Essence (Nectar 3)

Sasha was reading him. He was well aware of that. She was gauging him as a person, deciding if she might be able to trust him.

Sasha explained that a big element of the so-called militia was embracing more humanity. It wasn’t a rebellion in the way of a violent uprising that aimed to maim. This, instead, was a collaborative group of vampires who were in a coalition that strived to have equal rights with royal vamps. Many of them wanted to embrace humanity, live lives that weren’t necessarily altruistic but also that weren’t pure hedonism. Instead of lording over the world at the top of the food chain, this collaborative alliance tried to live without being megalomaniacs and worked together to try to live a more symbiotic existence with others. They sought to live without “power-hungry bluebloods” and hedonistic turned vamps who wanted to make all the decisions and control everyone.

She was contrite when he asked, “Vamps such as me?”

Sam’s behaviour was peculiar and when Tristan questioned it, he admitted that he had some ideals from his sister drilled into him the last 18 hours and a lot of what she’d said had been sinking in. Sam claimed to be processing a lot of things. Tristan didn’t quite know what to make of it. He wasn’t sensing betrayal in Sam. Just that the man was warring with himself.

Tristan wasn’t necessarily skeptical, merely planning to keep an eye on Sam, ensure he wasn’t under someone’s influence. He wanted to work hard at reading Sam’s sister so that he could determine whether or not she was safe to deal with but knowing she had a problem with Adrian Constantin’s dubious moral code was a good sign.

Sasha was definitely different. She wasn’t a screaming bitch; she seemed decent.

“So, you grew a conscience after drinking Kyle Kelly’s blood?” Tristan asked.

“Seems so,” she shrugged.

“Tell me, was your coalition involved in removing Kyla from her parents?”

“Yes. Before I had anything to do with them. Major efforts were taken to stop the breeding program run by Dr. Constantin.

But it was unsuccessful. Two individuals worked to make Kyla Kelly safe. The two were in separate locations, an effort taken to safeguard her whereabouts. Only three people knew where she was but two of them died, one as punishment for their involvement, the other of a freak unrelated accident so for years no one knew how to find her. Dr. Constantin found the third individual, a vampire who was incapacitated for so long he was desecrated in punishment for coalition involvement. Once he was located her new identity was revealed and my brother became involved for your end. Once things changed for me, I wanted to be involved for our end. But Sam wouldn’t return my calls. There have been some bad eggs in our alliance over the years but most of us want the same outcome, democracy and freedom among vampires, to live our lives on our own terms.”

“Why did you want to be involved at this level?”

“A few reasons. One, because the ongoing intentional breeding of royal bloodlines is a practice perpetrates the ongoing problem among our kind.”

“Meaning?’ Tristan was affronted.

“People like you, like your father, your grandfather; it’s an ongoing cycle of dictatorship. These councils that exist for a variety of things may have many members but they’re mostly based on the illusion of a democracy. For the most part, the top three royals on each council make the decisions. Metes out the punishments. Keeps things from progressing. They opt to imprison, program, or exterminate vamps that they don’t feel meet their criteria, try to control breeding and turning. They treat females like baby-making machines. They call us a militia but we’re merely a group of vampires including some of mixed race, some royal, some turned, from all walks of life who are looking to give people, turned vampires, and so-called blue-blooded vamps equality. We want to decide who to mate with, whether or not we want to try to be bred, to be able to decide how we want to live our lives. People have been indentured servants, chosen to bleed and breed for vampires and this is wrong. In the last two hundred years the upper echelon of the royals have been trying to micromanage our race. They don’t have that right. There is a similar breeding program in Europe. The last large organized program is on the verge of being dismantled. There’s an elder coming to the states next week to meet here for a small gathering. If things go well between now and then, perhaps you’d consider being a part of that meeting.”

Tristan scratched his head, “Yeah, uh, all this isn’t kind of hypocritical of you?”

“Oh, because Kyle is what you’d consider my pet? Absolutely. But Kyle Kelly has been in a coma for almost two years due to something brought on by Dr. Constantin’s experiments so either his blood feeds me and keeps me sensible and able to help people, or I don’t feed on him and that leaves me the sort who does nothing to contribute to society. Instead I go back to being another hedonistic psychotic vampress who gives no one anything, only takes. I knew Kyle before I was turned, from the time he was relocated to The Constantin Center and I think he would be happy to feed me if he knew how much it could help. And that’s the second reason why I’ve been trying to reach out to my brother. Maybe Kyla can help me get Kyle conscious again.”