1. Canada
"Who would've thought that one day I'd make a dish of my own blood!" the chubby, short man murmured under his breath.
"I wish you'd do it in silence, Robert!" his wife said, clearly not interested in the philosophical deepness this discussion might've brought on. "I don't want to get into trouble for your constant complaining."
And by that she meant, she didn't wanna hear no more of it. Eileen, the wife that is, was sitting in a chair with her feet up on another one – her leg was in plaster so it wasn't like she was skiving away. She read the OK! magazine as she was chewing absentmindedly on a chicken leg. The fact that KStew screwed over the lovely RPatt excited her a lot more than her husband's predicament.
"Easy for you to say" Robert said and closed the oven door rather loudly to make his huffy statement clear and audible.
"It's not my fault I don't have the correct blood type now, is it?" Eileen said patiently, without looking up from the pictures of the cheating couple. "Think of the money" she added, as she turned a page.
"What else do you think keeps me here?" he asked and took a leg from the plate for himself as he sat down in front of his wife.
"In two weeks, we'll be off to Hawaii" Eileen said dreamily, putting the magazine down for a while. "It'll be sunny and warm and we'll have cocktails all day long…"
"Brought to us to our hut on the beach…" Robert intersected.
"Miranda will be so jealous when I'll show her the pics!" Eileen said and she tossed her phone to Robert. "She's just texted me that I was a liar."
"The lottery-story was a bit of a stretch anyways."
"Yeah, well, what else did you want me to say? I couldn't possible tell her the truth, now could I?"
Robert groaned but said nothing. Eileen was right. They literally couldn't talk about the source of their holiday money – they were forbidden to mention it.
"Why do you think she didn't just simply glamour us?" he asked his wife, as he picked his second chicken leg. "It would've been just so much easier!"
"But less ethical."
They booth looked up in alarm at the owner of the velvet voice. Robert dropped his chicken leg to the floor in his nervousness and now was on his knees under the table to pick it up. He took his time. No matter how beautiful their employer was, he didn't forget what she was having for dinner.
Eileen stood up quickly and hobbled over to the stove to stir the blood that was slowly cooking on it.
"It's almost ready Miss Cassandra" she mumbled.
"You need more chili" Cassandra ordered and left the kitchen as quickly as she appeared in it.
"It freaks me out when she's doing that!" Robert said as he put some more chili powder into the pot. Eileen sat down on her chair again, happy to have her feet up in a comfortable position again.
"Still wouldn't trade lives with her, not even for all her money" she said, and texted to her sister again about Hawaii. "It sucks being so alone."
2.
Cassandra stood by the fireplace, her beautifully structured face as expressionless as ever. Sometimes she agreed with Eileen. It was mostly a lonely life after all. But it was her own choice, and she could change it any time. She had family: her brother working with her daughter on matter that their world considered important. She smiled affectionately. Maybe it was time to pay them a visit at the Authority's Headquarter. It'd been a while.
She held her fingers closer to the fireplace. It would've been dangerous, fatal even to let the flames reach her pale skin that shone like a fresh pearl in their flickering light. But what was life without a little danger?
Eileen rolled in her dinner, which smelt spicy and hot. Cassandra smiled. Robert kept his distance since she told them she liked his blood type. As if she'd let that filthy skin of his anywhere near her mouth. Ordinarily, she had her food delivered but her usual source was out of B positives so she reluctantly accepted Eileen's offer to use her husband's blood. Cassandra didn't like to mix the roles and she understood how freakishly odd it must've been for Robert to prepare his own blood for dinner. She'd give them a little bonus, she decided on a whim. They'd been very eager to meet her needs.
3.
Cassandra just finished her meal when there was a knock on the door. As Eileen opened it, she saw John, her brother-in-law.
"Can you believe what's happened down south?" he asked and pushed himself away from the doorframe unsteadily. Eileen grimaced.
"Based on your breath I'd say they exported all their rum here!"
John snorted and walked in. He stopped by the living room door.
"Is she in?" he whispered.
Eileen pulled him towards the kitchen by his elbow.
"She can hear you" she whispered back.
John attempted to touch his nose by his index finger to indicate his understanding but groaned instead because his finger unfortunately landed in his eye.
Robert welcomed his brother less enthusiastically than usual. He would've wanted to go to bed already. He expected some good loving from his wife; he'd earned it today after all. But when John was this drunk, it was impossible to stop him.
"You know how we read about witches and vampires and stuff when we were young?" he slurred heavily. "It's all true, bro, it's all true!"
Eileen put a can of beer on the table for each of them pretending to be interested. The longer John kept up with his nonsense, the more likely it was that Robert would fall asleep as soon as they hit the bed. She was not in the mood for any rolling around today.
"My mate has a friend in New Orleans and he said that witches were seen there! Real witches, bro! They fought against vampires! It's true!" John said nodding enthusiastically. It was hard to figure which side he supported more.
4.
Cassandra sat down in front of the system of computers she had installed in her study. The human and his story did not interest her one bit. She looked at the four screens with a little pride: a lot of the programs were her design. Well, she had a bit of a help from Molly who created the security system in the Authority's Headquarter. What a genius that girl had always been, Cassandra thought, they were lucky with her.
She'd just started to work on the utilisation of vector vertex weight in online trainings when one of her monitors blanked with blue lines running amok. Cassandra pressed the keyboard frantically, clicking faster with her mouse than a human eye could ever see but no matter what she tried, it didn't help. Giving up with an annoyed sigh, she signed into a chatprogram.
"Molly, I need your help."
"Bless you, Cassie, we're bored out of our minds today"
Mollie's reply came just as quickly.
"No juicy surveillance videos today?"
The security system covered just about every room in the complex. With so many vampires in close quarters, something scandalous was always bound to happen.
"Not yet but I'll let you know."
Molly wasn't serious of course. Security was of outmost importance for every government but the Authority valued secrecy even more.
"I'll give you access for distant control, Mole. Would check screen 3 for me?"
Cassandra watched as her screen obeyed the commands from thousands of miles away. It still amazed her at what an unbelievable rate technology developed in the last two centuries. It was one of her better ideas to convince Roman and the others to share their inventions with humans whose shorter lifespan made them work more feverishly, albeit less focused. Granted, they made huge mistakes, too, she thought as her eyes wandered to the photo of the handsome man she kept on her desk. Szilard's bomb went disastrous, killing all vampires in the Japanese Islands and the north-eastern coast of Asia. But they worked sedulously to turn it to a controllable energy source later on. He tried everything he could to prevent the Chernobil disaster, melting into the true death on the site himself. Cassandra still missed him: he had an amazing mind and he was the best partner she could've ever wanted.
Her screen flickered and it changed into a set of video streams for about 20 seconds. Cassandra leaned closer and froze.
"Sorry" Molly wrote her in the chat "I accidentally connected you to the surveillance cameras."
"I noticed" she wrote back. "A glitch?"
"We've had some of those recently."
But it wasn't the question of security that worried Cassandra. It was her progeny on one of the cameras. She was in the room with Lilith's blood. In the room that Roman had promised to be kept closed all the time. Even for his chancellors. That was their deal. But her daughter somehow got in, and took a woman with her, whose face was vaguely familiar. This was bad news. The Authority, maybe even Roman himself was in great danger. She had to go there. She couldn't leave him alone. Cassandra jumped up from her chair.
She needed a plan. She couldn't just walk in and expect everything to be forgotten. No, she'd need a friend. And she had a good idea where to find one.