A Requiem Eternal

Chapter 37 - Status

"Hey! Do you have these in green?"

Daniel winced at the impatient shout of a young girl standing within a gaggle of others near the case at the back of their shop at the end of the brownstone block. He knew exactly when they all entered. It was hard not to. Their mass insecurities and general anxiety within their skins preceded them like a dark cloud envelopes the sun. He had decided to ignore them when the girl tapped the glass, then he was so annoyed he had to look.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you. A little help here? Geez."

He walked back to them deliberately slow. He noticed the girl's manicured false fingernails which he had no doubt mommy and daddy bought for her via their credit card hours earlier. When he finally made his way back to her, he saw she was pointing to a pair of diode contacts. They had become a popular item since Kate's blog hit the internet. All the posers who wanted to be Psyon simply had to have them when they went out to the underground and private clubs that seemed to spring up overnight. The contacts contained a microscopic sliver of fiber optic light diode. With a targeted jerk of their eye, they would emit a pulse of light from the human's eyes who wore them.

Daniel cut his eyes back to Tess and smiled.

"What makes you think you can pull off green?"

Daniel said pulling out a neon fuchsia pair.

"These would be more of a match for your energy."

The girl looked at him with a pout and a smack to her gum.

"I don't remember asking your opinion."

Daniel leaned down close to meet her eye level. His neon green threads flashed to her eyes for a moment, then returned back to him. The group of girls looked up, stopped texting on their cell phones, all with mouths wide open. He took just enough of her, enough of her essence for himself and Tess. Her knees buckled and she fell back into her friends.

When she came to a few seconds later, the girl was the first to break the silence.

"I don't care what color they are if they work as good as yours."

"Yeah, I'll take a pair too." said another girl in the group behind her.

"Me too." said another.

Daniel grabbed a few more pairs for the crowd and began walking to the front for Tess to ring them up. The girls trailed behind him credit cards in hand. He arrived at the register depositing several pairs of contacts on the counter with a Cheshire grin. Tess shook her head and rolled her eyes with a sigh at Daniel.

He mouthed "What?" at her, then turned to go to the stockroom.

Daniel climbed the stairwell from the stockroom of their brownstone rock shop "The Quarry" leading up to their townhouse. He knew Tess wouldn't be far behind. He sensed her hunger as it worsened from the start of the day. With the onset of dusk, she was getting weak. He was teaching her as much as he knew but also had other turned Psyon living next to them on the block to help out. Lorelle told him the brownstones had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. It was the reason all the eight three story townhouses were connected by secret passages and contained some sort of hidden room. When the elder turned were looking for a place to start the new coven, it fit them perfectly. The turned could use the tunnels to get in one room in a moment if they were threatened in any way.

Tess was gaining confidence and learning quickly, but she still didn't know how to feed on humans in plain sight and also didn't know how deeply to feed if she was discovered. These two techniques were crucial to feeding as a turned Psyon. For her safety, Daniel couldn't let Tess feed alone until she mastered them.