{{This is just a quick note: Demons = vampires. They're the same race, just to clear up any confusion.}}
"This is the same thing that brought the humans down, made them weaker." Chrys growled. He was eating breakfast, a huge roasted pork. It was hard not to look at his feet, Ashes thought.
She knelt at the end of the table, head bowed just enough to appease, and stole glances at the Demons. Each had his or her own pig in front of them. She also knew that by the end of the meal, not a crumb would lay on the plates, not even the bones of the animal.
"We must discuss our moves before we make them, young Chrys. You are powerful, strong and intelligent, but impatient none the less. We can't just go charging into places where we suspect meat is being horded, or humans escaping. We have to plan carefully to avoid offending our people." It was an older vampire who spoke out, sitting a few seats down.
"I care not for this careful dance of intrigue and spying and bullshit. The lies will be more offensive than if we just went after what we wanted outright. Why complicate things into a web of chaos. Its too easy for things to get tangled and torn and just messy. I won't stand for it! Tomorrow, we start the plans for invasion of the southwest."
Ashes stopped listening. She didn't want to hear about the tactical movements of the Demons any more than she wanted to hear what they would do to the humans they found who had escaped the slavery they were now held in. She even wished to be one of them, strong enough to defy the will of their evil masters and plan a road to freedom.
She was a wimp and she knew it. On her knees at the and of the table, waiting for her masters call and doing everything she could to placate him, to keep him happy and his anger away from her. She knew the penalty for those who dared try for freedom would be gruesome and extreme. They would become the first of the examples. Like her.
"Ashes, come. I grow tired of the old fools." Chrys shoved his plate away from himself and stood up. She rose too, keeping her eyes on her bare toes, and walking away behind him. He was in a fury, she could tell.
"I'm in charge of this place. I am. Councils and voting and asking permission from every old geezer will slow us down, weaken the power that this system has."
Since he wasn't technically addressing her, she decided to remain silent. The path he took was winding them closer to the bath house, and she knew what that meant. Soaking in hot water, the luxury of it. This was the one place that Ashes received a luxury rather than a punishment of being a pet to the Demon in charge.
The door to the room was leaking steam, as always, and she followed Chrys through the door. There was a female demon soaking at the other end of the bath, steam licking the sides of her body. Ashes tried not to stare. She was beautiful in a very human way. Chrys noticed too, but didn't approach her. He stripped and walked into the water, drawing in breath when it met his skin.
Ashes followed suit, trying not to be embarrassed. She had scars on her arms, her back. There was also a fading purple-orange oval on her belly from the last time she'd made a Demon mad. It hadn't been Chrys. She'd bumped into someone in the hall trying to keep up with her master and that Demon, in his anger, had lashed out.
Chrys sat on one of the many benches and submerged all but his eyes. He could sit that way for a long time, neither needing nor wanting to draw breath. Ashes took her time, floating on her back in the steaming water, waiting for her master's call.
It felt like forever in the hot water, and she soaked until her aches were just a memory, gone in the distance and the steam.
"Ashes," Chrys called. All the aches came back, and she waded over to where he was. One of the attendants had brought a towel and several soaps over. She washed his hair, his body, rubbed soap into all the grime that stuck to him. He went underwater to rinse, then they repeated, him with his eyes closed, making sounds that turned Ashes' cheeks red.
After they were both dry and redressed in fresh linens, he went back to the politics. Ashes went behind him with her head bowed, hair falling down her back in wet tendrils.
