“You drink blood?”
Piper nodded. “I do indeed. But don’t worry, I won’t drink yours.”
Allen grinned. “That does put me at ease. Now, Ms. Ross—”
“Piper.”
“Piper, I understand you have something you’d like to share with our viewing audience, yes?”
Rose couldn’t tell for sure if Allen was under Piper’s charm or merely doing his job. Having experienced Piper’s influence a couple of times in her life, she knew it could go either way. Piper could be subtle when she wanted to be.
“I do.” The image zoomed in closer so that Piper’s face filled Matt’s phone screen. “I want the people of America to know they’ve been lied to for hundreds of years. Their government is a sham, one controlled by creatures much like me. And, yeah, I know that’s hard to swallow coming from a woman on the internet—this could all be a hoax—but I think most people are going to realize the truth before the end of tonight.”
“You believe you can convince them?” Allen sounded doubtful.
“Oh, I don’t have to convince them; my daughters will do that.”
24
Final Disclosure
The first reports of congressional assassination began less than a minute later. Matt’s phone received an alert from Reuters. The bulletin said Senator Becky Linden of Ohio had been shot in her car driving home from a party by an unknown suspect. By the time Rose finished scanning that report, a new one had posted. According to it, Congressman Michael Stroud out of Alabama had been shot at point-blank range while shopping in a DC-area mall.
More followed. Hundreds more.
On the live feed, which Chibueze had moved to the flat screen above the stage, Allen Mitchell’s gaze went unfocused for a moment even though Piper was in the middle of answering one of his previous questions. He pressed a finger to the earpiece on the right side of his head.
“I’m very sorry, Piper, I’m getting an urgent message from my producers. It seems there have been a string of attacks throughout the metropolitan DC area over the last several minutes. These look like coordinated—for lack of a better word—assassinations.” Allen swallowed, and his throat made a sound loud enough for his mic to pick up.
“My daughters,” Piper spoke like an affluent southern matriarch presenting her marriageable age girls to an interested suitor.
Allen’s gaze returned to her, his blue eyes rounded. “Your daughters are doing this?”
Piper nodded once.
A series of expressions passed over Allen’s face, like an actor trying them out for a class. He settled at last for consternation—the ignorant but otherwise intelligent man finally recognizing a con. Except, this was no con. “You are what you say?”
“You put me on the air. You must have believed something I told you.”
“You lifted those weights.” Allen turned to the camera. “Folks, Piper lifted a six-hundred-pound barbell in front of me. There was no way I was tricked. This is all quite real—extraordinary, but real.”
Rose, her heart in her throat, flicked her gaze between the huge screen and Matt’s handheld. His phone buzzed—it had hardly stopped in the last few minutes—and Rose read the newest headline.
Shots fired at home of General Andrew Gormley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military officer in the United States. Preliminary reports indicated the general died en route to George Washington University Hospital.
“Why is she doing this?” Thandiwe asked. “Attacking Alice was one thing, but exposing us all to the world, to the humans, this way is suicide. She’s starting a war between us.”
“Maybe,” Matt said. “But she’s also setting a precedent. She isn’t waiting for us to organize. She’s going on the attack. She wants to control Society before we get the chance.”
On the screen, a pale and visibly distraught Allen Mitchell looked as though he wanted to escape but lacked the courage to run. “Why are you doing this? Killing all these people.”
New alerts sounded across the auditorium, including one on Matt’s phone. Another senator was dead.
“I know this will be hard to grasp, Allen.” Piper’s expression told of her sympathy, her heartache at performing a grisly yet inescapable task. “But those people you keep hearing pronounced dead in your ear; they weren’t human. They were succubi. A succubus is a type of vampire, only instead of feeding on blood as I do, they feed on human abilities and emotions. They are the ones who have been in control of the United States since its inception.”
A new message, a new death. This one the head of the FBI.
Allen shook his head. “Ma’am, I was willing to go along with all this on a lark. The weight thing was impressive, and I wanted to catch you lifting something similar tonight, but this is insane. I think, perhaps, you and your cronies are likewise insane. Can you please call off your daughters? If you need someone to beg them, I’ll do it. I’ll beg for the lives of any other people you plan to execute.”
“No, I can’t stop them.” Piper’s face fell for a moment as if part of her knew the immorality of what she did. “What you take for assassination is nothing more than house cleaning, Allen. We are making way for a new regime, one that places vampires where they belong, at the top.”
“What about the average citizen?”
“You mean the humans?”
Allen nodded.
“Frankly, Allen, they don’t rate. I have no intention of harming any humans who stay out of my way. For those who seek to impose their will on me and mine, however, it’s a different story.”
“Do you drink blood?” Allen looked queasy, but he held it together.
“Yes, but very rarely do I kill anyone through blood-drinking.”
“Why is that?”
“First, because I have little desire to harm anyone outside a very short list. And second, it’s nearly impossible to drink that much at once. Now, I said I would give an interview if you put me on your show, but I find this line of questioning too personal. Ask me something else.”
“What are these succubuses—”
“Succubi.”
“Succubi doing that makes you want to assassinate them? What crimes have they committed against you and your daughters?
A new wave of phone updates echoed across the audience, more than twenty messages arriving one atop the next. Rose’s stomach ached. She wanted the bad news to end, but it kept coming. Unlike the previous updates, which all centered around the DC area, these new ones came from across every state in the union. Governors, local mayors, even city council members weren’t safe from Piper’s executioners.
Matt keyed his earpiece. “Tanner, your perimeter guard notice any activity outside the building?”
“Nothing, boss,” Tanner replied, his voice tinny over the security channel. “I’ve got everyone on high alert though and I’m outside walking the perimeter now.”
Rose couldn’t help but remember how Alice and her minions had ghosted past Tanner’s crew less than four nights ago. She hated herself for thinking it, but who said an army of vampires led by one of Piper’s daughters couldn’t do the same thing? Then again, the Run Time Error facility was supposedly secure.
Piper was still answering the previous question when Rose turned back to the screen.
“—there hasn’t been one fair election in the history of this country. You’ve been enthralled by these creatures forever.”
“But what you’re proposing, it’s a takeover.” Some of the color had returned to Allen’s face. He sat forward in his chair, eyes intense, the epitome of professional journalist written in his very stature. “Aren’t you simply picking up where this supposedly corrupt government left off? If you assume power without a fair election, what makes you any different from the succubi you would replace?”
“One simple thing, Allen. Honesty.” Piper smiled slowly, revealing her fangs one by one. “The succubi have lied to you and manipulated you for time out of mind. They ruled in secret. I won’t do that
. I’m going to run this country in the open. You have a vampire queen now. No hiding. No misdirection. I am exactly what I say.”
Allen sat back, watching Piper, nodding slowly. “And what if I say you’re a fraud? Yes, I saw you lift an impossible amount of weight, but I’ve seen a circus dwarf do the same sort of thing. It may have been staged.”
“And the succubi my daughters have been excising from the world?”
“You’re a psychopath in league with psychopaths. It wouldn’t be the first time the world has seen that sort of thing. You’ve got some sort of prosthetic in your mouth, and a fixation with vampires in your brain. It doesn’t make you real.”
“No?”
“Oh, God,” Rose whispered.
A hush had fallen in the auditorium as all eyes turned to the big screen. Piper, seemingly demure, alluring, sensual, leaned toward Allen the tiniest bit. Her fangs shone in whatever lights his production crew used to brighten their set.
“No,” Allen said more firmly as if he might convince himself of his theory. “I say you’re crazy, and you’ve committed atrocities because of your untreated psychoses.”
The digital refresh on the jumbotron television wasn’t fast enough to catch the instant Piper left her chair and sank her fangs into Allen Mitchell’s throat. One instant, she sat still as a dozing cat, the next, she held him pinned to his seat, her jaws locked on his neck. He tried to push her off with all the effectiveness of a chocolate-bladed knife. He screamed, as did someone off-camera, while the succubi in the audience gasped, and the vampires looked on like owls.
Someone dashed into view, a portly, balding man dressed in jeans and a ball cap. He tried to push Piper off Allen, but she punched him in the gut, and he went down gasping, all while her lips remained solidly locked on the reporter’s throat.
After some seconds that felt like a week, Piper released Allen. He was still breathing, but his eyes had rolled back into his head. He collapsed, unable to support his own weight. Alice turned to the camera and smiled, her fangs pink with her victim’s blood.
Rose couldn’t believe the show hadn’t cut to commercial during all that, or maybe one of those old test frames from way back, anything to hide what had just happened. It occurred to her then that she had seen no commercials at all throughout the program, a near impossibility in this day and age. That meant Piper had allies in the control booth. In fact, she must have had people helping her at every level of this production, or it would never have aired, not on network news or even the internet.
“America,” Piper said. “In the coming days, you’re going to face a new reality. I am your queen. You can fight it, or you can prosper from it. The choice is yours. I have no ill will toward you. I want us to thrive together.” She drew closer to the camera, her eyes peering out of the screen like two pools of hot oil. “But Rose Carver, I know you’ll hear this. For you, I have nothing but hatred. You got my children killed. My only son, Preston, my sweet Olivia—I trusted you to care for her like your own. They died because of you, Rose, and I promise you this, you’re going to die because of me.”
THE END
About the Author
David Alan Jones is a veteran of the United States Air Force where he served as an Arabic linguist. A 2016 Writers of the Future silver honorable mention recipient, David’s work spans the science fiction, military sci-fi, fantasy, and urban fantasy genres. He is a martial artist, a husband, and a father of three.
An eclectic reader, David counts Anne Tyler, Stephen King, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robert J. Sawyer, J.K. Rowling, and many others among his favorite, and most influential, authors.
You can find out more about David's writing, including his current projects, at his website: davidalanjones.net.
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