I used to dream of severed human heads.
They hung above me, their skin gray and pasty as the elixir of life flowed out of them. I inhaled, and the metallic scent of iron infused itself into my cells. It was the iron and other nutrients in blood that our bodies needed, but that wasn’t the scent that drew us, the scent we craved.
Humans don’t realize they each possess their own scent beyond perspiration and pheromones, a fragrance that comes from their very life force—their blood.
From one neck, a drop of citrusy blond female fell onto my tongue. From another, the leathery and musky flavor of a brown-haired male, this one muscular and full of testosterone. A third fed me with the floral flavor of a female redhead. Redheads were rare, and their blood tasted better than the finest Bordeaux. Redheads with green eyes tasted the best—a lusty concoction laced with essence of lavender yet acidic enough to make a vamp’s mouth water for more and more.
Then there were the dark-haired ones with light skin—those who, somewhere hundreds of generations ago in their family tree, were descended from a vampire. Their blood was the ultimate concoction, the Champagne of plasma. Bold and tannic yet fruity and divine. Peach, plum, blackberry. Leather, coffee, the darkest of chocolate. Tin, zinc, laced with violet and apple and estrogen. Even the men smelled of traces of milky estrogen.
All this plus the one-of-a-kind flavor unique to every human.
I lapped it up, gaining strength, finally able to pull hard enough to release my leather bindings.
I roared, flexing my muscles, ready to bolt—
But before I could escape my prison, my eyes would open. I always awoke.
Those fragrances had been denied me for years, perhaps decades. But I remembered, my memory exaggerating each aroma. The only scents in my enclosed space were the remnants of the two human servants who fed me. Who tortured me.
She would be hovering above me, gazing at me with her cold, evil eyes before she bent down and sank her fangs into my neck.
She never drained me, only took enough so she could maintain her control over me and keep up her own strength. The worst days were when I had to feed.
She forced me to drink from her. I had no other choice. I needed blood to survive, and hers was my only option.
Feeding from her kept my muscles from atrophying, even though I couldn’t move much while in captivity. A good thing. The only good thing.
The dream of sustenance pouring into me and giving me the strength to break free recurred again and again, but escape was always only that—a dream.
Until the day it wasn’t.