Page 13 of Haunted Nightmares
Zenlothanai chuckles, the sound causing every bit of my skin to ripple in disgust.“We just want to understand. Want to seehow this nonsense will benefit us. If it is worth it to allow you to keep reading the silly chicken scratch.”
Rolling my eyes, I start at the top of the most recently dated letter—two weeks ago—once again.
High Elder,
My people have been trying to reach you for quite some time and after many failed attempts, I decided to try on my own.
My name is Karl Deveroux Jr. and as you know, I’ve been the President of the United States for the last twenty three years, taking over for my father once he was voted out. I’m sure you’re not much for small talk, especially after the ordeal that took place six months ago, so I’m going to level with you.
The history books say that each U.S. president to preside over the country since the Species War has done so with full cooperation from the former High Elder, Atticus of Carmarthen. While there is some truth to that, it didn’t fully happen until our government seat was moved to NOLA in 1912 and even then, there were issues.
To cut to the chase, I don’t want issues.
My father walked into his presidency after Snodgrass was assassinated in 1975 and the corruption used to get him into office was a disgrace in itself, and is exactly why I pushed so hard in my campaign to get him out. Karl Deveroux Sr. ran this country into the ground and I’ve spent most of my term cleaning up his messes—the vampire government included.
I don’t want issues between our societies, I don’t want any more problems for either of us and hindsightmay be 20/20 but I know many of the problems we’ve both had come from my lack of handling the former High Elder.
I’m reaching out to you in hopes of meeting face to face, sitting down like man and vampire so we can sort through things and possibly come to a new agreement that benefits both of our kinds. We are not so different, you and I, and I think when we finally speak, you will see that for yourself.
Our world is in need of great change, and I’m hoping you will be the one to help me usher that in.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Karl Deveroux Jr.
President of the United States of North America
“Rubbish,” I grunt as I crumple the paper in hand and toss it in the pile with the rest, Zenlothanai nodding their agreement in my mind’s eye.
“Absolute bullshit. He doesn’t want change, he wants to use you the way he used your father.”
I tilt my head from side to side as I consider their words.
They do have a point.
There hasn’t been one single American president who has fully embraced or aligned with vampires in any way that wasn’t beneficial to them.
Snodgrass was assassinated after a few decades because he started talking about giving vampire males standing in society that was nearly equal to our less than appealing human counterparts. It took a long time to get there but he started thinking of how to merge our governments more cohesively and incorporate us more when it came to non-vampire affairs. I don’t know exactly what caused the drastic change of heart but I’m rather inclined to believe that it was when his eldest grandchilddiscovered that he was the fated mate of a vampire who had just taken asylum here after being tortured in his country of origin.
And this turn of events led to a few rather interesting things for everyone.
The idea of vampires and humans having interspecies relationships became all the talk, and those who had secretly been dabbling in it behind closed doors started to vocalize their enjoyment of the opposite genetic makeup. Hence the creation of places such as Plasma.
Former President Snodgrass was quickly eliminated for hisradical thinkingbecause if we no longer feared the hold the humans and their daft government had over us, and humans suddenly realized they weren’t just some food source for us, then gods forbid what kind of atrocities would come of that. So, Atticus had the old man drawn and quartered right there in The Pit, and Deveroux Sr. turned a blind eye when it happened.
Immediately after this, a law was put into place stating that it was illegal for humans and vampires to become bound to each other in any way that wasn’t contractual, and the punishment for such was death.
Essentially, fated or not,wearen’t allowed to mate withthemandtheyaren’t allowed to marryus,and if anyone decided to go against that, they would meet the same fate down in that wretched and disgusting place the Purists blew to smithereens.
And I can verify all of this as fact because I witnessed more than my fair share of the law being put into play.
Before all this, if I remember correctly, there were only a few presidents that my bastard sire dealt with and none of them lived long enough to even try to understand anything about my kind or the way the world was changing. And if they did, I don’t believe they cared enough to put any brain power behind it.
Deveroux Sr… he was a character in himself.
He started the VSUST, created the garbage law about interspecies relationships as well as many others that put us in a proverbial bubble, enforced curfews and took away most of the minuscule rights we had, and he encouraged Atticus to do what he did best—lie, cheat, steal, and kill.
The current president’s father let mine on the loose within New Orleans in a way he hadn’t been awarded before, and when he did that he turned a complete terror into a monster, andeveryonesuffered for it.
