Eavesdrop!
"... weirdest fucking human last night."
"Yeah?"
"So I'm just working, right, but I'm a bit hungry and haven't hunted yet so I go down the street, right, and there's this group of people coming out of this karaoke club. This one human's fiddling with her bag and lets the others go ahead so I'm like, okay, great, I have lunch now. But you know, it's always risky to approach the ones that present as female because -- "
"Yeah, I know, if you breathe on the other side of the road they'll know about it. I usually go for men for the same reason, they think they're safe. In most places anyway, ever tried hunting in the East End in the '60s? Even the men were super jumpy because they were always shanking each other."
"Dude, weren't you Embraced in 1974?"
"Yeah, but my sire told me stories. I was one of those jumpy humans. You could barely set foot outside your door after dark without getting mugged. I wore a turban back then though, so I didn't get bothered much, only by the idiots who didn't know what a kirpan was."
"Anyway. So she sees me approaching, right, and she's on her guard and I'm like, don't worry dude, I'm just a hungry vampire."
"Sullivan. The fuck?"
"It's this thing Evie started doing to fuck with the kine, just to see what they say. She only ever does it around me so I can sigh loudly and Dominate them into forgetting about it afterwards but uh, I also started doing it sometimes just for the lols."
"For the what?"
"Evie says that too, it means for one's own amusement. Can't you actually use a smartphone? How do you not know what that means? You've never been on social media?"
"Weren't you lecturing me about 'spiritual self harm' last week?"
"Shut the fuck up. So anyway, she plays along. A lot of them do. Asks to see my fangs. I show her. Asks me what fucking clan I am."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, she's played fucking Bloodlines. Matthew Dawkins has a lot to answer for, no wonder he's on that fucking Red List."
"Isn't that the alter ego of -- "
"Yeah, that guy. No wonder nobody's been able to bump him off yet. You try telling a Methuselah he can't just fucking violate the Masquerade like that by making a literal fucking game out of it."
"He didn't make it, he just -- "
"No, no, he did, Matthew Dawkins is just his latest cover."
"Oh! Right, I forgot. Feels like it only came out and made the Camarilla shit themselves like... six months ago."
"Bram Stoker, eat your fucking heart out. Anyway the human's pretty excited about how good my 'Lasombra cosplay' is because I'm all in black and the shadows are spooky and shit so I'm like, thinking, right. I'm behind my monthly quota and you know what Amicia's like when I don't hit it."
"So is this, like, the monthly-monthly quota or the monthly quota where she sneakily tries to bump it up, you call her out on her shit, and she brings it back down and doesn't give a fuck you didn't actually hit it so long as you hit the normal one?"
"Oh, it's the former."
"Oh, so you must be in a lot of trouble, then."
"Yeah, so like, I'm still hungry but I've got this human eating out of the palm of my hand and I still need some blood bags. She's not as jumpy now that she knows I'm a cosplaying weirdo instead of a sexual predator weirdo, but I still gotta lure her into the van."
"Yeah, I noticed the graffiti -- "
"Yeah, that wasn't Evie this time, I woke up and it was there. So anyway I decide fuck it, may as well go the whole nine yards, so I'm like 'hey can I steal your blood.'"
"How'd she take that?"
"She corrected me and said it's not stealing if I have her consent. So I'm like, okay, so do I have your consent to steal your blood? And she's like. No. that's not -- actually never mind, how are you going to take it? And I'm like well I have this whole set up in this van here. And she's like the one with 'free candy' written on the side? and I'm like. yeah. the one with 'free candy' written on the side. the kids these days think they're so funny."
"How many times has Evie -- "
"Eighteen, but nine of them were actually hallucinations because she was too lazy to get some more spraypaint so I don't think it counts. But like I said it wasn't Evie this time. So anyway, that graffiti ended up saving my ass here because I'm sure she'd have run screaming if it was a normal creepy van but because someone 'lampshaded the creepiness,' as she said, she hung around instead. I showed her my setup. She was like 'cool, sure, go ahead.'"
"She wasn't worried you'd chloroform her after?"
"Pretty sure she was going along with this for the lols. She seemed to think I was harmless. Or at least, she gave off the impression she did. To be honest it might've been a fawn response, but yeah, I had her in the van hooked up and giving blood. She tried to tell me off for not sanitising her arm but I just Dominated her into thinking I'd done it so no harm done. So yeah, got the blood, Dominated her into forgetting it and sent her on her way. Wish they were all as cooperative as that! I'd be way fucking less traumatised."
A snort. "Did you at least give her a cookie? The humans do that."
"She asked if I had any. I said no, I only have chewable iron tablets."
"You give the humans iron tablets when you're done?"
"No, but Jane has a stock for when I'm out in rural bumfuck nowhere and need to feed off her exclusively for a while. Anyway. Now there's a weirdass human who's got a bottle of chewable iron tablets in her bag and she has no idea how it got there. I think Evie would be proud."
"So you do give out free candy, huh?"
"Nah, she paid for it in blood."
"Yeah, that's... yeah that's true. Damn, and I thought I was being so witty."
"Har har har. Fucking smartarse Ravnos."
