For more than two hundred years, I've tasted the vital essence of countless humans. Murky, bland, tinged with the sourness of fear.
His tasted of strawberries and forest wood. Like biting into the ripest strawberry of June, its juice bursting in my mouth, while the tip of my tongue touched moss beneath a thin frost in a pine forest in the depths of winter. I cursed under my breath.
Then I told myself: It's only hunting. Mark him, get close, enjoy him.
But now I'm standing in his greenhouse, where the warm air at twenty-five degrees has thawed my two-hundred-year-old body. He crouches in front of an orchid, using fingers steadier than a surgeon's to clear away the dead leaves. Without turning around, he asks me, “Your vital essence levels have fluctuated a lot lately. Should we adjust the collection frequency?”
He's optimizing the treatment plan. He's optimizing the plan for being drained.
