Chapter 7

"I am the one who should succeed you. I should be queen!" The woman stared Leonora directly in the eyes as the two stood in Leonora's plush seventeenth floor apartment.

"Don't be absurd. I have made my choice."

"And violated the code. I was first born."

Leonora smirked at the younger woman.

"By a mere thirty-two seconds."

"But you broke the code nonetheless. You know queens may bear only a single female to succeed them. By rights Cassandra should have been put to death as soon as she was delivered and I should be the one bearing your child."

"I will admit to the indiscretion. A lapse on my part. Call it the mothering instinct which overrode my sense of prudence. But be that as it may, I kept you both alive and allowed you to grow up in human society as is called for in the code."

"But the code calls for..."

"Don't lecture me on the code. The code makes no allowance for two offspring. And since there is, it is my decision which of you I shall choose to succeed me."

The younger woman was furious. "She's weak. Look how easy she was..."

"No, not easy. Cassandra has a strong will. What she also possesses is a desire to be dominated. That has come from her human upbringing; some weakness perhaps in the humans who raised her."

"But a weakness nonetheless."

"Yes and one I shall remedy before she takes my throne."

"But why, Mother? Why her and not me?"

"Because while you are admittedly stronger than Cassandra, you are also reckless. We vampires may individually be stronger than humans but collectively they could still overwhelm our relatively small numbers, wipe us out if they ever knew we were living among and feeding on them.

Your brazen past is enough to assure me I have made the right choice."

"A queen must be fearless!"

"Fearless, yes, but not foolish. I could never trust you to protect your own brood let alone the other broods around the world. You enjoy the high life too much. You skirt the borders of impropriety and call attention to yourself. A queen must be discrete."

"That's BS and we both know it, Mother. You're just afraid I'll surpass your reputation and become the greatest of vampire queens."

"Of that I would be proud. What I am afraid of is that you will bring about the downfall of vampires everywhere."

The daughter could see this line of argument was getting nowhere so she decided to change tack.

"Have you told her -- everything?"

"If you refer to the fact that she is of vampire blood, then no, not everything. But all of it shall be revealed to her -- in its own good time."

"And what of the code, Mother? Does she know it was her own mother who raped and impregnated her?"

"She has had enough to comprehend for the moment. That too she will be told eventually. You know full well the bloodline must be preserved."

"There are others who could strengthen the bloodline. Men, even who..."

"Whose power mongering would mean nothing less than the downfall of what we have worked so hard to build over countless generations. Better that the bloodline go untainted."