Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse

"...I wasn’t going to say anything, I wouldn’t—"

"It doesn’t matter whether you were or you weren’t." Dion said, forcing himself more along sobriety. "You know now. So you and Julian come with me and what happened here is what you give me for it." His jaw trended faintly, him sighing internally.

"Your blood when I need it. That whole arrangement is... all you have to do:"

Florence stood against the wall with the shirt hanging at her thighs. She held them closer to herself, her expression tightening with some frustration as she felt the lingering sensation of his bite.

A part of her had gotten frustrated with how he was acting so succenlh. But... she understood.

This was clearly something he had been trying to not involve her in after all.

"...Okay," she said. "Thank you, I can do that."

Florence began to dress herself thereafter.

Dion gave her the time to eat the food he had left her, and now at least it was a lot more important.

Although, perhaps for some time, feeling the bleeding cut that he had given to himself over his tongue.

’At least I can feel my regeneration coming back, and she helped me recover.’ He thought to himself trying to see the brighter side and consolation.

But even then, deep down, he felt regardless of what he thought about what he had done... having drank her blood, he was supremely satisfied.

Eventually, the door clicked shut behind her, Dion stood there for a few seconds with the taste of her blood still warm in his throat, and then his breath left him and he dropped into the chair beside the desk.

The rain pressed against the window. The warmth from the feeding was still moving through him, fading slowly from his fingertips and ribs and the place behind his eyes where his vision had sharpened past anything human. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Blood sat there, a faint smear. He rubbed it against his trousers.

He looked at the desk. The dents his fingers had left in its edge were deep enough that the wood had splintered, and the surface was cracked where his grip had torqued the grain. He had done that without being aware of it.

’What the hell is wrong with me.’

Anastasia’s scent had never done this. It sat low in his throat when she was close, and he had learned to let it rest. Florence’s had filled the room and taken his sight and his hands and turned him into the thing that had pinned her to a wall by her neck. He did not know if it was her blood specifically or his own state that had made it hit that hard, and there was no one to ask and no answer coming tonight.

’I nearly didn’t stop...’ He sighed to himself in that silent moment.

Sometime after, Dion found himself in a dim corridor. corridor. He went down it toward the sound of Paris’s voice and found them two doors down. Paris was sitting against the wall with his legs out, Julian beside him with the bear in his lap, and Florence was standing by the window with her arms folded and her hair pulled over one shoulder. It lay across the left side of her neck, and Dion’s eyes went there once and then away.

She looked at him when he came in. Her expression was level, and whatever had been on her face when she left his room was gone or buried.

"We’re leaving," Dion said. "Get your things together."

Paris pushed himself off the floor. His eyes moved from Dion to Florence and back, and he went to gather the bag against the far wall without asking.

"The pharmacy first?" Florence said.

"The pharmacy first. Then we split from the others."

She nodded, and her hand went briefly to the hair over her shoulder, and then she knelt beside Julian.

Julian looked up at Dion from the floor, the bear against his chest, and his eyes were wide and clear and he did not look afraid.

He held his hand up.

Dion looked at it for a moment. Then he took it and pulled the boy to his feet.

Footsteps came up the stairwell while Paris was checking his bag. Lighter than Anton’s, lighter than Basil’s. Madeline appeared in the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her and a small plastic bag pressed against her stomach.

She looked at Dion, and then her eyes went to the floor.

"...I heard you were going," she said.

"I am."

She stood there, and then she stepped into the room and held the bag out toward him. There was something wrapped inside it, small and angular.

"...It’s not much. Some crackers from earlier, and a tin I had set aside. For the road."

Dion looked at the bag, and then at her.

"Keep it, Madeline. You have sixty people downstairs."

"...Please. I want you to take it."

"Keep it." He said it gently enough that she raised her head. A brief flash of red light pulsed from his hand, and when it cleared he was holding several sealed packets of dried food and a bottle of water that had not been there before.

Madeline’s lips parted, and she stared at what was in his hand.

"Take these instead," he said. "They’ll go further than crackers."

She looked at the food, and then at him, and her eyes were bright and her mouth was working around something she could not get out. She took them with both hands and held them against her chest.

"...Thank you," she managed.

"Thank you," Dion said. "For the way you’ve treated me since I got here. You didn’t have to be as kind as you were, and I noticed."

Madeline’s face crumpled for a moment, and then she pressed it back together and nodded once without speaking, and she turned and went back through the doorway and down the stairwell with the food held tight.

The rain had not stopped.

Dion stood by the window and looked out at the street below while Paris finished with his bag and Florence put Julian’s shoes on and tied them in silence. The building moved with the sound of sixty people getting ready to go somewhere, footsteps below and voices and the noise of things being gathered and set down and gathered again.

Anton appeared in the doorway.

"We’re ready downstairs," he said. "As far as the pharmacy, and then we split." He paused. "Yara’s staying with our group. She’ll keep an eye on Marcus."

Dion nodded. Marcus had lost the arm below the elbow to the cat, and he was not walking to Novamed in that state. Someone needed to be with him.

"Your people?" Anton said.

"Ready."

Anton looked at the rain against the window, and his jaw shifted, and then he went back down the stairs.

Dion looked at Paris, at Florence with Julian’s hand in hers and the bear under his arm.

"Stay close to me," he said. "All three of you."

He went through the door and down the stairwell toward the sound of sixty people waiting to walk into the rain.

The stairwell went past the ground floor and kept going down.

The rain that had soaked through every corridor above thinned out behind them until the only sound left was their footsteps on the concrete. Then the smell reached him. Engine oil and dust, and under them, the rot.

Dion held his hand up without turning and the footsteps behind him stopped.

"There are zombies down here," he said, keeping his voice low.

Anton came down beside him. His phone light cut a narrow line along the last few steps and the edge of the doorframe, but the parking level beyond was too wide for the beam to reach.

"How many can you tell?"

"Eight or nine spread across the level."

"We clear them before we look for anything else," Anton said. He glanced at Basil’s gun. "No shooting down here."

Dion went through the door.

The parking level opened in rows of vehicles beneath a ceiling low enough that he felt the press of it. His eyes picked out the shapes between the cars before his second step. Three near the far wall, dragging along the side of a van. Two by the ramp that led up to street level, the grey light from above catching the wet ruin of their faces. The rest were deeper in, groaning.

The others came through behind him. Irvin moved along the wall to the right with his machete up. Basil steered Florence and Julian through with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Florence pulled Julian against her hip.

Dion moved left, toward the nearest cluster.

The first zombie was between two cars with its hands flat against a door panel, pressing and pressing as though it had been trying to open it since the night everything turned.

Dion raised his hand, and the red mist bled from his palm and condensed and hardened, and the pale grey bone of the Gnoll-Bone Longsword took shape in his grip. The hide bit into his fingers immediately, the claw-grooves cutting into the meat of his palm, and he swung before it had finished turning.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!