This Is What Hunted Feels Like

I looked around the table and realized just how trapped I was.

I couldn’t even think shit. Turning my eyes onto Lady Hikari, my only defense was basketball stats.

1985 NBA Champions.

2016 NBA Champions.

1997 NBA Champions.

I looked over at Cutter.

“You’re on your own,” he whispered.

Bastard.

She looked at me like she was confused.

“You like basketball?” She asked.

“Today I do,” I nodded quickly.

Lady Hikari smiled and lifted a hand.

A server came over to the table, and she whispered into their ear.

They nodded and disappeared. Through the door at the top of the room.

I turned my eyes away to busy themselves looking at the rest of the room.

A gothic dining hall full of things that inspired me to do drugs and hide.

Not overly gloomy. But definitely dark. Like I was sitting at the table of an eastern temple devoted to violent passing.

A place you’d mourn the murdered with dignity.

“Are you guys all family… or…?” I asked, breaking the awkward silence that was honestly kinda starting to give me the chills.

A server came around and placed warmed plates down in front of us. Nothing on them, but they were beautifully made.

They had crests on them from eras forever in the past. I could tell just by looking at them that they had history.

Shit most niggas knew nothin’ about if I’m honest.

Present company included.

I recognized the lettering as foreign immediately. Japanese hiragana? Katakana?

I don’t know.

One of them.

I couldn’t read either one, so it didn’t matter.

What it did clue me into was that the restaurant was serving her on her own family plates.

“No… these are women from my coven.”

“Thought you was all Japanese,” I said, looking over at her.

“Just in name… it’s kind of hard selecting for lineage when you have very little control over who gets turned.”

“Omertà?” I asked.

“Pre-Omertà. Several periods throughout history were nothing like the one we live in now. This one is largely bloodless by comparison.”

“I wouldn’t say bloodless.” I countered, looking over at the redheads.

That short-haired one gave me the eye again.

I looked her up and down finally. She had body karate, I’ll give her that.

I’d eat that bitch.

Take that how you wanted.

Those freckles were fucking me up though, not gonna lie. Shit was cute.

Then I remembered Lady Hikari could read my thoughts.

I threw my eyes her way nervously, then tossed the glance away.

“I’m the only one.” She assured me.

“Oh, thank god,” I exhaled a sigh, “How the hell did you get that ability?”

“You’ll find…” She said, sitting back at her table as someone came over and wrapped her neck with a beautiful silk… bib?

Rich people rocked bibs?

Aight, that shit weird.

“That the many species that inhabit the echo have abilities. It isn’t always species that dictates them either,” she said.

I didn’t say anything back though.

What could I say? I knew nothing about this world. Instead, I looked to the collection of redheads across from me.

“So who are you ladies?” I asked.

“We’re sisters of the Hikari coven,” the short-haired one spoke up right away.

“And individually?”

“You don’t get to know that,” Lady Hikari said, as more servers came from the top of the room, “Though I daresay you’re only interested in knowing one of them.”

My eyes went wide.

“Like that?” I asked, looking at Lady Hikari with a half smile.

She returned it with a playful wink.

“Like that,” she said.

Cutter coughed a brief laugh but stayed silent.

“So you just gonna leave me out there like that?” I asked him, staring at the side of his head.

“Cash as many checks as you like, kid. I’m here for the food.” Cutter responded with a shrug.

The door opened and from it came serving trays, carried in by servers in dark red suits.

As if Cutter summoned them.

“You’re not cool,” I whispered at him.

He chuckled.

I could smell them from here. The servers.

Each of them, men and women, came round to the side of each of us and set a serving tray down in front of us, sliding it towards the middle until all of our trays connected.

In unison.

Their dance was a practiced dance of movement.

They placed silverware, they set small dipping trays. They even set a candle in the middle of the table for each place around the circle.

A circle of lit matches sparked the candles to life.

I could smell them. They were human. I felt their pulses throbbing.

I felt that urge rise.

Felt it in my jaw. To chew… to just chew and chew.

I couldn’t help myself. I clacked my jaw with a practiced bite.

At the same time she did.

Our eyes connected immediately, snapping my gaze to Lady Hikari.

She gave me a neat little smile. “Let’s just say you’re not the only one with secrets…”

The servers lifted the lids from our trays, releasing not just the appetizing smell of their blood into the air.

Like human servers were used to make me even hungrier.

Ambiance with the meal.

On the tray was fresh cracked lobster. A big one.

Like probably cost a lot big. Only the meat wasn’t white with that slightly pink mottling you’d see on commercials.

No, it looked like that lobster got boiled in blood and wine.

And I could smell both.

It was fucking incredible.

Beside the lobster was a fat, dark red steak. I knew it was soaked in blood post-cook. The smell of it alone brought absolute racial profiling to mind.

It smelled young. Maybe Canadian?

Could be. European for sure.

Then I realized it.

I looked around the table at everyone else looking at their bloody food with hungry eyes. Watched us all preparing, nearly salivating as the servers pulled our plates from the tray and placed them in front of us.

I saw the same hunger in all of their eyes. The same hunger I knew was in mine.

The same hunger that was imagining what my food was made of.

Who it was Made of.

Something about the whole thing seemed off. The apparently deaf girls sitting across from me who refused to speak.

They kept turning their eyes reverently to Lady Hikari.

The entire thing felt odd. Like I was sitting in on a seance for the dearly departed.

And the departed was me.

I felt the pressure of the room. Felt everyone’s eyes moving from her to me.

I knew they could smell me like I could smell the food in front of me.

All of the servers stepped back and headed back towards the kitchen. Except one.

“Baby,” Lady Hikari said.

My name startled me.

I wet my lips and acknowledged her.

“Yeah…?”

“Would you be a dear and season my food?”

I was confused for a moment, looking around, catching the eyes of Sporty Red over there.

She licked her lips in the kind of way a man always wanted to see.

But it wasn’t for what I would have hoped.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and swallowed.

“Uh… y- sure…”I nodded.

The server beside me reached down and opened his palm.

I turned my head to look at him.

I looked down at his palm, then back up at him.

“What, you want a tip?” I asked.

“Your hand,” the server said.

Then it struck home. The feeling that hit the bottom of my stomach.

Season her food.

I didn’t even argue. I just let out a deep sigh and lifted my hand into his.

He turned it over, grabbed what I thought was a pepper shaker from the table, and placed its bottom end against my wrist.

With a hiss of air, I felt several needles jab into my skin. Instant bee stings burst to life along my flesh under that device.

I let out a groan and clenched my teeth as he held it there, watching my blood fill the shaker.

It didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt my ego. Sitting there while everyone at the table watched him bleed me. When the needles let go, I felt the sting.

My hand was released, and I could see them. Eight tiny drops of blood on my inside wrist. The smell of them filled the air like fruit punch to my senses. I had to swallow hard to resist the urge to suck my wrist. The only thing that stopped me was looking up, seeing those redheads staring at me. Waiting to see me do it.

Waiting to see if I got high on my own supply.

Believe me. I was thinkin’ about it.

The server handed me a cloth serviette, and I took it, dabbing my wrist.

I glanced around the table slowly, to each face, reading their interest.

Even Cutter was looking at my wrist like a starving man wandering out of the woods into a buffet.

I watched my server move around to Lady Hikari’s side of the table and set the shaker down in front of her as I placed the serviette across my lap.

“Thank you, Baby,” she said, offering me a wicked half smile that…

Honestly kind of turned me on.

What’s with me and crazy bitches?

She picked up that shaker and turned it over her food, tap-tap-tapping droplets of my blood over her lobster and steak.

She offered the shaker to the redheads to her right, and they all took part, locking eyes on me from the moment Lady Hikari shook the first droplets free.

The moment all of them realized, those deeper breaths they were taking.

Those rooting nostrils.

Those deeply appreciative moans they all let out as they cut into their food and took their first bites.

Those were me.

They were eating my life juice.

And like tasting me suddenly made me part of the family, the creepy air in the room disappeared.

“Oh my god, Baby, you are so good!” Sporty Spice said.

I looked up at the short-haired girl cutting free a piece of steak, pushing it into that pretty mouth of hers and sating her sick satisfaction with me.

“Mmn, you’re so right. Wow, Baby… You’re exquisite.”

Cutter was cutting into his food without a word, only offering small exhale laughs now and again under his breath.

Conversation erupted from the table all on its own as people started to dig in.

“So I hear Dr. Weir is up to it again,” Cutter said.

“When is Dr. Weird not trying to horrify us all? I think he said his latest foray into insanity was blood magic leylines.” She rolled her eyes, eating a mouthful of her lobster. “Mmn, unbelievable,” she nodded at me.

“Thanks,” I said with all the cheer I could as a seasoning.

“So why the meeting? You have me over for dinner about as often as Raymond does.”

Lady Hikari nodded, “It’s because of Raymond actually… Baby and I share the same problem, do we not?”

“Since when?” Cutter said, but he didn’t seem surprised.

“Do you remember Deep Elm?” She asked.

“Oh, you were at that?” He asked, his eyes wide. “I was in the Outback, wasn’t here for it.”

“I wasn’t at that,” she asid with a knowing look, “Beaurocratic absence of presence. But unofficially that’s where I was bitten. Which is why I invited you both here. Raymond Blossom asked me to give you what I knew about the issue.”

“We’re flying blind, yeah.”

“So I’m told,” she nodded, taking another bite of her food and chewing it carefully.

I busied myself eating my steak. The entire time, I had sat there in disbelief. Not just in my situation, but in what was unfolding in my life.

Listening to Cutter and Lady Hikari talk, I found myself paying closer attention.

I realized this would be me soon. Cutter. Having the dinners. Shutting my mouth and listening.

If my new post was what it was shaping up to be, I’d better take the time to learn some shit.

The fact that my life had gone from trying to figure out how to pay my bills to annual carnage parties not withheld.

She nodded, “By no happy chance… I was turned, but in so being, I’ve learned a lot. I know Raymond and my father talk.”

“They do,” Cutter nodded, “So I guess that means you’re part of the cool kids club now.”

“Looks like it. In either case, the roller gangs say a lot of homeless people have been getting splatter-gasted off 8 Mile.”

“8 Mile?” I asked, “That’s my old hood. Splatter-gasted like how?”

“Like the mess you left.”

“Zombies?” I asked her.

“I believe so,” she nodded.

“If it’s anything like the mess he left I’d say so. Why didn’t anyone call the Black Ministry?”

“Because whoever did it cleaned their own plate. Missing persons, red puddles. That’s it.”

“Fucker’s taking his victims some place he has time to eat,” I said.

“Exactly. Meaning they know the area. Probably move in the area. Likely a resident.”

“Yeah, that only gives us about everyone as a suspect,” I said.

“Right,” Cutter said.

“So what’s the move?” Lady Hikari asked.

“I think we gotta go pick a fight,” Cutter said. “Baby… you down to be bait?”

“Bait?”

“Yeah,” he asked me.

I didn’t wanna look like a bitch in front of that cutie over there.

I even glanced her way and she gave me them choosin’ signals.

Know what I mean?

I gave her a half smile and looked back at Cutter.

“Y.. yeah- man… I ain’t scared,” I shrugged. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll have to let you know, in the mean time,” he looked at Lady Hikari. “That all you got?”

“For now. I have eyes and ears where I can, but I’ll be honest with you. That territory isn’t really my area,” she said carefully.

“Translation. She don’t know that many loyal niggas. I feel you,” I nodded. “I can handle that part. Like I said, that’s where I’m from. Mind if I ask a favor though?”

Lady Hikari lifted her eyebrow, “Can’t say I’ve ever been asked a favor by my meal, but sure.”

“… I actually really get that,” I nodded. “Sorry. I just mean you already like the product, and I need some side income. I’d like to get outta the hood. Kinda tired of getting my ass beat.”

“Technically he’s Raymond’s property. We’d have to clear that with him, don’t you think?” Cutter asked, giving me a knowing stare.

“Oh, shit… I forgot about that. Yeah- I mean, if it’s possible,” I offered.

“You got balls, kid,” Cutter said with a chuckle, “I’ll give you that.”

Lady Hikari took another bite of her meal.

“We’ll see. In the meantime,” she offered, pointing at my plate, “Eat up. You’ve got a lot of work to do. At this point, no one has a clue where the original bite came from with the zombie outbreak. We just know it needs to be contained.” She said.

I looked at those redheads again, watching them silently eat.

It was unsettling. Not a word. They just kept staring at me.

Like they were daydreaming, sinking their teeth into me in unison and letting me scream myself to another bloody death.

I was kind of disappointed in the fact that it turned me on to think about.

And then it dawned on me as I saw them.

They weren’t staring at me. They were fixating on me.

They kept sniffing the air, learning my smell when they could.

Tasting the air without me noticing.

Savoring every bite of me on their plates.

It was the behavior of predators learning their prey.

Because Vampires played the long game.

This is what hunted feels like.