Two Worlds - Choni

Chapter 7

"You can begin thanking me now." Rose said with a grin as Cheryl and Toni walked down the stairs. Cheryl gave her a dirty look and walked past her into the living room. "So what happened?" Rose asked as Toni sat down next to her. "You were in there for so long that I was starting to wonder if I should have cast a soundproofing spell on the door." Toni frowned.


"Why would you cast a soundproofing spell?" She asked, confused.


"Well, I occurred to me that I had trapped a vampire and a teenage girl in the same bed, and that both of you had crushes on each other. And according to every form of media ever nowadays, there's only one thing teenage girls want to do with vampires."


"But Cheryl can't drink my blood." Toni pointed out, still confused. "And even if she could, what would that have to do with soundproofing?" Rose face palmed.


"Toni, vampires don't want to drink the blood of pretty young girls. They want to have sex with them. And according to every paranormal romance book ever, the life purpose of every teenage girl is to have sex with a vampire. And seeing as you're both paranormal creatures, your lives have become a paranormal romance story." Toni gave her a strange look, somewhere between horror and anger.


"We haven't even gone on a date yet!" She told Rose, punching her in the shoulder.


"Since when has that meant anything?" Rose asked, shrugging. "I mean, you already know each other, and you're both crushing on each other at the very least, so..." The rest of her speech was cut off by a pillow slamming into her face.


"I can hear everything that is said in this house you realize." Cheryl growled, leaning on the doorframe of the family room. "And I resent your suggestion that I only want teenage girls for their bodies. I have absolutely no issue with drinking their blood." Toni frowned.


"Yeah, about that. Do you have to drink people blood?" She asked. Cheryl raised an eyebrow.


"I do if I want to continue to live Topaz. Why, are you already starting to regret kissing me?"


"No!" Toni said quickly, shaking her head. "It's just that...well, it feels weird to know that I'm kissing and dating someone who kills humans for food. Couldn't you drink animal blood?"


"Well, yeah, I've done that a few times. Blood is blood after all." Cheryl said with a shrug. "It's all got the same basic nutrients, even if you can't give people cow blood in a blood transfusion."


"Then why don't you drink cow blood?" Toni asked, frowning. "Aren't you scared of these Hunters you keep bringing up?" Cheryl sighed.


"Toni, this is Riverdale. People go missing or turn up dead all the time. I just seal up the wounds my teeth make and nobody is the wiser. That's why most supernatural creatures live in cities-humans do so much crap to each other that nobody notices when we do the little stuff we need to survive. Hunters only come when we're really obvious about ourselves."


"But still, why do you have to kill people if there's a non-murderous option?" Toni asked, starting to sound a little angry.


"Two reasons." Cheryl said. "First off, I'm doing my part to help with population control."


"Population control?" Toni asked, starting to get really confused. Cheryl nodded.


"Look, let me put it this way. What happens to the population of deer in a forest if all the wolves in the area die?"


"It explodes and the entire area goes the crapper." Rose said before Toni could say anything. Annoyance briefly flashed across Cheryl's face before she continued. She'd wanted Toni to make the connection herself, but she supposed that it would take a while for Toni to reach that point.


"Exactly." Cheryl said. "Vampires are humanity's wolves. We exist as humanity's predator. So that's one reason. The other reason is...well, quite frankly, animal blood tastes nasty."


"So your reasons are fake biological bullcrap and that animal blood doesn't taste good?" Toni demanded, standing up.


"It's not bullcrap." Rose said defensively. "The Wizard Council got together to decide if we should try and force vampires to not drink human blood anymore and put them on an animal only diet. They cast a simulation spell which showed what was essentially a magical hologram of a world where vampires never killed humans for reasons other than self-defense. Since humans routinely kill each other, it wasn't quite as bad as deer without wolves, but there was a definitely negative impact."


"So you're saying that humanity would be doomed if Cheryl stopped drinking human blood?" Toni asked sarcastically, turning to glare at her.


"Well, no." Rose admitted.


"Then give me a serious reason beyond 'animal blood is gross'." Toni snapped, turning to face Cheryl.


"I don't know how about I've been living off of human blood for seven hundred years now and I don't see the big deal here." Cheryl growled. "You're acting like I go around massacring kindergarteners."


"I never said that. I'm just saying that you shouldn't go around killing people when you can easily get animal blood instead." Toni told her.


"You eat cows, I drink human blood." Cheryl snapped.


"There's a difference between cows and people!" Toni yelled, taking a step forward.


"Not to me there isn't!" Cheryl yelled back. "And in a hundred years you won't see the difference either!"


"Well you're not going to be able to see if you're right!" Toni told her, shoving her way past Cheryl and storming out of the house. Cheryl and Rose stared after her in stunned silence.


"That could have gone better." Rose said after a minute. Cheryl shot her an angry look and stormed back upstairs.