A chance at survival (Azreath)

[Jack Tracy (DELETED 5904)]

*Cling cling*

The sound of the bell above the door announced the entrance of the new customer, a young man with short, curled dark brown hair and soft steel blue eyes that nervously scanned the interior. It was a small shop, littered with old and worn looking objects; everything from daggers and crosses to dried herbs. A couple of skulls were placed in glass monters by the counter, their empty sockets and yellowed grins sending shivers down the youths spine.
There were four people in the building. Two strangely dressed youths in the back, holding an old looking book and talking ecitedly in hushed voices. A very well dressed gentleman in his early twenties, inspecting a pouch of red powder that seemed to be a part of a set. The last person was what appeared to be the owner of the shop, a thin, harsh looking man in his late thirties with sunken in eyes, leaning against the coutertop next to a cash register.

The young man stepped gingerly up to the owner, hesitating a moment before speaking. "Uhm, e-excuse me?" His voice was low and cautious as he spoke, his hands nervously twisting the edges of his worn out black sweater. The Keeper gave him a disapproving look, and then shook his head. "We don't sell drugs here." He said in disgust, as if the youth was a cockroach he'd found under a stone.
His cheeks turned a deep shade of red, standing out against his pale skin. "Oh, n-no, I don't... I mean, I'm not... I'd heard..." He glanced around, and then lowered his voice to a nervous hush. "I'd heard you bought... blood."

The silence that followed weighed on the youth like a ton of water was trying to crush him from every side. The man's appraising look forced him to swallow thickly, shrinking beneath the cold, calculating gaze. Had he been wrong? He'd finally dared go in and now...
"20 dollars a pint." The man spoke suddenly, jolting the youth out of his thoughts. "O-only twenty?" He felt his chest tighten again, the words nearly choking him on the way out. "Bbut... but that's..."
"20 dollars. Take it or leave it."

He stared at the man for several moments, uncertain what to do. His heart was pounding hard against the inside of his chest, so hard he could hear the thump thump thump pulsating in his ears. Had he been braver, or stronger, or better at conversations, he would have stood up for himself, told the man to go suck it, but he was not brave, or strong, or particularly good at talking with anyone. So with a dejected look he gave a tiny nod, shifting to look down at the floor and his dirty sneakers instead. "...Yeah, sure..." He responded, drawing in a deep shuddering breath to try and still his heart and force away the fear.

[Azraeth]

“Now now, shopkeep, that’s hardly a fair bargain for the boy.”

Azraeth was easy to pick out of a crowd. There was this ethereal quality to him, a mixture of the paleness of his flesh and the translucence of its undertone, and then something else. There was this energy to him. He could summon orbs of light into his palm, a little trick he had picked up some time before. Useless except for to reveal vampires who were particularly weak to illumination. That was the aura he gave off, like white light all around him. It was not visible to the naked eye, but people could usually feel it in the form of a soothing warmth that came with being near him. Touching him. It may not have existed at all, but he seemed to be gifted at the art of expressing love without reservation.

That might have been it too. He didn’t believe in asking things of people. His gifts were given freely.

He had been looking for some ritual ingredients, something for Eirene’s Will. He had recently gotten the tome after quite literally barreling his way into a camp of what had looked like paladins and sorcerers. It might have been brash, but if there was one thing that had the ability to make him giddy as a child (there were many, really) it was the promise of adding to his repertoire of magic. The acquisition of arcane knowledge was one of his primary motivating factors, because he had once been nothing more than a young boy interested in the occult. Son of fundamentalist Christians, he had been ostracized in his own home for worshipping the world, and nature, and life.

The ritual had the ability to cause pacification over a specific location for a short period of time. It actually made it impossible to do violence against someone else. Considering his tendencies, it hadn’t really surprised anyone how intent he had been on gathering the ingredients. His hope had been that there might be some at the shop. He had been mistaken.

The shop keeper looked at him dumbly, then scowled.

“You’re going to sell it at ten times that price. Don’t give me that look. If you won’t give this fine young man an appropriate wage, then I will take him somewhere that will.”

The shopkeep’s face went red. Az pushed his sunglasses down at the bridge of his nose so that his blue serpentine eyes were revealed. They looked quite literally as if they had been ripped out of the head of a snake and forced into his own.

Suddenly, the man seemed less interested in picking a fight. He snarled and then walked off, slamming things along the way. “Get your *** back here if you want your money!” He called out a second later from somewhere in the back. Az and Jack were left at the front of the store, even as the former adjusted his glasses once more.

“You know, that offer to show you a better option is still very much open."

[Jack Tracy (DELETED 5904)]

Resigned to getting less than he had expected, the youth tugged at a couple of stray strands of hair that fell in front of his eyes. He had nowhere else to turn, didn’t know how else to make money, and 20 dollars were still 20 dollars.

“Now now, shopkeep, that’s hardly a fair bargain for the boy.”

Surprised at the voice Jack turned his gaze up to see who had spoken; surprised to find the well-dressed man he had noticed before having gotten involved. Uncertain what to say, he glanced back at the shopkeep, who suddenly had the look of someone who had swallowed something extremely sour. He seemed about to object, when the man spoke again.
10 times that? That’d be like… Jack drew in a slightly deeper breath, surprised that people would actually pay that much for blood when every butcher had it for free more or less. People who would actually pay 200 for blood, even if it was human, must be real psychopaths.

The man suddenly stormed into the back of the store, the young man flinching at the apparent fury that the shopkeeper was suddenly expressing. Worried as he was though, and grateful at the gentleman’s seeming concern about him, Jack didn’t want to cause any more trouble. ”No, that’s…” He paused, clearing his voice a little, forcing it to seem deeper, darker. ”That’s fine, thanks though. I’ll be fine.” Forcing a deep breath into his lungs, he gave a small nod, adding softly to himself. ”Yeah… I’ll be just fine.”

Without looking back he hurried into the room behind the counter, where the shopkeeper was sitting on a stool next to an uncomfortable looking chair. There were tools Jack had never seen before, but he imagined they were for taking the blood. ”Sit down.” He nearly spat out, and the youth was quick to comply. Before he could do it himself, the man had grasped the sleeve of his black sweater and roughly pulled it up to expose his arm. ”How m-much can you take?” He asked meekly, wincing as the large needle was ungently pushed through his skin and into the bend of his arm. It didn’t hurt terribly much, and despite the rough treatment Jack could tell that the sour looking man knew what he was doing.

”Depends how desperate you are. Since I’m guessing plenty, then two pints.” He didn’t look at the youth as he spoke, he just adjusted the tube and the pack where the blood had started collecting. ”And how… how much…” He knew this wasn’t the time to ask, but he felt uncomfortable just sitting there and wasn’t sure what else to say. ”200 for both.” He snapped, successfully silencing all attempts at conversation by the pure tone of annoyance in his voice. Without saying anything else, he stood and walked back out to the front, leaving the boy alone with his thoughts and questions.

[Azraeth]

The young man looked as if he had been put between a rock and a hard place. Azraeth had seen it a multitude of times in dealing with the Worthington lineage – a bloodline known for its absentee head, and his anarchist inclinations. When the elders had first returned from the Fade, he had been the one to immediately go on a siring spree, pulling over what seemed like dozens of people into the darkness. To say that there had been strong personalities was something of an understatement. And they had clashed. Frequently. Az had been witness to many in those early days who had tried to play the mediator game between wildly conflicting viewpoints. In those days, he had been more preoccupied with handling the Dragomir political affairs than he had been in ensuring the entirety of his ‘family’ worked in harmony.

It was one of his few regrets.

The look though, was similar to those worn by the unfortunate souls who had been forced between opinions.

Az stuck around so that he could make sure the skeezy shop owner didn’t try to cheat the youth again. Not really a necessity considering the dark haired boy was human. There was a reasonable probability that the blood he donated would end up in the belly of either Raeth or one of the people he knew. So when the guy said he’d be fine, the only response offered was the slow upward curve of a dark brow. He always questioned that. When people said they were fine, or would be ‘fine’. It always seemed like what they were really saying was ‘no I won’t be fine, but I don’t want your charitable time’. There was a story there, and the vampire would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t intrigued.

It wasn’t often people were pushed to the point of desperation it required to give up their blood willingly. Not in a seedy back alley type place, and certainly not to a man as pugnacious as the owner.

He leaned against a wall as he listened to the conversation, his fingers delicately tracing over the jagged pattern of blue as it curved through what appeared to be an otherwise clear, polished stone. Two hundred for two pints? There was a reason that most vampires only ever drank one pint from a human. One pint wasn’t likely to be missed, but two could begin to mess with a body’s natural chemistry. He wanted to interrupt and say the deal was off – but it really wasn’t his business. Not in that way. Besides, he had made a reasonable offer. The last thing he wanted to do was come across as ‘that crazy guy’. So he kept his comments to himself, gave the stone a little toss into the air before catching it in his palm. He then pocketed it a second later.

Then the price was mentioned. That was still a 100% mark up. Many people in the modern day knew Azraeth to be a giving man, and for that reason, there were only a handful that recalled just how calculating he had been when it’d come to the nature of business. That was just plain insulting to the human, so he knocked against the wall which he had been leaning against.

“Not to interrupt again, boys, but don’t you think you could make it $340 at least? That’s still $60 in profit, and then it’s at least worth his time.” He doubted the owner of the shop would like him interrupting again. But that was the nature of the market. In Harper Rock, there was always someone looking for blood. Simple supply and demand.