Fragment 7

John regarded delivery persons with much greater respect these days. He'd never really thought about them much before. It had seemed like simple work for simple people if he'd thought about it at all.

He examined his list again. Mrs. Beaglesworth had asked for potatoes and vodka. Wasn't vodka made from potatoes? He wondered if her apartment was potato themed. He wouldn't be finding out anytime soon, if ever, since he was supposed to knock, ring the bell, and move on, so that no one had to come into contact with anyone else.

He gathered up the items for the next three orders and staggered toward the elevators. Technically they were supposed to be avoiding closed environments like elevators, but he was pretty sure that climbing the stairs enough times to deliver everything would kill him a lot faster than catching the virus would.

--

The vampire stirred and woke up a little reluctantly. Of course, he'd only identified himself as a vampire relatively recently and he still wasn't certain that the word exactly matched what he was. There had been other, older, names for something like him, but none of them were quite… like him.

Vampire was so close that he'd decided that the things that didn't match must simply be incorrect. The sun didn't bother him, for instance, but he could see in near darkness as well as any cat. He could be seen in mirrors, but he could make people forget that they'd seen him if they met his true eyes. He could make himself into mist, a bat, a dragon, or even a human of pretty much any appearance he pleased. In fact, his identification of himself as male was only because it took more focus to appear to be female, and he'd never been gotten with child.

He might have continued to think of himself simply as a shapechanger, but he did draw more power and sustenance from drinking fresh blood than he could get from mundane food, or rather, from anything dead. Raw fruits, nuts and seeds were all technically alive and were better than dead meat, or cooked vegetables. Yogurt and cheeses were also alive after a fashion, but they were so weak that they were not much better than gnawing uselessly on dead things.

However, a beating heart's blood gave him the most energy of anything that he'd ever tried. Not that modern vampire literature mentioned beating hearts, but some of the older stuff did, and he felt like maybe the stories where the vampire lived off of the energy of its bound chosen without hurting them weren't… impossible. He just couldn't quite figure out how.

He'd never let anyone stab him through the heart with anything, let alone a wooden stake, so he didn't know if that was what it would take to kill him. In his personal experience, stabbing anything through the heart would kill it, and the same with removing its head. He could regenerate whole limbs and heal from other things that would normally kill a human though, so that part matched the vampire lore well enough.

He also might be immortal, since he was at least four centuries old already and showed no signs of aging beyond 'adult'. He was fairly sure that he was an adult, but not absolutely certain. In his earliest memories he had been much smaller, and painfully hungry all of the time. He thought that maybe he'd spent a long time as a snake who ate eggs because those had been able to feed him best, and snakes were good at that.

He shoved the protective lid of the stone casket aside and sat up, looking for what had woken him, but there was no obvious sound or scent on the air. He checked the expensive and customized atomically powered watch on his wrist. It was quite new, and it told him that it had only counted a few years since he'd fallen asleep.

He frowned. Normally he slept for at least a couple of decades at a time, but then he didn't have to sleep again for nearly half a century. No wonder he felt a little enervated. He reset the watch cheerfully despite his questions. Instantly knowing how much time had passed was just as satisfying as he'd hoped.

--

The mankind who owned the cart was angry. He wasn't quite sure what to do about it, since the creature was waving its arms and stomping its feet while shouting unintelligible words, without ever getting closer than its own body length.

The downside to the apple protecting trays and this small form was that he couldn't simply pour a whole crate of fruit into his mouth at once, so he had only managed to eat half of the cart's contents before the mankind returned.

A few of the repeated words seemed like they might be descendants of one of the previous languages of the mankind that he'd learned fairly well during his last waking, but they might simply sound similar. "Obnoxious" might be from noxious. "Responsible" might be from responder. It did seem like it wanted him to respond to its accusations, but he'd never been particularly talented with the languages they used, so he wasn't doing much more than picking up on its obvious anger and frustration.

Many thought that his kind had been the ones to teach them speech, but personally, he doubted it. They did speak with sound, like many of Earth's creatures, but the few languages of mankind that held sounds that were at all similar were spoken by those who worshipped them as gods. He was fairly certain that those words were simply rough imitations that they had given their own meanings to.

Some had not been distressed by the plague of them sweeping across the continents like an infection, and had kept individuals as pets and trained them. Many of those had been killed for their efforts. Even the strongest beings could not defend themselves while they slept.

The little mankind was now angrily weeping as it faced the half empty cart, and he felt uncomfortable. His kind did not have the same instincts to possess things as the mankind, but he roughly understood that he had stolen this one's labor just as he had rudely emptied the heart of the other's garden. Perhaps it was worse for it because it believed the damage had been done by one of its own kind.

That felt right, so he decided to show himself for what he was before leaving. He let himself expand, and the little mankind froze in place and made soft whimpering noises.

Others, who had been keeping their distance from the conflict, shrieked, yelled, and pointed at him as he launched himself into the air. Some of their words were definitely descended from that language, as many of them were crying, "Dragon!" It was nearly identical to the cries of "Drakon" that he had heard during his last waking, it had merely softened a bit.

He removed himself from their reach, and flew beyond the small river that tumbled down the mountain before landing closer to the edge of the vast… city was perhaps more accurate than infestation? But he wasn't sure.