Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 37136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
“Are you Carter’s maker?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Gideon said softly. “How might I help you?”
There was still time for them to make a decision that might save their lives, and here and there, a few of the mob melted back into darkness. Gideon let them go. Only the impudent and foolish would be taken this night.
“Can we come in and see Carter?”
“Yeah! Can Carter come out to play?”
A smattering of laughter rippled through the remainder of the group. There were at least ten still left, becoming emboldened every moment something terrible did not happen to them. They were impatient, these young men and women. They had been trained by their phones to believe everything, good or bad, would manifest instantly. It did not occur to any of them that they were being lured into the den of a vicious vampire coven, mostly due to the fact they thought they were trying to get in.
“Carter cannot come to you, but we would be more than happy to invite you in for dinner.”
At this point, only the bloodiest of idiots would take up that invitation. They believed themselves to be on the trail of the internet’s most popular vampire, and Gideon, elegant and beautiful as he was, could not avoid exuding menace on the word dinner.
“What’s for dinner?”
It was a bold question, one with some modicum of intelligence. Gideon smiled and answered simply.
“A banquet.”
A little while later…
They had almost finished the last body when someone said something about it maybe not being the best idea to have killed all these people all at once.
Gideon wasn’t sure who had said such a silly thing, and he did not have the energy to investigate.
Blood drunk and satisfied for the first time in a long time, Gideon paid that comment little mind. He was reliving the glory days, when impudent villagers would inevitably find themselves on his menu. This was how it should be. This was how it was always intended to be. He was quite grateful to the fledgling for rejuvenating his interest in the world, showing him that this technology could be used to nourish.
Gideon no longer felt bored and sleepy. Instead, he felt invigorated and ironically, alive. For the first time since awaking in this cursed age of technology and collapse, he saw a path forward for himself and his kind. These little blood bags were insolent and so removed from the basic fundamentals of life, they no longer understood what it was to be human. But prey didn’t need to know it was prey in order to be delicious. In fact, these young people making themselves digitally immortal were incredibly tender and tasty, almost like veal. Soft lives made soft people, made delicious food.
Gideon looked at the scene before him. It was bloody, to be sure, but he saw a similar expression on the several dozen vampires who feasted with him. They all had the look of predators long denied proper prey. They had been very careful to stay hidden in this modern world, to keep their existence from society at large. Ancient blood feasts were long forgotten. But Gideon remembered. Gideon remembered it all.
A little over a thousand years ago….
Bright sun beat down on Gideon’s back, warming his chilled flesh. He wore a headdress of quetzal feathers, a bark band securing it to his head with a diadem of jade. His people called him king, and for that he did not destroy them. He was not hungry, however. He had not been hungry for many years thanks to the hunting prowess of the warriors raised by his generals.
Gideon, wearing the name Etzli, walked the dry space cut out of the jungle. Great erections of stone made up a city that would surely be the glory of the ages.
Pens full of fattened prisoners ready to be walked up the thousand steps to eternity. Some wailed. Some begged. Some sat silent and wide eyed, knowing what their fate would be, for they had seen the fates of hundreds of others.
On days such as these, in the wake of successful war, the sacrifices happened six times per hour, for sixteen hours a day, beginning at dawn and going until dusk. Ninety-six souls per day, all going to feed Gideon and his children.
The priests were drinking the sacred brew, a mycological concoction from a local mushroom growing in the fecal material of ungulates. It altered their minds, gave them visions, and separated them from the horrors of their actions. Everybody in King Etzli’s city was broken to his will. There was not a baby born who did not lose his innocence by the time he was able to speak, seeing the cruelties and perversities visited on the alleged enemies of these brutes who considered themselves warriors and wizards.
Soon, the pyramid was running red with blood on all four sides. It was a waste, but Gideon understood the need for drama. It pleased his subjects to see the cruelty and destruction they were capable of. It made them feel strong to commune with gods.