Page 44 of Silent Stalker
“My father would do something like that,” I grumbled.
“Precisely.” Emerick ferried paper-wrapped packages to the refrigerator. “I believe I shall grill us a pair of steaks for breakfast tomorrow, as you should be feeling better and quite ravenous by then. Chicken soup, unless you would fancy something else?”
“I’m game for chicken tonight and ridiculously expensive steak tomorrow.”
“It was a gift from our friends in Japan.”
“They gifted you the beef?”
“Indeed. A small token for our union, and I have been told there shall be a proper gift at our official ceremony. I’ve learned not to refuse tokens, and we will respond in kind with a token in a few weeks. Perhaps we can go on a venture to find wood for a new stake and carve some for them. Japanese carvers are even rarer than American ones. Europeans tend to become carvers more reliably.”
“Why is that? Do you want help?”
“Stay where you are and enjoy relaxing. It is one of the benefits of having been cruelly assaulted with so many needles in one evening.” Emerick set one package aside and put the rest in the fridge before rampaging through the remaining bags for vegetables. “Most times, the brood won’t permit me to go shopping for groceries. I take too long, spend too much money, buy too many things I don’t need, and somehow manage to never get enough of what I want later. I end up buying for everyone else, and it results in annoyed vampires and chaos. But the ones I shop for are happy, because I buy them the things they won’t buy for themselves because of their pesky budgets.”
I giggled at the thought of Emerick making a mess of something as basic as grocery shopping. “Would you like to go grocery shopping next week?”
“Desperately. Grocery stores are fascinating. Even though they have been around for a long time, I remember the markets, and no matter how many times I go, I appreciate the drastic difference between now and my childhood. Some things are missing, but so much is better now. But it should be obvious enough. Humans live much longer lives without the use of magic.” Emerick glanced in the direction of the reception. “We will have to trick the guards if we want to go.”
“No, we won’t. I will walk out of my own house and go grocery shopping if I please, and no vampire on this planet is telling me I can’t go grocery shopping.”
Emerick stilled. “If you are attempting to flirt, I find your flirtations to be very effective.”
Vampires. I had no doubt in my mind I could pull a knife or a stake on him and get the same general results. “I will keep that in mind when I’m preparing to secure and enjoy your surrender, Mr. Lowrance.”
“This game has become rather dangerous and wrought with perils,” he muttered.
I giggled, got up from my stool, and joined him in exploring the grocery bags. “Your grocery shopping problem isn’t really a problem. We’ll make a budget for excess items you buy, several lists of things your chosen targets appreciate, and generally keep to the list. If you wish to shop for food because it remains a novelty for you, we can do that, and we’ll donate everything you buy to a charity, a food bank, or a church. We do not donate the things needed to make soup for me right now.”
The vaccinations had done something to me, awakening my general appetite, although to a far lesser degree than I expected. I located the potatoes and onions and carried them to the box to store them, discovering a plethora of potatoes, onion, garlic, scallions, and other root vegetables waiting to be used. “Someone overstocked on things that go in here.”
“I don’t think anyone checked what I had before going out shopping,” he admitted. “Or they assume you’ll eat me out of the penthouse. Either is possible.”
“Do you like potato soup?”
“I do.”
“Roast the chicken, and we’ll make potato soup. We’ll use some of the onions and garlic with the roast and the potato soup, and we can do roast vegetables and freeze it to make vegetable stock later. Assuming you have freezer space.”
“There are several deep freezers downstairs with plenty of space if our personal one runs out. There’s one in the pantry.”
Pantry? The penthouse had a pantry? I eyed the possible door options and picked one of the two doors leading off the kitchen to discover more of my new home’s secrets. The first door led to a pantry, but I spotted no sign of a deep freezer. “Does this kitchen have two pantries, Emerick?”
“It does. That’s for grains, pastas, and dry goods that might become infested with various unpleasant bugs. I pay a premium so that these infestations never occur in my home. The magic also preserves the goods so they lasts much longer. The other pantry has canned goods and the deep freezer.”
I closed the door and headed to the next option, and sure enough, I found a second walk-in pantry. Not only did it contain a deep freezer and shelves upon shelves of canned goods, links of dry sausage hung from the ceiling along with other preserved meats, including sacks labeled jerky. “And I take it you have similar spells for all this meat?”
“Indeed.”
I licked my lips and pointed at the jerky. “Is this edible?”
Emerick joined me, laughed, and pulled down one of the jerky sacks, reaching inside to pluck out two long strips of meat, offering me one of them. “It is elk jerky. Each bag has a different type of jerky in it. I see I will have to reward your good behavior with a new type of jerky to try. I enjoy it, and it makes for an excellent snack for peckish, grouchy vampires.”
“Something we can sink our teeth into?” I guessed.
“Precisely.”
“So, do you think playing Clue with our problem will help?”
“I think playing Clue will improve our general mood, which will help let us focus better when we go over all of the facts we know. The information I have been given is not pretty, and I fear it will only get worse as we are filled in on what happened early this evening.”
I nodded, and I gnawed on the jerky, narrowing my eyes while considering the possibilities. I appreciated the meat’s toughness, which allowed me to take my frustration out on it. “No one vampire could do this, right?”
“I don’t believe so. I couldn’t make so many vampires in such a short period of time. Nor would I have the resources to keep so many newly turned captive. Starving vampires tend to be vicious predators, driven by thirst and the start of madness. Consider it to be like late-stage rabies, where the animal has lost most of its ability to be a danger due to how the disease has progressed. Once bloodlust progresses beyond a certain point, that is what happens. The predator becomes easy prey.”
“But why bother releasing the vampires, then? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“This is why I believe the vampires involved may be young, ignorant, or both. They likely don’t understand the progression of thirst and bloodlust, and assumed the madness in their eyes, when caged, would translate to capable hunting. You saw the lack of humanity in their gazes. It gave even the normal humans pause. That was why only one fool perished. If they believed that to be the most dangerous stage of bloodlust, then it explains much. I hope, for all our sakes, they do not learn the truth about when a vampire becomes the most dangerous.” Emerick returned the sack of jerky to its hook before leaving the pantry. “There will be time enough for that talk later. For now, we will cook, play a child’s game, and fortify ourselves for the dreadful work ahead of us.”
