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The best thing about living in Arizona was how easy it was to pick up replacements for his blood herd. So many footsore migrants wanting a quick trip across the border. And he did take them across the border, didn’t he? He had a convenient little arrangement with a coyote who collected the money from the families. In exchange for flying them over the border at night with no lights on, Crispin got to keep a share of the “pollos” whose families didn’t pay fast enough. Usually they didn’t figure out he wasn’t taking them to freedom until he’d put them in the mine with the others with its stench of blood and shit and fear and infection so thick that even humans could smell it. But he wasn’t a fool like Eric had been, devouring them one at a time. No, the point of a blood herd was to sustain you. What a delightful little setup they had.
The mine may not have held enough copper to satisfy the original owner, but Crispin thought a cool, light-proof, sound-proof place to store people until you needed them was one of the best things about this amazing house. It hadn’t taken much to expand the tunnels. Eventually he’d connect it to the house, like a wine cellar stocked with his favorite beverage on the hoof.
Crispin had become so tired of waiting for El Patron to make his move. It was getting boring. Eric had been rather subdued since Crispin had shot Wolfe. Sometimes Crispin thought he’d shot the wrong man. Wolfe at least had spirit. It might have been fun to take him to the mine and show him what happened to the Harris boys, but Wolfe had gotten away too soon. If only his ward could keep people in as well. Crispin heard rumors of a ward that would keep people in as well as out. His own ward was a Levantine ward, which could only be broken by a human sacrifice and the proper ritual. Was El Patron too much of a weakling to kill a single human, or did he have no one on his side with enough skill in magic to do the deed? Either way, Crispin was bored. And when he was bored, he wanted to hear screaming.
Crispin knew that Fain was planning something, but he didn’t know what. Someone was sneaking around in the stables. Crispin had started electrifying the fence, and he hired some of those humans to patrol during the day. He didn’t even eat from them, since he had the blood herd.
Crispin had to wait until sundown to go to the mine. He packed a box of heavy-duty trash bags, his case of surgical knives, a lighter, duct tape, and the salts and herbs he needed for the ritual. It would be so convenient if he could access the mine from the house, but then the smells might flow between them. Still, the house was so perfect in so many other ways. Yes, this was quite the place they had here. Once he got Wolfe back, he’d ensorcell him into signing over the deed of the house so it would be his in truth. Or torture him into it. That was good too. Screaming was so much fun, and vampires could take so much more abuse than humans before they died.
Thirty yards past where the small rocky hill blocked the view of the house, Crispin lifted the heavy steel plate that blocked the entrance to the mine shaft. Since that unfortunate incident in which one of El Patron’s people had managed to free his entire herd, Crispin had taken to keeping his herd in a different part of the mine, and for good measure, he’d expanded his ward to keep poachers out.
Deep in the darkness, the herd whispered fearfully to one another, shuffling as if trying to hide deeper in the darkness. Sometimes Crispin liked the heavy tang of fear, but sometimes he liked to simply pounce on someone in the darkness, the boogeyman who comes to prey on the unwary. Their screams of terror when he seized them were hilarious. The heavy steel door made too much noise for those sorts of games, but it couldn’t be lifted by human hands. Stephanie fed his herd every day, among her other duties. She was so much more efficient of a servant than Eric was. He was grateful to Wolfe for convincing Stephanie to come and live in the house. It was good to have a thrall again. Eric could be cowed into obedience, but for total submission, no one was easier to ensorcell than a new, weak vampire that you yourself had turned.
“Stephanie,” Crispin called out. “Did you fetch what I asked?”
“Here, Sire,” Stephanie said. She had her own lighter, as the mine was so completely and utterly dark that even vampires couldn’t see. Stephanie came closer, holding a frail-looking man with a weary face and a racking cough. The prey had lost his shirt, and his thin ribcage was caked in dust.
“Very good,” Crispin said. “Hold him still.”
Crispin was enough of a mage to ensorcell the man into a docile complacency, but where was the fun in that? He started by cutting open one of the trash bags to make a waterproof surface to perform his ritual. Then he spread a pinch of the herbs onto the earth and lit them, inhaling the familiar acrid smoke.
Stephanie held the man’s arms and shoulders in a full nelson while Crispin pinned his legs in a vicelike grip. With his free hand, Crispin took out one of his surgical knives. Enjoying the look of horror in the doomed man’s face, he began to slice open the man’s belly ever so slowly. It took a steady hand to keep the cut shallow despite the human’s frantic bucking and wrenching. Crispin leaned back, stretching the man’s torso between him and Stephanie like two points of a rack. Ah, the rack, Crispin thought with a pang of nostalgia. He’d have to have one of those made. That gristly tearing sound as arms and legs came loose from sockets. The whimpering moment when they realized they’d never leave the room alive. Good times, good times.
Stephanie’s eyes widened, and her nostrils flared, but she didn’t drink from the man despite the warm delicious blood coursing over his ribcage and dripping onto the black plastic bag. She was too well trained, like a dog that would hold a treat on its nose until you gave the signal it was okay.
The prey was too weak, and he went into shock before Crispin even finished cutting through the skin. He died soon after Crispin finished cutting the abdominal muscles, allowing the entrails to spill out onto the plastic bag. Crispin reached into the body cavity and carefully extracted the liver.
Inhaling more smoke, Crispin felt himself fall into the familiar trance-like state in which the seemingly random patterns of blood vessels along the liver transformed themselves into a meaningful message.
Two nights before the full moon. That’s when they’d strike. He saw a dark house, his wi-fi going down? And they’d hacked into it. He’d have to take care of that. And there was someone else involved. Sorrow? Sorrow of House Sanguinatus? That made things interesting. They were not on terrible terms, perhaps the two of them could come to some agreement.
A mountain lion. Did Fain have a shapeshifter? Or worse, a skinwalker? That would be bad news for everyone, but he couldn’t imagine a skinwalker allying with a white man.
Crispin saw someone he didn’t know, a young woman. She had a kind of invisibility spell, and she was coming to break his ward. How did she get in? Perhaps she was the shapeshifter. But no, he didn’t see her transform. Crispin saw himself pulling a stake out of his own chest, laughing. Was she a vampire hunter? What did she have to do with Albers’ whelp? Was she even related to Fain and the others? He hoped she was a vampire hunter. He had some special things he liked to do to those mortals who dared to assault their betters. There were quite creative ways a person could use pool acid and glass pipettes. Crispin smiled. It seemed as though his period of boredom was about to end.
The trance faded, and Crispin wiped his hands on the paper towels he’d brought before making some notes about the future the liver revealed to him.
“Good girl. You may drink, then wrap that up and follow me,” he told Stephanie.
Crispin watched her delicately lean down and drink blood. It was astounding. She never got any on her clothes and barely any on her face, just a little on her lips that she licked off. Such a fastidious creature. He walked away to the sound of her swallowing the sacrifice’s pooling blood. He’d gotten to the point where he knew these mine shafts well, but he still looked at his sketched map. You used to be able to follow the sound of whimpering and cries of pain, but the Harris brothers had given up on that sort of thing lately. It was cooler down here in the mine, like a root cellar. It disturbed the blood herd to hear the screaming, but it did keep them in line. Crispin rather thought he liked the way that blood tasted when your host was terrified all the time.
“Knock knock,” Crispin called out brightly, when he entered the chamber he’d turned into his personal dungeon. He set down the paper bag that held the rest of his supplies. “How are you two gents doing?”
Jay Harris had been hung upside down. The blood pooled to his head, giving him a puffy appearance.
Keith Harris had been manacled to the wall. Through repetitive effort, Keith had managed to loosen some of the rock around where the eyebolt attached, but he was so weak from hunger that he wasn’t be able to make much progress. Jay was a little stronger, though he didn’t look like he liked being hung upside down much.
“How long has it been since I hung you here?” Crispin asked Jay, turning slightly to one side so that he was almost face to face with the Harris boy, as everyone called them. “Oh goodness, it’s been nearly two weeks, hasn’t it? I imagine you’d like to come down from there.”
Stephanie came in, carrying the plastic sack. Jay’s eyes flickered, but he didn’t say anything. He still had streaks of dried blood dripping from his chest to his face, but it looked like his nipples had grown back. Crispin smiled, remembering that night. The best thing about torturing vampires is that no matter what you did, they’d eventually heal, as long as the head remained intact and they got enough blood.
Crispin double-checked the manacles before releasing the winch that lowered Jay to the ground. Jay just lay there, which was a good sign. His spirit had been broken. Break the body, break the spirit, that’s what his old master used to say.
“Did you boys ever learn how I found out you two were planning to kill me in my sleep? Funny thing, I’ve studied dark magics. I’m of the House of Silent Shadows, who have been teaching secret ways since before your little country existed. Not everyone can learn everything, of course, but a few of us do find our own niche. My specialty? Oh yes, you do want to know, don’t you? I’m a haruspex.”
Jay’s eyes flickered again, and he coughed up something sticky and black. He was probably extremely dehydrated after being left down here with no food and water for so long. He wasn’t so far gone that his nostrils didn’t dilate when Stephanie brought the plastic bag closer.
“You don’t know what that is, do you? They just don’t teach the classics anymore. I read the future through observing the liver of a sacrifice. Traditionally they used to use a sheep or a goat, but that’s not what my herd is made of.” He nodded at Stephanie.
Stephanie opened the sack to reveal the disemboweled body of the sacrifice. The blood was spilling out from the black plastic drop cloth, so she’d put the body inside a second trash bag. Crispin reached in to his paper bag and pulled out one of the red plastic keg cups he’d tossed in there, scooping some of the red liquid from the corner.
Jay licked his lips. He was close to frenzying. Keith was certainly close enough to frenzy.
“Drink some and feed your brother.”
Jay chugged from the cup, then filled it again from the inside of the bag, but instead of drinking the second cup, he carried it across the tunnel and poured it in his brother’s mouth. Keith still drank, which meant he wasn’t quite dead yet. Eventually, if they had the strength of will, they’d realize it made more sense to refuse these little gifts. Without blood, they’d eventually die. The feeding just got them back to the point where Crispin could have more fun with them.
“Jay, I’m going to let you go back into the house for a while,” Crispin said. “We’re going to play a game, and this game will be more fun with an extra player. If you do very well, I’ll give you a night off. Sound fun?”
“I’ll do it,” Jay said.
“Delightful,” Crispin said, and outlined his plan.