special, and your father and I thought it might be our only shot at having a child.â
This was the first that Oliver had heard of any of this. âBut youâd had Bane.â
âOh, well â¦â Phlox said quietly, her eyes not meeting Oliverâs. âYes, of course, but this was after that. We wanted another child and we were having trouble.â¦â She trailed off, again seeming to think hard about what to say next. âAnyway, Half-Light picked us and we started the force treatments to prepare for siring you. And it worked.â
âHuh,â said Oliver. It sounded fairly normal, a little boring even.
Phlox shrugged. âThere was no other way to have you, Oliver.â She reached over and rubbed his back. âI know you had no choice in the matter, but here you are, and the responsibilities of the prophecy are worth it, to me.â
âAll right.â Oliver found that he kind of liked the thought of his parents trying so hard to have him. Yeah, great, so they get to have their kid, only I have to destroy the world . Still, it did help a little.
They emerged from sleepy houses and reached a busy intersection. In front of them was a gas station and convenience store called 24-7. Above the pumps, which were busy with cars, was a giant, glowing sign advertising the current, comically high gas prices, which had the humans in a panic. They were so silly sometimes. The vampires had stopped using oil and gas for energy decades ago.
Atop the sign was a tiny square marker displaying a red neon circle with a black plus sign in the middle. This symbol let the vampires know that this 24-7 was also their local Harveyâs Discount Sanguinarium and Confectionery.
Oliver and Phlox crossed the street and entered the starkly lit store. Aside from occasionally hurrying in to pay for gas or buy cigarettes, humans rarely ventured inside. They couldnât help feeling like there was a friendlier place somewhere else, a place that was, well, warmer. There were only a few vampires in the store at the moment, and Oliver figured that Phlox was glad to see this.
The place looked like any other human twenty-four-hour convenience store. Its shelves were stuffed with unhealthy, overpriced snacks, and too-small packages of kitchen and bathroom necessities. Its walls were lined with refrigerators, featuring row after row of sodas, juices, teas, soda-juices, juice-teas.⦠The wall behind the counter was devoted entirely to cigarettes and scratch tickets.
Oliver walked beside Phlox as she took a basket and proceeded down the first aisle. She stopped in front of the piles of bag snacks, reached carefully between the Doritos, and pulled the very last bag from the back of the shelf. It looked like Doritos, except for a tiny Skrit symbol hidden on the bottom corner of the package. A human would have been surprised to open this bag, if the clerk ever allowed one to actually buy it, because it was full of blood-fried, spicy-hot triangles of alligator skin.
Phlox put the bag in her basket, then carefully rearranged the bags on the shelf into neat, equal rows, her lips clicking as she counted to herself. Oliver had counted the bags, too: twenty-five bags now in perfect rows of five. This order gave him a satisfied feeling.
They continued to the line of refrigerators. âGrab some Coke,â Phlox instructed. Oliver did so, and rejoined his mom at the display of sport drinks. Phlox ran her finger under the fourth shelf from the bottom. It passed under a small blue light, which scanned her and verified that she was a vampire. There was a click, followed by a quiet humming. The shelves began to move apart vertically, and rows of hanging blood bags slid forward in the new spaces.
The bags were clear, vacuum sealed, and marked with black labels covered in white writing. Each row contained blood from a different animal. For some creatures, there was more than one style to choose from, like pig, where
This was the first that Oliver had heard of any of this. âBut youâd had Bane.â
âOh, well â¦â Phlox said quietly, her eyes not meeting Oliverâs. âYes, of course, but this was after that. We wanted another child and we were having trouble.â¦â She trailed off, again seeming to think hard about what to say next. âAnyway, Half-Light picked us and we started the force treatments to prepare for siring you. And it worked.â
âHuh,â said Oliver. It sounded fairly normal, a little boring even.
Phlox shrugged. âThere was no other way to have you, Oliver.â She reached over and rubbed his back. âI know you had no choice in the matter, but here you are, and the responsibilities of the prophecy are worth it, to me.â
âAll right.â Oliver found that he kind of liked the thought of his parents trying so hard to have him. Yeah, great, so they get to have their kid, only I have to destroy the world . Still, it did help a little.
They emerged from sleepy houses and reached a busy intersection. In front of them was a gas station and convenience store called 24-7. Above the pumps, which were busy with cars, was a giant, glowing sign advertising the current, comically high gas prices, which had the humans in a panic. They were so silly sometimes. The vampires had stopped using oil and gas for energy decades ago.
Atop the sign was a tiny square marker displaying a red neon circle with a black plus sign in the middle. This symbol let the vampires know that this 24-7 was also their local Harveyâs Discount Sanguinarium and Confectionery.
Oliver and Phlox crossed the street and entered the starkly lit store. Aside from occasionally hurrying in to pay for gas or buy cigarettes, humans rarely ventured inside. They couldnât help feeling like there was a friendlier place somewhere else, a place that was, well, warmer. There were only a few vampires in the store at the moment, and Oliver figured that Phlox was glad to see this.
The place looked like any other human twenty-four-hour convenience store. Its shelves were stuffed with unhealthy, overpriced snacks, and too-small packages of kitchen and bathroom necessities. Its walls were lined with refrigerators, featuring row after row of sodas, juices, teas, soda-juices, juice-teas.⦠The wall behind the counter was devoted entirely to cigarettes and scratch tickets.
Oliver walked beside Phlox as she took a basket and proceeded down the first aisle. She stopped in front of the piles of bag snacks, reached carefully between the Doritos, and pulled the very last bag from the back of the shelf. It looked like Doritos, except for a tiny Skrit symbol hidden on the bottom corner of the package. A human would have been surprised to open this bag, if the clerk ever allowed one to actually buy it, because it was full of blood-fried, spicy-hot triangles of alligator skin.
Phlox put the bag in her basket, then carefully rearranged the bags on the shelf into neat, equal rows, her lips clicking as she counted to herself. Oliver had counted the bags, too: twenty-five bags now in perfect rows of five. This order gave him a satisfied feeling.
They continued to the line of refrigerators. âGrab some Coke,â Phlox instructed. Oliver did so, and rejoined his mom at the display of sport drinks. Phlox ran her finger under the fourth shelf from the bottom. It passed under a small blue light, which scanned her and verified that she was a vampire. There was a click, followed by a quiet humming. The shelves began to move apart vertically, and rows of hanging blood bags slid forward in the new spaces.
The bags were clear, vacuum sealed, and marked with black labels covered in white writing. Each row contained blood from a different animal. For some creatures, there was more than one style to choose from, like pig, where
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