The Taste of Blood

Gaius POV

In a world where everything is being dominated by obscure darkness, endless nightmares, and false fantasies, lies a lonesome hundred-fifty-year-old blood-sucking demon who stands firm on the top edge of the tallest building in the city.

The hectic city of New Orleans sounded and looked the same as the previous nights. Humans wondering the streets with a smile on their faces. And small and large sizes of vehicles run in and out of my sight.

"Target is on the move! Randolph Griffin, fifty-six years old and was holding a Ruger Max-9 Pro 9mm gun wearing a black hoodie. He is now heading to East Avenue, five blocks away from the building. I repeat..."

My profound pleasure in indulging the sensation of this night's summer breeze that gently rubbed my cold pale skin shattered into pieces when someone's deafening voice vibrated in my ears.

I was startled to the point that my body gets out of balance and falls through the air. Shit. I should have followed my instinct not to put earpods in my ears since I am a vampire with a heightened sense of hearing.

However, my teammates forced us to use one so they could come after me in my every move. Using earpods is the most effective and efficient way they know how to have proper communication between distances.

"Gaius, can you hear me?" he added.

"I heard you loud and clear, you moron." because of too much annoyance, I remove the earpods and pulverize them before my feet could land on the ground and follow our target.

My name is Gaius Spencer. I remained single in the world for one hundred and fifty years and was the youngest Blood Demon Guardian among my teammates of vampires.

Our job being a Guardian is to be the ears and eyes of the city we were assigned to protect. We work most likely similar to the cops who keep roaming around on the streets day and night. The only difference is that we dont use guns and always stayed behind the darkness.

Demon blood has run through our veins but our generation of vampires brings us into the world under a Cursed System where killing is no longer a formidable solution to our thirst for blood.

We drink blood, yes, it is still a must for us, vampires. But we have to find the best method that certainly does not involve draining our prey's blood until they get killed.

Most of us who often drink human blood could barely access our superhuman abilities. Other abilities even go dormant because we could not dare slaughter lives anymore. Some vampires choose to drain their lifeline and die.

Good thing I am wise enough not to follow that kind of mindset and choose to live longer even if eighty percent of my abilities are already sleeping profoundly.

Furthermore, we have these tiny rectangular red and black stripes marked on our wrists that embodied our lifeline. Red color means the number of hours, days, months, and years that we are allowed to live in the world.

Black, on the other hand, corresponds to our lifeline that must be filled with red or the time we wasted by disobeying the Cursed System's written rules.

Once all the stripes turn black, even praying to gods or the council of sorcerers could not help you anymore. You'll die before you know it.

It was purported that ten thousand years ago, a council of powerful sorcerers cursed the vampires and to the next generations of our generations that we are not allowed to kill anyone with a soul to suck up their blood.

Instead, they cursed us to lead and bring peace against our enemies; humans, co-vampires, werewolves, and even witches. We dont know either if the Cursed System goes the same for the humans, wolves, and witches.

Nevertheless, all I know is that we are required to do humanitarian missions to increase our lifelines if we still want to live. Saving one human increases an hour of our lifeline. But killing a life cost us a day. Too unfair, right?

We also report to the Council of Elders about the updates on our successful and failed missions and most importantly, our lifelines by the end of the month or unless necessary.

Once we saved a few within the month, the council will be pleased. For those who were unlucky, the Elders stepped into the way to extend their help and provide us with the missions.

And as of the moment, I am chasing a fifty-six-year-old man who mercilessly put a bullet in a man's head two hours ago. His reason was that he found out that his wife has been having an affair with the man he slaughtered in cold blood.

"Stay where you are!" exclaims Randolph while pointing the tip of his gun straight at my head. Based on my opinion, he believes that it would be easier for him to pull the trigger when he already did it once.

"If I were you, I'm not gonna do that, old man." I extended a smile on my face, thinking he might ease off, drop the gun, and surrender to my hands.

Sad to say, he took the courage beneath his anger and released a bullet straight to my head, but it was my right shoulder that got hit.

Even if I'm a vampire, the bullet could not stop me from being in pain. I moaned shortly after the bullet was pulled out from my shoulder.

Randolph was startled and pulled the trigger. This time, he did not stop until all the bullets in the magazine were pulled out. I got hit but my body remained standing.

"Monster!" his boisterous screaming almost break my eardrums again. Then, he runs as fast as possible away from me.

As soon as I remove the four bullets from my body, I divided myself into tiny bats that no ordinary vampires can do. This special ability was a gift from my deceased mom who was once a leader of the council.

It is also one of the reasons my teammates assigned me to do, most if not all of the fieldwork. With the help of the daylight ring I also inherited from my father, I can manage to walk under the sun after he died protecting me for the same reason - the rays of the sun.

Since then, I became an orphan at the age of ten. It was also the starting point of my life to experience nothing but an endless nightmare. My stomach always yearned for blood. And I could depend on no one anymore aside from myself.

At the age of ten, my hands got stained with fresh drops of blood from my first unforgettable kill. It was a woman who wanders the street with her four-year-old daughter.

The slaughtering never stopped when every time I could smell and even imagine blood, my stomach gets famished. And every time I get hungry, I keep searching for prey.

Killing someone has been as easy as counting from one to three for me and was only stopped when the Cursed System fell into our lives and met my teammates who treated me like a real family.

After surrendering the unscratched Randolph to the cops, I proceeded to the club where my teammates are celebrating a small party after a successful mission. And of course, for us to equally divide the one-hour increase of my lifeline.

Our team is comprised of four members. We have one brain, two ears and eyes, and one hand which is me as the doer of the plan. So, mathematically speaking, out of the one hour we earned from the mission, I only get fifteen minutes of a lifeline.

While holding onto the thought, I accidentally bumped into someone as soon as I stepped foot in the club.

"Apology, miss, I didn't mean to bump...," I could not help my mouth from getting zipped off when two unrestrained gorgeous light-green eyes from a pure human were locked up with mine.

Even for a short period, I considered her eyes the most exquisite masterpiece I have seen in my one hundred and fifty years of wandering the surface of the world. They were completely pure and innocent.

The feeling was similar to experiencing swimming in an endless wide blue ocean in the middle of summer or lying on the ground surrounded by a grassland of scented lavender.

It was too warm and refreshing. I have met a few women, young and old, but her eyes outshined the rest. Too precious to make her cry.

"No. It's all right. I'm fine, really," she did not drop off her stare, knowing that mine embodied deadly ones. Instead, she cracked a half-smile before she added, "I'm so sorry, too. It's just my eyes were busy looking at the screen of my phone."

Even her voice sounds music to my ears. The feeling was like I can hear birds singing in unison or like a group of angels that sing harmonious heavenly songs.

She was about to slide to the exit but I manage to stop her and asked if it was her phone that was dropped on the floor. But I already knows it was hers when it comes from her hands when we bumped into each other.

She and I pick up the phone in unison without us knowing it. However, before our hands could reach the floor, our heads bumped into each other this time. I never expect that she could have a harder skull which resulted in me stumbling before her.

On the other hand, she was about to stumble, but I managed to grab her hand and pulled her back to my chest. Sad to say, I barely expect that I could use a bit of my superhuman strength when her body bumped into me again which resulted in us plummeting to the floor.

And the worst part of the situation is that our lips were the ones that got bumped into each other. The situation was a bit awkward, but I got panicked all of a sudden.

Who could have thought the bump caused a cut on her lips?

The second I tasted the fresh drop of blood that comes out of her mouth, I quickly pushed her away and I rushed to the toilet.

My head then started spinning, in a way that all my sleeping senses have been heightened for the very first time in a very long time.

While having a hard time breathing, the color of my vision also changed. And the blood inside me was burning in flames as though my body wants to turn into a pure vampire voluntarily.

"What took you so long, Gaius?" asks Monbert, the brain of our team. But I ignore him simply because my brain freezes at the moment.