The Outbreak

CW : Abuse

"Thanks for having us. We heard from Zaylee here you like to lock her in the basement, and who knows what else, so let's play a game okay?" Orissa smiled and sat on the couch's armrest holding Zaylee and watched Odelle dump him on the floor like garbage.

"Screw you! It's illegal to barge in without my permission! Leave and I won't call the cops!" Three of the four vampires present rolled their eyes in disdain.

"I can assure you you will prefer to play our little game. See, Zaylee here nearly died tonight and hearing about you from her made us want to kill you, but that isn't much fun, so let's play a game instead, okay?"

Sierra sat on a chair while Odelle wandered into the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge. While they weren't overly concerned about how this man would meet his end, they wondered what Orissa had in store for him.

"Okay, to start, we will all ask a question about what you did to little Zaylee, and don't bother lying, we can tell. So what I was saying was, what you did to Zaylee is what we're going to do to you." Hearing Orissa, the man rushed her but she promptly kicked him away with ridicule.

"Where is the basement?" Sierra perked up and asked, and with the pain he felt from Orissa's kick, he immediately pointed at a door in the hall leading to the kitchen.

"I'll go look." Sierra vanished in the man's eyes and that scared him. A few seconds passed and Sierra came back with a gloomy expression. Odelle went down and came back and hugged Zaylee and took her from Orissa so she could go see for herself.

Walking down the stairs, Orissa tried the light but it didn't work. Before she even reached the basement, the smell of blood and filth became almost unbearable, so she stopped breathing.

A small cage was in the corner filled with human excretion and a tattered book lay on the ground, it's pages yellowed and wrinkled from use and age. An assortment of belts, sticks, and even pipes, some metal and others plastic lay scattered around with splatters of blood on them.

Going back upstairs, Orissa gave the man a look of disbelief. How could someone treat their own flesh and blood like an animal? Locking them away in a cage like an animal? Beating them so much that the smell of blood was almost overpowering?

"You really did that to her? No wonder she didn't want to come home." Sierra gave Zaylee a reassuring smile when Orissa sat down, placing her chin on her hand as she stared at the man.

"I honestly can't think of anything that would equal even a fraction of what you did to Zaylee, so I can only make you regret being born." Orissa clicked her nails together and tapped the floor.

"Um, Zaylee, how often did this man beat you?" Seeing Orissa contemplating his fate, Odelle spoke to Zaylee who was looking around the room curiously.

"I don't know... I would get beaten several times when I was awake." Recalling there was no window, Odelle frowned because she wasn't sure how frequent that was.

"Between meals, how often?" Sierra tried but Zaylee's following words made her fall silent. Odelle and Orissa sighed when Zaylee spoke because no child should ever be treated like this.

"I had some bread sometimes but when I was hungry, I had to eat... poop. If I asked for more bread, he'd beat me with a pipe or a belt until I couldn't move." Orissa's eyes were glazed over when she heard that.

"I'm honestly surprised you survived Zaylee." Odelle patted her head and watched as Orissa got to her feet, walked over and knelt in front of them with a frown.

"Zaylee, do you want him to live?" If Zaylee did want him to live, she'd find a way to kill him later, and if she didn't, he'd die in the extreme agony he deserved.

Zaylee was young, but being the subject of such a situation made her intelligent, so she shook her head. Even if he did call himself her father, he never treated her like the family she read about in the books.

"Okay." Orissa got up and bit her finger, slicing a gash in the man's hand and letting a drop of black blood drip into the wound. With a bit of strength, she slapped the man's hand away and looked at him.

"Why are you giving him your blood?" Odelle asked, but before Orissa could answer, the man let out a painful shriek! He thrashed and squirmed as Orissa's blood changed him, but unlike vampires, he wasn't even anything remotely human when it finished ten minutes later.

His skin stretched to the utmost and his body became different. Instead of walking on two legs, he crawled on four with sharp black nails on each limb. His skin was pale, his eyes milky white, and his teeth jagged knife-like fangs.

"A ghoul. Weaker than a common vampire, but they are guaranteed to infect any humans they bite and make them into their own. I can control them, and Nobles can if you tried as they lack any conscious mind of their own."

"When the sun is about to set, I'll let him enjoy the final rays of the sun." Sierra and Odelle took turns controlling it, and it wasn't verbal, they could pilot the ghoul and withdraw their minds at anytime.

"If we let a few loose, will humans go extinct?" Odelle mused to herself earning a chuckle from Orissa who shook her head. She could limit the infections by tweaking their venom so humans wouldn't die out.

"We need humans because I can assure you there are jobs no vampire will want to do. And we need them for food." Hearing Orissa's reasonable arguments, Odelle felt it was a pity.

"I can let a few loose at night, but this one has an appointment with the evening sun." Seeing Orissa determined to destroy this one, Odelle sat back and stroked Zaylee's hair.

"He will be in for a sh*tty experience." Odelle didn't feel an ounce of pity for this former human piece of trash who could do what he did without any remorse.

"Um, if we let these go, kids will die you know?" Sierra spoke up, but Odelle shrugged as if it wasn't her problem. She was angry because Zaylee was a vampire now, if she was human, she'd just find it a bit unlucky.

"I can only care about so many things Sierra. Human kids will grow up and will hunt us because we're vampires. Zaylee is one of us, so I can sympathize, but humans can all go die for all I care." Orissa looked at Odelle and shrugged at Sierra.

"Can't really do anything about that. She's just a bit twisted, but who isn't?" Orissa chimed in and Sierra felt it was a bit cruel, but rather than fighting tooth and nail for survival, letting a few ghouls go to start an infection would be a lot easier.