He shrugged. “Hard to say without getting real confirmation from the dead. The ones that linger in Silveropolis are strangely quiet. I can’t reach out to the victims, either. That guy we found in the forest? It’s like he never existed.”
Gil grunted as he lugged both crates of fruit out of the trunk. “Then maybe they’ve moved on, too. But it’s always possible that it’s something more sinister than that.”
“Entrapment,” Asher said, shaking his head. “Terrible thing to do. Some magical traditions still practice it, I’m sure. Put someone’s soul in a jar, keep it as long as you like, forever, even. Fate worse than death. Blasphemous, as far as I’m concerned.”
“There’s also the very real chance that their spirits have been snuffed out, too,” Gil said. “Eaten by something, maybe. It’s not unheard of. And speaking of eating, just who the hell needs this much fruit, anyway? Will one of you help me with these at least?”
“But you’re so big and strong, Gilberto,” I purred. “All those huge, enormous werewolf muscles. You got this.”
He frowned harder because I knew he was trying not to show how he was at least a tiny bit affected by the compliment. Flattery really does get you everywhere. At the very least it gets impressionable werewolves to haul around your kumquats for you.
“Stupid thing, buying all of this just to show off to your lady love. This stuff is all going to spoil unless we eat apples for every meal. Just enthrall her officially and be done with it already.”
Asher peered into one of the crates, then shook his head. “I don’t even understand how she turns a profit on any of this. The lady loves her fruit. Eventually she’s going to run out of funding. Gil’s right, Sterling. If you’re looking to keep yourself fed, you really should just make her your thrall already. You’ll be supporting a local business.”
“Supporting a local – mind your own damn business! The both of you. I’ll ask her when I’m good and ready.”
Which was going to be when, exactly? The process of making someone your thrall wasn’t just something that came up over a cup of coffee. It’s a matter of ethics in many ways, really, but vampires the world over have different approaches to keeping up their food supply. I couldn’t even say it was a cultural or a regional thing.
A lot of it came down to personal beliefs and preferences. You might think an ancient vampire would be perfectly happy to use hypnotism to take all the blood they needed, for example. But I’d heard of at least one old fart in Romania who housed and supported his very willing thralls all under the same roof. One big happy family.
A younger, newer vampire might be someone who’d be more willing to go through the social complexities it took to establish a relationship with their very first thrall. Still, limited finances and desperation could very well mean that they would end up resorting to hunting city streets past midnight, anyway.
You only had to look to the jargon to know that the vampire world had progressed, even if only a little. No one really called their human juice boxes cattle anymore. Thrall was a much nicer way to put it. You could argue that “human juice box” is even ruder, but hush, I’m talking.
At the end of the day, the word enthrallment didn’t really hold to either of its definitions anymore, at least when it came to the vampire-thrall dynamic. I liked making contracts. There were fewer problems that way. Not as many hurt feelings, for one, and smaller risk of a scorned thrall turning around and stabbing you in the heart with an ice pick. That way you could sort out little details, like the frequency of feeding, or even the delivery method. Some preferred more mechanical ways of extracting their blood before giving it to me. Others enjoyed the eroticism of the vampire’s kiss. Either way, I got to feed. It was worth it.
You’d be surprised at the sheer variety of people who open themselves up to enthrallment. The bottles I’d brought with me, you already know about their sources. Both the kindergarten teacher and the aspiring actor liked it when I visited, when I took my fill with their permission. The teacher, I appreciated how her skin smelled and tasted faintly of distant flowers. The actor, the way he squirmed and moaned when I sank my fangs into his neck, it was almost as satisfying as his blood itself.
But what all thralls had in common was at least some small awareness of the supernatural, of our existence among them. I’d met a few of mine through exhibitions of the darker sort of art, in underground sex dungeons, even clubs or concerts that catered to those with more aggressive tastes in music. Think goths, fetishists, fanciers of horror, my favorite kind of human, the type that belonged to one or another counterculture. The human version of freaks.
And then you had Olivia, who loved fruit. Fucking loved it, enough to make a living off it. She was sweetness and light, pretty dresses and blushing cheeks. How the hell was I even going to bring up the subject of turning her into a blood donor? It didn’t feel right to just yank the veil off of someone’s eyes like that, especially not someone like Olivia.
“You like her.”
The night came spinning back to me, Asher’s eyes staring deeply into mine. He was suddenly standing too close. I shoved him lightly in the chest. He laughed.
“Stop trying to read my mind, Mayhew.”
“Oh my God,” he said, chuckling. “You like her too much to corrupt her. Is that it?”
“Fucking fuck off already,” I said, stubbing my cigarette out on the ground. “It feels wrong, okay? I’m not saying she’s some delicate flower that needs preserving under a bell jar, but I don’t know about just plunging her into our world like that.”
“Ew,” Gil said, wrinkling his nose. “You do like her.”
“I fucking hate you guys. We need to figure this Uriah shit out. Why are we focusing on Olivia? Shut the fuck up about her already.”
“Fine. If you say so.” Asher shook his head, wiping away a tear, his expression going serious again. “But I’m going to go back to suggesting the thing that you don’t want us doing. I’m serious, Sterling. It’s looking like a communion is the best way to go about this.”
I scowled at him, then turned to Gil, questioning. Gil tilted his head and shrugged.
“He’s not wrong, man. We’ve got way more questions than answers at this point. We need some clarity. It honestly can’t hurt to try.”
I ran my hand through my hair, scratching in annoyance. “Fine. Okay. Say we do this. Who would we even consult? Not someone from the underworld, surely? Asher said so himself. The dead are being wishy-washy on the details. Not much use talking to one of their own, is there?”
“Yeah,” Asher said. “I wouldn’t recommend it. I know I’m supposed to make nice with them and all, but the entities of death aren’t the easiest to deal with, even on a good day.”
That was what communions were about, after all. You scrawl out a circle, make the proper offerings, and add a little blood and some muttered incantations, depending on the entity in question. Then hey, presto! You’ve got your own private audience with one of the many, potentially horrifying supernatural powers of the earth.