Cain || December, 2014.

The shouting could be heard in every corner of the prison.

Following the sound, many paths led through the disjointed corridors, each lined with silver bars and dark cells filled with agitated inmates, their catcalls mingling with the roars coming from farther along. The halls came to a nexus, level upon level of metal balconies encircling a single point where men and women in black uniforms walked their coordinated routes with automatic weapons strapped to their hips.

Most leaned on the railings to watch the festivities below.

The pit was ringed by steel walls and riveted doors, silver spikes jutting from the rim of the floor above to keep the rabble contained—and rabble there was. Ten men scrabbled in the confines of the enclosed space and they barely had room to walk, and yet they struggled and grappled with one another, bodies slamming into the steel to leave dents in the warped surface. Light from the covered fixtures played upon their bloody, twisted faces, gleaming on teeth too long to be in the mouths of humans. Dead eyes were empty but for the hunger that shook them, bleak and listless desperation curling once timid hands into white-knuckled fists.

They were dressed in rags, shirts loose over shrunken bodies and their feet bare on the filthy floor. Those smaller and thinner in stature, built like saplings with arms that could break under the barest breath of pressure, stuck to the room's perimeters and swiped at each other, biting and hissing. The larger of their number converged in the middle, fists thrown in pulverizing haymakers—targeting a lone, specific man.

He was a giant among them, seven feet in height with a body of wiry muscles and quick, unrepentant hands. His hair hung lank from his scalp and pooled about his heaving shoulders in a damp cloak of deepest black. A matted beard covered the sharp planes of his jaw, the bared teeth behind the hair straight, even, and white with sweeping canines poised above his bottom lip. Vivid eyes blazed under a furrowed brow, flashing emerald in the sterile light.

His assailants suffered. A man missing two fingers on his left hand grappled at the giant's shirt, tearing the worn fabric, and the taller man sent him spiraling through the crowd, his arm reduced to a twisted mess of splintered bones and sundered flesh. The others clamored over the howling man without regard for his presence or injuries, bare feet scrabbling for purchase on a floor soaked as crimson as seas befouled by punishing angels.

On the level above, men and women in their stark, buttoned uniforms balanced open coolers on the railings, and from them they dispersed frosted red pouches. The pouches sailed through the air and into the grasping, desperate hands of those who struggled below, brought down to greedy mouths with elongated teeth that pierced the synthetic skin of the pouches to suck the sweet nectar dry. The blood bags that weren't caught or were fumbled fell to the floor and burst like water balloons. The creatures who missed the flung pouches fell to their knees and licked the red juice from the filthy metal.

The tallest didn't touch the blood.

From behind a thick one-way window observed a warden who was more uniform than man. He pursed his mouth and sipped flavored water past his mustache, watching bodies come flying at the window and set the wall to trembling. He never wavered, never flinched, though the occasional grunt of disapproval passed his lips. The young recruit at his side was wide-eyed and pale as he stared at the reinforced glass and those being bashed against it. 

"Sir, is this—." His voice quivered, breaking like a boy's as he blinked and fixed his gaze upon the warden's gnarled hand. "—is this necessary?" 

"Necessary?" The warden snorted and the fine filaments of his facial hair twitched. "'Course it's not necessary, boy. We do this around dinner time to give the guards a bit of entertainment. You see, those leeches you see out there were picked up because they didn't register. They evaded the laws requiring them to step up and identify what they are so they could keep livin' on pretending to be human. They do that so they don't have to adhere to the rules, so they can live like animals. So, we let them live like the animals they want to be, and this is how an animal gets dinner. If they don't fight, they don't get fed, and the nights can get awfully hungry around here."

Above, the coolers emptied and the pouches falling thinned to nothing. Greedy hands thrown heavenward lowered and turned to fists once more, accusations of theft traded as easily as heavy blows. Those who were weaker scrabbled at the edges and sucked on the floor or their dirty hands. The tall creature paused in his defense to catch a pouch that had been purposefully chucked at his head. The thin plastic didn't break beneath his curled fingers, but it did burst when he hurled the blood bag at the warden's window, painting the glass in a viscous red film.

The young guard shut his eyes as the light, now tinged crimson, swirled across the rounded angles of his face. Worried lines formed between his blond brows.

"Why doesn't the big one pick up one of the blood bags off the floor? Or...take one?"

"Notice that, did you?" The clink of the warden's glass being set down upon the table went unheard among the muffled groans and thumps of flesh with metal. "That one's different. He's got himself a special diet and doesn't drink the watered down blood the NRI provides us with. You see, he's part of what they call the Cornatus, and the others are Incornatus. Don't know what the difference is, only that outside of here, they'd treat him like royalty." The warden sniffed, lower lip moving over the ends of his mustache. "Doesn't matter, though. Cornatus or Incornatus, lord or not, he's just another fuckin' vampire in Crion." 

Two of the smaller dark-eyed creatures took it upon themselves to form a tenuous alliance, and they rushed their tiring target from two directions. One scrambled onto the giant's back and threw his arm around his neck, muscles bulging as he cinched his hold tight against the taller vampire's throat. As the larger man curled his fingers around the clinging vampire's limb to tear him free, the other dark-eyed attacker flung practiced fists into the man's front and ribs.

Grunts arose from the assailed vampire, the crunch of bone quiet in the din, one of his knees hitting the dented metal of the floor. 

A thought rung through the head of the Cornatus man: they will not break me. I will not bow, I will not bend.

The attacker bit off a foreign swear and reeled as he clutched his bloody, broken knuckles. Snarling, the taller creature lunged and slammed his head into the face of his attacker, snapping cartilage and teeth. The dazed vampire crumpled with hands now clutching his crushed nose as the giant stood with pained grace and twisted the restraining arm of the man clinging to his back. Again the screaming rose in the pit's confines as the last of the lesser vampires slumped to the red floor and the giant alone remained standing on bruised legs.

He swayed, feet yet spread and abraded fists held still at his side. Every gasp was accompanied with an empty swallow and his teeth gnashed with grinding force, pain etched in the lines tightening the deceptively uncreased skin about his eyes and brow. Bite marks and jagged, uneven scratches decorated his bare chest and arms, blooms of violet, black, and yellow staining his body like seeping watercolor on a fresh canvas.

As he panted, tearing the air through his fangs, the weeping injuries drew taut, flesh melding to flesh, nothing remaining to show the damage that had been done but for the sheen of red waiting to be washed clean.

Then came the thunder of righteous boots of coming guards, and the bolted door swung on well-greased hinges as a line of men equipped with gleaming body armor and matte assault weapons came marching through the portal, fanning out to the pit's edges. Those on the floor remained bent and bowed with their feeble hands slowly lifting to their heads, wary gazes following the path of those guns and the men who held them.

With hatred in his eyes, the giant came to his knees like the others when the last of the line parted and another warden—gaunt and severe, dressed in black—stepped over the raised threshold.

"What a mess," the warden commented, tongue tripping on thick, accented syllables. "You beasts make such a mess of everything you touch. I ask for a show, give you dinner, and you fail to behave civilized even in a fight. Like dogs, you are. Scraping and scrabbling, biting at your betters—but I guess that comparison is unfair. At least dogs don't piss where they eat."

The warden came to stand before the kneeling creature, snapping his gloved fingers for one of the attache to lower their weapon and retrieve a metal thermos from the canvas bag slung across his shoulder. The vampire's gaze fell upon it and did not waver as it was passed from the hands of the guard to the hands of the warden. His eyes widened and his breath was held.

"Hungry, are we?" The uniformed man smirked as the lid was unscrewed and then tossed to the floor, uselessly pinging on the metal. Smoke rose from the thermos's mouth. "You monsters disgust me. You disgust all of society, really, no matter how misunderstood the liberal agenda paints you as. Your quick-witted associations and advocates may have passed that amendment telling us you're legal citizens—people—but you aren't. We know the truth. We recognize your kind for what they really are."

The vampire's head jerked, chin jutting upward as light flickered in the creature's narrowed, emerald eyes. They gleamed as the shields of a Roman legion do when caught in flickering torchlight. "You understand nothing of my kind."

Hands tightened on triggers and guns rose with steady aim toward the kneeling giant, but the warden said nothing and no bullets were shed. He grinned with a mouth full of blunt, smoke-stained teeth and tipped his hand, allowing the murky red liquid within the thermos to dribble and flow to the floor below. The creature watched with trembling fists.

"Perhaps you are right, and yet if you are, I do understand what leashes a dog like you."

The last of the creature's needed nourishment splashed in a puddle at the vampire's knees. Where the puddle and traces of other blood met rose an acrid steam tasting of metal and burnt wood.

Turning upon his booted heels, the warden chuckled and his men followed him from the pit without a given order. Others meant to usher the groaning, filth-covered vampires to their cells filtered in, and the kneeling creature continued to stare at the puddle before him, chest falling in rapid, short breaths. 

He hesitated no longer. Eyes shut, the proud vampire bent his neck and bowed his head to lick his meal up off the floor.