Surgical Happenings
“I can’t believe scum like that tasted your blood before me,” Serena sulked once they were back in their room.
“
“Hey! I’ll have you know that I would very much resent being exterminated.”
Eva moved past the bickering idiots and slumped straight into one of the beds. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she would care about them murdering each other.
Her head was hammering, Sawyer’s actions were just as nauseating as they had been earlier, and now she had Nel and Serena talking far too loudly. Casting a darkness spell around Serena to get her safely back into the room had taken its toll. All she wanted to do was to sleep for the next thirty-six or so hours. Then, the ritual would have worn off.
They would have to move fast once it ended if they didn’t want all the knowledge she had learned to become useless.
Sawyer had worked through about half of the bodies. The light from sunrise was not making their appearance any better. Though she could actually stomach their appearance. It was still the smell that got to her the most.
If only Sawyer would go around and open the caskets before he got to them. Something to let them air out.
At no point in moving between caskets had Sawyer pulled out his cellphone. Perhaps because the sun had risen and most vampires slept through the day. Or maybe he knew that his minion had perished. Eva really didn’t care what he thought so long as he didn’t flee.
On the plus side of everything that had happened with the vampires, Eva now had a cellphone. At least until the phone company didn’t get payments from the dead vampire. Maybe she’d be lucky and he would have some bank account set up to automatically make payments.
What, exactly, she would do if and when Sawyer called, Eva still didn’t know. She would likely just ignore it. Maybe with a text message about how she shouldn’t be contacted for a few days because of whatever reasons.
If she saw an opportunity to taunt him with it that wouldn’t cause him to run, she would probably take it. Maybe a text message right as she launched a surprise attack.
“They can’t be trusted,” Nel said, hands on her hips. “They’ll stab us in the back the moment they see the chance.”
Eva had her face buried in the pillow, but she still used her blood sight to track everything around her. She trusted Nel and Serena to an extent and didn’t think that either would attack her. Like Nel, she didn’t believe in the vampires to half the same extent.
The tenants in the neighboring rooms were still asleep. No one was outside and she couldn’t see all the way to the manager’s office. She wished that they were in a room closer to the vampire’s thralls, but she’d just have to make do.
Eva half expected a bunch of thralls to show up around noon to break in the windows. She would have to keep an eye on her blood sight and watch for anything suspicious outside.
“They made a fuss over Lucas for two reasons. Reason the first,” Serena held up a finger as she spoke, “one of their number had just exploded. They were scared. The other reason is that Kuvon couldn’t appear weak in front of his den. They would have eaten him alive if he had shown weakness. Literally, probably.”
“So what, since we’ve assuaged their worries they’ll just fall in line?”
“Nooo,” Serena said, drawing out the word with a shake of her head. “They’ll fall in line because Eva promised them a whole case of her blood.”
Eva just groaned. “Don’t remind me,” she mumbled into her pillow.
“It might not have been the wisest thing to do,” Serena said with a sage nod.
“I didn’t want to fight. Even if I could have clapped my hands and killed all the vampires, I don’t know that I would have held up against the thralls. And there were a good number of them. With me useless and Nel,” Eva paused, turning her head to the side just enough to stare at the augur with one eye. “Well, you would have had to deal with them on your own.”
Nel just huffed, crossing her arms across her chest. Though, Eva didn’t count that as a disagreement.
“And then there were the extra vampires you mentioned. The ones that might not be there.”
“Those were August strain vampires,” Serena said. “They tend to like large groups. Six just feels small. Even for a town this size.”
“How many more would you expect?”
“Four to six. Ten to twelve in total. Minus the one called Lucas, obviously.”
“So we would have only killed off half of them. Probably wouldn’t have been able to trick the other half into drinking blood either.”
“They would have realized something was suspicious if we offered them a few vials.”
“There you have it,” Eva said to Nel. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, having them as our allies is much better than fighting both them and Sawyer. Doubly so because our fighting would probably draw Sawyer’s attention prematurely.”
