Lycanthropy

Wherever she might be:

“Wake up little white.” Radu said to me.

My body hurt, my skin felt like it was melting off of me and I was still tired even though I had slept all night. It took me a few moments until the pain subsided and I was able to sit up right.

Radu was so kind to hand me a plate of food, with three juicy steaks, a spinach salad with beans and nuts. He even had arranged for some cereal with extra fibres and such, so a bowl with that plus milk was standing nearby as well. Also some tablets with vitamins and painkillers and a big glass of water to take them in with, stood on the nightstand.

This sounded pretty nice of him right?

Well no… all the items that I had to eat, were all containing extra iron to resupply my body with new blood quicker. And the vitamins had extra building blocks for the production of blood as well.

Like clockwork, almost literally, I was hooked up to a machine at exactly ten in the morning and at eight in the evening. I could have tried to fight it, but I didn’t know where I was and how many of these Nightstalkers were present in this building. Besides, Radu had threatened me with returning to Aron’s pack and capture or kill all of them if I didn’t do as I was told. And because I still had no idea of any of their capabilities, I couldn’t risk to attack them.

I had decided to die over and over again, hoping that Aron could find me anytime soon. But I couldn’t talk to him through the link, so I was too far away for him. I could be at the other side of the world right now, as in this room where I was captured, there were no windows to look outside for any possible landmarks to see.

But dying twice a day became exhausting. I yawned as I ate the food, which was delicious, but it still tasted awful mentally, as it was a means to drain me again within a few hours.

“Radu?” I called for him.

“Yes, my little white?” He answered, using the name I came to ignore the moment he had said it first.

“You know I can’t die, I have proven it to you plenty of times already. But I have never died this many times in such a short time, I can feel my body being drained and exhausted. Could you skip the ten o’ clock for today perhaps?” I asked him.

“But you have to at least die about two-hundred times for the people that I had taken otherwise.” He said, as if it was the most normal subject to talk about in a decent conversation.

“True, but I’m not struggling, or demanding food of two-hundred people, and you can kill me every day, for eternity. So, within a year I have paid myself back almost double.”

“Yes and in half a year too, if we keep up at this rate.”

“I just need a little more sleep and if you keep me inside this room, I might truly die of boredom. At least entertain me with something.” I sighed.

“What did my little white had in mind?” He said while stalking closer to the bed, crawling onto it and picking a potato from my plate, to put it in my mouth.

He had been nothing but charming, besides being a monster that drains my blood twice a day.

His body looked really nice though, where his abs looked well trained upon, and his silky white skin was unblemished of any scars or wounds. He even carefully took showers each morning, did his hair and shaved his face, and wore a different coloured suit every other day.

Not that his body did anything for me or Dakota, all we craved for was Aron, and nothing could compete against his warm body. But Radu taking care of himself, and staying in this room with me, sleeping in the same bed, fetching me food and such, made me wonder about him.

“Tell me about yourself.” I said.

“Hmm… well you are going to be here for a long time, so I might as well share. What do you want to know?”

I don’t want to ask things about his weaknesses at the first chance I get, as that would maybe stop him from telling me anything.

“How old are you? You don’t seem a lot older over thirty, yet there is something that makes me doubt that.” I said.

“You are very perceptive to details, but I am actually thirty.” He said but I didn’t buy it, not truly.

“For how long?” I asked and he laughed.

“Well, I have been thirty for over thousands of years actually.”

“You are well preserved to be that old then.”

“Yes, that is what the blood is for. I need it to live that long, and to be in good health.”

I had asked him a few other meaningless questions, and I actually enjoyed myself a bit. He was funny and could be just as sarcastic as I am. He kept me distracted for a little while, until a knock on the door was heard.

It was time already for another round of drainage and I hopefully looked towards Radu, for maybe skipping it this time.

“This was fun for a while, but don’t forget why you are here.” He said with a serious voice again, while gesturing me to get hooked up to the machine.

The woman that came in, unloaded everything from the cart, that was required to connect me to the machine. She cleaned my wrist with alcohol, connected the machine to the wall socket and grabbed the other items as she put them together.

A small cold device was pushed on my wrist again, and upon twisting the button on it, two separate pins injected into my skin. She turned on the machine, and my blood was taken and pushed through the tube that went up to it. These two puncture holes in my wrists were similar to the ones on the attacked warriors, but it still remained the question as to how the warriors hadn’t attacked while being drained.

The drainage went so fast, that it took a minute per unit to drain me from the blood, so I watched the first few units be changed and in between number four and five, the woman forgot to turn off the machine, and spilled some of my blood on the cart. She instantly saw her mistake, and turned it off.

She looked at the few drops, but instead of wiping them away with a cloth, she dragged her finger through them, and put them quickly in her own mouth. Instantly the cracks on the side of her eyes were healed and she enjoyed it, but soon realized she had made another grave mistake, but it was too late for Radu to not see it this time.

He had instantly walked over to the woman and threw her against the wall.

I don’t know why he had let me ask the questions and be so nice to me only a few minutes ago. I thought I had broken through for a moment, but the monster within him wasn’t gone. Not in the slightest.

The woman apologised, I assume, in a strange language to me. But Radu wouldn’t have it, he just snapped her neck and she laid there, lifeless.

“Wow, you really don’t like to waste your food.” I remarked.

Within a flash he was on top of my body, half drained of my blood I was exhausted, so I couldn’t do much to hold him from doing anything to me. I tried to push him off of me, using my hands against his chest, but it didn’t do a thing.

“Your blood is only for me, and no one else.” He said with a husky voice, blood red eyes and thickened veins on his face.

“I’m getting a whiplash from your emotions. Why are you being nice one second and a monster the next? What is it with you!” I tried yelling but I hadn’t much energy to be truly angry.

I breathed heavily, and passed out from the lack of sleep.

I had woken up after a few hours and found myself lying on the bed, with still the device lodged into my wrist. The machine hadn’t been turned on again, and the dead female was still lying on the floor at the wall. But Radu was nowhere to be seen.

I hadn’t died, I could tell, because I wasn’t that exhausted as other times. So Radu hadn’t drained me of the rest of my blood himself.

The device taken off my wrist, I checked the bathroom if he was there, but he wasn’t. I took a shower and got dressed, but he still wasn’t back at the time I was done.

This was completely confusing me, why didn’t he kill me? He had told me to remember why I was here, so why not follow through on it?

He had never let me get out of the room before, but since he wasn’t here, I might as well go and try to explore a bit. I tested the door, if it was locked, and found it wasn’t. Upon checking out of the room, with just my head around the door, I saw Nightstalkers guarding there. They weren’t looking in my direction, so I tried to step out, and still they didn’t do a thing. So I walked out completely and figured they would be following me then, but that didn’t happen either.

I walked down the hall, and noticed that everything was either black, dark red or grey. It was a grave view to look at, but everything was clean and nothing was littered. On small side-tables stood large black shiny vases with white flowers, on the walls were old Victorian lamps with lightbulbs in the shape of a flame, and on the floor was a carpet of grey and dark red with an intricate design.

Sometimes I could see a flash here or there, notifying me that the Nightstalkers used their skill in their home as well. I guess that they are used to using it. But none of them stopped to look at me, or dared to attack me or question me. They just kept on going and never bothered me.

Then I saw one room where plenty of them teleported out and in, so I wanted to see what kind of room it was. I glanced around the corner and saw some sort of kitchen.

There was a counter, and trays filled with clean glasses in different sizes. The Nightstalkers were pouring them full, with taps that stood in the centre, in the middle of a round bar. They were drinking and standing in groups, talking and laughing, as if they were in a bar or restaurant.

Several pipes were going down from the ceiling and I looked at the hallway again. Those same pipes that came into this kitchen, also led to other rooms as I saw them going across the ceiling and down some walls as well. I had just assumed they were water pipes for the showers or something, but it seems that it wasn’t.

They were filled with blood instead!

The stench of iron and decay filled my nose, and it was hard to ignore the smells that came out of this ‘kitchen’.

This whole place has been installed with these pipes, to provide every one with blood, whenever they wanted to. I looked inside again and noticed that no one wanted to look me in the eye. They stopped talking but never looked in my direction. And when I stepped into the room, they all had vanished within two seconds. A flurry of lights surrounded me, passing by me, as they all had left.