“...I’m good.”

He sounds just a little blank. He...needs a little processing time.

"OK! Have fun! You're allowed to play the Gamecube and eat however much pizza you want, and I'll come check on you in a bit!"

She beckons to Roman, and the two of them close the heavy metal door behind them.

"Any daring escape plans?" asks Zana, idly, after waiting long enough for their captors to have made their way upstairs.

"...well, obviously we have to get you out first. But I don't know how."

"Yeah, I got nothing right this second. But she sounds like she's not gonna kill you right away, that's cool I guess. You like, knew her when she was a human or something?"

"Yeah. Just online, but she was a pretty good friend."

He looks up at the stairs.

"How long has she been, uh...possessed?"

"About two years now. She was like, really nice before the vampires tortured her to death and handed her body off to a demon. She'd be really sorry about all this. If she were here."

Fuck. Really? He tries to remember if there's anything that changed, any real sign that she wasn't herself anymore.

"...so there's no way to just...take the demon out. If she's dead."

Zana looks at her hands. "There're maybe ways. Really dangerous inaccessible ways. She lets me have books, even books about demons, but no spellbooks or anything. Obviously. There are stories about this one vampire who got cursed to have a soul again, but the details've been lost and I don't know if it's the same as bringing the person back. It's sort of a dumb hope, I think. I really think we should figure out how to just kill them, that's something we might actually be able to do." She looks pained saying this, but only a little bit, like she's mostly but not quite made her peace with it.

"...if we can't do anything else, and they're all like that, then yeah. We should."

A twelve-year old should not have to make these plans. Neither should he, really, but that's not the most horrifying thing in the room right now.

"How long have you been stuck down here?"

"Bout eight months. I spent like a year in foster care after she killed my mom and brother and stepdad. They've only been here a few months, before that they were living out of an RV."

His hand goes in his hair.

“What the fuck. What the fuck! I’m so sorry...”

"Yeah." She frowns and looks at the screen, where Yoshi continues dancing under raining confetti. "D'you like. Need a hug or something."

“Do I need a hug—what about you?”

Fuck. He takes a second to calm himself down.

“...right, uh — what do we know so far? That’d help?”

She runs off and comes back with books. "Some of these're in French or Latin. Lots about vampires, but lots of conflicting information, too. You can kill them with fire or sunlight or beheading or a wooden stake through the heart. Aversion to crosses and holy water but I don't think you can kill them with it. They can't enter the houses of living people without an invitation, which doesn't super help us, but it's good to know. Imrainai's working on solidifying her power in the area, plus weird dumb shit like her skull throne. She might turn you, in which case you become a soulless demon too and that would kinda suck. 'Specially for me. No offense, but a vampire you doesn't sound like someone I super want around."

He nods through her explanation, trying to commit it all to memory the first time. She seems like a really smart kid.

Being turned sounds like...something he’d rather avoid.

“Uh. Why would I be a worse vampire than anybody else?”

"I think the demon takes on some of the personality of the host. Imrainai's, y'know, evil, but she's still into Pixar movies and Nintendo in addition to all the new stuff, like maiming and killing people. You're into like. Pain. I don't know if that matters, but I don't super wanna find out."

He considers.

“...yyyeah, no, let’s avoid that.”

"Yeah. Let's."

She sighs and grabs another slice of the half-eaten pizza. Gotta keep her strength up if she's gonna kill people at some point.

Yep. Him too.

 "How often is somebody else down here?"

"Depends. New people maybe every couple weeks. Mostly they hunt people outside and just take the heads and valuables after they're done with the blood. They feed once every few days when things are going well for them, but not a whole person every time, not unless they've gone a while without feeding. Sometimes they split a whole dude three ways. If she took three pints from you then she'll be good for at least another couple days, I think. Uh, but sometimes they bring people home so they can torture them, and sometimes the people hang out here. Mostly they're too busy crying or screaming or going into shock to play Mario Kart. Uh, not that that's wrong of them or anything, I'm not actually more upset about being bored than I am about the thing where they keep killing people."

It figures that when he finally lives out a kidnap/torture plot it's actually fucking horrible in ways he's not into.

(This girl needs to get out.)

"...yeah. I didn't think you were."

He starts to draw his knees up to his chest and stops himself, carefully, stretches his legs out.

"Do they ever all leave here at once?"

"Sometimes, I'm pretty sure. Not for more than a night at a time, and it's hard to say exactly when because they also have the upstairs." She looks down. "If one of us could escape, we could go get backup or something. Call the police. Or like, witches or something. I don't even know if witches are really a thing, but if they are they might be more useful."