I'm Doing This For Them

Werewolves

Although Alison still wasn't happy that JPG was living in the mansion now as well, there wasn't much she could do about it.

"Just think of it this way," JPG had tried to assuage Alison's concerns. "Since I'm technically an employee of the Sorceress now too, none of your vampire buddies are allowed to eat me! I'm safe from them!"

"But you know that it means your life comes at the expense of others, right?" Alison replied angrily, though her anger was not directed at JPG. In this case, it was directed at the Sorceress and Dorian.

It was common knowledge that humans and vampires coexisted in the mansion, but by order of the Sorceress herself, the vampires were forbidden to harm the humans living inside the mansion. Instead, their prey came from the outside. In order to obtain that outside prey, once a month, Dorian and the Sorceress would send out a flurry of letters to every corner of the globe. Those letters invited random strangers to a "magnificent ball" being held at the mansion that night. Using the black carriages, all the guests would arrive for Dorian's party, but none of them would ever leave. It was a very easy, efficient way of feeding an entire court quickly and cleanly (in a sense).

But Alison hated this method of feeding. To her, there was just something so wrong and cruel about inviting innocent and ignorant humans in under the pretense of celebration and hospitality, only to break their trust by turning them into the main course. Of course, Alison understood why Dorian chose to hunt this way, and she did have to admit that it was both more logical and less gruesome than pillaging village sides, but it still didn't sit well with her. She hated watching her court bring all these mortals in for a dance and then keep them for dinner. The screams were nightmarish to behold and Alison couldn't help but be selfishly glad that JPG's screams were never amongst the dying chorus. But her heart still ached for all the humans who did spend their final breaths, screaming in agony and terror. And what about all the family they were leaving behind?

Alison, herself, would still leave the mansion to hunt. Although she now had no reason to ever leave the mansion just because JPG lived there as well, Alison did still take the occasional trip outside and she continued to do what she used to do for food: prey upon the dead or dying. Because Dorian's guests were always youthful humans in the prime of their life, Alison never drank from any of them. Instead, she still fervently insisted upon drinking only from those who were already gone and unable to feel pain, or those who were close enough that killing them would either be considered a mercy, or a minor inconvenience. And as always, whenever Alison did have to kill, her blows were always quick, clean and painless. It was something the other vampires still disdained Alison for, but she didn't care. To her, being merciful was not a weak or cowardly trait, it was an honorable one worth preserving. The true act of cowardice was to relish in the terror and pain of a lesser creature.

"Oh. Yeah. I forgot about that..." JPG had the grace to look ashamed of her remark. She, like Alison, found it horrible to think about what the vampires did to all these innocent people on a monthly basis, but, because Alison made sure to shield her from those dark and dreadful nights, JPG had never heard the screams or seen the blood the way Alison had. Alison protected JPG from that and it created something of an emotional wall between JPG and the victims. But that didn't mean JPG didn't feel any sort of guilt or grief over their deaths. On the contrary, her heart broke every time she imagined how many innocent lives were ripped away every month. She just wasn't foolish enough to think it would ever change.

Like Alison, JPG knew the vampires needed to eat. The only way to get them to stop harming humans was to either get them to forsake eating altogether and die, which would never happen, or convince them to try Alison's diet of only eating the dead or dying. That was just as unlikely as the former choice. To the vampires, it was more fun to brag about cutting down a man in his prime than it was to brag about ending someone already at death's door. Likewise, as Alison herself had admitted, the blood of the old did not taste as good as the blood of the healthy.