Later that morning, close to dawn, I sat at a large conference table in a dimly lit room and listened as the council tried to come up with ideas. Everyone was on edge trying to find any way to prevent death.
In reality, it was the way it should be. Technically, we weren’t supposed to even be alive. We were a crime against nature, and this death, the one that was starting to bang on each and every one of our doors, was right.
“It’s reported that twenty-eight more vamps met their final end tonight, sir. Five more entered a comatose state and are probably going to die, as well. We must proceed with the plan to breed,” David Powers said to William Rhys, the leader of the United States.
I had always disliked David and his rat-like features. His greasy hair plastered to the sides of his face in rounded out shapes had always disturbed me. Most men wore their hair like that, but I refused to run around looking like a total idiot. I was trapped in the twentieth century, and so was my style.
“Other nations are willing to help with funding. Russia even agrees that breeding humans is our best bet,” Sheridan said.
She looked over at me and pleaded with her eyes for my help.
Sheridan should have been a man. The hard angles of her harsh face held no feminine appeal. I expected her Adam's apple to bob up and down when she swallowed in a panic.
The fact that her hair looked as if someone held her down and chopped it up against her will with a razor blade didn’t help. It was the style, but it wasn’t attractive as far as I was concerned.
I remembered when a woman’s hair held a certain power over a man. There was nothing like running your fingers through the long threads of a woman’s sweet-scented tresses; the feel of the softness against your face when you leaned in for a stolen kiss.
Rhys’s eyes found mine from across the table. As his lead consultant and guard, everyone looked at me. They thought I was the only vampire capable of persuading Rhys into anything. They assumed I was the only bloodsucker never to feel the thirst that was starting to drive them all mad.
They were clueless.
They had no idea how severe my thirst was.
The room went still as they waited for me to respond. Outside, the sound of rioting reached my ears and was an even bigger push in the back. Something had to be done, but the idea they had was making me ill. I would never admit it to anyone that I gave a shit, but it felt wrong.
The plan to breed humans was introduced ten years before. It was bound to happen once the predators, like me, became the top of the food chain and anything with a pulse began to go extinct.
The world as we all remembered it was turned upside down. Our lives were inverted, flipped so that we were even more dominating than we’d always been behind the scenes.
Twenty-five years before, humans consumed the earth. Twenty-five years before, they easily outnumbered vampires, and we could feed on anything we liked.
After killing and turning too many humans for our own sick desires, we were faced with one simple fact. We, the vampires, outnumbered the humans, and we were starving to death.
In years past, we played all night and slept all day. We fed randomly and filled ourselves with the blood of anything with a beating heart. We drank vigorously without regard for our future, without the knowledge that one day, after all had been sucked dry, we would be without humans and their blood; without a food supply.
In the past, humans were the workers, the inventors, and the law, while we lived the lives of kings behind closed doors. There was no work and all play for us, and we definitely played. We were gluttonous, greedy beings, and we took any and everything we wanted until there was no more.
The humans soon became aware of us, and news stations all around the world reported on the bloodthirsty mythical creatures killing mankind. Governments around the world fought back. They sent out troops to try to kill our kind.
The army men became known as the Fang Hunters. They tried and failed to eradicate us, and in the end, all it did was anger the errant vampires, if there was ever any other kind.
Those wayward vampires were referred to as the wild, and they were the reason for our current predicament. While some of us started to realize our food supply was dwindling, the wild remained the same.
They went on killing sprees and changed lusty women and men into vamps in exchange for death. Little did these humans know they were accepting death, just a much more malicious kind; one that was never supposed to occur, an unhurried death that happened to the mind slowly over the years.
These delinquent vampires killed more and more. They turned army men into vampires just to watch them try to kill each other. It was a game, a form of entertainment for the ones that had lived for too many years with no new amusement.
The humans that remained became more guarded. Still, vampires continued to ransack random homes to feed our insatiable bloodlust, pushing the blood bags into hiding.
And that was where we stood.
The humans hid as we took their place in the world. We were the workers and the inventors, we were the law, and we did what we had to in order to survive.
I had watched the world become what it was, a world where vampires were the dominant species. I remembered the times when we, as vampires, hid in the dark corners of the streets and waited for a fresh kill. I remembered the joy and the exhilaration of finding fresh blood, but since we dominated everything around us, fresh blood was a thing of dreams.
Eight years before, the Blood Bond laws were passed. These laws made it illegal to turn a human into a vampire; five years after that, we passed another law making it illegal to kill anything with a pulse.
The Blood Bond laws were passed to keep the humans and animals from becoming extinct; they were passed so vampires could feel like they had some kind of future because, without them and their blood, we would surely become extinct too.
“James, our worst fears are coming to life. We’re becoming immune to Hematonin. Say something, damn you,” Sheridan yelled across the table.
Her heavy man-like palms landed on the wood in front of her and echoed into the room.
Hematonin, a small pill produced fifteen years before by Ralph Singleton, was the miracle drug we vampires had been surviving on. It provided the much-needed nutrients that human blood cells would usually provide to our bodies without the kill and the feed.
The miracle drug was made in mass quantities all over the world. We didn’t eat. Instead, we took a pill every morning before bed to sustain us. But the hunger never went away. The thirst still burned our throats and drove us partly insane. To feel the effects of starvation yet never die was enough to make you crazy.
“We knew this day would come, James. Are you even listening?” David Powers asked in a panic. “Tell Rhys this is for the best.”
It was whispered throughout the world that Hematonin would not keep us alive forever. At some point, whether it took ten years or fifty, our bodies would become immune to the miracle medication. The vampires who succumbed on a daily basis were proof of that matter.
I was going to have to go against my gut and agree with breeding humans like dogs. After one hundred and thirty-seven years of hating myself, of feeling like a murderer, I was going to agree to the production of humans just so we could suck on them and feed our thirst.
Memories of being alive made it difficult to consider the breeding plan. I could still so vividly remember the first time I had ever made love when I was alive. Memories were supposed to die, but even after a hundred years, those memories were still clear. It felt like I still had my heartbeat not long ago.
“It’s now or never. We must search out what humans are left in the world and start the breeding processes immediately. If we don’t, we’ll die,” Sheridan said across the large meeting table.
“James?” Rhys, our leader, looked at me with concern in his eyes.
Rhys always remained calm, though his tall frame and charcoal skin were intimidating. There was nothing like a huge black giant haunting the night. I could remember the fear in the humans’ eyes when we would feed together.
But I knew his calm was a front. It was his job to prevent widespread panic, and he did a damn good job of it, but I had seen him crack a handful of times over the years.
“I think it’s time we move forward with this plan, don’t you?”
His composure was admirable, considering the circumstances.
I looked around the table full of scientists, consultants, and guards… all vampires, and I knew it was inevitable.
I nodded, guilt filling my chest and rushing up the back of my throat to choke me.
“There’s no other choice. We have to do what we have to do,” I responded.
“Okay, then it’s settled.” Rhys looked around the table to see if anyone else disagreed. “James, your new job is to lead the search. I don’t trust anyone else not to feed on the first human they find. This isn’t going to work if the ones searching can’t control their thirst long enough to bring back anything alive.”
I nodded my understanding.
The burn in my throat intensified with just the thought of being near fresh blood.
William Rhys might have been the leader of the vampires in America and the oldest documented vampire in our government, but he was also my best friend. I would go to hell and back for that man. Being around a human and not being able to feed on them was every vampire’s idea of hell.
As the sun came up later, I was back at my condo, and I pushed the red button on the remote that controlled everything. I watched as the thick tinted shields slowly dropped down to cover the windows, keeping out the fire of the morning light.
I relaxed in bed and watched TV as I waited for sleep to take me away. The songs of morning birds chirping filled my dark room. Birds were mostly safe from us. Vampires could do a lot, but flying wasn’t something anyone had mastered.
Flipping onto my stomach, I stared at the clock. The first round of searches was set to begin once the sun went down. Anything with a pulse was to be captured and taken back to the lab. Again, the burn grew in my throat, prompting venom to leak onto my tongue. Sleep took me away an hour later, and dreams of my past haunted me.