Unfair

Hello, nephew. Welcome to my bedroom. Don’t mind Miss Cooper here! She is a little shy right now, covering her naked breasts like that.

The woman is used to expose her skin and her veins, but you being a boy unsettles her a little.

We shall back to her in a moment.

I am your aunt Dagda. You saw me in family events, but may not remember.

Your father died under my command, fighting an invasion to this house. Your mother was my friend. I literally saw you being born. Graziella died when a rival family exploded my airplane in an attempt to capture me, to use as bargain chip.

Usually, those initial instructions in how to be a vampire are given by much younger member of our family. I asked to be your mentor.

This is likely to be a double-edged sword to you. I am old fashioned.

Not old, OLD, as in pre-Atlante Civilization days, old! Not even old enough to have seem the disappearance of Lemuria. That last remaining archipelago left from the Lost Continent.

Still, old enough to remember the nights of Troy, before the Greeks end the city. Certainly, old enough to remember how things used to be before the Law of Secret.

Other preceptor would keep a “need to know” protocol in regards to many aspects of vampiric condition.

The traditional school, that I follow, chooses personal responsibility over reduction of risks by micromanagement. I dedicate most my life to test drive war strategies. I choose to work with field commandants who know too much over those who do not know enough, any night of week.

That’s why I will tell you what can kill you, and how you can kill other vampires.

On the other hand, I will hardly ever worry about your feelings or try to save you from your own stupidity. If you must end your life doing a bad choice, I will accept that and move to damage reduction. I will not try to change your mind. Like a more contemporary preceptor would.

Tonight we have our first lesson, and that is about feeding.

Your transformation ended one week ago. I understand you have been drinking human blood from bags, so far. Mixed with some other things, a recipe developed to make this process of adaptation easier.

Now is the time to start learning about a balanced diet. Latter I will explain to you the hunt. Because that is something all vampires need to learn by themselves, I will not show you the hunt. Just explain it.

Right now, we are dealing whit an easier topic. How to drink from a source that is at your disposal. No fight, no flee, no hunt to you tonight.

I take half my blood from non-talking animals. Dogs, bulls, bears, horses, are all options. Birds have awful taste, but Komodo dragons and snakes are surprisingly pleasant. Crocodile blood, specially from the fresh-water variant, help with meditation, turtle blood is good stimulant for intellectual effort. Our family do not drink from cats.

Specially the domestic ones. It is a family tradition, since we have a cat in our family shield.

I prefer to drink directly from the source, but in order to have a balanced mix and hide the unpleasant smell, most pos-Renascence vampires favour “elixirs”. Mixed with ****, honey and different essences.

Half of your blood can come from that, some take as much as 70% but anything above 50% is unhealthy. Our intellectual capacities drop, self-control too.

I take other 30% of my diet from lovely human cattle, like Miss Cooper here on my lap. We shall talk about this lovely 24 years old blondie soon.

There are risks in drink from other vampire’s blood-thralls. Some blood seeds allow a vampire to place traps in the blood and when his thralls drink it their blood becomes poisonous or addictive to the vampire who drinks. Creating vulnerability and weakening the mind.

Drink from other vampires has the same inconvenient, by the way. You should be mindful about that.

The Disclosure Pact celebrated four years ago, like most post-Secret laws, allow us full control over our blood-thralls. They are ****-property. On the other hand, legally, we should not take humans as thralls without their formal consent.

More about that in a moment.

The family has human servants that provide us blood voluntarily. Human cattle, cultivated for thousands of generations of selective breeding. All self-respecting Vampire Families own that sort of farm animal.

We control how much we drink from each cow at a given time, give them time to recover. They rarely die in the process, but that is not entirely avoidable.

Naturally, there is no word about them in the disclosure laws.

They are not blood-thralls, would not be viable to elevate them all to that status.

That is the part a vampire can replace by literal blood bags. Like animal blood some “garden flowers” get this blood in flavoured elixirs.

The term “garden flower” is pejorative, by the way. Serious insult. Don’t go around dropping it casually.

Finally, at least 10% or a vampire blood has to came from the hunt.

We must take that blood from unwilling, human, source. By ****.

Is possible to attack the human by surprise or hunt our prey down after show ourselves as the hunter. Fear improves the taste of their blood. Some like the taste of pain too, I don’t. Mostly, young vampires seem to enjoy it and as we get old the flavour becomes too heavy. There is some personal element in it too, it is matter of taste, after all.

Human food and drink does nothing for our family. We can consume it but does not sustain us. Some blood-seeds allow vampires who develop them to get part of their nutrition from that but we don’t have anyone whit that seed in our family. Many vampires cannot consume human food without getting sick, it is rare in our family but your cousin Derik suffers from it.

During the hunt we have a considerable risk of lose control over our actions. Taken by passion we kill our prey and leave it dry. Does not happen always, but when we lose control, the human rarely survives.

That part was included in the Disclosure Legislation. We cannot kill humans at will, on purpose, but we can hunt and killing during hunt is considered accident.

I see you are still distracted by the half-naked girl on my lap. Alright, lets talk about my friend Amanda Cooper. Miss cooper, I will raise your shirt now. Spread your legs wide open for my nephew, darling.

Now, now, no need to tremble like that Miss Cooper! He is not about to pop your cherry, sweetheart. That’s only to teach him how to pierce your femoral artery

This grow woman, six years older than you, is still a virgin, my friend!

She is under the impression that she is saving herself for the man she wants to marry. Imagine that!

I am the one saving her cherry, for some young vampire man like you to enjoy. Of course, I erase that information from her mind, so she keeps thinking it is her choice.

That is the part those ‘deals’ between vampires and humans neglect to mention. We are not just physically stronger, harder to kill, and immune to the decay of advanced age. Aside other powers, that variate from one individual to another, we all (or almost all) have the power to command the human mind.

Even a newly turned vampire like you can erase hours of recent memory from the minds of most humans. With a little training. Simple commands are easy and used with method over months or years even that blunt, clumsy, tool is enough to structurally reshape the human mind.

There is no deal possible between predator and prey. Because no compromise is necessary.

We have science and technology beyond the dreams of humans. Even when you exclude the blood-seeds and other strictly supernatural advantages. We know more about the nature of our universe than you can imagine.

Is not fair. Like is not fair that bovines, goats and chickens cannot defend themselves against humans.

Like is not fair that some human nations are stronger than others.

Also, is not fair that men should be larger and stronger than women. Or that you vampire males should start with superior vampiric powers of body and mind. And also improve those advantages faster than us, vampire ladies.

Neither is fair that I have dozens of thousands of years of advantage over you, as a vampire. And still have ahead of me the same prospect of future you have: eternity.

To summarize the argument here: existence neither is nor is supposed to be fair. We take life by life’s terms, and life’s terms are never fair. Deal with that!

Is usually more practical to pretend otherwise. When handling our relations with the humans.

We need to administrate resources, to deal with rival vampire families. Rule the humans directly, by iron hand instead of them shepherding tactics, is unpractical.

Besides, we need the hunt and that means we cannot destroy the fighting spirit of all humans. Our sanity depends on that fight.

I intend to have Miss Cooper married eventually. To a young human bull of my choice not to the one she has in mind.

Naturally, a lovely cow like her shall give me many lovely babies.

Who will grow, into fine human cattle, and give me even better generations of servants. In due time.

Before that, some young vampire will claim her sex. And enjoy her hot body as he pleases.

Not tonight, however. Tonight, you must learn how to drink blood from a living human.

Don’t worry too much, their blood wants to be inside us. If comes to us easily.

Best place to start is the inside of the thigh. The neck is far too delicate, too easy to brake. Requires experience. The problem with the femoral is blood pressure, but I am here. Don’t worry, I will see that Miss Cooper survives the night without any permanent trauma.

Are you ready to start?