The girl sat at her vanity table; her head was contemplatively tilted to the side, watching the vampire approach in the mirror. She judged him to be approximately 400 years old, a kid that hearkened back to a time when mirrors were made of silver and therefore did not reflect vampires. When he was about three feet away, she smiled brightly. "Hold up and have a sit. We need to talk." She gestured commandingly towards a chair placed facing hers, and tossed him a notebook and a pencil. "You'll need to take notes. First, though, I want a background - brief, mind you! Basically, name, age, age made a vampire, who made you a vampire, short history concerning the time before you were made a vampire." The vampire sat, looking bemused, and stared blankly at the commanding presence before him. "Right, begin." She said, readying a notebook of her own. "My name is Ludovic von -." The vampire said, and got no further, because the girl interrupted. "No, your real name, none of that 'I'm a vampire and so I must have a Transylvanian or somewhere near there name crap'. Honestly, just because that worthless Dracula fellow came from that area, all vampires seem to think they have to follow silly stereotypes." "Fine. My name's Kian Bryce. I'm 393 years old. I was made a vampire at 23, by a vampiress who called herself Circe. My mother died in infancy, my father died when I was thirty, I had no siblings. Circe caught me walking home alone, after a dance, and that was that." The girl was nodding, as if everything he had said cleared up issues. He really couldn't see how. It was just basic stuff. "Sad, really. Male vampires never seem to know basic facts about women, especially when they come from that time, and if they haven't got a mother the whole thing's shot. And female vampires seem to have utterly neglected to mention the whole business to the guys, or even realize the issues. It's simply careless. By the way, my name is Amarantha Enisule. Known as Mare." The vampire was confused. Mare sighed and elaborated. "You came here to suck my blood, right? Probably call it feeding; as if that makes it any more morally correct to do so! You don't look like the kind of guy to kill a girl, so I imagine that you were going to take about a pint of blood, not enough to kill me, and then make me forget. Now, to start with, I call that rude." Kian looked startled, having never considered that before. "Second, supposing you were going to kill me, I believe I have the right to object, and to fight off any attempt to the best of my ability." He nodded, corroborating her statement. "Third, draining women is a particularly bad idea. Men, they really haven't got a leg to stand on, but women… Half a pint at most is acceptable." "Why?" Kian looked a little irritated at the idea that the blood of men was worth less. "Well, it makes us anemic. And that, in a woman, is not a good thing. You see, every month around the full moon, we lose a lot of blood anyway. We are already slightly anemic, and have to consume a lot of iron to make up for it. With you taking some as well, it simply becomes too much. You may think you do little harm, but consider! Many women could very well die from a pint of blood taken at the wrong time. A cup at the wrong time will make them very weak and susceptible to illness. At the correct time, you'd better make up their blood loss before the bad time rolls around again, otherwise you are just as poorly behaved as any one of the less civilized vampires that simply kills their victim." He busily finished recording the last of her statement and looked up. He was tall and thin and pale, with dark hair, like most vampires, and pretty cute, Mare thought. Well, maybe really cute. "Any advice?" "If you have to take blood from a woman, you'd best be a good cook, and you had better stick around to make sure she's all right. She ought to be well taken care of for at least a week, thoroughly pampered. Study iron-rich foods. Of course, morally speaking, it is a better idea to leave off the whole blood-sucking thing, especially the rude without asking part." "The only problem with that is that I sort of need blood to survive. It isn't that I like it or anything." Kian said defensively. "Well, that's a step in the right direction." Mare said cheerily. "There are substitutes available - sheep's blood mixed with herbs - or not." She added, as Kian looked a little ill. "There are a variety of serums, but they are horribly difficult to come by, and usually stop satisfying after a while. I know one vampire that faints at the sight of blood - he drinks V-8 juice." Kian raised his eyebrows. "Isn't V-8 juice a little, well, sissy and gross?" he inquired. "Perhaps." Mare laughed. "Gross, at any rate, though I personally believe that blood is much more disgusting. Really, though, try this." She handed him a warm mug, decorated incongruously with sunflowers. "I find it is definitely the best substitute." Kian obediently sipped the hot liquid, a look of happiness coming over his face as he drained the mug. "What was that?" "Chocolate." Mare said smugly. "More precisely, Dutch processed cocoa powder combined with sugar and cream and heated till hot, then stirred till well mixed. Humans tend to prefer milk, but I find it a little thin for a blood substitute. You can have it in a variety of ways. Try it out, and come see me in a week." With that, she gently tugged the mug from the vampire's hands, handed him his notebook and pushed him out the door. "If you have any thoughts over the next week, please, write them down and show them to me!" She spent a long time that night considering her latest patient. Kian wandered back to the vampire home, and then realized he hadn't any of the ingredients he needed for his blood substitute, so he wandered bemusedly out to the grocery store and returned. Another vampire noticed his distracted state. "What's up, Kian? Have you missed a feed?" Instantly, a large number of other vampires gathered around, offering him a suck off a victim, or an opportunity to hunt, and then, finally, another vampire noticed the plastic grocery bag hanging from Kian's hand. "What's up with that, kiddo? Don't you know vampires don't need to eat?" "It's chocolate." Kian muttered, embarrassed. A roar of laughter went up, and he was patted on the back sympathetically by a number of vampires, ones he wasn't familiar with. "You tried for Mare, didn't you?" One asked. "By the way, I'm Adair." Another pulled his notebook out of his grasp and began flipping through it. "Well, she was just so easy looking. Never locked her door, walked home through the streets, no garlic in the house or crosses or anything, no cat - it was just like a dream come true! She didn't even have a jealous boyfriend, and she just had candles for light. They smelled like vanilla." He said irrelevantly. "Yeah, she's the Vampire Counselor. No one listens when we try to tell about her, though, so she has to lure her new patients to her like that. She prefers to conquer via chocolate." Kian had been daydreaming about the caramel hair and golden complexion of the lovely Mare, and wondering what to do about cooking and heating up his hot chocolate. Eight ounces didn't do much for a hungry vampire. He vaguely recalled that a pot was necessary. "Uh, what exactly do you need to make hot chocolate? Other than ingredients?" Many of the vampires standing about looked mystified. Kian had made a lot of friends in his time at the vampire house, and so they hadn't wandered off when the peculiar Adair began speaking to their pal. Besides, they were curious. What exactly was going on? "A pot, lad, and a spoon, and a mug. For hot chocolate. Bet she told you to learn how to cook, too, didn't she? Come here, I'll show you how. Tomorrow night, I'll take you to the master chef of the city - He's my third cousin five times removed, and I'm sure he'll give you lessons." Adair and Kian walked off to find the materials, leaving the other vampires looking confused. "Poor kid, he's got it bad, hasn't he?" One remarked into the lengthy silence. The group began to disperse. Over time, and many visits to the charming Vampire Counselor, Kian became ever more besotted, until at last he was pretty sure the infatuation was incurable and might well be called love. Eventually, he convinced an equally devoted Mare to accept his offer of vampiric immortality, and unlike most recorded vampire relationships, this one looked like it would last. The Chocolate Cure spread across the world, wiping out the bad name of vampires over time, and producing a large number of useful, chocolate devouring chefs. Some turned their remarkable talents towards crime fighting, but most found them extremely useful in the kitchen. Of course, some vampires were not interested in being cured, but those were few and far between, and were quickly gathered up and placed in solitary confinement in the Sahara, where daily doses of chocolate instead of blood soon won them over. Eventually, the desire for blood was replaced by chocolate cravings, and that was the end of the Vampire Problem.
