Necessary Evil

When Aria arrived in the president's office, it was dark and empty. The moonlight cast long shadows, giving the place a slightly eerie feel. Bookshelves filled with files and clutter lined the walls, making the urge to snoop almost overwhelming, but Aria forced herself to resist. She had enough leverage for now. She could always come back later.

As Aria had known she would, the President herself arrived just ten minutes later, followed by a rather frenzied-looking assistant who could barely see over the stack of folders and files in her arms. Emilia Brooks was looking over her shoulder as she entered the room, so it was a moment before she realised Aria was there. The little scream she let out when she noticed that her office was not empty caused the assistant to drop the files.

"Good evening, Madam President," Aria said, making an effort to smile. After all, it couldn't hurt to make a bad first impression, and Aria couldn't help but wonder whether fear of the vampire race alone might sway the President before she was forced to make any threats.

The assistant turned to run for help, but Aria, using the speed gifted to her upon her rebirth, blocked the way.

"No need to run," Aria said. "I'm just here to talk."

The President looked at Aria in astonishment.

"How did you get in here?" she demanded.

"The window," Aria replied simply, gesturing to the open frame.

The President eyed Aria suspiciously then, seeming to decide that she didn't want to turn away from her, backed up several paces so that she could view the window and the vampire at the same time.

"Helen, make a note to speak to security," Emilia Brooks said to the assistant, who nodded without taking her eyes off of Aria.

Unable to resist teasing the terrified human a little, Aria flashed her teeth at her. How satisfying it was to hear the woman's heart rate increase.

"As I said," Aria repeated, turning to the President. "I am here to talk to you."

"And what makes you think I will listen?" Emilia Brooks asked haughtily.

"I was counting on fear for your life," Aria replied honestly. "But since you are brave enough to talk to a vampire in that tone, perhaps fear for the life of your assistant will work better?"

Aria let her teeth elongate into fangs and took a few steps towards the shaking woman.

"She's full of Blackthorn," Emilia Brooks said. "And so am I."

The berries of the blackthorn bush were poisonous to vampires. In the year since humanity had found out that they were not at the top of the food chain, they had incorporated the berry juice into almost every single product they used, from shampoo to coffee. It made eating very difficult for the vampires, which was precisely why Aria was here.

"No matter," Aria said, retracting her fangs. "Her neck will still snap."

Aria reached out towards the assistant and clasped her head in both hands.

"Alright!" the President said hurriedly. "You've made your point. I'll listen."

"Good," said Aria, relieved that the President would respond to threats. "I want you to call a press conference."

"You... what?" said the President.

"A press conference," Aria repeated. "Now, please. I'd like to address the citizens of the world."

The President stared at her. It was evident that whatever she had been expecting when she entered her office to find a vampire waiting for her, it had not been this.

"I'd make it snappy if I were you," said Aria. "Or else I really do fear for the life of your assistant.”

“Why do you want a press conference?” Emilia Brooks asked.

“Because very soon, we will start hurting people to get what we want,” Aria replied. “And if you do not give me the opportunity to warn people, the pain and fallout will be so much worse.

“You want to warn people?” Emilia Brooks said, unable to hide the astonishment in her voice.

“I do,” Aria replied. “So I suggest you tell the world’s media to get their cameras ready.”

Two hours later, Aria stood behind the President on a raised podium while hundreds of media people looked on. The President kept shooting nervous glances her way, which Aria rather enjoyed.

However, When Aria came to step forward, her enjoyment of the situation dissipated. She had really hoped not to have to do this. From the moment she devised the plan, she hated it, but she could see no other way. Her daughter was starving, and she couldn’t let it continue.

The moment her foot descended onto the platform, she knew there was no turning back. If she delivered an empty threat, the vampires would all starve. While comforting, the thought did not erase the guilt that bubbled in her stomach.

Behind Aria, her daughter Luna and one of their pet humans, Chloe, moved forward as well. Aria had collected them while the conference was set up and was glad of the backup now.

“Hello, world. I am Aria; this is Luna and Chloe. Before I start, I suppose I should really prove my species.”

She let out her fangs and, behind her, knew Luna was doing the same. The watching humans gasped.

“There we go, all out in the open. Now, I’d like to start by saying that for all of you who think we are evil, we are no more evil than a lion who eats a zebra or a snake that stalks a dormouse. We are certainly no more evil than you, you who, as a species, kill billions of animals each year for your own personal profit.

“Does the zebra poison the lion? Does the dormouse harm the snake? No. And yet, you all seem to think you are justified in ingesting a substance that is toxic to us.

“Now, fair game to you. You don’t want to be eaten, but you are causing a real problem for us. I met with your president recently to discuss this issue, and she was less than helpful. You see, I offered her a choice—stop the population from taking blackthorn, or we will.

“Clearly, she did nothing to stop you; in fact, following our meeting, she increased the recommended daily dose. So I would like you to remember that it was her decision, and not ours, that saw you taking so much extra of that vile plant. We are simply doing what we must to survive. I trust you understand.

“So I come on to my message. We debated extensively on the best way to stop you all from ingesting blackthorn, and many very fun-sounding ideas were put forward. But this one sounded the most satisfying, and so here it is.

“You will have noticed, no doubt, that when Luna and I showed our fangs, Chloe’s face did not change. That is because Chloe here is a human- and a delicious one at that,” Aria added, turning to smile at Chloe, who looked a little embarrassed and proud at the same time.

“Chloe here is going to demonstrate what it is like to drink some of our blood. Luna, if you will?”

Luna nodded and buried her fangs into Aria’s neck, creating a small wound for Chloe to drink from. The human obeyed and screwed up her nose a little at the burn.

“It burns a little,” Chloe said. Aria smiled.

“I know,” she replied gently. “But it will not do you any harm. However, if you ingest our blood while filled with blackthorn like, say, this gentleman here…”

Aria grabbed a policeman from near her and forced some of her blood into his mouth. He dropped to his knees, screaming and writhing, coughing up blood and turning paler by the second. The media gasped. The other officers took up arms, and Aria pushed Luna behind herself.

“You don’t want to start that,” Luna warned them. “There is a good reason Demetri is afraid of her.”

At the mention of Demetri—the vampire hunter turned vampire who was responsible for informing the human race of the vampire species’ existence—the President shuddered. Aria noticed the response with some satisfaction. She had been worried that the President thought Demetri was innocent and good.

The police officers clicked back on the safety clips but did not lower their weapons. Aria smiled and walked back to the plinth, keeping herself between Luna and the guns, her clothing soaked in the policeman’s blood. Patiently, she waited for the panic to stop. When it did, she continued on as if uninterrupted.

“Now, as fun as it is to watch police officers die like that, the police are not our targets. In fact, no one in this room is in any danger, so long as they heed my warning.

“In four days’ time, we are going to spread out across many schools on many continents and feed all the little children our blood. If they are blackthorn-free, the effect will be as with Chloe, a little stingy but gone within seconds. If they are not blackthorn free, the result becomes a little more… interesting.”

Aria looked down at the policeman and then back up at her audience.

“Four days will be enough to drain yourselves of blackthorn. Take no more, and you will be clean by then. But here’s the thing. After testing schools and making snacks out of the children, we will come for more substantial meals: you. If we find you with any blackthorn in or on your person, we will be unable to feed. And if we cannot feed on adults, we will have to feed on your blackthorn-free children. Your nieces, nephews, grandchildren, siblings, sons and daughters will pay the price.

“So I highly suggest that you stop taking the damn stuff. Because everyone has loved ones. And everyone can be hurt.”

Aria returned to the Whitehouse a week later, Luna by her side. She had been one of the lucky vampires during what they were now calling the ‘purge’, only coming across one child whose parents had not heeded the warning. Even still, the fear in that child haunted Aria, and she had taken pity and snapped his neck rather than put him through the painful death that would have occurred if he had been fed vampire blood. Luna had refused to take part in the purge at all, but no human was to know that. They had to believe that the vampires were merciless.

The president was alone in her office, looking over files when they arrived. Aria kissed Luna’s forehead and cracked open the window, bursting the bolt that had been added after her last visit. Emilia Brooks looked up at the sound.

“Don’t scream,” Aria said. “And don’t press that panic button.”

Aria had learned on a scouting mission the day before that the President had installed a panic button behind her desk in case Aria visited again. Emilia Brooks’s hand retreated from beneath her desk.

“Demetri won't come in here,” Aria told her. “We’ve soaked the door in blackthorn-infused water.”

Luna had indeed used the moments of Aria’s entrance to squirt water from a bottle over the door, and she came now to stand at Aria’s side, smiling softly at the President.

“But you don’t want him to,” Aria continued, noting the slight release of tension in the President’s shoulders. “What has happened, Madam President? Has he finally shown his true colours? I told you he was bad news.”

“Well, you’re not exactly good news,” Emilia Brooks retaliated.

Luna snorted.

“Touché,” Aria said. “But then, I never tried to hide that.”

“What do you want?” Emilia Brooks asked.

“Blood,” Aria replied, unable to resist messing with the human when she made it so damn easy.

The President gasped and clasped her throat. Aria laughed.

“Oh, relax, I was only joking,” Aria said. “Sort of. I came here to talk.”

The President looked wary but relaxed her hand from her throat.

“So I’m curious,” Aria said, sitting herself in a seat opposite the President and motioning for Luna to do the same. “What did Demetri do? Did he kill someone?”

Emilia Brooks looked shocked.

“He is not that bad,” she said stubbornly.

“Really?” Aria asked. “Then why are you so scared of him? If he is the innocent victim trying to help humanity break free of the terrible plague that is vampirism, then why do you shudder at the mention of his name? And why, Madam President, after finding out that he is just as bad as us, if not worse, do you continue to work with him?”

“Just as bad?” Emilia Brooks spluttered. “Just as…? You threatened children!”

“You threatened mass genocide.”

Whatever Emilia Brooks had been planning to say seemed to stop in her throat. She gaped at Aria for a moment, closing and opening her mouth but making no sound.

“You never thought of it that way, did you?” Aria asked. “Never considered that you were tearing apart families, hurting people in unimaginable ways. You never caught on to the fact that you were wiping out an entire species simply because we are different.”

Emilia Brooks still said nothing, and Aria wondered if this was the statement that would tip the scale.

“I didn’t choose vampirism, Madam President. I didn’t ask for this. But I made the best of what I got. I couldn’t have my own child, so I found a baby in an orphanage, ill and abandoned to die. I took her and nursed her to health, raised her as my own. She had a happy childhood filled with fun and laughter as my sister and I raised her, and then, when she was old enough, she chose to become a vampire so she could stay with us forever.”

Aria reached out to put her hand over Luna’s.

“Humans abandoned her to die,” Aria said, looking into Luna’s eyes. “And I saved her. And recently, she did the same thing for another child.

“And then Demetri outed us, and Luna and I have been forced to watch our children suffer and starve. And then, to top it off, Demetri showed up last month and tore the heart from Luna’s daughter’s chest. He murdered her as he murdered my sister. He tore our family apart.

“You have a son, Madam President. Imagine watching him suffer, watching him starve. Wouldn’t you do anything, anything, to stop that? I threatened your children because you threatened mine. You tore Luna’s away from her. Don’t take her from me. Please. I’m begging you, mother to mother, stop this war.”

Emilia Brooks had listened to Aria’s plea in silence, tears forming in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” the President said. “I’m so sorry. But it’s too late. The war has already become too prominent. To stop it now would be near enough impossible.”

Aria looked at Luna, making no attempt to hide the fear that was filling her at the thought of losing her daughter.

“I’m sorry,” Emilia Brooks repeated.

“This war is going to end you too, you know,” Aria said softly. “Without us to keep your population under control, you will overpopulate, run out of food, and suffer the same fate we currently face.”

Emilia Brooks closed her eyes, then flung them back open, apparently remembering she was in a locked room with two vampires.

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said.

Aria nodded.

“I’m just sorry you let this happen,” she said, rising to her feet and motioning Luna to do the same. “Good luck, Madam President. I hope I am wrong about how this will end.”

And without another word, Aria left the President’s office and prepared to face whatever came next in the war.