13 – Blood, Dirt and Saliva

I stared at the large, bloody rag Mia used to wipe up the bloodstains. It laid in a bucket, mildly damp from the water necessary to get the drying blood off the ground.

As I’d been warned by Mia, there was a significant amount of dirt and grime mixed in. Even with the fading scent of sweet blood, the thing didn’t look appetizing.

Looking up, I met the former maid’s gaze. She seemed to be torn between a mix of disgust and anticipation. Like she was waiting to see if I’d actually do it. I was mentally debating the matter.

My eyes narrowed. “You didn’t get extra dirt on this on purpose, did you?”

Mia shifted in place, her eyes refusing to meet mine. A faint hint of red crept into her ears.

I snorted and shook my head. This girl was really lucky I wasn’t Kalin.

“Well, I did say a little dirt wouldn’t kill me.” I picked the rag from the bucket and brought it towards my face. The way Mia’s eyes widened in surprise made the corners of my mouth twitch.

With the rag right in front of me, considered how best to get the blood out of it. Due to the moisture it hadn’t dried yet. I might be able to squeeze the cloth and get most of the liquid out that way. Hmm, will the dilution affect the blood’s potency?

I stuck my tongue out and gave the rag a tiny lick.

As expected, the dirt flavor was pretty forward. Still, the liquid blood-water mix tasted good. A bit thin, but still like proper blood. Like watered-down juice, sorta?

Inspecting the rag again, the spot I’d licked was unusually clean. Or, to be more precise, unusually blood-free. Some dirt was still stuck there. Actually…

It reminded me of when I licked clean that bowl of dried chicken blood earlier. And a bit less similarly, it also brought back memories of the chickens’ blood flowing with unusual ease from their bodies.

Does that require a living body though? Or does it work on any contiguous volume of blood? Only one way to test.

Mia gasped a little as I brought the cloth to my mouth proper and closed my lips to its side. Then I began to suck on the bloody liquid.

There was some resistance, but I did get a larger than expected amount of blood in my mouth. I kept sucking and it didn’t stop, even though there really shouldn’t have been any left in the parts near my mouth. The taste of dirt had stopped after the first bit.

Then, after about two mouthfuls, no more blood followed.

I reopened my eyes, even though I didn’t remember closing them.

Mia’s gaze was disbelieving as it alternated between me and the bundle of cloth in my hands. I looked down at it.

Not a hint of red remained on the dirty rag. Most of the dirt was indeed still there. Apparently, I’d somehow pulled out the blood without any of the grime coming along.

The rag was also dry to the touch. I shook it gently and most of the dust and earth fell off into the bucket.

“See, that was easy.” I smiled mischievously at Mia.

It took a moment for her to regain control of her jaw.

“You didn’t know that would happen.” Her answer was a funny mix of accusatory and uncertain.

“And you can’t prove that,” I retorted with a widening grin. Then, while looking her straight in the eyes, I dropped the now useless rag into the bucket. That a small cloud of dust and dirt spread across her room’s floor was entirely coincidental.

Somehow, the twitch of Mia’s eye gave me the impression she didn’t quite believe it was purely an accident and not payback for trying to intentionally make me eat dirt. No idea what gave her that idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have given her such a wide, shark-like grin at that moment, I don’t know.

Mia coughed into her fist. “Anyway, now that you’ve drank this blood, did anything happen?”

Good question. I focused on my body’s state for a few seconds.

“Aside from being less hungry, I don’t feel any difference.” Nothing had noticeably happened – to me, at least. I didn’t know whether there was any change to the unconscious traitor. Unless… no, his heart was still beating at the same, slow pace. He also hadn’t moved at all.

“I guess I’ll do my ‘inspection’ of the prisoner now. Do you want to come along? I’m not quite sure if there will be anything for you to do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be present if you want.”

After thinking about it for a moment, Mia shook her head.

“You go on ahead, I’ll… I’ll join you later. Don’t get yourself caught by doing anything stupid, okay?”

“I will do my best.”

With an unnecessarily flamboyant mini-bow, I picked up my mostly empty wine bottle from the table and headed to the infirmary.

When I arrived, the pair of guards informed me the doctor was absent, tending to the other prisoners. The traitor kept here was unconscious and hadn’t reacted to anything that happened to him. Even when they opened his eyes and shone a light directly into them, he didn’t respond at all.

The means available to a mundane doctor were limited in this regard. Aside from treating the external wounds and carefully feeding the comatose man a watery herbal concoction, there was nothing to do but wait how it turned out.

As I stepped into the room where the traitor lay face-down on a bed, I couldn’t tell any change to him with any of my senses. His blood smelled the same, his heartbeat and breathing were steady but slow and he didn’t have any visible differences to last time I’d seen the man. Aside from the bandages of course.

One of the guards had followed me into the room, but I sent him back outside. It was surprisingly hard to convince him, but there wasn’t really anything he could do about me being stubborn and insisting on my order.

I decided to interpret it as a good thing that the guard didn’t want to leave me alone with a potential danger, instead of the less charitable version where he was worried I’d do something to the prisoner.

Once the door was closed and both guards were as far away as they were going to get, I stepped closer to the bed.

My plan was to feed this guy some of my blood to see the effects of the blood bond thing on humans. Then I would test drinking his blood.

On the way here, I’d scrounged up a cup to go with my new bottle of wine. This way, I’d have a container to try indirect feeding without having to explain why I had it.

Unfortunately, to feed the unconscious man my blood, he’d have to be face-up. It wasn’t like he could intentionally drink anything, so the only way was to dribble it into his mouth slowly and hope he actually swallowed instead of choking.

Of course, with my new strength I could flip this guy over no problem. I probably would’ve been able to do it in my old body as well. It wasn’t like he’d fight back against being moved. Unfortunately for me, Kalin was not only unfit, but also pretty averse to exertion. So it would raise a lot of eyebrows if someone entered the room and found this guy flipped over.

Aside from that, I did have to be careful not to jolt his brain or put any pressure on the back of his skull. It really wouldn’t do to have him die accidentally. Not before I was done with him at least.

I paused a moment at the thought. It was unlike anything I’d ever expected to feel towards another human. There were no illusions in my mind about the fates of the demon collaborators. They would all die, if not by my hand or order then once the demon hunters got here at the latest.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Still, I didn’t feel too bad about the possibility of this man dying. Even if I was the one who directly killed him.

Part of it was definitely the whole ‘demon follower who tried to kill me’ part, but there was a clear decrease in empathy towards strangers in my mind. I wondered if it was a result of Kalin’s memories blending with my own or if it was a result of my transformation into a vampire.

In a way, it would make sense for vampires to feel less concerned or guilty about harm they did to humans, since said humans were their preferred food source. It’d be pretty bad for their survival if they empathized too much to properly feed.

Still… being a remorseless killer was a great way to end up a true monster. One who viewed humans as nothing more than prey or at best livestock. The kind that ended up getting slain because they were feared by everyone and their true nature came to light.

So, even if I didn’t have part of my previous morality left over, I still had good reasons to behave ‘morally’.

Sure, I hoped it wouldn’t get to a point where I was totally bereft of empathy for humans, but it was hard to know how likely such an outcome was. Knowing I wasn’t likely to turn into a full monster even if driven by pure rational self-interest was… calming, in a way.

Enough of that, I have something to do. At least for now, I would do my best to preserve my humanity where possible.

The obvious way to turn the traitor over without raising too many suspicions was to just order the guards to do it. Now for an excuse and some performance…

***

I’d been making demands, slowly escalating to shouting at the unconscious traitor, for several minutes.