The Vampire Queen's Ruminations

The vampiress was distracted and restless as she went about her duties that night. She was one of the few Queen Vamps in a world full of subpar vampires and King Vamps that only wanted her to submit to them.

Never.

But something else had touched her earlier that day. The werewolf -Growl Alpha, was it not?- there was something... different about him. Not different as in species distinctiveness (obviously he was a werewolf), or interspecies distinctions (less obvious but still remarkable, he was an Alpha), but different as in mortal beings differing from one another... albeit a long-lived one, Jacqueline amended to herself. But she would still be fair in youthful looks long after his bones had turned to dust. She was tired of flirting with, using and, ultimately, destroying male vampires in her bite. That's what the world called a group of vampires now: a bite! How appropriate then, the name of their current abode.

She was restless this night and the bite sensed it. There were approximately five hundred thousand humans under her... protection in this part of the City. Normally that was not a large number of people, but in these times, it was an empire. As with other such "empires," faerie folk played the role of muscle in defense of the weak humans. Jacqueline had gone a few steps further. She had set up a governing council of seven humans, five females and two males, each one a "governor" and each of whom was responsible for the day to day necessities and concerns of approximately one hundred thousand people. Each governor had a sub-governor, of sorts, who informed the governor of the well-being of his or her constituents at any given moment.

There were teams of ostensible functionaries under the sub-governor, under which again were the actual workers: various technicians and engineers who became mini gods with their knowledge of sustainable resources and water potability and other such mesmerizing engineering terms. These engineers and technicians kept the water flowing and the heat going in the buildings they occupied.

As much hate as there was towards world governments, there had to be a structure in the vacuum of power once filled by the putrid politicians of yore. Some people might not have wanted to call it such, but it was a form of government. Everyone simply could not live out their individual lives in a fairytale bucolic countryside dream. Even without werewolves and vampires and other "creepy crawlies," there were ruthless individuals roaming about who would always seek to prey on the weak or the isolated. Rape was a favorite tool of these predominantly male scumbags. So a government-like structure was introduced by Jacqueline, who had watched these pathetic creatures stumble about that could not take care of themselves. She consciously reduced her ire at humankind - after all, she came from them. Lack of physical power and lack of survival skills kept the majority of these humans under the thumbs of those they elected amongst themselves to represent them in a larger political body. If she turned each human she knew of into a vampire, they could each have their dream in this wasteland; they would just have to drink fresh blood often (at least in the first hundred or so years). Not so sweet a deal... But they could each live by themselves off somewhere in the suburbs, and terrorize their neighbors.

Jacqueline switched her thoughts to think about other issues... like Growl. Pockets of electricity were extant due to the few electrical companies that somehow continued providing electricity for free all over New York State. The executives of these companies had gone underground, literally, but the employees could control the output of electricity remotely. Artificial light could never harm a vampire and Jacqueline often and needlessly used electricity. She missed civilization and it was likely that sliver of civilization she clung to in these ravaged times. Vampires could see in the dark, perfectly. But she still used artificial lights. It was a strange habit.

People still stuck to their day and night sleeping schedules even though most of the planet was under a thick, black cloud of radiation that had only recently changed colors from anthracite to dark gray matter. The next time her governors met with her would be... tomorrow, Jacqueline reflected. These humans could be so annoying with their demands: hot water this, clean and warm food that, warm sleeping rooms this, etcetera. A thought occured to her - even vampiredom had a governmental organization to it! After all, there had to be order, especially order out of the chaos of a nuclear World War. But everyone kept a wary eye on one another - the slightest hint of self-serving interests and Jacqueline would quickly and embarrassingly put order and structure back into the person with political aspirations, just as, in the vampire kingdom, any hint of wanting to usurp the extremely reclusive and vastly powerful Elders was considered to be punishable by death. And every vampire knew what that meant.

Jacqueline controlled approximately two hundred vampires, more than half of whom she had personally created over the years, although most had been turned just before and during the Third World War. Bastion had been with her some seventy years now. He was of the Civil Rights era, a staunch racist, and she had no idea why she had gifted him with immortality, but he had his uses, dull as he could be. The Southern United States was his backyard, and there had been times he had shown her the wonders in the preponderance of the bayous, as well as strange and ancient landmarks in their backroads she had made a mental note to visit at a later date.

There were a few others of her bite older than Bastion, but Bastion was her bodyguard, concierge, social media handler - he was tasked with keeping in touch with the other members of the bite, worldwide, if they could be found, on and off social media. A couple of the older vampires she had turned had struck out on their own soon as the Third World War had begun She stood atop one of the dilapidated buildings in some forgotten projects in what was once proudly known as "LES," the Lower East Side. Bastion and a few other vamps stood to either side of her, all of them looking down on the mostly deserted City, its areas of illumination a deadly beacon to those who knew better. Those who did not know better fucked around and found out the hard way that sometimes a light source did not mean "safe haven." Jacqueline wondered where her first and eldest vampire was. She reached out to him mentally and met a stone wall - par for the course. He was still angry with her for turning so many into vampires. Well... at least you are alive, she sent out telepathically. The wall blocking any creature from mentally intruding into his thoughts seemed to ripple, and she was comforted. He had heard her and, despite what he was doing at the moment, in his own fashion, had responded, if brusquely.

Comic book superheroes could see through stone and steel and various other elements. Not so with vampires. Which is why, as powerful as Jacqueline was, she had not been able to detect a large pack of... irradiated werewolves. She was a powerful vampire, but a pack of werewolves moving underground would troop right under the radar of the ever alert bite. Werewolves also had a natural defense to mentalism of any kind. Vampires used to be able to control werewolves telepathically but, as time went on, limited but powerful evolutionary advancements changed their susceptibility to telepathy and other types of mentalism.

As the infected werewolves burst out of the sewers, the nearest humans screamed and tried taking flight. Jacqueline vaulted off the rooftop and plummeted to the street below and at the edge of her housing projects. She calmly summoned all nonessentially placed vampires and, at the last moment, sought out a certain and fortuitously new ally.