The Blood Bank

Chapter 12 - Poppy Red

Mina’s POV:

Upon my entry into the lounge, I’m flooded with tasks to do for the ‘manual project’. Apparently, my tasks are to investigate and research as much information as I can on the subject of Singers, and then I have to write a draft chapter to hand to Rosie who will be writing everything up in neat.

“Why did you assign me to the Singer chapter?” I’m genuinely curious as I am probably the person who knows least about anything round here, let alone Singers.

“Because being a Singer yourself means that you’re in a better position to understand them. Plus, a vampire, namely Covas, will understand you asking strange questions about Singers much more than any of us. You have the best chance of obtaining a vampire’s knowledge on the matter. And also, I believed that this subject would be interesting and useful to you.” Rosie beams at me, she’s ecstatic about this whole shebang.

“So what are the other topics being covered?”

“Well, we hope to cover every aspect of life in this place, as well as some useful background information on the vampire world in general and, of course, its relation to the human world.”

“Oh okay, so basically everything..”

“Basically, ye… I think the nice thing about all this is that it gives us all something to do around here, something constructive. I mean, we have a hell of a lot of free time.” She’s right about that, I’ve been having fun getting to know everyone, but I guess once you get past that stage then life must get pretty dull.

“So are we getting started right now?”

“Oh, well, you can if you want. We’ve got months to gather information and put this thing together. It’s not like it will ever be completed really; people can just keep adding stuff as they find more out or if certain things change with time… you know, it’s just something that will keep us all occupied for a while, something to work towards…” The more I hear about this idea, the more I like it. “A good place to start, if asking Covas seems like a big step, is you can meet other humans on the Commonground near our building. That will be perfect actually, the more sources we have, the more information we can gather. Plus, we’ll be making useful connections…”

“Hey, you guys! Pizza’s out!” We both turn to see Janey holding a big tray of pizza on a pair of gigantic oven-gloves. She hasn’t even placed it on the table before everyone rushes forward to grab a piece. “Jesus, guys, slow the fuck down!” I laugh as Janey looks down at the one piece of pizza left on the tray for her, before that too is playfully snatched away by Hayley.

“”Don’t cry over it, Janey!” Hayley laughs and hands the slice back to Janey who snatches it from her only to stuff the entire thing in her mouth for safe keeping. The presence of hot every-day food seems to lighten up the whole room; even Zack and Hannah are smiling and munching away. I suddenly realise that I have neglected to grab a piece for myself before Rosie taps me on the shoulder and hands me a piece.

“Oh, thanks, Rosie… I guess I’m not quite used to the way things are done around here yet.”

“No problem, Mina, I got your back.” She replies mockingly; I’m beginning to like it here, as much as any captured-human-forced-to-serve-vampires can like a place.

       As it turns out, there’s plenty more pizza where that came from, and by the about eight o’clock we’ve all had our fill and continue to chat lazily on the couches of the donor lounge. I’m surprised not to see any vampires around at this time of night, but I’m told that human meal-times are ‘out of hours’ so to speak.

“…They never bother us at this time, but watch out later, they’ll all come through here looking for a light snack; the older vampires don’t need a lot of blood to sustain themselves, not like the new-borns do.”