The girls in front of him quaked terribly under the dim light of the torches lit across town in preparation for their arrival. The humans liked to see their predators even if there was nothing they could do against them. On occasion, one of the girls whimpered, but their fathers, brothers, or whatever family they had left shushed them. Even so, his entire mind was blank of much before him, still stranded back on Silvia's look of terror as she'd fled from him.

That mage wasn't coming back.

The idea that taking her with him would have eased this was preposterous. The woman hadn't known though... that he was sifting through the available girls in the close by towns to drag back to his castle as blood slaves.

Damien had laid out a plan to make each girl's stay temporary, using them for a few years and then releasing them back to their families. In this way, he'd returned each and every girl his father had kidnapped that was still alive, and they had slowly been resupplying. It was too devastating to take all of what they needed at once, so Damien had been doing it every six months and in different areas of their territory. The humans bred in surplus so they had no shortage of towns to go through.

Before actually coming to take the girls, Damien visited each town to gather a list of available girls, their families, and their responsibilities and position in said community. In doing so, he intended to take the girls who were the healthiest within their age group while also leaving the least impact in their wake. Damien insisted that they'd be returned in three years' time to their families, but the people here had no reason to trust his second in command, let alone Neil himself, as the spawn of Vincent.

Vincent had raped and brutalized most of the slaves he'd forced into the castles. The age pool he'd chosen from had also been nonexistent. Anything Vincent had liked, he'd taken, regardless of whether or not they could sustain being drank from or forcibly bedded. Neil had about as much interest in sleeping with an unwilling woman as he did in drinking their blood. Every time he fed, he couldn't stop. It consumed him, terrified him, and he'd spiral into madness, drinking harder until they were a corpse.

Since Vincent had died, Damien was always with him when he fed. In an attempt at better relations with the townspeople, and mostly just his own moral conscience, Damien ripped Neil off the girls when he lost control. Sometimes Neil could stop on his own, but more often than not, he would hiss, fight, and struggle with Damien like a savage beast until he calmed from the madness brought on by the blood.

It was terrifying for the girls, so they were petrified when he came to them. It angered him, made him want to lash out at them, but that was his father talking. If they didn't sit there and bleat at him every time and increase their heart rates in fear, maybe he'd have a better chance at learning how to control his urges, but they all despised him.

All of them were new to the occupation, but it was expected in his territory that the girls should fear being taken. Neil wasn't cruel to them–he didn't hit them or leave them to sleep on the rock-hard ground as Vincent had. Damien pampered those damn women, giving them their own beds and small chests of their own so they could own things that comforted them. They were fed the best food to keep their blood flow healthy, strong, and more renewable than if they were alone. There wasn't anything they lacked for in his care, but they still loathed him.

It made him regret staying his hand and tongue against them. Neil had never hit a blood slave, or anyone for that matter, but his anger spiked so often that he was just as worried about turning into his father as Damien was. Rage overtook him so quickly and came from nowhere.

Like when he'd lashed out at Silvia.

She hadn't known what he was going to do tonight, how many human women he was going to rip from their homes, or how after, he would have to find a blood slave to sate his hunger. The cravings had been worse since he'd met Silvia. Normally, he would have been good another week or so, but her pulse so close to his mouth, the warmth of her body pressing into him, and that sweet voice and touch had been heightening his desire for her blood.

It wouldn't be an issue after tonight anyway. Silvia wasn't coming back. She'd never come back. It ached, in some horrible pit that his human heart used to reside.

"Neil, you need to pay attention," Damien said down to him, and he met the older man's dark eyes with all the agony he'd been feeling. There was no reason to wear a mask for Damien. The man cared deeply for him and would not judge his sadness as weakness. Neil regained his composure as he looked to the women gathered before him. "You need to pick this time."

"I know," Neil said. They all flinched away, and a few started to cry in their loved ones' arms as his eyes passed over them.

It didn't matter who he picked. They would all cry, beg, breakdown, and their fathers would implore him to choose someone else. Damien had been choosing thus far, doing it as carefully as he could, picking only girls who would not negatively affect the houses they were leaving and also making sure not to pick ones who were too frail or unsuited.

Neil glanced at his list, but he'd decided this based off of Damien's information days ago. Standing in front of them was just to make sure they were as written, healthy and that the information was correct. There were names, but he didn't care much to use them. Damien had insisted on it, but it made him angry to have to give them names when all of them thought of him as just some monster.

If he was only a beast, they needed no name other than prey.

"I've little patience for your wailing. If you make this difficult, you'll find yourselves much unhappier come the end of this night," Neil projected his voice over them. Damien didn't like the way he threatened them, but they silenced. Better. "I will name you, and you will go to Damien," Neil gestured toward him. If you do as you are told, you will be unharmed. If you resist, I can't say you won't end up with bruises. Forcibly carting humans as a vampire is difficult without inflicting injury. You're too soft, so come willingly."

Neil was making it worse, but he really didn't care. Any attempt at being kind to these things was wasted and just translated as cruelty in their minds.

"Beth." Neil stated, and a young girl of barely sixteen lost her knees and collapsed into tears next to her older sister. Their father was ailing and needed care that couldn't be provided by the younger one.

"Sasha, June and Catherine." Seventeen, nineteen, and eighteen, they were all a mature age and in families with other siblings to bring in sustenance. They didn't have sisters though. Most didn't. In three years' time, they could resume their lives here and that was the best he could do. They had only needed five this time, and he glanced across the girls, not focusing on the one he'd chosen last. "And Lera." There was an immediate angry curse from one of the villagers, though he was manhandled by his son into silence.

"Neil," Damien voiced his objection with a sharp hiss.

Neil regarded him with challenge in his eyes, and Damien backed down. If Damien had chosen, he would not have taken the last girl.

"Gather up any effects as you deem necessary, and we will depart in an hour. If any of you choose to flee, I will hunt you down myself. I know you all prefer my servant, so behave."

Neil turned around and headed to the outskirts of town to sit as the humans prepared themselves. Damien did not follow him, silently seething. On a large rock near the forest edge, Neil perched and looked to the stars. All he saw in them was Silvia's face, the way she'd looked drunk out of her mind on his lap, and how she'd smiled when she'd draped the blanket over his shoulders sober. It had been strangely uplifting, when she'd come to and not attacked him or run off crying because of what he was.

But he'd blown that.

Lost in his remorse for snapped at Silvia, he didn't notice the human approach until a twig snapped. Whipping his gaze around, he bared his fangs and hissed but bit it back to silence almost immediately. Expecting an attack from a grief-stricken villager, he found one of the girls instead. The blind one. How had she managed to get to him, let alone figure out where he was?

"May I sit with you?" Lera asked, but Neil wanted her nowhere near him. The wave of her gold hair glistened under the moonlight, draped over a peasant dress handsewn of cotton.

"If you can make it to me." Neil turned around with a smirk. There was no way he was going to get up and– Neil's thought ended abruptly as the girl found the flat of the rock next to him and sat, leaning her small cane on it.

"You are really good at that." Neil had no reason to hide his astonishment, and Lera turned her dead eyes toward his voice, smiled, and chuckled lightly. It was an unusually pleasant greeting considering how the human blood slaves normally treated him, cursing his name, crying, or spitting in his face.

"I know every house, tree, and rock up until the forest, since I've been wandering it sightless for years." The girl's tone was calm and kind, like she did not deplore him, making her a skilled pretender.

"How did you find me?" Neil demanded, not bothering with a pleasant tone as she did.

"Well, I can feel you. Humans to me are like the warm buzz of energy, and vampires are a heavy thrum of a vacuum. It's dark and permeating so that I can feel a vampire anywhere in town. It's a skill that's kept me alive as long as it has.

"Humans don't always care for the weak if they might put them in danger, but when the townsfolk realized I could sense a vampire's approach, they accepted me and gave me a place. It was hard before that, always being a burden, sneered at, tripped and the punchline of many cruel jokes. When things finally settled down in this town, it was the first time I had a home."

"Are you trying to sway me to leave you, human?" Neil growled, but she shook her head.

"No. I wanted to thank you... before I was given to your servant. I did not know if I'd ever be in your presence again, as I know blood slaves in your castle are used by any vampire you house there."

"Thank me? Are you daft?" Neil couldn't fathom the thoughts going on in this girl's head.

"My father and brother have had to spend their entire lives providing for me, caring for me, and always hanging up their hopes and dreams at the door to our house. I always came first. Taking me away, I think maybe they'll finally get to live. My brother can go find a girl to dote on aside from me, and my father needn't work so hard."

"That is not why I chose you." Neil flinched away from her light-blue, dead gaze as it wandered to his.

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Word Count: 2008