find as many distributors as soon as I could so I could expand my market to the rest of the United States, Europe, and so on. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working out like that. The name alone turned some people off. They thought it was a joke. For now, I had to settle on peddling my cases of Devilish Beasts door to door and stocking bottles with a few trendy restaurants the younger crowd frequented. Being a drug dealer as well, Nathan has some lovely connections with the common folk.
“Luc, you wanna glass?”
I nodded as T broke open the first bottle of wine. I had become fond of my rag team group of misfits. Certainly they didn’t know who I was, but I offered my advice when the opportunity presented itself. Nathan, the leader, appeared to have the makings of a suitable servant if he followed his path into darkness. I was only too happy to help by supplying him with as much wine as he could drink. The savage rage swirling in the red contents of each bottle would eventually turn each one of them into raving maniacs, zombies I had heard the condition called before. It was all part of my plan, and I was ready to get the ball rolling.
My only concern? The level of potency was not quite there yet. My bottled savage rage didn’t change someone into a zombie the minute the liquid hit their lips. I had heard of a few stories where it had worked right off, but I had not seen the effects I had been hoping for. However, I was not worried. I planned to keep working at it. Enhance the recipe. Improve the production lines. Increase the demand by hand feeding the liquor to punks like this Nathan and his friends. Then I would sit back and see what happens.
As I made myself comfortable on a worn-out faded navy blue beanbag, trying to balance my plastic cup I had been served the wine in, I observed my host and his friends. Nathan and five of his friends played video games on the big screen TV. The group was all dressed in black sleeveless T-shirts, green camouflage pants, and black army boots. It seemed to be their unofficial uniform because they rarely wore anything else.
Nathan glanced over at me and waved. “Luc, my dude.”
I held my cup to him in salute. “Nathan, always a pleasure. Who is winning?”
His cloudy blood-shot eyes squinted at me a few times in confusion as his pale gaunt face twisted up in disapproval. Someone handed him a joint. After he took a hit from it and blew out the smoke, he replied, “Fuck man. Me of course.”
I laughed and nodded again at him. The little punk who thought he ruled the world. I admired his confidence. He had no idea the plans I had for him. No idea at all. I allowed him to have his moment in the sun, saving my daughter as he did. He enjoyed his treasure and thought he would be able to sell her for a high price on the internet once he found a buyer. Unfortunately his posts about ‘For Sale - Sexy, Submissive Slave Girl’ on a popular human trafficking website had gone unanswered. The owner of that website was a customer of mine as well.
Deciding I needed to get the party started or at least on its way, I excused myself to the kitchen area which was a small nook on the right side of the large open space living room. I opened up another bottle of wine. After pouring a splash of the liquid into one plastic cup, I found a small kitchen knife, sliced open my index finger and let several drops of my blood fall into it. Swirling the contents around, I stared into the cup. A large shot of blood wine for my adorable human friends. Let’s see what this does.
I had learned that part of these nightly rituals involved getting high, so no one objected when I forced the cup of my blood wine into their toking rotation. Obediently each one of them took a drag on the joint and passed it to the next. They did the same with the cup of wine as well, drinking down a gulp of the liquid and handing it to the next