The room was packed to standing by the time I got there. It wasn’t every millennia one of the three coffins opened. I had been a fairly young vampire the last time and still didn’t have the finer points of our language down. I could only catch a word or a phrase, here and there, that was spoken. Thankfully, it was all written down. Pretty boring stuff, once I had the translation, in all truth, all about the finer distinctions in the tastes of blends and the process of aging. Personally, I prefer blood warm and fresh from the source, but still, the memory was a dear one.
I spread my arms and flapped up into the air. Reaching an empty I-beam, I latched on and folded my membranous wings around my body. Somebody had seen me, and now a black cloud of my brethren was flying up after me. Oh well. It was still a great spot even if a little crowded. I’d hear better as a bat anyway.
The old bloodsucker was small, like he had shrunk inside his ancient suit, and his eyes seemed to wander, as though he couldn’t find something he was looking for.
He began his talk. At first, I couldn’t see the point he was working towards. An acquisition of an island. The long working of a spell to make it impossible to find. It dawned on me that this project must have been going on since before I was turnedābefore I was even born! Then, he got to the point:
“ā¦and they worship us now, as in the old ways. I’m talking virgin sacrifices and the warm, hot blood of really murderous warriors. There’s no hint of the acrid aftertaste of the fallen Calvinist or saccharin affront of the lapsed Catholic. This is pure paganism,” he sighed, “like it was meant to be. There’s nothing holy at all about these people or their history. We have bred them and formed them from youth, and only our image remains on them.”
He leaned hard into the sales pitch after that. I think we were all curious to learn what a real pagan would have tasted like, though we only had his word for it. The only other two vampires old enough to say one way or another were still sleeping in their crypts.
When I finally got a bottle, though, I felt a little let down. Sure, I had to account for travel and the anticoagulants, but there was something wrong, dissatisfying. I was wandering around the convention, taking short sips from the bottle, trying to find the right words to put to it.
“It doesn’t fight you,” I suddenly proclaimed, stopping in my tracks to the grumbling annoyance of the group behind me. “Sorry,” I said, shuffling out of their way.
Asked Grok to draw the scene:
Tale Told 