Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse

Dion thought to himself passing people.

At the very least, in his perception, the prana that had been afflicting the people was settling, even if t wasn’t by too much.

Dion kept his breathing shallow, trying to focus on the sweetness of the prana and kept walking.

Paris had mentioned to him that there was some kind of commotion going on with the lady that they had helped, and who had helped Marcus.

If there was anything good about all of the things going on in this place, it was at least the fact that she, even inducing all of this restlessness and hormonal nonsense in him, was forcing him to learn to control himself.

Slipping out of his thoughts, he heard the commotion as he turned the corner.

"...so what, then? We all sit here and starve politely, is that it?"

Two men stood over the woman who was sitting against the wall with her arms around a boy no older than five or six.

The boy’s face was buried against her shoulder, and her hand was pressed flat to the back of his head, holding him there, and her eyes tensed up on the two men while her body had turned to put her shoulder between them and the child.

"There is nothing left!" The taller of the two had his hands out with the palms open, and he shook them once at her as he said it. "We haven’t eaten since yesterday, and you’re sitting there on a whole packet of crackers like the rest of us don’t exist!"

"I have a child to take care of," she said. Her voice was steady, and her arm had tightened around the boy. "He hasn’t eaten either."

"Everyone has someone they need to be taking care of." The second man was quieter about it, and he didn’t raise his hands at all, but his jaw was set a good deal harder than the first man’s. "My wife is in one of those rooms with a fever that won’t break, and she can’t keep water down. She needs to eat something as soon as possible."

Madeline stood between the two of them with her hands half raised, turning from one to the other.

"...If we can all just sit down and work out what we have left between us, then we can split it so that everyone gets—"

"We’ve been sitting down." The taller man didn’t look at her when he said it. "We’ve been being obedient and patient since we got here. Every time somebody says they’ll figure it out, and then nothing happens, and then it’s a few hours later, and we’re all still sitting down and doing squat. The group that went out for food came back with nothing, and they’re injured! Half this floor is sick! When does somebody actually do something?"

Doors had opened along the corridor by then, with faces standing in them.

"He’s not wrong, you know."

"Keep your voice down, will you, there’s people trying to sleep in here."

"Sleep? Who in this building is sleeping?"

"What exactly is going on?"

Suddenly they all turned.

Dion was approaching from the back of them, and whatever the taller man had been about to say next, he swallowed it.

The second one found something on the floor to look at.

And the woman’s attention lingered on him, then her lips pursed as her arm tightened around the boy, and further down the corridor one of the doors closed again, quietly.

"How much food is there?" Dion asked.

"...One packet of crackers that I had been given yesterday," the woman said. "I was saving it for him."

He looked at the two men. "Is there anything else on this floor?"

"There isn’t anything at all."

"I see."

Dion finally got right next to them, reaching right before the woman.

He crouched down in front of the woman, close enough that he could hear the boy breathing over the sound of the rain.

"Give me the crackers, please."

She looked at him for a long moment, and the boy shifted against her.

Her eyes widened a little at his demand, and then her lips pursed. She gave way to a very difficult and reluctant expression, and then her hand came away from the back of his head and held the packet out.

Throughout those moments, Dion maintained his gaze on her green-grey indignant eyes, his expression even. At the same time, Madeline seemed moments from intervening, but she held herself back.

Dion took the packet of crackers and ultimately shoved them into his pocket in front of everyone.

He stood on his feet, and his expression tightened a little, his voice leaving no room for arguments as he looked between the two men. "See, now there isn’t any reason to fight."

The men looked between each other and they immediately turned on their heels, leaving as they muttered curses beneath their breaths.

"...Excuse me." The woman then said without looking at them as she left within the next moment.

Unlike the others, she didn’t curse him audibly, but he was sure she was doing so internally.

Dion had to sigh to himself internally, shaking his head.

’I’ll have to speak to her after I’m done with these guys...’

The moment he thought of this, he wrestled internally with anticipation and reluctance.

"Let’s get out of here and head to the others." He said to Madeline then.

The woman nodded, and they left soon after as well.

"...Thank you," Madeline said with a bit of difficulty, once the two of them had gotten far enough along the corridor. "I was standing there for ten minutes. I kept saying things, and none of it was getting anywhere near either of them."

"I thought you would have told me I was being unfair, you know." He laughed a little.

"... I almost did... but I understand why you did what you did."

Dion didn’t say anything then, only laughing faintly.

It was rather unfair and cruel, but when things were like this, someone had to play devil’s advocate.

And who better than the only one among them that was not human?

Madeline didn’t say anything to that for several steps.

They were headed to a meeting with the others that had been called.

Madeline had led him down a stairwell and along a corridor that he hadn’t walked before, past the rooms where the coughing was loudest, to an office near the end of it.

The door was ajar a little, and there were voices coming through the gap of it, and when Madeline pushed it open, the room was a good deal fuller than Dion had expected it to be.

Anton sat in a chair against the far wall with his wounds cleaned and a dressing over the side of his face.

Irvin was against the opposite wall, and his attention only lingered on Dion for a moment before he looked anywhere else.

Yara sat up on the edge of the desk with her injured leg stretched out in front of her and her hands flat on the wood either side of her.

Despite the state that the three of them had come here in, within such a short time, all of their injuries looked to hardly be bothering them at all.

Paris stood over near the window with his arms folded and his weight going from one foot to the other and back again.

Basil was in the middle of the room and standing, with a chair right there beside him that he hadn’t taken.

"Marcus?" Dion asked.

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