Chapter Text
Whistling happily, America approached the woman strapped to the table in the center of the room. She bared her yellow-tinted fangs at him, fighting against the bonds to no avail. Her arms were spread out as though on a cross, palms up and making it impossible for her to bend her elbows without breaking any bones or yanking her shoulders out of socket.
The straps were leather, sigils burned into them as added precaution. Even if she escaped, the sigils would be burned into her wrists, upper arms, on either side of her neck, along her waist, on her outer thighs, and on her inner ankles. They’d slow her down enough to be caught again.
The room had no windows, the only sources of light the red bulb above the table, and a lamp on the oak desk shoved against the wall. The door was closed, insulation put up around it to keep sound from escaping.
“Bastard,” the vampire hissed, voice scratchy. She was dangerously thirsty and could shrivel from starvation soon—America made a mental note of that.
He wanted to study the shriveling phenomenon more, but not with her right now. So far, all the vampires he’d starved to the point of shriveling couldn’t be revived, but those bodies never decomposed, so there should be a way for them to revive, right?
“Scientist,” replied America glibly. “I’m only curious.”
It was the usual back-and-forth. She played dumb to his questions, and he played the scientist only interested in what made her (and those like her) tick.
Well, it wasn’t total play-acting. He was curious, though there were other questions he needed answered first.
It had been two years, four months, two weeks, and a day now.
He’d vanished after that night. On his property in West Virginia one moment and gone the next.
Chaff in the wind.
“But if you’d like to tell me where…?” America let the question linger in the stagnant air between them.
The room was getting hot, the air conditioning off and temperatures outside sweltering, even for this far south. It was humid too, and while vampires were undead, a few months of moving around told the nation vampires preferred colder climates. Humidity did not often affect them until heat was introduced, making their undead lives miserable.
It made America wonder why, then, any vampire stories would be best seen set in New Orleans. Its air was thick as cream, keeping a hold of summer heat until February—late January if they were lucky.
Maybe it was the atmosphere.
England always said he had no knowledge or talent for any sort of magic, conveniently forgetting about the Crescent City (to name one city renown for spirits, magic, and the like). Voodoo was a religion (closed to the uninitiated), which was often conflated in pop culture into simple magic.
Hoodoo was the magical system, and America knew it well. He’d been both caster and victim.
Hoodoo was an African-American tradition, rooted in the oppression they faced (in history and present times). As a nation, America had been both slave and master, oppressed and oppressor. While he had not practiced hoodoo for some time, he still knew it well. It had structure and rules, which America preferred. The wand-waving England did was too out-there, too unreliable, too impromptu.
Most thought America impulsive, and, to a point, he was. However, much of what others saw as whimsical (or downright idiotic) fancy was calculated on America’s part.
Better for them to see the boy that ate too many burgers and an obsession with superheroes and aliens. He didn’t want them to always see the king with a throne of bodies.
And now blood on his tongue.
He craved it now, even when he had fed last night. The hunger could not be eradicated, only quelled.
But if he got the answers he wanted—needed—then maybe he could make the hunger go away completely.
The vampire spat in America’s face. Or, at least, she attempted to. Nothing left her mouth but air and sound. Her amber eyes were wide, and her pale skin was coated in a substance that looked too thick to be sweat and stank of decomposition. America tried breathing through his mouth earlier, but that had only made the experience worse.
It was interesting, though. A vampire’s body regulated itself by consuming blood and energy from humans. The energy part still escaped the nation, as such things could not be measured, but he’d seen it happen as plainly as he’d seen these sigils burn into vampire flesh.
This was his sixty-eighth subject since the Incident. Finding how to keep them bound had taken trial and error. Finding how to examine their regenerative abilities without actually killing the specimen also took trial and error, though not as much, once America figured out how to keep them still.
They were much better at escaping than at dying.
However, it was America they were up against.
Oh, the looks on their faces when they’d thought they killed him, only to see him come back to life….
America smiled at the thought—the barest pull at the corners of his mouth.
“No screaming, now,” he whispered in a Yat accent, which always appeared whenever he entered the Crescent City. “Or do. No one will hear you but me, but it may affect how much more it’ll hurt.”
“Go to Hell,” the woman growled, pupils dilating to where they nearly blocked out the irises.
Odd how different vampires’ eyes reacted. Some dilated when agitated or hungry; some turned to slits, like a cat’s; and some became blocky, like a goat’s. Dilation was by far the most common, the slits in second and blocky pupils in third. It made America wonder if this meant there was some form of competition when it came to Turning new vampires.
It made sense. Dilated pupils were less likely to garner attention than slit- or rectangular pupils.
“How quaint a command, coming from you.” Alfred put the speculum in place, keeping the vampire’s right eye wide open. He then grabbed a fistful of hair, keeping her head down and still. “I think you recall how strong I am. I wouldn’t move if I was in your place.”
“What are you?” The vampire’s breathy voice barely passed her fangs, and America noticed the veins in her eyes were more visible than usual. The veins in her left eye had burst, making the bottom half of her iris darker than the rest.
Oh, this was going to hurt her a lot. Without enough blood inside of her, the numbing agent in her system wouldn’t be able to cancel much (if any) of it out. There would also be minimal bleeding; America was glad for that. The clean-ups were the worst part. Crime shows made it look much easier than it was, and, unfortunately, vampires didn’t turn to dust when killed as some myths proclaimed.
On the bright side, though, having the corpses allowed him the option of autopsy if he so wished. He’d only done autopsies on a few subjects, though, only killing them when time dictated.
“A hero,” America answered simply, the words a reflex. “Now hold still.”
On the desk was a hot plate, kept away from the papers and books. A small pot of water boiled, instruments sterilizing inside of it. America chose the deep-bowl spoon, humming as he came close, the subject’s snarl trembling like her shaking fists.
In the span of a held breath, there was a pop! and a high-pitched scream, pummeled by the vampire’s thirst. She soon could only whimper as she shook as much as the straps allowed. Her teeth chattered, and her eyelid drooped once the speculum was taken away and dropped into the pot of boiling water. The eye was dropped into a shallow mason jar. America added formalin to preserve it before screwing the lid shut tightly as possible.
Paying no mind to the vampire’s pitiful noises, he labeled the jar #68 5-21-17. The jar was then placed onto the lower of the two shelves above the desk, next to the much larger jar, which held the vampire’s liver. On the other side was a jar holding the subject’s kidneys, and next to the kidneys was her spleen.
America was curious if blood needed to be filtered. Vampires didn’t need to worry about accidentally drinking from a victim with a blood-borne virus that he knew, so he wondered if it had to do with them being in that tiny grey area between life and death (which he still had trouble wrapping his head around), or if vampire bodies could filter the blood so they wouldn’t die from a nightly drink.
To see, she needed blood. She’d starve within a few days if not given nourishment.
Vampire bats urinate while they drink, thought the nation as he pulled on gloves to protect his hands from the cold of the cooler next to the desk. Only a portion of the blood they take has any nutrients that can be used, and they need a lot just to get what they need. Blowing that up to her size would take gallons upon gallons, and from what I’ve seen, vampires don’t produce waste. And how does the numbing agent spread, when the heart doesn’t beat…?
His thoughts were bullet trains taking off in different directions, none of the tracks coordinated.
Sighing, America grabbed a fistful of the vampire’s hair, forcing her eye up at the ceiling. He’d already uncapped the bag, the vampire gasping as the smell hit her.
“Bon appétit,” whispered America, pouring the blood into her wide-open mouth. He did it in short spills, allowing her to swallow in-between. It took some time, and after a pint of clean blood, America switched to the bags holding blood from HIV-positive patients.
The smell was different, making America wrinkle his nose. The vampire spat the first mouthful, droplets hitting the nation’s cheeks, lips, jaw, and neck as rivulets streamed down from the corners of her mouth. That meant the taste was different from clean blood as well, to the point of it being unappetizing, even after being starved.
But if I’d fed her this blood right off the bat, thought America, she probably would have drunk it without hesitation.
He would try that next time to see.
The vampire gasped and sputtered, swearing in a mixture of English and Pennsylvania Dutch—ah, so that’s where she’d come from. Except for the groups that kept themselves separate from the rest of the population, Pennsylvania Dutch had fallen out of favor after World War II.
This vampire seemed rather young compared to others America had caught, but it was hard to judge age with vampires. Younger ones were burned by holy items, whereas older ones only developed a rash, which resembled someone touching poison ivy. This wasn’t a reliable test, though, as the reaction seemed to depend on the vampire’s beliefs, or their beliefs prior to being Turned.
One vampire, for instance, hadn’t reacted at all when touched by a crucifix, but when touched by Buddhist prayer beads, a rash had developed where America had touched him with it.
No matter, thought America. Her age was of little importance. After a year, all vampires’ anatomies worked almost identically, and this vampire had been undead for more than a year, America was sure.
Another spill of blood, and, again, the vampire sputtered.
The third time, though, was the charm. Still deeply hungry, she swallowed the rest of the pint, plus two more (both filled with infected blood).
She laid still, eye closed, and America injected ten cc’s of garlic juice, knocking her unconscious. Even after drinking three pints of blood (taken from live donors), the garlic would keep her weak for six to twelve hours.
As he left the room, America took a bag of clean blood, hunger a clenched fist deep within him. It felt both different and similar to hunger for food; it was a feeling he was unable to articulate, even in thought.
The house was a camelback style, the sealed room on the second story and would overlook the back yard if the window had not been covered up to make the room sound proof.
The staircase was right out the room’s door, a bathroom on the left and office straight ahead. The stairs led into the living room, which had a fold-out bed (still folded out and unmade), a loveseat, a TV over the fireplace, and a shrine in the corner, which acted as more decoration than devotion.
When in New Orleans, America suddenly felt Catholic. It was weird, being religious as a personified nation. Beliefs could change from one town to the next, one moment to the next. It was easier to just go with the flow and give it no thought.
Turning left, America passed through the dining room into the kitchen and set the blood bag on the counter, next to his iPhone, which blinked with a notification. America washed his hands and face, also taking off his shirt and took it to the washroom in the back. Luckily, most of the blood had ended up on his skin, and like other nations, America had nothing to worry from the HIV-positive blood other than maybe some flu-like symptoms for a few days.
Too impatient to warm it up, America opened the blood bag and started drinking from where the medical PVC would be attached. The coldness made his nose wrinkle, and bagged blood only patted his hunger, like drinking a kale smoothie in place of a meal. He needed a live donor every ten days (at most) if he wanted to keep from losing control.
Again.
Halfway through the bag, he unlocked his phone, finding a text from Canada and two from England, reminding him about the G7 meeting next month. It would be in London this year, and England warned America that they would not be putting everything off for two days because he missed a flight.
Late once and you never forget again. The corner of his mouth twitched. He texted them back, assuring them that he’d remember.
Germany hosted that year. He’d been angriest of everyone, though he’d kept it bottled up until he and America were alone.
“I want to break up,” America had practically vomited to shut him up.
He hadn’t been able to meet his eye; the words had been bitter in his mouth, the foul taste brought back with every swallow of human blood. His heart hurt, and America growled upon realizing that he’d started to cry again.
In truth, he had not forgotten about the meeting that year. It had been barely a month after he was Turned. He’d been fighting the hunger to the point of it causing him pain in a way that shredded the idea of time and made him believe he was already in Hell, sentenced to an eternity of torture.
He didn’t like thinking about those poor people. He still heard their screams. He still heard that woman’s pleading as she trembled through prayers for mercy and escape.
It was easier to believe he’d forgotten. His façade wasn’t just to give the other nations a mask to look at. It was so America could walk past a mirror without having a breakdown. It was so he could have some semblance of sanity.
Licking his lips, America set the phone back down onto the counter and dropped the empty bag into the trash, which was in the cabinet under the chrome sink. His fangs were extended, conscious thought needed to keep them retracted to where they were of normal length. The bottom canines were sharp as well, but they were smaller, barely noticeable. America had bitten his tongue numerous times after he’d first been Turned, and he still did it on occasion.
But if the vampire upstairs had any information, then, maybe, America wouldn’t have to be one of them much longer.
Maybe then he could look himself in the mirror. Maybe then he could win Germany back.
He just needed to find the one that had Turned him.
And eat his heart.