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A waiter brought menus, and I picked something out nervously. I didn’t recognize half the words, but something with chicken and potatoes seemed safe enough. I was half-expecting Augustine to entrap me into a meal I couldn’t pay for, especially after his economics lesson earlier, but he didn’t bring it up.
The waiter brought back two glasses of dark liquid, and he handed me one. “Yours is sherry,” he said. “Mine isn’t.” He smirked as he swirled the viscous liquid in his glass, before taking a sip that stained his lips. Then he drained his glass and called for another.
I tried mine hesitantly. It tasted like raisins and toffee.
“It’s like the blackberry wine we had in Algrave,” I said.
“I thought you might like it.” After his second glass, he seemed more relaxed. I realized his intense fixation on me was like a spotlight; one minute it was a hot glare, but when he turned away to appreciate the music, leaning back against the booth with cold detachment, I almost felt abandoned, like a forgotten plaything.
“You’re not what I expected,” I said finally.
“How could I be?” he asked. “Almost everything you know about your elites is a lie. But we’re just people. I never got the whole vampire vibe. You’d know what I mean if you watched the movies. Black velvet, antique furniture. I mean, sure I had a goth phase for a while. Couldn’t help it. And some of it makes sense. We’re sensitive to light, to everything really. But we move quickly. We need comfortable, loose, clothing, but we learn to be careful. We are sensitive creatures of the night after all. The hunters, and the hunted. Anything else is just an affectation, a pretense. But like I said, we were humans once, and that makes us vain and insufferable. Some of us, I’m sure, are just assholes.”
I snorted in spite of myself, then looked away, hiding my smile behind a sip of wine. Augustine’s voice wavered between poetic speeches, and cutting barbs that reminded me of the havocs.
“If I seem different from those elite you’ve encountered,” he said, leaning closer. “It’s because my life before all this was, let’s say, challenging.”
“How so?” I asked. My food had just arrived and I tore into it, but wanted to keep him talking so I’d have a chance to eat. It was much better than the cold eggs and meats we’d been eating from our fridge.
“I got locked up for dealing,” Augustine said. “When I was sixteen. Sold it to rich pricks, who came to the city to sow their wild oats with hookers and drugs. Mostly cocaine, but they’d need weed to chill out the next day.”
“Spent a decade in and out of jail. But they always sent me back, for stupid trifles. You see, I was worth more to them locked up—so they could charge the government, private businesses, making millions in profit.”
“You were a criminal?” I said between bites, trying to follow his story.
“I was an entrepreneur,” he said. “Or I liked to think of myself as one. Rise and grind. They let me out of jail right at the brink of collapse. In my absence, technology had rapidly progressed—so fast I could hardly do anything with the new phones. But some of my gang, they’d expanded my operations. Started selling drugs online for cryptocurrency. Then they legalized marijuana, while I was still in jail, years left on my sentence. Sold it in high-end, boutique stores. I was serving a sentence for a crime that no longer existed. When I got out, the news was just starting to cover the outbreak—that’s what we called it then. When I got home, my boys were already dead. I found my girl on the kitchen floor, a note clutched in her bloody hand. It had the passwords to our accounts. I managed to login to see the crypto I’d received a decade earlier was now worth a lot of money. So I sold it quick. I bought a couple buildings here, kicked all the tenants out, shut down the restaurants and casinos, started loading it up with supplies. They were already well stocked, with good defenses and security. At the dusk of civilization, commerce thrived.”
“You had kids?” I asked, my eyes widening. It was strange to think of him as a father.
“Twins,” he said. “Had a girlfriend, got married on parole but it only lasted a few months. Still, she was good to me. Tried to protect them. If I’d been there, if I’d gone straight home…” he shook his head, steeling his expression. “That was all so long ago, a different lifetime. She’d be over a century now. In fact,” he glanced at the sign by the entrance. “I named this place after her.”
“I spent a bunch on military equipment, gold, online junk that never made it—the supply chain broke down soon after. But it was enough. I sat in my towers, hundreds of empty rooms, a mountain of food I couldn’t eat, biding my time. When I got hungry, I’d go hunting. It was easy. The blood, so sweet, so fresh. I was used to being in prison, so the lockdown didn’t bother me. But the humans were just as eager for my venom. Suffering, starving. Half of them addicted, violent, crazy. They set up their little villages of rusted cans, becoming tribal, fighting and killing over resources. A leader would pop up, then someone would murder him. Every few years a slagpaw or elite would bust through their fences and kill nearly everyone.”
“I got tired of watching it all, from my balconies. I was lonely. I started passing between them, keeping an eye on them from afar, with binoculars. I’d watch them for years, before ever making contact. I’d get to know them, and offer them a deal. Often, they only wanted a favor. I’d grant it, in exchange for the company.”
“Then one day, a girl tricked me and seduced me. Chained me, so her friends could keep me locked up for elixir. A year at least. When I escaped, I killed them all. Except her. Her, I made immortal. She was my first.”
“You rewarded her?”
“I punished her. Cursed her. To be alone. Like me. Forever.”
“Tate?” I guessed.
He nodded.
“Now we’re alone together. Other elite are guests, visitors. They agree to our rules, and we take our price.”
“Elixir for blood. Just like the kingdom.”
“Not quite,” he grimaced at the comparison. “Think about it, do Richard’s elites have any integrity? Kept in check by force and power, threats and carrot sticks. They grew weak, but it was like taming wild dogs. They’ll still bite the hand that feeds them.”
“And your way is better?”
“Socialism is like water; equal, but flowing to all parts, no matter who deserves it or needs it most. Eventually it wears everything down to nothing. Each citizen, dependent on the teat like lambs to slaughter. Here, each man consumes what he can afford, and what he can tolerate, until he can do neither. Venom is a poison, toxic, as you know. And yet they seek it out, for the pleasure it causes, even as it kills them. I don’t have to watch my back here, because I can trust every person to do what’s in their best interests. This is what I mean by integrity, some kind of support that holds, so the edifice will not collapse. If I die, I know the system will continue without me, such as it is, because it’s not forced piety or chastity, a pretense, for both humans and elites. My system allows for their darker tendencies, and an outlet for their fury. Besides,” he said wryly, “we also have movies.”
“What?” I asked.
“I told you, entertainment. Music, stored in offline computer towers, tens of thousands of different songs. And movies, thousands and thousands of them. And plays, to perform. Live events.”
