The Vampire's Rival

When she lets you in

"Hello there, little one?" I said, helping Drew, as he struggled to sit up. It was early. The others were still asleep on various spaces and surfaces in the blood café. "How are you feeling?"

The boy looked up at me with tired eyes. He was still extremely weak. Maybe I should have tortured that New Ager. Death suddenly seemed too good for him. Every vampire knew that the rule was to drink only from adults. The Human Error and the UV Wars had wiped out more than three quarters of the human population. This rule ensured the ethical preservation and increase in our human stock! But there were too many vampires I knew who, given the chance, would drain a child and not even bat an eyelid. One stood in the mirror.

Or at least used to.

"I'm tired," the boy said. "And scared."

I nodded and gave him what I hoped was a comforting smile. I was a little out of practice with those.

"It's still early. You can go back to sleep," I informed him.

He blinked, a slow and tired blink. "Why did he hurt me, Ruq? I'm a vampire. Why did he hurt me?"

I've never really been comfortable with how Progenies were raised.

A while back, the Masters realised that a human who was born and raised as a vampire was a lot easier to eventually turn because they were brought up to look forward to it all their lives. But something about the process had never sat right with me. However, the alternative, a human taken from a human-centric upbringing, wasn't much better. They would sometimes resist a Turn. And when they did accept to be turned, they always questioned what made them worthy of the gift of immortality over others. Survivor's guilt. They would also have to watch their human loved ones grow old, get sick and die, which affected them deeply.

Progenies didn't experience any of that. So, I understood the move to raising Progenies.

I just never liked it.

It made me think about turning Hadley and how she would process it. Especially when it came to her girlfriend, Jamila.

I'd think about that later. For now, I pulled my focus back to Drew.

"Listen to me, Drew. He may have been a vampire, but he was fundamentally a bad person. Bad people hurt others," I said.

Without skipping a beat, he asked. "You're a vampire and you hurt him. Are you a bad person? Will you hurt me, Ruq?"

I had walked right into that, hadn't I? What did it even mean to be 'bad'? And did I hurt people? In the last twenty-four hours alone, I had killed dozens of innocent girls and women and I had enjoyed it. In the last half a millennium?

I heard a sound behind me.

"Ruq is not a bad person, Drew," Hadley said, walking up to us and reaching out to examine the little boy. "And she'd never hurt you. Or me. Or anyone in this room. She only hurts those who hurt others."

Drew looked up at Hadley. Her blue eyes firmly held his and had in them a fierce sincerity. Even I almost believed her. Drew certainly did.

"Okay," he said, with a tired smile.

"Now, go back to sleep," Hadley whispered. "And when you wake up again, you'll be feeling much better."

The little boy nodded, lay back in his makeshift bed and closed his eyes. His breathing settled into a regular rhythm in seconds.

"You should be asleep, Hadley." I whispered, afraid of waking the boy.

"And you should be lying to terrified little kids in the dark, like a good parent is supposed to." Hadley whispered back, with a small smile.