Still Hungry

Chapter Three

From these observations, Casey determined that in front of her, right by the entrance, there were two mini-rooms with small openings near the main walls of the massive square room for entry and departure. Using the ceiling and the two walls that the mini-rooms were pushed up against, a long, thin rectangular box of a room was suspended across the ceiling.

Casey stared up at it, and using the thoughts of the human located in it, she figured out where the opening was. Stepping forwards, the vampire lurched into a running jump, landing on the small box-shaped room on the right. The inhabitants of it didn't notice her landing, due to her soft landing and the sound-proofed nature of each room.

Casey looked directly upwards at the small circular disturbance in the floor of the suspended room. The circle had a diameter of about two and a half feet. Crouching down this time, Casey focused on her stance and where she wanted to go, then jumped. She rose through the air towards the opening, trying to make it through, and accidentally hit the space directly next to the opening. She fell flat on her back, uninjured and annoyed.

Groaning slightly in annoyance, Casey stood back up, straightened her jacket, and attempted the jump again. This time, she managed to get her upper body up through the hole. Before she fell, Casey grabbed onto the edge of the floor. As she pulled herself up to survey the room, Casey could feel the coldness of the subtle forcefield covering the entrance to hide noise and light from others in the main portion of the room.

The room was more brightly lit than what Casey had seen of the Blood Bar so far. It wasn't blinding fluorescents, but it wasn't dimmed deliberately to hide everything from others or laser pointers. The entire interior of the room was lined with plush dark red carpets. Scattered throughout the room were plush red pillows. Sitting on a pile of them in the corner of the room, reading a book, was a human. It saw Casey enter, and once she was standing, it closed the book and placed it next to where it sat.

It walked over to where Casey stood, and smiled up at her. The human wore only a set of thin, lacy undergarments, and the marks of pervious vampiric bites were visible across its shoulders.

"Haven't seen ya around before." It said in a soft, almost teasing voice. "Ya looking t'have some fun?"

"Just a private snack." Casey smiled, stepping forward towards the human and away from the hole.

The human stepped closer as well but moved around Casey to remove her jacket and whisper "Why don't ya take a seat first?" into her ear.

"Alright then. I wouldn't want to be rude." Casey quickly moved across the room and within seconds she was sitting atop the pile of pillows the human had previously been.

The human stared at empty space for a few moments before noticing that Casey had moved. After turning its head to see where the vampire had gone, it said, "Well that was fast."

Casey stretched out both her arms out to her sides, before dropping them again. "Thank you."

"What d'ya got?" the human asked her.

"What do you mean?" Casey asked it.

"If ya want a private feeding on a top level, then there's gotta be some kind of payment." The human explained.

"And why is that?" Casey asked. Though she could read the human's mind, she wanted to talk. The human was about to say it wasn't allowed to tell this vampire why, but with a little mental nudge Casey made the human talk.

"The owner of this bar made that rule. Most pay with money, and that all goes to him. Anything else we get to keep." The human explained.

"Well, I don't have any money." Casey thought a minute, not just in her own mind, and soon came up with an idea. "What about your friend Maddie?"

"What?" The human exclaimed, surprised about hearing the familiar name.

"You were first brought in here with your friend Maddie. You want her to be free of this place. Give me a snack, and I'll get her out of here."

"Ya won't hurt her will ya?"

"Of course not." Casey smiled.

"But- how did ya know about her?" The human asked, furrowing her brow in confusion.

"I can read minds," was the vampire's simple answer.

"Really? Huh. Never met someone who could do that."

"Well that's probably because all the vampires you've met so far are practically babies." Casey said, insulting every other visitor of the blood bar in one sentence.

"Alright, but what are you going to do to Maddie?" the human asked, moving the conversation back to its friend.

"I'll take her out of the cage, and bring her to a hospital. I'll erase her memories of this place, and contact her family. She'll be fine." Casey lied smoothly.

"Thank ya so much." The human finally moved over to where Casey was sitting. The human stood over Casey, and leaned down so that its shoulder was right in front of Casey's mouth. It crouched down to sit partially in front of Casey and partially in her lap. "She doesn't belong in this place and-"

Casey silenced the human's train of thought with a thought of her own, then pulled the human closer. Twisting the human's thoughts to feel not an ounce of pain and instead wander on the other end of the spectrum, she reached out to bite down on the human's neck.

<_<

Casey exited the room back to the main section of the blood bar and headed to the center of the room where she could see the whole room easily. The ceiling of this room was extremely high. From what she could see, the chains holding the cages were very short. She wouldn't be able to jump onto one of them from the floor, so the vampire walked towards the nearest wall.

As she neared it, she sped up. Once she was just a few feet away from it, she jumped towards a spot high up on the wall. The second her foot collided with the wall, she flipped around and propelled herself through the air towards the nearest cage. The empty metal box swung violently under her weight, urging her to jump onto the next cage over. This one had an inhabit. The weight of it combined with Casey's more gentle jump led to this cage moving just briefly before stopping - unlike the first one which was still swinging.

Casey stood on this cage, slightly crouched so as not to bang her head on the ceiling. At each of the four corners of each of the countless identical cages was a thick chain leading up to the ceiling to support it. Oddly enough, everything was extremely clean. Now that Casey was thinking about it, she realized that the whole bar had been clean. She'd never been to a blood bar where every surface wasn't coated in blood and grime. At least - she didn't think she had.

Shrugging it off, she looked through the thoughts of the unconscious humans resting in the cages, searching for the exact location of the one named Maddie. It didn't take long, and soon there was a row of swinging cages leading from that first one which Casey jumped on all the way to one in the far corner where a teenage female human lay unconscious. 

When Casey landed on this cage, she was more careful with her approach, so that it would remain still. There was a large square door on the top, secured with a pair of sliding bolt locks. Once those were pulled out of the way and the door was open, Casey dropped down into the cage slowly, grabbing onto the sides of the cage so that she didn't disturb the cage too much. 

The floor of the cage was a flat sheet of metal covered with a thin rug. In the corner, there was the human wrapped up in a blanket. Sticking out of her arm was a needle, which was attached to a bag hanging from the bars of the ceiling of the cage. Casey walked over to where the human was, and carefully removed the needle. 

Once it was out, she gently picked up the human and held it close to her body, still wrapped up in the blanket. Casey then teleported out of the blood bar.