Chapter 9
Prague
His bitter, grey eyes reflected the orange fire in the hearth. He sat on his throne motionless, bored, but full of anticipation. He had failed to kill Blade. He had failed to kill his own son. He had failed to dethrone humanity as the dominant species, but his successor had accomplished the impossible. Humans now lived in caves, in the wilderness like the animals they are.
Silently, except perhaps in the mind, Damaskinos called to his servants. He wasn't hungry—in fact the hunger had near completely lost precedence—but he wanted to feed. He wanted to feel the warm blood on his hands, in his mouth, and coursing through his cold, dead carcass. He wanted to feel the incredible euphoria that was tantamount with orgasm in his mortal life.
With consuming the blood of a mortal, he could go places he never would have been to. He could become people he never was. He could feel feelings he could never have felt. He became the person he was destroying, if only temporarily.
It made him God.
The man was pulled into the decadent room by two vampires. The man gave little resistance, but nonetheless, knew his ultimate fate was here in this room. Everything he was, or used to be, was about to crash head-on with oblivion. His heart told him so—as did the voice in his head.
But it wasn't his voice...
Sluggishly, Ely Damaskinos rose from his stone throne. He never opened his eyes; instead, he used the eyes of one of his servants to see him to his prey. The man stood shaking in fear as the urine ran down his leg. The one servant, who still had his mind to himself, laughed.
Damaskinos slapped an open hand on the back of the man's neck and swung him to the left. He opened his eyes, and let the servant have his mind back. The Elder's right hand grabbed the man's tattered shirt and ripped it off, and threw it on the laughing servant's face.
The young man looked at Damaskinos' fingernails just before Damaskinos grazed them up and over his chest—the man let out a horrifying shriek and attempting to remove the vampire's claws as the blood dribbled down, and Damaskinos clenched tighter on the man's neck, obviously hitting a nerve.
Shhh...
Damaskinos then thrusted his claws into the man's stomach, and removed his intestines. The servants smiled in youthful expectation.
He rubbed the stomach lining between his fingers, and closed his eyes once more and inhaled the aroma of the blood.
Damaskinos let the intestines fall to the floor. The man, now unable to scream, due to the grip on his nervous system, physically and mentally, stood motionless in shock. His eyes were the only source of consciousness.
In the next instant, so fast the vampire servants even failed to see it, Damaskinos' hand slammed into the man's chest, and removed a still beating, though badly damaged heart. With each beat blood splashed from it's violent but useless act. Damaskinos wrapped his mouth around the heart, and within moments drained it completely.
He then tossed the heart to his servants, who juggled it before catching the slippery organ. The Elder, finished with his meal, tossed the man's languid body into the large hearth.
"Thank you..." said the Elder as he nonchalantly sat back on his throne.