Chapter 95: The Decadence of a Sanguinis

Dion laughed to himself there.

"There was nowhere in this building to keep it. And are you saying that you would like to find out what it’s like to bring a fight, however many more mutated animals that it brings? It’s a pretty dressed idea to keep it in hiding, but at the end of all that greed, it comes down to whether you can handle the consequences of trying to do so. So, I got rid of it."

’I have to have lied more in these past couple of hours than I have in years...’ Dion laughed wryly to himself internally.

"...Right," Anton said. He rubbed at the side of his face, careful of the dressing, and then let his hand drop back onto his knee. "Right. No, that’s... that’s probably for the best."

Irvin’s jaw shifted, and his eyes stayed on Dion a moment longer, and then they went off him and back up to the corner of the ceiling where they had been the entire time before this.

There, Dion dragged his seat back and stood.

"That’s all I wanted to say. You guys can talk about the rest that you have in mind; I’ve got to go speak to someone."

Dion left their meeting without anyone saying anything else then. Paris immediately moved along with him, leaving as well.

The two of them parted in the hallway, with him only mentioning that he had to go speak to someone once more. The young man went his own way as well then, and then Dion headed down in another direction.

Paris had a difficult expression to him, as if he had been thinking hard about something, and perhaps he had even wanted to say more to Dion. But having seen that he had something to do, he held himself back and left.

’Well... if anything, the tension will be good for him.’ Dion thought as he braced himself.

After all, he was following that so alluring scent in the air as he went to find them.

They were in a different area, amongst others who had perhaps fallen asleep to fend against the hunger, and others who had been put towards a different area; they were asleep or at least trying to do so to make it through the sickness.

The moment that he had walked into the area, the people still awake here immediately began muttering between themselves, thinking about what he might be doing here.

And the woman had looked up as well. The boy was asleep with his head in his mother’s lap and the stuffed bear pressed between his arm and his side, and the woman’s hand was resting on his back, her thumb moving in small circles over the fabric of his shirt.

Her eyes quickly averted from his for a bit, her lips pursing along with her reluctant expression. It was slight, and she had clearly tried to hide it, but how could she from his eyes?

Not to mention when he could hear the change in her heartbeat.

"I don’t have anything else, if that’s what you’re here for."

Dion had brought himself to them as she said so, and his expression immediately fell wry.

"That’s not what I’m here for," he said as he gave a bit of a laugh, "Please, come with me, I’d like to speak to you about something."

From briefly crouching before her, he stood as her wary eyes followed his.

Then she sighed faintly through her nose, bracing the boy as she gradually stood up.

She followed him down the corridor and past the stairwell to the room where he had been sleeping.

"Wait here a moment." He said as he pulled the door open for himself and walked in.

He mostly closed the door without shutting it, and he walked over to the table.

At the same time, the woman waited outside nervously. What could he possibly want from her? She really didn’t have any more food for him to take. Those crackers were all that she had left.

’What was I thinking... I should have just stayed quiet and sat in the corner without drawing attention to us.’ She thought as her jaw tensed a little.

In the room, Dion looked over the table, his hand outstretched, and searched his treasury for a brief moment.

The flash of red was brief, no more than a blink between one breath and the next, and food appeared over the desk.

There were two wrapped pies from the gas station’s deli, a stewed meat meal with rice, two bottles of water, a small bag of crisps, and beside them, the packet of crackers that he had taken from the woman’s hands.

’It doesn’t stop time for them... but it definitely slows it down a lot.’ Dion thought to himself looking at the food.

It was still warm, as far as he could tell, and this revelation of how the treasury handled things that he put inside it made him smile a little. Although it wasn’t necessarily a fully good thing.

After all, a part of him had been thinking that ultimately, if the food wasn’t maintained well, he would have just donated it. But now... with his plans of forming a group, all the things he had gotten from the gas station became that much more important to him.

’... Seriously, I really hardly feel anything at all about it.’ He shook his head a little at the feeling within himself about the decision he was making.

Dion turned on his heel and he walked back over to the door that he had properly opened. The way that her head snapped up, it was clear he had pulled her out of her thoughts, so he gave a bit of a gentles mile as he stepped aside for them.

"You can come in now."

The woman stopped in the doorway, and for a few moments, she had been watching him, but then she caught a whiff of the food, and her eyes immediately turned to the desk and the food on it.

"You can wake him up," Dion said as he closed the door behind them. "It’s for the both of you."

"...Where did you get this?" Her voice was quiet and quivered a little in surprise; her eyes widened a little.