might institute tagging back home.
Despite the impersonal quality of the message that numbered me like some thing to be consumed and discarded, at least the only one allowed to consume me in any way was my master. And nothing between us had been impersonal from the first time he’d forced me to my knees.
Gabriel motioned, and I went to him. When we left the room, several in the common area stared. Some of them—at least the blood drinkers with such good hearing—had heard the pronouncement when my bar code scanned. No doubt the humans overheard the immortals talking amongst themselves about it. The blood drinkers looked resentful. The humans seemed the same, but for different reasons.
Oh, my stay here was going to be fun. Not that I’d planned to make friends on this trip.
I wasn’t sure why Gabriel had brought me along, except that he didn’t want to feed on anyone else while he was away, and he wanted me near him. That thought filled me with unexpected pleasure, which I tried to tamp down to no avail.
The official took us to the queen’s quarters. She had an entire wing with guards stationed both at the entrance to the wing itself as well as outside each individual door.
“Her Majesty’s sleeping chamber is at the end of the hall,” the official said. “We’d ask that you not defile her room with the human. If the human must be in the queen’s wing, it may stay in another room, and you may visit it to take care of your needs there.”
Gabriel’s eyes flashed. “The human is Helene. She will be sleeping with me at the end of the hall. If you have any objection to this, the truce between our cities can be rescinded. Amari has already broken it by seeking my intervention at all. I doubt you want a war with me when you have so many of your own troubles right here from within.”
The official’s gaze shifted to me as if I’d just been given some dark state secret requiring my immediate death, but Gabriel’s growl had him nodding and excusing himself quickly.
When we were alone, Gabriel locked the outer doors and led me down the long hallway to the queen’s sleeping chamber. As we passed, curious eyebrows rose on otherwise statue-still guards.
Once inside, he locked that door as well. Clearly, he wasn’t counting on anyone else to protect us. He motioned for me to move away from the door.
This one room was the size of the main cottage at Gabriel’s place—the house I’d once thought was practically a mansion.
I found it confusing that the queen could have so much lavish and outward power and control, yet come crawling to Gabriel, begging for his help. Next to this display, my master seemed like a working-class stiff with just enough to cover his debts.
His power was quiet yet unrelenting. The queen’s was a show. Maybe she’d always been scared of losing everything, and the enormous palace was an outward manifestation of this fear.
We were on one of the higher floors, which outside of the need for a quick getaway, was more secure than the first by far. Even so, there were guards stationed outside down on the ground stretching all the way around the wing.
Gabriel took me into the bathroom and turned the shower on. But instead of undressing, he took a small device from his pocket and started to scan it over every available nook and cranny. Gabriel. Mr. Paper and fire and old things and phones with cords was using technology to search for recording devices.
“Okay, it’s safe to speak.” But he didn’t turn the shower off. The steam rose and began to fog the mirrors. Even if there were no electronic ears, he was keenly aware of the hearing capabilities of his kind. Even with stone walls and some distance between us and anyone else, the shower acted as an additional sound buffer.
He put the device back in his pocket and withdrew the key to my collar. “Turn around.”
I turned and he removed the gold band from around my neck. At first I thought he intended to feed, but he put the collar inside the inner pocket of his jacket and returned the key back to the other pocket.
My hand rose to touch my bare throat. All at once I was both relieved to be free of it and upset by its absence. I didn’t like the way the bar code at my wrist and lack of collar at my throat made me seem like so much anonymous chattel. If I’d had any doubt before, belonging to Gabriel was far better than belonging to everyone.
“This is not permanent, Helene. We have less than fifty hours until day. I need you to blend with the others and go out into the city to help me find the rebels.”
“B-by myself?” I couldn’t just go out there at night. I’d be vulnerable, exposed prey.
“The bar code will protect you if one of my kind scans it. The city is well-lit. It’s different here. You’ll be okay. Go.”
So this was the reason he’d brought me. It wasn’t that he found my blood super special and intoxicating. It wasn’t that he wanted me near him—despite the evidence to the contrary on the trip over. He needed a spy that wouldn’t look suspicious. A human.
Why didn’t Gabriel consider me a security risk? Was it because he’d hurt Simone if I betrayed him? Or did he trust me? I had no ties to this place, but shouldn’t I at least side with my own kind against the monsters? It was the internal struggle of the whole city: align with the monsters for some level of perceived safety or resist and be free—and probably dead in short order.
I’d practically sought death out only a few hundred hours ago. Why should Gabriel trust me? I didn’t even trust myself.
As if responding to my thoughts, he pulled me into his embrace and sank his fangs into my throat. He drank for a few moments, searching for the truth inside me.
He pulled away and sealed his bite. “Don’t put yourself in harm’s way, Helene. We are past death now, you and I.”
Were we?
Chapter Nine: 41 hours until day
As I descended the staircase into the main hall, hundreds of pairs of eyes went to me—most glowing. But otherwise, they remained engaged in scanning and feeding.
“Citizen 17783, expired. Do not consume. Remove to retirement center immediately.”
The woman getting her bar code scanned didn’t look that old to me. But then nobody here looked old. As I got closer, I saw a few lines around her eyes and mouth. They apparently liked their veal around here. I couldn’t imagine her being treated as an old person.
The woman screamed. “NO!” Guards rushed in to contain the situation, using the mind control tricks on her to silence the scene. The immortals moved in as one unit—as a pack—to descend upon the humans in hearing and sight range, touching them, speaking quietly to them, erasing the apprehension from their faces.
With the attention off me, I slipped to the edges of the room and followed them, careful to stay a good distance behind.
I didn’t know what lay outside the palace or where the rebels were, but I was sure this woman must be one of them or at least know something; otherwise why struggle and fight when she was scanned? The other one who’d been deemed expired hadn’t kicked up a fuss.
I peeked around a corner as they took the now-placid woman into a gray sterile-looking service elevator. I watched the numbers descend all the way to the bottom. A dungeon, maybe?
My countdown clock showed thirty minutes pass before the guards came back up. I ducked into a supply closet and waited for them to go by, thankful for the cleaning chemicals that surrounded me, masking my human scent.
When everything was clear, I got on the elevator and went to the bottom level, unsure how well the information encoded in my wrist band would protect me under the circumstances. But surely the king was allowed in any part of the palace or city. And according to Gabriel, that extended to me.
When the doors opened, it wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d expected a sort of larger dungeon set-up, like what Gabriel had. Instead, what I got were sterile steel walls that reflected my own image back to me as I walked down the long hall to the door at the end.
Several multi-directional round black cameras were bolted into the ceiling. Each craned its motorized neck at me, following me as I moved. I expected the door to be locked or for someone to question me through a call box, but that didn’t happen.
