King's Blood: Vampire Descent (A Serial Novel, Part 4) (9 page)

“Don’t your victims act strange after they’re bitten? I mean after all, it’s a shock to the system, you know?”

“
Don’t be silly, Jack. Jenny is a prostitute. She’s a nice girl but in the end, she is a whore, or whatever you want to call her,” he said, as he plopped onto the chair, putting the palms of his hands on both knees and leaning close into me. “She makes a living feeding us and she never feels euphoria when Kai or I neck on her.” He leaned back, and took a rather pensive posture. “In fact, I feel dirty doing it and so does she.”

“
Well, I’m sorry to hear that, you just don’t have the right touch, I guess.”

Milton stood up, kicked the chair and began yelling, “Don’t you lie? Her neck was instantly healed! How?” He opened the door to his room and called for Jenny. “Get your ass in here.”

Jenny walked in with a bright smile on her face and asked, “Is Jack going to bite me?”

“
No,” Milton scolded her. “Show him the left side of your neck.”

Jenny pushed away her silky, black hair and revealed two bumpy callouses on her neck.

“See the scars?” Milton asked, as he grabbed Jenny’s hair, exposing her neck. “Where did you bite her that night in the club?”

“
On her right side?” I said, rather unsure.

“
Precisely, no scarring, no marks, clean as a baby’s ass.” Milton let go of her hair and shoved her out the door with his hand over her lower back. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

Milton proceeded to close the door, turned around and continued with his intense gaze. “Jack, I like Ted. He’s a fun guy. I’ll be the first one to admit Holly is a piece of ass; you don’t want them in there for too long, do you?” he asked, taking a more submissive posture as he sat down again.

“I don’t trust you after the stunt you pulled back there. This whole setup, the nice stuff you got out of nowhere, you look like exploitative people, I’m sorry.”

“
Exploitative? We are fucking vampires, Jack,” Milton said. “We don’t have much recourse. You’re lucky. Look at you, you’re a good-looking guy, you dress well, you had no problem assimilating. We aren’t allowed to play by the rules. We are practically peasants who happen to be vampires.”

“
Again, how do I know you aren’t manipulating me right now?” I asked, pulling his hand away from my face.

“
Okay, I’ll go first, ask me anything.” Milton suggested, as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

“
How in the hell did you infiltrate my dreams?” I asked, as my eyes began to well up.

Milton stood up from his chair and began pacing the room, repeatedly smoothing his face with his hand. “Luc is going to kill me for this,” he said, with marked worry.

“Who the hell is Luc?” I asked.

Milton opened the door and yelled at Kai, “
Dài lái de tóugǔ.”
I could see Kai walking slowly toward the tunnel. Milton stood by the door, looking at me with an uncomfortable smile.

“
You need Kai to explain how you did this?”

“
Kind of, you’ll see,” he said, motioning his hand in a downward gesture. Kai came in through the door with a black, velvety tote bag in his right hand, which seemed to contain a medium-sized ball. He handed the bag to Milton.

“
Jack, before I proceed to answer your question, do you know anything about your own anatomy?” asked Milton, as Kai looked on.

“
What? You mean our teeth? Our ability to quickly heal? That we have no expiration date?”

“
Beyond that? Anything else?” asked Milton, as he put his hand inside the bag.

“
No,” I said, with slight confusion.

Milton pulled out a skull with a reddish tinge from the bag. The smell was horrifying, as there were still pieces of flesh hanging on the side of the cranium. I immediately noticed the skull’s set of sharp fangs in its mouth. I looked away, my brow crinkled in disgust. Kai’s face turned white as a ghost and quickly left the room.

“No reason to be grossed out,” Milton said to me. “He died a hero, he really did,” he proclaimed, holding up the skull as if were performing Hamlet. “I want to show you something before Jon is put to rest.”

“
That’s Jon?” I asked, gagging and almost puking out the blood I had just drunk. “How did you get his head back?”

“
The rest of my men just showed up, they brought back Jon—his head I mean—and that accountant fellow.”

“
Larry?” I said. “Where is he? We need to get him home.”

“
We dropped him off in Guilin City with some long-haired traveling Westerners,” Milton said. “We told him to tell them he was lost. He had such a horrified face, from what I hear. He’ll be fine.”

“
How do you know?”

“
Listen, Guilin City loves tourists, he's in good hand—now hear me out, okay,” Milton said, snapping his fingers trying to get my full attention. He brought the fresh skull close to my face. I turned my head but still had my eyes fixated on the skull, magnetized by morbid curiosity. Milton placed a finger inside the skull’s nasal cavity. I fought off my aversion and focused on what Milton was trying to show as I completely faced the skull.

“
See that?” he asked, pointing to a small, thin piece of fleshy cartilage inside the skull which extended from the lower-brow area down to the middle portion of the nasal cavity. “Watch this.” Milton flipped the skull and proceeded to blow air through the foramen magnum, a hole where the skull attaches itself to the spine. I looked closely into the nasal cavity and the little piece of cartilage began flapping, vibrating like a thin piece of tracing paper against the breeze.

“
What the hell?” I exclaimed, as my revulsion transformed itself into astonishment.

Milton pulled the skull away from me and gently put it back into the black tote bag, with respect and dignified reverence. “
Qíyú Zài hépíng,”
he said to himself, with sorrow in his eyes, carefully placing the bag on the desk.

“
I have that
thing
in my head?” I asked.

“
We all do, Mr. King.”

“
What else is inside me?”

“
I don’t know, I’m not a doctor or a surgeon and I don’t want to go around giving autopsies to fallen comrades either.”

“
How do you know about this and what does it do?”

“
We the Jiang-Shi are the last remaining vampire social group or some might say a tribe. Our camaraderie has enabled us to retain many traits that makes us vampires,” he said, lowering his eyes solemnly. “Most of the remaining vampires are like you: solitary, wayward creatures.”

“
So, how does that flap relate to my dreams and you?”

“
We call this technique,
Mènghuà.
” he said, as he got up from the chair and poured himself another glass of blood. “We have discovered the ability to fine-tune hums at varying decibels which stimulates that small flap inside your skull when dreaming.”

I sat still in my chair, completely frozen, focused on Milton’s every word as if he were a renowned college professor unveiling the cure for cancer. Milton’s revelation had made me want to learn more about who I was. Why was I a vampire? Why was I here? What makes me different from humans other than the obvious traits: the horrible, undignified, monstrous traits.

“Who taught you to do this? I mean, do you hear me back, am I humming to you without knowing it?”

Milton sat back down on the chair, holding his glass of blood, and calmly crossed his legs. “One question at a time. But first, now that I told you the greatest revelation of your long, boring life, you tell me mine.” He leaned in closely. I could smell the metallic, sweet aroma of his drink. “What’s
your
secret?”

The reason for my hesitation in telling Milton about Zeo was the possibility of the drug’s proliferation and the possible implication of our company getting in hot water or being exposed myself. Also, the possible consequences of addiction that might consume our willing hosts. I was practically injecting women with heroin every time I bit their necks.

“It’s called zeopirudin or zeopirudophine, or zeo for short,” I said, with hesitation.

Milton’s eyebrow’s lifted and his eyes lit up. “So, it’s a drug?”

“Yes, it’s currently patented, and still going through trials. It’s in the last testing stages with the FDA and the European Union—it’s an anti-coagulate, with time-released hyper-coagulation.”

I could see the thoughts of multiple possibilities racing through his head, as he sat in the chair, with his eyes darting left to right, engaged in deep thought. He sat back and asked, “But the feeling of euphoria, for the host?”

“There is a version with an opiate derivative, it’s used for surgery only, and aids anesthesia,” I said, already predicting in my head what his next question would be.

“
I want that one...where can I find those pills, right now?”

“
I don’t know, I had some in my room.”

“
Where can I get the formula?” he asked, standing up from the chair with excitement.

“
I don’t know.”

“
Yes ,you do!” he said, raising his voice. “How can you not know? You relayed information of the drug’s origin through your subconscious humming.”

“
See, I knew it!” I stood up and confronted Milton. “We all have the ability to communicate in dreams.”

Milton downed the blood from his glass in a single swig, and said, “You tell me where the formula for Zeo is or where I can find a stash, and I’ll make sure you know everything—But, I need to ask permission first.”

“I don’t know if I can tell you where...”

Milton cut me off, “...who cares, they fucked you over, you’ll be part of us. The last remaining true vampires in existence. With powers you never thought possible.”

I looked at Milton with a suspicious glare, “Are you going to teach me how to communicate in dreams?” I asked.

“
Everything and much more. I’ll even show you how to gather information through this technique,” he said. “I’m good at what I do and I still couldn’t get this information from your dreams, which means you are mentally stronger than most—that’s a good thing, believe me.”

“
Fine, I’ll tell you the exact location where you can get barrels of this stuff, but first, what’s the hum? Can I do it to humans?”

“
Humans don’t have flaps, silly. I do need to ask permission first,” Milton said

“
Ask whose permission?”

Milton checked his pockets and began excitedly looking for something in his room, stepping left then stepping right. He stopped abruptly and said in an excited tone, “Wait here.”

Chapter Eight

I sat in the large dining hall which looked to be part of a small cave system. Broken stalagmites and stalactites adorned the corners of the hall. There were eight tables spread throughout the cavernous opening with no uniformity, they all looked temporarily placed, unused and lonely. Kai and another younger-looking male Jiang-Shi stood behind me, speaking Cantonese to one another, conversing about sports, religion, politics and any other topic that I imagined they probably chatted about. They both kept a watchful eye over me, not overbearing, but with casual vigilance. Milton walked out of his room with a black leather duster and a dark gray hood, a black mask over his mouth, he looked like a Molotov-chucking dissident. “I’ll be back. I’m heading up to the temple,” he said. “You can have him visit with his friends, if he wishes.” He quickly walked out of the hall and exited through the tunnel.

I looked up at Kai as I sat on the splintered bench and asked him, “Can I see Ted?”

Kai gave me a firm nod and asked with a strong accent, “The girl?”

I did not want to see Holly yet. I wanted to talk to Ted first to see what he and Holly had talked about while they were imprisoned in the room. Hopefully, he didn’t tell her I was a vampire. If there was anyone that had to break the news to Holly about my true identity, it would have to be me.

“
No girl,” I said. “Just bring the man, please.”

Kai nodded at his companion. The other Jiang-Shi left to get Ted. As I waited, I began looking around the dining hall and noticed a few four-foot tall jade statues placed at random spots against the walls. They didn’t look modern, or even recently produced, rather, they looked antiquated, and of some worth. The statues were of men and they looked Greek or Roman, rather than Chinese, however, their garb was of Oriental influence. The sculpted figures had their mouths opened and revealed a set of fangs. I continued to lose myself in the fascinating artwork. I asked myself, who made them? Why do they not look Chinese? How old were they? I continued to ponder the jade curiosities. After a few minutes of contemplation, I heard a familiar voice enter the room.