The Vampire & the Rebel (Completed)

Part 1: Chapter 25

I sank into a comfortable chair in my chambers. The quarterly was nearly over and I could only be glad since I was growing increasingly anxious to get home and resume my usual activities.

I considered Jamie's reaction to the new humans I had bought. Enrique had talked me into going down with him again and I had acquiesced since I had been pondering acquiring more humans. I supposed I had gone on something of a shopping spree considering I had not intended to buy four of them.

Still, I needed more humans for my ever expanding desires and it was a shame to leave them to be used up by the short sighted fools of the council who had voted against my bill—or at least that was what I told myself to justify my impulsive purchases.

These humans were not quite the calibre I would normally select, but with the feral human population in decline, I would likely have to become less picky. There might come a time when I longed to find new humans like these once again and at the very least I sensed Travis was going to be very useful to me.

He had been afraid—I could tell by the almost imperceptible nervous shake—but wonderfully stubborn enough to catch my attention. He was almost certainly a future guard.

Evan had been pathetically terrified. He probably would be handsome once he was fixed up a bit, but he was probably destined to end up at my factories, although the nice thing about humans is they could still surprise me from time to time.

Mark could go either way. He was not willing prey by any means.

I had bought Barb almost entirely to shut Enrique up about his supposed knowledge of my feeding preferences. I had also not forgotten my whimsy of spawning more delightful romantic entertainment amongst my humans, although she might be a bit young for anything like that for the next few years.

Although, in truth, if humans were going to go extinct in the wild, then females would certainly be worth more to me than they had been in the past.

I seriously began to consider what problems might occur if we exhausted the ferals. It would certainly shake the relative peace of the vampire world. Most vampires had no concept of how to maintain humans and the majority were clearly not interested in learning my methods. Not that I was particularly anxious to impart my secrets even if they were, but it was hardly an issue, since I could imagine larger problems looming before me.

It seemed a certain thing that it would eventually come to war over the humans that were left. Maybe not today or in a decade, but if we did not reverse course the problem of human scarcity would eventually become dire.

Since I chose the best humans, I would certainly be challenged when it came to that point.

I considered. Perhaps I would institute more training for the humans, not just the guard as things currently were. Even a weak human could potentially take out a vampire if they worked together and I was not at all keen on the vision of Magnus or Ivan getting their fangs into any of mine.

Of course, nothing was certain. It was likely that other interventions would be attempted before it came to all out warfare. For a group of powerful creatures, as a whole they had grown surprisingly adverse to risk, afraid to face the possibility that we were not truly immortal in the purest sense of the word.

No doubt there would be future bills addressing the negative repercussions of our consumption, like increased reserves and decreased hunting, and the human breeding proposal group never seemed to stay quiet for long. They would be back, calling upon the council to lift restrictions against directed human breeding.

I did not support their efforts as a rule, but if they decided to work to lift the inconvenient law in which I was required to dispose of humans who foolishly got pregnant, I would certainly support that aspect of their efforts. I had lost the use of more than one excellent human that way and the memory displeased me and was the reason I largely kept the males and females separated.