When the eting broke up, the pureblood nobles still had enough grace to smile and exchange pleasantries with the human representatives.
The mixed-bloods, by contrast, left almost imdiately.
Black Widow approached Drex after the execution and trial were over, a file tucked under her arm.
"This is their next move," she said. "The Vampire Carnival. If they're going to retaliate for the blood factory, it'll be today."
The pureblood's underground blood operation had been one of the most important suppliers in Greater New York and the surrounding cities.
It didn't just provide expensive plasma for the wealthy. It also pushed out huge quantities of cheaper stock. Male blood from Black and Southeast Asian donors, for example, sold at prices far below what the human governnt charged for refrigerated plasma.
A hundred milliliters for fifty dollars.
That was the kind of supply low-inco vampires depended on.
And yes, vampire society had its own racism. That was what made it so absurdly human.
The bitter irony was that the factory had also kept a lot of poor, frightened vampires fed. Without that cheap supply, they wouldn't need to hunt humans.
In a way, the operation had helped stabilize New York and a few nearby regions.
Now that it was gone, the city was entering a dangerous vacuum.
More vampire attacks were inevitable.
Drex scanned the latest intelligence packet from the U.S. governnt, then let out a faint breath.
"So they're blaming for breaking their little balance."
The reports were ugly.
Since the factory's destruction, vampire attacks on civilians had been climbing day by day.
And now vampires from all fifty states were converging on New York.
This was no random gathering. It was the traditional Vampire Carnival, except this year there would be no blood factory to provide the usual feast. Drex had also confiscated the plasma reserves from the raid, partly to test whether any of it contained X-gene traces he hadn't seen before.
Either way, the vampires coming into the city were hungry.
Drex folded the file shut.
"Tell them Hellfront is more than willing to treat vampires like monsters," he said. "I don't care how many of them there are, or how many connections they have. If they cross the line, wipe out every last one."
Black Widow nodded.
Unlike the vampire-adjacent elites in Washington, there were still plenty of human officials who were disgusted by what the system had beco. A lot of them had long since lost patience with sacrificing the weak just to preserve a fragile peace with predators.
That sa night, far away from S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, mixed-blood vampire leader Lawrence Dan sat in his office with one of his closest lieutenants, Jesse.
"Are you really going to do this?" Jesse asked uneasily.
Lawrence reclined in his chair, one hand supporting his chin.
"Food from the Middle East won't arrive for another week. But today is the festival, and the factory is gone."
He looked tired, but his voice stayed level.
"For a week now, New York's cheap plasma supply has been cut off. The council won't spend a cent to help ordinary vampires who can't afford the increase."
He gave a bitter smile.
"The human blood banks raised prices again too. Supply is tighter than ever, so a hundred milliliters is now five hundred and fifty dollars."
He didn't need to say the rest. They both knew it.
A lot of vampires had already gone hungry for an entire week.
And a hungry vampire, one weak from lack of blood, wasn't even guaranteed to beat an ordinary human anymore.
"Jesse," Lawrence said, "after what happened, I finally understand what those disgusting purebloods really are."
"They don't care about mixed-bloods like us. Officially, we're part of the empire. In reality, they exploit us and always have."
He sighed.
Watching S.W.O.R.D. stage its trial, watching the purebloods act like sacrificial martyrs, had convinced him of one thing: the purebloods were not reliable.
Jesse understood the pressure his boss was under.
Whatever path Lawrence chose, the risks were enormous.
The council had clearly used this crisis to restrain his growing influence, maybe even to cut down a few mixed-bloods under the excuse of restoring order.
Did those ancient bloodsuckers really not understand who was keeping their crumbling empire together?
And now humanity had S.W.O.R.D., Drex Valen, and a growing number of superheroes standing against them.
In Lawrence's view, the greatest threat to vampire society was Drex himself.
A genius who had outgrown both century and country.
If anyone could invent a way to exterminate vampires outright, it was him.
Lawrence had even tried to turn Drex into one of them.
It hadn't worked.
No matter how many beautiful vampire won he sent, none of them had been able to get close to Drex Valen.
The man was always either at S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, at Umbrella Corporation's central facility, or simply vanished from the map entirely.
When he did appear, he did so like a ghost.
And even when he stayed visible, he wasn't easy prey.
He was a superhuman in nanotech armor.
Dark Knight.
According to the vampire sympathizers in human high society, S.W.O.R.D.'s own evaluation placed Drex's armor on a level where it could fight ten armored units at once on its own.
In the field, it had already proven it could shrug off tank shells, fly at Mach 10, and deploy an endless range of advanced weapons systems.
If Lawrence forced the issue, all the mixed-blood vampires in New York could rush Drex together and still get torn apart.
That was the problem with geniuses.
They made violence asymtrical.
Hellfront Task Force units and S.W.O.R.D. agents received Drex's orders that day too.
They were to patrol New York during the Vampire Carnival and kill any vampire that attacked civilians.
No hesitation.
No negotiations.
Drex had even prepared high-powered ultraviolet floodlights. Against a pureblood vampire, one second under that light would be enough to turn them to ash.
A perfect anti-vampire tool.
After all that was handled, Drex finally turned to matters inside Burning Legion.
He officially renad World Serpent to the Burning Legion.
At the sa ti, he completed developnt of a new enhancent drug.
A Superman drug.
Unlike the one from the Injustice comics, this version was far more potent.
It didn't just boost physical performance.
It rewrote the body.
Completely.
The drug represented the peak of biological engineering.
The downside was brutal: if a user's physiology didn't match the formula perfectly, they would die.
No exceptions.
------
Sorry about the delay, seems like the tir bugged again.
User Comments
0 comments from readers