Empire of Vampires 1.1.4 Monitored

1.1.4 Monitored

*1978*

Selene had spent the last half year in the Caribbean to recover from having become a widow again. Husband number twenty-three had left her a yacht, but apart from that, just like his predecessors, had failed completely. Selene had spent every night with him, but he had not been able to make her pregnant at last. And like all her husbands, he died of heart attack within two years of marriage. Men were simply not robust enough to satisfy her insatiable desire for sex, or rather reproduction, and spent themselves until their death. At least they died happy.

Selene had tried to fall in love with him like any of her husbands, but what really saddened her was that he couldn't get her pregnant. A thousand times, she had given herself to him. She had tried a lot of positions so that he wouldn't get bored and she hoped to find a position that would make pregnancy easier. But as always, the sex had been completely pointless.

Selene had spent her vacation in Havana at the ten-year anniversary of Cuba's accession as state number sixty-four to the North American Alliance. Drunk men celebrating were easy prey and they were increasing their entourage. She now had some twelve thousand slaves, but since, unlike her, they aged and eventually died, she regularly had to find new slaves to work for her and provide her with blood and labor. Accordingly, she subjected on average one more man every day to one time sex, who then worked for her with joy.

Her husband had made his fortune in the slave trade. Since the economic crisis in the thirties, the ban on slavery had been gradually eroded. At first, over-indebted people were able to enter into a lifelong employment relationship paid in advance and in return received debt relief. Later on, serious criminals were used for forced labour and rented out by the prisons.

In the aftermath of the war, millions of captured soldiers of the enemy remained in captivity and were used for forced labour. The possibilities of legal slavery became more and more numerous. Her husband had specialized in importing slaves from Eastern Europe and delivering them to the factories in the North. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people there were easy prey. The people were captured in Europe against their will, but after the import to America they were legal.

Only ten per cent of the people were still slaves, that is, about 450 million in the world, but the trend was clearly upwards. Slave hunters from all over the world captured people on the streets and abducted them to other countries to sell them there. As soon as they crossed the border, the slaves were also legal and were rarely sold back to their own families. But as always, this practice only affected the poorest. Rich countries could protect their citizens much better. Selene did not like the development, but since she herself kept thousands of slaves, she could hardly criticize this practice.

The bigger problem than slavery, however, was that after a decade of sexual freedom, the wheel of history was turned back. Women were not allowed to use contraception, have abortions or escape their marital obligations. The growing voices of religious fundamentalists became more and more accepted. Not that Selene escaped her marital duties for even one night, but she did not like to be forced. She had sex because she wanted to get pregnant and not because her body was her husband's property.

The tension between the races was also becoming a problem. The Latinos had not only been banned from speaking Spanish as their language and had to use the official English language, but, just like the blacks, they were also increasingly unfairly persecuted by the judicial system. The aim was apparently to lock away as many of them as possible, to enslave them and even to castrate them if they disobeyed.

Selene was safe by her wealth of almost five billion dollars, but she was about to get married. It was hard to tell how long she had rights as a woman. As beautiful as it was to enjoy the sun of the Caribbean states, she felt more at home in the big cities of the north. She had sold the yacht in Florida and was now moving to Chicago to look for loot.

---

On her first night in Chicago, Selene decided to try a local dish. At nightfall, she set out into the city in search of her prey. Finally she saw a man who was alone and therefore could not resist. Out of nowhere, she appeared before him and gave him a kiss. Her prey took away all flight instincts and made the blood taste better.

Selene drank under cover of darkness from her first victim still on the open road. She let him stroke her tight leather clothing, but she concentrated on his neck. When she had finished drinking, she stood up. Only now did she notice a surveillance camera pointed at her and her victim. They didn't have that in the south yet. But in Chicago, apparently they were standard issue now. At least at a major bank branch where Selene found her victim.

It was pretty dark, but the light from the street lamps should be enough to identify her. Whoever had seen her drinking from her victim could describe her exactly and above all he would know what she was. She was a monster who fed on humans. Even though she tried hard to treat her prey nicely and never drank more than they could give, without being exposed to serious dangers to her life, she would be hunted. Selene would fight back, but sooner or later she would be caught. They would catch her and kill her. If she were lucky, they would make her a slave instead. No one would care that she helped in the war thirty years ago. And if they did, they'd only take it as proof of her guilt.

When Selene realized what was happening to her, she pulled the camera down and destroyed it. Fortunately, the camera had the name of the security company that worked there. It was reckless to quench her thirst right outside a bank branch. She would have to hurry. There would be a lot of blood that night. She hoped it wouldn't be hers.

---

Selene was in a hurry, but she did not want to be filmed by any more cameras. So she jumped onto the fire escape above her and after two more jumps she was on the roof. Contrary to her usual rules, she had also sucked the remaining blood from her victim and then disposed of his body in a garbage can. She would have to dispose of the body properly later, but at the moment she didn't have time for that. But at least she was full.

Selene felt her conscience gnawing at her. It made a difference whether you killed a person directly or just kept them as slaves until they died of old age or sexual lust. The first time in her life she had killed intentionally. At least since the war. She was clearly a monster and many more people would die that night. She repressed her guilt and jumped from rooftop to rooftop to get to the security company compound. Even multi-lane roads were no obstacle, which brought her back to the ground. She just kept jumping.

When she reached the compound a minute later, three kilometers away, she briefly sounded out the situation from an adjacent building. Of course, all entrances were equipped with cameras and there were guards at every door. The building was free-standing and one floor higher than all the others in the area. It was impossible to enter it unnoticed. She would have to strike fast and hard so that no reinforcements came from outside. She couldn't handle Police too.

She broke a few rungs from the fire escape of the building she was standing on and felt each one briefly in her hand to check their flight characteristics. Then she struck. First she destroyed the electricity distribution box and the telephone line by throwing the rungs of the ladder. Next it was the security cameras, which were shredded by the collision with the metal rungs.

It had taken only five seconds to turn off all the technical fuses along with the lighting and then Selene himself attacked. She knocked down the guards at the entrance with one blow to the head, but it was enough to kill them. It would be difficult to determine later whether they had died of a ruptured spine or the fractured skull.

She was a hunting predator and killed each of the guards on the outside before she broke open the door to enter the building. She didn't need light to orientate herself, she was satisfied with the sounds that all the staff here made. The heat radiation from their bodies also helped, of course. Like any real predator she had sharp senses and that included being able to see the warmth of her victims. She killed every one of them, most of them didn't even know that they had been attacked before they died.

The entire attack lasted only two minutes, but in that short time Selene had killed nearly a hundred people. Selene now searched for the recordings of the night and collected all the video tapes. She briefly activated the emergency generator to make sure she had the right cassette. When she saw herself on the tape, she was reassured and set about covering her tracks.

---

After Selene burned down the security company building and dumped the bodies of all the guards she had killed in the lake, she was certain that no one would ever know it existed. Her first victim of the night was now also lying at the bottom of the lake three hundred kilometers north of the city. No one would chase her. Of course it would be noticed that such a large building was burning and almost a hundred people had disappeared, but it would be blamed on the gang wars. Maybe even the Mexican separatists. Probably thousands of Latinos would be captured and enslaved for what she did.

Her wealth and preparation had protected her that night. Her slaves had taken the bodies to the port with two trucks and loaded them into one of her ships. It was a two hundred meter long freighter for grain and would drop them off at Montral. Selene had not dissected the corpses herself, that was what her slaves were for, she had only had the blood pumped out and stored so that the dead would have at least a small use.

But Selene's conscience troubled her. She was sure that she was not on this world to kill. She would much rather protect people than kill them. It was not only a waste of precious - probably even tasty - blood, which could no longer be produced by the bodies, but the humans could also have provided her with their labour. Modern surveillance techniques had forced her to fight back. In just one night she had killed as many people as she had saved from illness in the last year. At least it was only men she had killed, not women.

In fact, she should be killed or at least locked up. If she were locked up safely in a prison, she would never have to kill again. But she felt that she had a task that required both to be alive and free. She had to make sure she was no longer the only one of her species. Conscience was as irrelevant as good sex. Selene decided to stop thinking about the dismembered bodies at the bottom of Lake Michigan. She refocused on her goal.

Selene decided to be more careful in the future. She would make sure there were no security cameras around before she hunted. The best thing she could do was to seduce her victims outdoors and drink from them behind closed doors. She would look for her next husband in Europe after all. She had heard that the fashion scene there had discovered a new material for itself in the meantime. Rubber.

She couldn't imagine wearing the same material that was used to make car tires, but it was supposedly much more comfortable than her previous leather outfit. And it fitted the figure of the wearer even better than anything she had ever seen before. Selene decided to try it out for herself. Maybe her prey and her future husband liked it, too.

And to appease her guilty conscience, Selene decided to help humanity by eliminating the most dangerous members. Like in the war. Only this time she wasn't planning to defeat states, but this time she would focus on terrorists. Maybe even mob bosses. Although she didn't need their money as the richest woman in the world and if don't counting rulers of monarchies also the richest person in the world, she would still take as much from the dead as she could. A woman could never have enough money.

She radioed her London slaves to prepare everything for her arrival. She had to be prepared in case she also had to leave this city at short notice. Her slaves had four days to prepare. In the meantime, Selene would amuse herself with the crew of the ship. The thirty sailors would enjoy the pleasure of herr company every day. Even though the chances were minimal, Selene would not miss any opportunity to get pregnant. She had enough blood in storage at the moment and was only interested in the sperm of the crew.