Didn’t read part 4? Find it HERE.
PART 5
A knock came at the door.
“Shy boy? Are you in there?” Zanny’s voice asked through the front door.
Ivan, sitting in his new arm chair, stared unblinking at the door. It had been several days since they had both stood at the ocean and he wasn’t sure how to move forward with the newly acquired information about Zanny.
“Come on, Ivan. I know you’re in there. You haven’t left for days.” Zanny pressed further.
She had come to knock at the door every single day. Multiple times a day. Ivan was convinced that she had stayed posted up outside. She had even heard Jason ask Zanny why she was bothering him so much.
Ivan didn’t move. Her use of his preferred name seemed to him like she was trying to be manipulative…but what did he know? She was the first friend he had come to know in decades. He had no idea what her intentions were but now that he knew her true identity, he knew that he needed to be a lot more careful around her.
Ivan heard her sigh and place her head softly on the door, “Come on, shy boy. Please talk to me. I promise I was going to tell you, I just wasn’t sure if you were one of them or not” she explained further.
That got his attention. He opened the door and she yelped in surprise as she fell forward, not expecting him to actually answer. He caught her and stood her back up.
“Who is ‘them’?” He asked her.
“Can I come in?” She requested, looking around her as if she were afraid that someone was listening.
Ivan studied her hard for a few moments before nodding ever so slightly and moving out of the way so she could come inside. She thanked him softly and brushed past him, taking a seat on his couch. Ivan shut the door and walked up to stand directly in front of her, refusing to sit down. He did not ask the question again and simply stared at her waiting for her to explain.
“How long have you been out of contact with our world?” She asked him, trying to gauge where to begin.
“Centuries.” Came the short reply. It wasn’t the complete truth, he knew one or two others, but it was a professional contact to get sun block and other such items, nothing more. He did not stay up to date with vampire politics and he did not care to ever re-enter the world again.
Zanny took a sharp breath, “this is going to be tough to explain, then…” she mused.
“Try.” Ivan said curtly, starting to grow impatient with her.
She looked up at him, her eyes hardening, “As you know, our society works on a monarchal system” she began. He nodded. She shifted slightly in her chair, “things between our kind and humans have grown…tense. more and more humans are finding out about the existence of our world every day and, as you know, a lot of them do not accept it. They get angry, afraid, brash…they lose their minds.”
Ivan nodded gravely while his gaze shifted down to some scars on his forearm, he knew all too well their reactions to him.
“They’ve begun slaughtering whole towns.” Zanny said flatly.
Ivan’s eyes snapped up to her, trying to discern if she were telling the truth or not.
“Society has deemed humans irrelevant and useless…especially since there are now alternative methods of feeding such as animals, coconut water, and synthetic sources. They’ve decided that humans should be eradicated and are starting in smaller towns that are out of the way and working inwards. They’re trying to keep it quiet as long as possible to prevent war.” Zanny explained, her expression grew darker the more detail she added.
“Well that’s…that’s just not our way!” Ivan exclaimed, completely shellshocked.
Yes. Vampires drank blood. Yes. Some vampires went off the deep end and relished killing humans. But killing wasn’t necessary and the process, rarely needed as it was, was mostly non-invasive and didn’t drain a lot of blood from the food source. There was simply no need to kill humans and the practice of safe-feeding was as common as holding the door open for a stranger. It was just unheard of to harm or even kill humans once you knew what you were doing. It was why it haunted Ivan so much, the man that had stained his last house’s ceiling. He had unnecessarily ended a life because he was new to it. He didn’t know better. But now he did, and so did everyone else. With their new knowledge, there was just no reason for it.
Zanny nodded, “I know. But the mass majority agree and have been helping with plans to make it happen. It’s why I went into hiding. It’s why I don’t want to go back…it’s why….” she trailed off.
Ivan stared at her hard. “This is your job. You are next in line. I thought you were just some spoiled princess, but you’re not! You’re a runaway!” He scolded her.
A smiled played at the edge of her lips, “You just now figuring that out, shy boy? Why else would I be here?” She asked him. He balked. “I am here for the same reason you are. To live a peaceful life out of the eyes of anyone who might cause me trouble and grief. It’s better this way…or so I thought…” she said.
Ivan’s posture softened when he realized what she was getting to.
“It’s not right…we need to stop it…there are already small resistance groups forming. They say that humans have no right to be here, they should be stuck the same way we have been, they should either be extinct or kept in cages. It all started with the belief that humans just shouldn’t be on this continent, that we should have a land and that they should have a land, but now they’ve started killing them in mass sweeps. I don’t know how it got to this point, I’ve been in hiding for the last decade.” She went on, tears brimming in her eyes. “We have to do something. This isn’t right.”
Ivan closed his eyes in a grimace and then shifted his gaze to the ground, “you’re going to get me involved in this, aren’t you?” He asked. It was more of a statement than a question. He searched within himself to see what his feelings on it were.
He felt with a deep instinct that it was wrong to kill off humans. Just because they were a different race, doesn’t mean they deserve to die. Just because they were different didn’t mean that things could not find a peaceful coexistence. But what could he do about it? He was one individual…
“I know what you’re thinking, and there’s more vampires like us than you think…we would definitely be outnumbered, but not alone…and given what I know about you so far, I feel that you could really provide some desperately needed stability…” She stated.
He looked at her with a sideways glance but she grinned sadly and shook her head, “I didn’t know I would be asking you to do this until now. No, I was not pretending to be your friend to recruit you.”
“Alright…what do we need to do?”
END PART 5
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