Anti-Hero || Leah Clearwater

14 - Footnotes

"I sit and watch you
And notice everything you do or don't do
You're so much older and wiser and I
I wait by the door like I'm just a kid
Use my best colors for your portrait
Lay the table with the fancy shit
And watch you tolerate it"

tolerate it - Taylor Swift

Leah stayed silent for a whole minute before asking Felix: "What do you mean you don't kill people?"

Felix shrugged. "That we don't. Do you seriously think that every single vampire on the planet have to kill a person every time he or she needs to eat?"

"Yes," she answered, without hesitation. She was pretty sure.

He went to the table, where Leah had set her empty plate, and grabbed a chair to sit on it. Sometimes, she forgot that he didn't really need to change position, he was just pretending to be something he wasn't. Human, fragile.

"All right. Let's assume this is true: every vampire on this earth need to kill a human, once a month, to survive." He was now looking at her with a smirk. "My coven, not a normal coven like others, since we are almost thirty - not considering all the others vampires working with us -, decides to kill every month thirty persons. Do you really believe that all the tourist we use end up dead? It's not possible. We can hide a death, maybe two, even three, but a whole group of tourists just disappeared from the face of the planet every month?"

"Edward Cullen told us that this people you...use," she hated that word. "Are not from here. That you bring people here, from afar, in order not to arouse suspicion. Sometimes people that are, you know, all alone. That no one would end up looking for if missing."

"Well, it's true. But you have to understand that in this age you can't do that very easily. We could succeed once, but do you really think that we could do this every month? For centuries?"

Leah now was sitting too. She had left the food on the counter, too engrossed in the conversation to think about it.

"So, assuming that this is true, that you don't harm them..."

"I didn't say that. We don't kill them, but it's not very pleasant receiving a bite from one of us."

She raised her eyebrows. She knew very well how unpleasant could be a bite from one of his kind.

"Then, how do you buy their silence?"

"We don't. Before, we used to drug them, with beverages or food, but we had to be cautious, we couldn't drug more than a few. Some of us went very far from Volterra to eat. Sure, with no drugs, you left some human very traumatized, but we were never too picky about that."

Felix said that in an almost bored tone, as if the thought of humans traumatized after being attacked by a vampire was not atrocious.

"And now?" she asked.

"Now, we have Floriana with us. She has a unique gift: she can hypnotize humans. So, after we do what we have to do, they leave without a memory, maybe lightheaded. We even offer a buffet on the way out."

He was not serious.

How could she believe him?

She knew what vampires were able to do. They killed humans, they have been doing it for centuries.