“Blood lust is something no human can ever understand. Yes, there are humans who become Satanists and they drink blood at ceremonies, and they probably quite enjoy the wickedness of it all, but it is not like that for us. The only way you can even begin to understand how it feels, is if you try to imagine you are starving.
“You haven’t eaten for days, then someone puts a wonderful, favorite hot meal in front of you. You can see it, and smell it. It is right in front of you, but your hands and feet are tied and your mouth is taped shut. As I stand here now I can hear the blood rushing in your veins and I can smell it. Smoky sweet and seductively innocent. You had onions at lunch. And the adrenaline from your encounter with those intruders is still flowing in your blood. Adrenaline is like a drug. A drug far, far more addictive than the purest heroin.
“Do you want to drink my blood?” she asks, her voice shaking with horror.
“Yes, I want to,” I admit brutally. “And I cannot stop the blood lust, just like you cannot stop your heart from beating, or your kidneys from doing what they are supposed to do. You see, our greatest punishment is not that we lost our light, or we have to slink and slither by night and can never feel the wonderful warmth of the sun again. It is having to endure the curse of this relentless clawing thirst for blood, day and night... for eternity.”
She shakes her head in rejection at my words. “No. No. Oh, my God, no. I cannot believe this. This is just so incredible, so unbelievable. And to think I laughed when I read Interview With A Vampire at the absurdity of vampires going around killing humans every night. As if they wouldn’t be found out. And here you are telling me you and your family are going about doing just that.”
“You were right to laugh, because that is not how it is done. We couldn’t, as you put it, go around killing humans every night, or we would have quickly aroused suspicion, become known to the communities that we blended into, and eventually destroyed. The solution was obvious. We had to have our own supply. Like the Massai tribes who drink the blood of the cattle without killing them.”
She presses the heel of her hand to her head in disbelief. “Oh God, you own humans?”
“I don’t, not anymore, but my family and the others of my kind do.”
She frowns. “How? I mean where are these poor people kept?”
“In underground facilities.”
She covers her gaping mouth, and shoots to her feet. “Jesus, I have to get out of here!”
“You cannot run from this any longer, Autumn. I know you are shocked and horrified, but please sit down and let me finish. I have to tell you everything because you have to know everything, no matter how distasteful. It is the truth.”
Slowly, she lets herself fall back on the chair.
“When I say underground facilities, I don’t mean sordid little prisons dug into the ground. Earth is not a solid ball, it is more like Swiss cheese with many deep tunnels, and massive secret underground caverns, some are humongous with ceiling heights as tall as a New York skyscraper. Some of these spaces are owned by humans and called DUMBs (deep underground military bases), but they are mostly owned by Vampire families who bought up the land above these caverns a long time ago, then built homes with secret elevators that travel into the caverns underneath.
“Some of these settlements are so big they are spread out over areas bigger than Hunter’s Cross. They are powered with electricity, have rail networks, and are fitted with sophisticated aqueduct and filter systems that purify and distribute water and air. There are schools, shops, offices, coffee shops, a bar, a club for the young, a Church, a Police station, and a clinic.
“People live in comfortable units fitted with all mod-cons and have access to beautiful parks with tame birds and animals. Each person is given a hydroponic allotment garden where he/she can grow their own food if it so pleases them. They have no bills to pay, and food is plentiful so they have no need to work or produce anything of value, unless they want extra credits which will allow them to shop at the luxurious stores.
They are free to spend their time on leisure activities; painting, sewing, making furniture, distilling whiskey, playing video games. There is no crime. The inhabitants fall in love, marry, bear children, and bury their dead. They have no idea about life on the surface of the earth and yearn for nothing. Once a month they go to the clinic and donate a pint of blood. They don’t know why they do it, but it has always been done that way.”