I needed to know this to refine my judgment of vampire abilities.

"In return, I'll get you something to eat, both of you."

Evelyn shook her head at me, but the plates were already empty and she swallowed what she was about to say.

"I was born in 1917," Agnieszka revealed with slight hesitation.

She was almost a hundred years old, two human generations older than me.

"And how long have you been a vampire?"

That was a good question from Evelyn.

It seemed that this time Agnieszka wouldn't answer, but in the end, she changed her mind.

“Since 1942. I was twenty-four when they took me to Auschwitz. I met a man there. He liked me, but we only met occasionally, as work schedules allowed. The camps were segregated.”

She looked at us. I knew the history of concentration camps fairly well. Evelyn just nodded. Death factories, evidence of how civilized people can be beasts. Much crueler and more heartless than us.

“Then, one night, he visited me in the barracks. Such a thing was punished by death. Immediate, without trial.“

"And what did you do?" Evelyn asked.

It seemed like her story had caught Evelyn's attention for the first time.

"What could I do? We saw each other a few times, exchanged seven sentences, a total of forty-six words. What could I do?“

To let him go? It was a deadly, unnecessary risk just to talk to him.

Evelyn continued to wait, as if that wasn't everything, and surprisingly, Agnieszka went on.

"I went outside with him, in front of the door, and there we made love on the ground."

Evelyn nodded, as if she expected nothing else. Agnieszka surprisingly kept talking, as if she wanted to get it out of herself.

Maybe she's never told anyone before.

“We saw each other many times at work, exchanged a few words seventeen times during fleeting encounters, and nine times he visited me at night. In addition, he supplied me with seventy-four loaves of bread. Personally or in secret boxes. I don't know where he got it and how he managed it. But it saved my life. Without his gifts, I would have died of hunger and exhaustion long ago.”

I was waiting. Evelyn wanted to mention something, but I stopped her with a gesture. The coffee was cooling down and the steam rising from the mugs was diminishing.

"Then I got unlucky, they moved me to Auschwitz II, and that's where things went downhill for me. Very soon I became a Muslim.”

The coffee had already gone cold, and Evelyn didn't mind. Seconds stretched into minutes. We weren't in a hurry, not now. There will come a time when fractions, tenths of a second will matter, but it wasn't the case now.

"He visited me one more time. I don't remember much; I was already very out of it. He caused a crazy chaos, many SS officers died, and one furnace exploded."

By the furnace, she meant the cremation ovens.

"And since then, I've been a vampire, thanks to which I survived," she finished her story.

It seemed like everything that needed to come to light had been said.

I got up from the table. Ordering another lavish breakfast would attract too much attention to us.

"I'll get the food, you two go back to the room," I told them.

"And since when do I listen to you?" Evelyn sneered.

"And since when do women not listen to men?" I retorted, heading out for the food.

I had promised it. Besides, if they were as irritable from hunger as I was, I didn't want to share common space with them. A hungry vampire and a hungry werewolf. A combination that instilled fear even in me, and I considered myself a fairly tough guy.

From a local farmer, I obtained a mature lamb, along with a place under a roof where I could process it. With a club, I stunned the animal, cut its throat, and bled it properly. Then, I hung it over a beam using borrowed hooks and started to work. Without thinking, I skinned it carefully and cautiously, without cutting the fur anywhere.

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It didn't take long, and I had front and hindquarters, back, and the best pieces of organs in a canvas bag, which I then placed entirely in a large sports bag. Just to be sure, I wrapped them in plastic.

"You're not doing it for the first time," said the farmer, who had been watching me with interest most of the time.

"I'm from here, and as a boy, I knew how to handle sheep," I chose an answer that wasn't actually a lie.

With sheep, I really knew it in many ways. For example, the Kazakhs kill sheep so that not a drop of blood is wasted. They open the chest, put their hand with a knife inside under the ribs, and pierce the heart. Then, they process it into its own skin. I learned that too. A very useful skill in the steppe.

With the prey in hand, I returned to the hotel. It was boiling in the kitchen, so I went straight to our room.

Evelyn sat on the bed, Agnieszka on a chair. Based on the full bags and unpacked clothing bundles, they had been shopping.

"For such a backwater place, you can find quite a few things," Evelyn informed me.

No one was looking for two women moving together, so the danger to them was minimal. I didn't comment on their disobedience to my order. It was just a game between us.

"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner," I announced and placed the bag on the small table.

"Evelyn caught a deep whiff.

"Goat, actually no, lamb," she clarified.

Without hesitation, she unpacked the bag and chose a hindquarter.

Agnieszka handed her a paper tray from the barbecue set. So, they weren't just shopping for clothes.

It didn't help much, the hindquarter extended far from one end of the table to the other. Evelyn carefully placed the hindquarter on the table, pulled out a small knife from the sheath attached to her belt, and began slicing thin strips of raw meat.

"Still warm," she murmured approvingly.

We prefer our meat warm.

"Good thing I also bought dental floss," she mumbled with a mouthful.

Agnieszka also pulled out a knife. From an armpit sheath, a Bowie knife with a false edge and a handle adjusted precisely to fit her smaller hand. Having had my fill of the scent of lamb from the previous work, I decided to pass on the taste. At least for this moment.

Silently, I observed them during the predatory feast. Somehow, they managed it so that, except for the tips of their fingers, everything stayed clean. I would have been messy even behind my ears. Usually, we fed a bit more vigorously.

Agnieszka finished first, cleaned the knife, returned it to the sheath, washed her hands, and pulled a cylinder resembling a thermos from the fridge. Except that thermoses usually don't have electronic displays. She loosened a securing thread, opened a bayonet lock, and opened the cylinder. It was indeed a thermos. She pulled out a plastic bag filled with red liquid, of whose origin I had no doubt.

"Raw meat is fine, but sometimes I need blood. Real blood. Human blood," she corrected herself.

To each their own... I preferred horse blood.

The next day, we fine-tuned our plan, and for the following three days, we gathered everything we needed. Thankfully, the three of us no longer shared a single room, each having our own. I had had enough of the probing glances Evelyn directed at both me and Agnieszka.

Overall, the preparations took up the remainder of the workweek and Saturday, and we worked from dawn to dusk.

The next day, Evelyn, thanks to her contacts, exchanged her Range Rover for three different cars, she insisted that everything was legally sound. I hoped she was telling the truth because I didn't want to be pulled over by the traffic police due to driving a stolen car.

I opted for a 220-horsepower petrol Octavia, a car brand commonly seen on the roads. I had the battery, spark plugs, and brake pads replaced, and removed the VRS letters from the front grille to make it as inconspicuous as possible. I also had new tires with a soft compound ideal for asphalt, with optimal adhesion. I had no intention of taking the car off-road; for that, I planned to rely on my own two feet.

Evelyn secured a decent, average-sized Volkswagen Golf for Agnieszka. For herself, however, she chose a car that stood out in the local area like a penguin in the Sahara. A red Mini Coupe Cooper with a white roof. She didn't give a second thought to how she would transport corpses in it. Just typical of a woman.

Even in the small Golf, we could fit two bodies in the back seats. In the Mini, at most, they would have to be dissected and packed in plastic bags. I swore to myself that if it came to that, she would handle that gruesome task on her own.

I took care of the weapons. Another shipment from Erik Drexler had not arrived yet, so I had to figure something else out. I needed a weapon with good range and a decent impact on the target. I managed to buy a CZ Safari Classic rifle with a Mauser Magnum action, chambered for the .505 Gibbs cartridge, using one of my identities with appropriate firearm licenses for hunting, personal defense, and professional use (Class C, D, and E). I would have preferred a slightly less exotic option, like the .300 H&H Magnum, but unfortunately, it wasn't available.

Luckily, I eventually found ten matching cartridges. What proved elusive was acquiring a telescope sight. These weapons for hunting in the African wilderness are usually used at short distances. I hoped that wouldn't be a problem.

Short weapons posed no difficulty. Evelyn armed herself without protest with a modern clone of the old reliable M1911 in .45 caliber. I took some effort to work on her cartridges, increasing the load to ensure a greater impact on the target. Surprisingly, Agnieszka didn't want it; she insisted on something with more than eight rounds in the magazine. I couldn't find anything else but an old Scorpion, fortunately a rare variant in 9x19 Makarov. In its original 7.65 caliber, its impact is no greater than a mosquito bite. With a bit of exaggeration, of course.

In the evening, exhausted from countless patrols, gunplay, and dealing with weapons, simply fed up with the myriad tasks that had to be sorted out in recent days, I lay on the bed. I indulged myself with a double Bowmore whisky on my chest, listening to the radio softly below the threshold of audibility - human audibility, that is.

Sunday, a time for rest, awaited us. Even God rested on Sunday. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad for us. Nerves were on edge. Not so much mine, but I wasn't entirely sure about Agnieszka and Evelyn.

I heard someone coming before the person touched the doorknob. It wasn't locked. If someone wanted to visit me, I didn't object. I had a Smith & Wesson laid on the chair next to the bed, I didn't want to shoot from the six hundred at any cost.

"Can't sleep?" I addressed her before she entered.