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Alittle while later…
They had almost finished the last body when someone said something about it maybe not being the best idea to have killed all these people all at once.
Gideon wasn’t sure who had said such a silly thing, and he did not have the energy to investigate.
Blood drunk and satisfied for the first time in a long time, Gideon paid that comment little mind. He was reliving the glory days, when impudent villagers would inevitably find themselves on his menu. This was how it should be. This was how it was always intended to be. He was quite grateful to the fledgling for rejuvenating his interest in the world, showing him that this technology could be used to nourish.
Gideon no longer felt bored and sleepy. Instead, he felt invigorated and ironically, alive. For the first time since awaking in this cursed age of technology and collapse, he saw a path forward for himself and his kind. These little blood bags were insolent and so removed from the basic fundamentals of life, they no longer understood what it was to be human. But prey didn’t need to know it was prey in order to be delicious. In fact, these young people making themselves digitally immortal were incredibly tender and tasty, almost like veal. Soft lives made soft people, made delicious food.
Gideon looked at the scene before him. It was bloody, to be sure, but he saw a similar expression on the several dozen vampires who feasted with him. They all had the look of predators long denied proper prey. They had been very careful to stay hidden in this modern world, to keep their existence from society at large. Ancient blood feasts were long forgotten. But Gideon remembered. Gideon remembered it all.
A little over a thousand years ago….
Bright sun beat down on Gideon’s back, warming his chilled flesh. He wore a headdress of quetzal feathers, a bark band securing it to his head with a diadem of jade. His people called him king, and for that he did not destroy them. He was not hungry, however. He had not been hungry for many years thanks to the hunting prowess of the warriors raised by his generals.
Gideon, wearing the name Etzli, walked the dry space cut out of the jungle. Great erections of stone made up a city that would surely be the glory of the ages.
Pens full of fattened prisoners ready to be walked up the thousand steps to eternity. Some wailed. Some begged. Some sat silent and wide eyed, knowing what their fate would be, for they had seen the fates of hundreds of others.
On days such as these, in the wake of successful war, the sacrifices happened six times per hour, for sixteen hours a day, beginning at dawn and going until dusk. Ninety-six souls per day, all going to feed Gideon and his children.
The priests were drinking the sacred brew, a mycological concoction from a local mushroom growing in the fecal material of ungulates. It altered their minds, gave them visions, and separated them from the horrors of their actions. Everybody in King Etzli’s city was broken to his will. There was not a baby born who did not lose his innocence by the time he was able to speak, seeing the cruelties and perversities visited on the alleged enemies of these brutes who considered themselves warriors and wizards.
Soon, the pyramid was running red with blood on all four sides. It was a waste, but Gideon understood the need for drama. It pleased his subjects to see the cruelty and destruction they were capable of. It made them feel strong to commune with gods.
Those who would come after would have no understanding of what these people meant by gods. They would have no comprehension of the forces at play. In this moment, in this place, and in this time, Gideon was not a creature apart from the world, something unique and rare. He was one of many dark forces acting upon the world and its people, in all places, and in all cultures. The darkness of man was fully exploited, and it kept many creatures such as him alive.
As Gideon’s thoughts meandered back to modernity, he felt himself yearning for those simpler days. Modern humans had far too much ego, and imagined themselves much more permanent than they were. The city he once ruled over was now buried beneath jungle, and those sacrificed entirely forgotten. Nobody knew their names. They were not people. They were a vague concept of horror. He had not merely taken their hearts and their blood, he had erased their very humanity.
Perhaps he would do the same for a new generation, lured like moths to bright lights and the prospect of digital attention. Perhaps he would teach them the lesson of their ephemeral irrelevance.
Unfortunately, his thoughts were abruptly and rudely interrupted by the arrival of yet more interested parties. It was quite the night for mortal intrusion. The latest group was even less mannered than their predecessors, coming with large weapons and poor attitudes, shouting like louts.
FREEZE!
The doors to the dining room burst open, smoke filling the air so thickly it was impossible to see anything. The vampires moved with incredible vampiric speed and escaped in the fog quite easily, leaving only two figures in the room. One was Carter, who had been on his phone and continued to be on his phone while men in full body armor appeared through the door.
The other figure who had not moved was Gideon, at the head of the table. He did not flee from mortals any more than a frog might flee from flies. He sat on his dinner throne, a dark wood chair carved in gothic patterns that pleased him greatly and regarded the men and women who came to him with terrible weapons, red dots on his chest.
“GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!”
A very rude man without a hint of respect in his voice began screaming at Gideon in a frankly hysterical manner.
Carter had been pushed up against a wall by three of the armed humans, all of whom saw fit to press the muzzles of their guns to his torso.
Gideon lifted a bone to his mouth and sucked the cells from the marrow within. It was a delicacy he did not intend to waste.
“GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND, OR I’LL SHOOT YOU, MOTHERFUCKER.”
The intruders seemed disturbed by the gore they found themselves surrounded with. It was setting them on edge, creating a mental disequilibrium.
“If that makes you feel better, why not.” Gideon smiled.
“Sick motherfucker.”
Gideon felt into the man’s mind and saw there the fact that he had a teenage daughter, and seeing the remnants of these young people was causing in him a rage and anxiety he could not remain professional through.
