Chapter 30: New Blood, New Way

--- Aurelio Hermenez ---

He ran a hand through his hair, thinking over what the trio in front of him were asking.

On the surface it was simply a question of what he wanted to learn, a little deeper and it was a question of who he wanted as a bodyguard, a bit deeper than that and it became a question of who was going to show him the ‘vampire’ lifestyle. (As defined by the guy who thinks turning someone makes them his kid, and two of said ‘kids’ who are okay with that.)

He wasn’t going to judge them for their life choices but… (I’d rather not get dragged into their drama without knowing more about this whole mess.)

Vampire novels had taught him that was just begging to get dragged into all sorts of political bullshit. (And unlike the protagonists of those stories I know to take my sexy vampire and get the fuck out before stuff starts trying to kill me.)

Oh, he wasn’t stupid enough to think that he’d get out of it entirely but he trusted Geraldine a lot more than he did this lot. Both as a mentor and an introduction to the modern supernatural world, something they were both equally familiar and unfamiliar with.

(Aww, how sweet… and smart.) Jerry assured him, only mildly sarcastic. (I’ll admit I was trying to ignore the point of existing politics due to general disdain and the need of resources, but I’ve also made the mistake of allying myself with someone I shouldn’t have for what others told me…)

Something in the way she said that told him it was a big mistake on her part, but sensing it was likely a sore spot he instead turned his attention back to the trio of vampires who had been doing this for far longer than him. (Now the question is how to reject them without it biting me in the ass later…)

(Hmm… Perhaps play up the angle of an unwilling New Blood?) His personal poltergeist suggested. (Mr. Pierce seems to hold a particular guilt about that matter. So while it may not free you completely it could buy you some more time to make a decision. Time we can use to give you perhaps not equal footing but better all the same.)

“Aurelio?” Alex asked in a concerned tone, his thoughts having apparently taken long enough to draw attention.

He played it up a bit by biting his lip and shaking his head. “Look I… this isn’t what I was expecting when I came here… I, I was expecting like an, an introductory course on this whole vampire thing not… whatever this is supposed to be.” He explained gesturing to the three of them.

“Aurelio, I know that this is disorienting-” Alex began, only to be cut off.

“Disorienting, I can handle disorienting.” He frowned, eyes wide as he put a hand to his head and channeled what little he’d managed to pick up from his theater club back before he’d had to quit because of the jocks targeting the few friends he’d made in the group.

Namely, how to be a dramatic little bitch.

“I-I could handle this vampire thing when it was just magic and blood, since I apparently don’t need to drink blood let alone people every night, or every week, month… am I going to have to kill people now? W-why can I still go out in the daylight? That’s the biggest vampire myth, but it barely bothers me more than before you bit me. Can I still eat garlic or will it send me into anaphylactic shock? Can I cross running water? What about church, will I burn if I step foot on one? Oh, god am I going to hell now? I mean if vampires are real then… Fuck…” He took a pause more to take an actual breath than the emotional devastation he was playing up.

(You think that was too much? I feel like that was a little too much…)

(No, no. While your questions are idiotic to anyone in the know, they are perfectly valid concerns going solely off myth. Especially the appeal to god and religion.) Jerry assured him. (Speaking of, how… is religion in the modern world?)

(Like three fourths of america with maybe a third of them being cool and another being like the assholes who sent ‘pray away the gay’ fliers to my house while their kids beat the shit out of me.) He may have taken a little too much bitter joy in warming himself by the fires he made with those.

(Ah, so they’re more tolerant now. Good for them, but I’m still a heretic and proud.)

(You do you.) He told her, not really caring given his own issues with them.

(I will.) Jerry promised, sounding pleased. (That said, you might want to add a finale to your little performance before you lose momentum.)

(Right, right…) He ran a hand down his face, before running it back over his hair. “And on top of all of that, you guys are now talking about having me follow you around or working for you, as if I don’t have a life outside of… this.” He paused to consider that before legitimately asking, “Do any of you have a life outside of this?”

The fact that the silence continued did not feel him with faith.

After a moment, Alex stepped forward, “Aurelio, son-”

“You’re not my father.” He interrupted through grit teeth, his acting bleeding into actual emotion as this was once more brought up.

Alex winced back, visibly hurt.

(You might wish to pull back a bit, the torch is nearing the bridge.) Geraldine warned him.

Knowing that she was right, he forced himself to take a calming breath before shaking his head. “Look, I’m a fan of vampires but that doesn’t mean I want to go all in in whatever organization you’ve all got going on.”

Another silence filled the room, only this was broken by Catherine letting out another frustrated groan. “I knew this shit wouldn’t be as straightforward as you two were hoping.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Freeman looked him dead in the eyes as her own narrowed, against his will he took a step back as he felt a weight of something settle on him, a weight that faded as Catherine’s eyes softened.

The older vampire shook her head with a sigh. “You’re just a kid in over his head, expecting you to go all in was naive on all of our parts.”

“Cat…” Eric started, only to stop when said woman raised a finger into the air as she walked towards Aurelio.

“No.” Freeman paused next to Alex. “Let me handle this.”

Alex made a pained face but eventually nodded.

Walking past him Catherine told him, “Come on kid, let’s get you a couple blood bags and get you out of here.”

He glanced back at the other two men, but didn’t say anything as he moved to follow.

--- Catherine Freeman ---

When it was just the two of them, and after they’d put a bit of distance between them and the other two the kid started to talk. “Look I’m sor-”

“Don’t be.” She interrupted. “Like I said, we shouldn’t have expected so much from you. You’re just a kid who got dragged into something you didn’t ask for.”

When she’d put a bit of ‘pressure’ in the air to see how he’d react. If he was full of himself, hiding something, or just a kid in over his head, she couldn’t help but see Miles’s exhausted face from a few days prior.

After a moment she asked,“Did you know you’re the same age as my niece and nephew?”

“Uh, no…” Aurelio confessed, not that he’d have had any way to know.

“Yeah… I don’t blame you for not being all in on this thing.” She admitted. “I… made that mistake and it strained things with my mom, my sister, and… other people I can’t make it up to…”

Her mind flashed back to Richard, her brother long before he’d married her sister, a man that faced death with a grin on his face and a drum beat in his wake.

And of course with her brother came memories of… the other one… (A cocky grin under dark eyes… a whistled tune filled the air as he pulled her into a dance… blood covered him as he stood with a broken arm, his grin almost feral… warm arms wrapped around her… a mocking laugh tore through the air, overwhelming the panic that had been holding onto them… she couldn’t help but fall asleep as she listened to his heart beat…)

She shook away those memories, knowing she’d lost them both and that they weren’t coming back. (No matter how much I want them to…)

“It took work to get back what I could, but…” She made sure to look the kid in his eyes. “If you’ve got something outside of this, hold on to it. Your friends, your family. Hold them close, because with the way the city is going they’re going to be what sees you through, okay?”

The kid was silent for a moment, a far cry from the emotional rant he’d given them all in the training room, before eventually nodding. “Okay…”

“Good.” She nodded back before turning back towards the kitchens. “Also, technically you don’t need blood but you’ll feel an instinctive need to feed building after about a week. Though it builds faster the more you use the Blood. The instinct peaks at a month but should break after another week, though if you make it that far expect your regeneration to invert aging you three times faster than a normal human.”

She paused to see if he was paying attention, and while he gave her a blink he eventually answered her expectant gaze with, “Feed once a week for control. I don’t need to to live, but I’ll live maybe half what I would’ve before turning.”

“Right.” She told him, before continuing down his list of concerns. “You don’t need to kill to feed, we’ve got a deal with the local hospitals but you’ll have to come here for blood bags, which you’ll have to pay for at a certain point. That said, if you need to feed in an emergency you can drink a pint or two from the vein without killing if you use Blood Magic to heal the wound which… third spell anyone learns I think.” That was far enough back, and no one actually went to her for lessons on the Blood so she didn’t know for sure.

“What about people remembering me… drinking?” The kid grimaced as he said the last word.

“I would hope you’d ask for consent in most cases.” She admitted, not really worried about it given how she didn’t get that kind of vibe from the kid. “Now it’s not publicly accepted, but there’s more than one vampire who works a deal with someone for their blood. Though you shouldn’t rely on that only since you can only get a pint every other month unless you’re really good at blood magic, and even then that can quickly bite you in the ass if they’ve got a disease of some kind which might cost more Blood to heal than you drank.”

There were a few other reasons she personally avoided that scene, but if the kid was going to make his own way he needed to know about this. (At the very least he doesn’t come off as that kind of skeevy bastard.)

She’d had to deal with more than one out of towner who’d stopped by thinking to set up a blood trade, not realizing they were making a human trafficking pitch to a Hunter.

“What about… animal blood?” Aurelio asked. “Can that… do anything?”

“You’d need twice as much for half the kick, and well… you ever try chugging a gallon of milk? Same problem.” She answered, before explaining that the, “Human stomach forces you to vomit once you hit the half gallon mark. You’d have to push yourself to near sickness to get the same value, but if you want to down a pint of pig's blood every day go vegan I won’t judge.”

Admittedly she’d tried it herself and had to quit about a month in when the amount of work she was doing pushed her to the point of drinking more pig’s blood than water to stay active. (But that shouldn’t be a problem for him if he’s trying to avoid all of this.)

“Next was… daylight, right? That one differs a bit depending on the Bloodline and some Practitioner stuff I don’t fully understand.” She remembered this one irish vampire who felt nothing from the sun due to a Fire Affinity, something Eric was hoping to one day mimic with his own. “You probably haven’t noticed it because you’re still ‘adjusting’ but once you start throwing around Blood or Shadows you’ll start to feel it."

When they started to get near the kitchens she made Aurelio stop, “Okay, uh, let’s try to blitz through the rest real quick before we see anyone else. Garlic, you’re not allergic to it but when your senses start to sharpen you will learn to avoid sharp smells. Side note, never chop onions. Running water isn’t an issue, I cross the river at least once a week. Churches and crosses aren’t a big deal either.”

“And on the soul thing…” His last one was the big one, and for a lot of people tended to be something that beat themselves up over, compromised their beliefs with, or outright given up on their beliefs because of. It was a deeply personal question that could tell you a lot about the person answering it, and for her that answer was, “Most of the gods I’ve met have actually been pretty cool with it. Though whether your god is cool with it or not I don’t know, I know mine was as long as I don’t pretend it’s his blood I’m drinking. Pretty, sure they’ve given him a complex over that.”

“Gods? Wait, gods?!” Aurelio stammered out. “The gods are real?! You’ve met the gods?!”

She shrugged and told him, “Eh, world ‘s a bigger place than most realize.”

“O-okay?” The kid blinked, sounding even more overwhelmed than he had about being turned into a vampire.

“Look, look. This is a whole rabbit hole man, just keep it simple.” She told him the same thing, she was told upon ripping off this bandaid. “Whatever god you believe in is real. You don’t need to be a devout worshiper unless they're an asshole. So believe in a kind god -or gods you do you- and you’re set… Oh, also a god can’t hurt you unless you let them. Which is why half of them try to scare you first.”

Aurelio stared at her for a moment, his eyes slowly narrowing, “You’re fucking with me. Aren’t you?”

She gave him a smile and a pat on his shoulder before entering the kitchen.

“Aren’t you?!” Aurelio called, chasing after her.

Just like Hendrickson before her, she kept her mouth shut save for her grin.

Unlike him however she couldn’t help but wonder what poor sucker got stuck as the Gede Baron’s personal Horse after Richard. (Whoever it is, I'm glad I’m not that dumbass.)