The Alien Agenda (4 page)

Since there was nothing that could be done about it when they were noticed, Humans had come to a fait accompli acceptance of what could not be altered.  Humans were aware, but there was nothing they could do about it, so they denied it.  They blocked it out.  They were in massive denial.  They ignored what they could not affect.

“I can think of nothing more dangerous.”  I said.  “Can you imagine what that may precipitate?”

“It will depend on that individual
’s will to live.  If it reveals it has been infected or if it hides it from the rest of its comrades.”  Sonafi said, then added, almost imperceptibly; “What do we have to lose, if what you believe is true?  That soon we may not
have
a place to hide.”

“I didn't say I think it's an imminent concern.”  I said, now balking at the intensity I was seeing on her moon bathed face.  “I see that you have been thinking about this a lot, though.”

“Quite a few of us, actually.  We're fed up.”

“I thought you wanted to move?”  I said. 
“Now this?”

“I have to admit to having an ulterior motive.”  Sonafi admitted.

“Which is?”

“They want to use the house.”

“Who is they and do you mean our house?”

“Yes. 
Our house.”  Sonafi answered, with mildly exaggerated exasperation.  “We think it has a number of advantages.”

“The 'we' represents?”  I asked, not failing to notice that I was asking this question for the second time.

“Quite a number of us, actually.”

“Brid?”
  I asked, suddenly sure my rabble-rousing son was at the heart of it.  He was the epitome of the modern generation.  Hacker.  Gamer.  Designer.  Anything and everything technical.  Aware of the modern issues and politics- though there was no effective way a Vampire may participate in any mainstream or political organization, many of us were very socially aware- and not that any of it mattered, in the end, after all, when it was the Others who intended to inherit the world.

Brid was too smart for his own good, I have thought since the da
y he was born.  He had been fearless, cock-sure and arrogant from the moment of his birth.  Vampires are even worse than their Human counterparts when inclined towards arrogance.  Vampires are bullheaded, fiercely independent beings, and I have been expecting him to come to a violent end at any moment.  Arrogance is not a healthy trait in a Juvenile Vampire.  The Elder Vampires take violent exception.  A Vampire does not have to go rogue to turn in violence upon another of its brethren. We kill one another all the time.  It is why the Community is as fractured and disjointed as it is.

Why was I surprised?

“Brid and a dozen others.”  Sonafi admitted.

“If we fail, we'll see an escalation in their efforts to eradicate us.”  I said.  “Have you thought this all the way through?”

“I've thought of little else.  It's all I've thought about.  But it may be our best, last chance.”  Sonafi said seriously.  “I don't see how we have a choice.”

“Nor do
I, really.”  I agreed, looking into her set, determined features.  “Nor do I.  You're right, what choice do we really have?”

“We don't have options. 
None.”  She said.  They were already planning it, with or without me, I could see, so it may as well be with me.

At least if I were involved, I could keep a watchful eye over my son.  Any time a
group of Vampires got together there was likely to be trouble.  The killing kind of trouble.

“Brid is a foolish
Juvenile.”  Was all I could say.

CHAPTER 3

Human blood was the only blood a Vampire truly thrived on.  We could sustain ourselves with the blood of any of Earth's fauna, but none matched the healthful benefits of our Human kin.  If I did not feed on Humans, I would soon find myself in a much weakened state, compared to other Vampires who did feed on Humans, and thus susceptible to Vampires much junior to myself.

Still, I find myself plagued more by conscience as I grow older.  I am troubled when I must cause pain or suffering to another living being, and by 'being', I do not necessarily just mean Humans, Vampires or the
Others.  Telepathic, I am subjected to the thoughts of all living creatures.  In the last century that has not been an attractive thing.  Slaughterhouses, live animal processing plants, even the modern farm and its inhumane, factory-like way livestock is now treated.  In many cases the mental anguish is overwhelmingly extreme, even for a predator.  It would undoubtedly drive me insane if I had to spend any great amount of time near one of these places, though there are a few of us who I thought might enjoy such things.  Do enjoy such things.  Among Vampires, like our Human kin, there are both good and bad, in similarly balanced numbers.

I do not like that there are so many Vampires who lack consciences so utterly and completely.  We all feed on Humans but some kill their victims on a regular basis.  They enjoy killing.  It is oftentimes a difficult struggle I wage with myself, with my conscience, that I should allow those others who are so lacking to continue the horrors they perpetuate, but if I attempted to set myself as Judge and Executioner above all other Vampires, those who found themselves at odds with my high handed ethics would soon join together, at least temporarily, to destroy me en-mass.  I am the eldest, strongest Vampire, but I am not omnipotent.

We walked back into the city, casting about ourselves with our telepathy, looking through the minds of the Humans who slept in their beds, behind the thin walls of their homes, so close around us.  The houses here were mere feet from the sidewalk and only separated one from another by narrow concrete sidewalks.  The life-force around us was incredibly thick and heady.  Humans lived here like sardines packed in a tin.

We chose a home and removed our shoes, hiding them behind a bush in the front yard of the property.  I cast my consciousness into the minds of those above and shortly thereafter the window above us opened.  A face showed itself, peering down at us momentarily, and then disappeared inside.

We moved to the wall and began to climb.  The loose mortar and deep beds of the masonry joints made ideal finger and toe-holds.  We scurried up the wall like monstrous insects and slithered into the home through the open window.  A Vampire has pliant, not brittle, bones, and we slithered in like boneless earthworms.  We slithered in through the open window and rose, a single, sinuous motion.  We stood before the couple awaiting us.

Like dumb beasts they awaited our coming.  Docile, seemingly unaware and unresponsive, yet they had opened the window for us, they wanted this.  They wanted us.  Humanity had been genetically tailored to be accepting of the Others Visitations.  They had no choice but to be so of us, as well.  The woman moaned slightly as we drew near, an autonomous response as her brain pumped endorphins into her system in preparation for the ecstasy of the union. 
The union with a Vampire.  For the Human, the bite and the sucking of the blood was an intense pleasure.  The autonomous reward that was also wired into the system for obeying.  A pleasure this couple had experienced many, many times.

I moved to take the man.  Sonafi did likewise the woman. 
Merely logistics.  The man was larger.  Had more blood to offer.  Neither of us had a wish to harm the Humans we fed upon and we only visited the same Humans infrequently.  Too frequent visits, or the drawing off of too much at once, would be harmful to our hosts.  We did not want that.  We did not want to be parasitic to the point where we damaged them.  We had come to a comfortable equilibrium.  A long adjusted balance.  Fourteen years we had been here.

I drew closer to my man. 
Sonafi the same the woman.  As I leaned in I saw Sonafi suddenly stiffen and pull back.  I drew away as well.

“What is it?”  I asked her, but then I perceived.  I perceived the beat of a third small heart. 
Almost too small to notice.  Almost imperceptible.  Possibly two or three cells, only.  The first stage of what it would later become.  A new life growing within her womb.  She was pregnant.

“I can't do this.”  Sonafi said.  I could see that the hunger was upon her, but she forced herself to draw back.  It was a struggle, I saw, being this close and prepared to feed. 
Even a Vampire as old as she could not completely conquer her primordial instincts to the point where she would not be inflamed by the nearness of prey when she thirsted.  A Juvenile would not have been able to draw back once so committed.  Some Juveniles could not draw back until they had completely pulled all the life from their victims, so Sonafi and I were careful to chaperone our own offspring until they could be trusted to feed on their own, without killing those they fed on.

I have sired cruel offspring.  Monsters I was loathe to turn loose on society, but a progeny I have sired directly demands more regard than a similar
Juvenile created through a transfusion of blood, and so I have never killed one of my own, at least not while they were young.  Such cruel, brutal Vampires seldom lived long, anyway, often antagonizing one or another of the Community to the point where they are killed, though it is not always the case.  There are several such very old Vampires.  Careful Vampires.  Vampires who thrived on the pain they could inflict.  Who lived just for that.

As hard as it is sometimes to face the things I do, the things I have done, the monsters I have created, in my own defense, I have lived a very long life that I did not choose for myself.  This life was thrust upon me not of my will.  The unwanted byproduct of an egregious experiment gone terribly wrong, yet was I so terribly different from those who had created me?  Am I not compelled by the same physiological needs as every other living being, to survive, to eat, to procreate and expand my
kind.  Does the lion feel guilt that it sires a cub that will, throughout its life, if it can even survive to adulthood, kill and eat many thousands of living, breathing animals.  It does not!

Yet I do.  I have to live with the horror a conscientious being knows that I have caused endless suffering. 
That I will continue to do so.  That I can see no end of it.  Not in the foreseeable future.

There are yet things I will not do.

The woman, suddenly deprived of the bite she craved, stepped forward to embrace Sonafi, but Sonafi side stepped her.  She was no longer where she had been and the woman's arms closed on empty air.  Without a backward glance Sonafi went out the window and was gone, as if she had never been.  She may as well have for the woman's meager ability to perceive her movements.  The woman moaned piteously.  Bereft and abandoned, she turned to me.

“Not this night.”  I told them.  “Return to your slumbers.”  They turned immediately to do as they had been bid, but not before the woman cast a last, imploring look my way.  I remained implacable and my command drove her onward to her bed.  As if they had never awoken, they were asleep as soon as they were under their covers.  I climbed quickly out the window, my fingers adhering to
the rough brick and mortar.  Like a spider I hung there then closed the window one handed. Quickly I scurried to the ground, faster than a Human could run.  Sonafi waited for me on the sidewalk.

“She had
been trying to get pregnant for some time.”  Sonafi said when I joined her.  “I suppose it is our fault she has had such a hard time.”

“I suppose that is probably true.”  I agreed, but said no more of it.  We gathered our shoes and began to walk.  We would have to feed somewhere else, but there were many hours left in the night and thousands of people in this area upon whom we could visit.  We were herders.  Humans we
re our flock.  The only difference being that we did not have to slaughter our herds to feed.  Was this not more humane?  Were we not a notch better?

“I find that, as I age, I have a harder time doing the things
a Vampire has to do.”  Sonafi said quietly as she walked at my side.  I had known she was going to say something about it.  It was a cruel twist that all Vampires had to face sooner or later.  All but the very worst of us.  I had seen it building within her for some time now, something that we tried to avoid facing, because there was nothing we could do about it.  A mellowing with age of the instinctive Vampire urges, like Human evolution as a whole, the rise from primordial beast to thinking, reasoning animal.  A rise which the Others had exacerbated but not caused to occur.  Men would have eventually evolved fully, left the cradle of their birth-world, reached for the stars and their destiny there (barring a catastrophic world shaking event) without the Others interference.  And the Others weren't helping humanity.  They were stealing it.  Now Sonafi was evolving, as well.  Her Human half asserting itself.  Slowly learning to take its full place within her.  Its full half share.  Asserting its humanity.

I did not think our Human halves would ever rise far enough to rid us of our physical dependence on fluid blood.  I did not even know if the
Others could eat solid foods and our need for blood some strange anomaly created through the admixture of species.  I did not know anything about the Others.  Not even what they called themselves.  All I knew for sure was that Vampires had to drink blood.  It was the only food our dual physiology could digest.  Anything else simply sickened us and weakened us.  In these weakened states, we would become blood thirsty, ravening animals.  With extreme blood-lust came the complete loss of our faculties of reasoning.  Better
controlled
feeding than the latter.  Better for all involved.