by Jeff Schanz
The guilt about his reaction to her – condition, and the way he had treated her, was festering. He might have been justified to freak out initially, but Lia didn’t deserve to be shunned. Whatever else she was, she seemed to be a genuinely sweet person. He had enjoyed every minute of being with her before he knew what she was. And he knew that meant something, he just wasn’t ready to come full circle yet on that subject. One step at a time.
He had preferred not having to deal with those thoughts yet, and would’ve preferred to enter the house quietly and leave quietly, but it felt wrong walking in and not announcing his presence. Lia had old fashioned standards, and it would be rude to just waltz into her house without calling out.
“Hello? Lia?” he said. No answer. “It’s Brandt.” Gee, who else would it be? If Viktor was down in his basement sleeping, or resting, he might still hear Brandt. “If anyone’s home, I’m just here to borrow a few books. I know where they are.”
There. He hoped that was adequate to enter a vampire’s house without drawing wrath. Standing still for a moment, he waited to see if Viktor or Lia came out or answered. No one did. He felt confident he knew where Viktor was, but Lia could be anywhere. Out at the barn or up on her mountain. Or, maybe most days she napped in her room. Maybe she only came out in the sun because she wanted to be with him. Ugh, more guilt.
Nothing stirred in the house, so he made his way up the stairs. He passed his old room and peeked in. His bed was made and the room was otherwise tidy. As promised, it was ready for him should he wish to stay. He closed the door and went down the hall to Lia’s library.
He half expected that she’d be there, but she wasn’t. So now he could find what he came for and exit without having to talk to anyone, or deal with conflicting feelings.
Unzipping the duffle bag, he took out the old worn copy of “Island of the Blue Dolphins” that he had rescued from the sloop. He left it on a table for her so she could categorize it however she wanted.
In the reading area, he noticed a pile of books neatly stacked on a table top. Next to the books was a canvas bag, hand-embroidered with a soaring white bird. Brandt examined the book stack. It contained pretty much everything he had come here to borrow: Two boat-building and repair manuals, a woodworking guidebook, and a few smaller books that had something to do with star guides for nautical navigation, etc.
You little devil. You read my mind. That was probably not just an expression in this case if she was anything like her father. He sat down and thumbed through the books. Most had a few chapters that might be of use, so he loaded all but one of them in his duffle bag. He left the embroidered bag on the table. One of the boat-building books dealt primarily with fiberglass boats and engines, which he would not be dealing with now. The trawler's engine was toast, and the little maneuvering motor wasn't strong enough as a main motor for the trawler. It was sails or nothing.
Since there was a very obvious vacant spot on a medium-high shelf that fit the width of the fiberglass-boat book, Brandt decided to be kind and replace the book on its shelf. As he descended the ladder he noticed a shelf that had a few odd books on it. Most of them were very old, and only a couple had discernable titles: “Vampire” on one, and “Vampyrism” on another. He stepped down a rung and rolled the ladder over to the shelf. The largest book was entitled, “Vampyrism: A Comprehensive Study and Guide to the Unique Affliction.” Lia had mentioned pointedly that if Brandt ever wanted to understand her, there was a book he could read that would answer all his questions. Well, this big tome looked like it might be the referred-to item. He hesitated to pick it up, noticing the author’s name: Natalia Viktorovna Zakharyina.
His squirrely mind wondered if she had ever tried to publish it. Likely not, as what printing house would agree to publish it under non-fiction? The book looked ancient. He picked it up, needing two hands because of its heft. The pages looked extremely thick and heavy. I’ll bet this thing is so old she had to make her own papyrus.
Your jokes are getting worse.
Assassins tried to kill me a couple of hours ago and a giant vampire bat-man saved me. Bad jokes are for coping.
He sat down and propped open the Vampyrism book on the table, wondering if he’d even be able to get through this thing without either cringing or wincing. Though he wasn’t looking forward to going through all those pages, he needed to at least skim through them.
Three hours later, he was still reading, jaw slack.
CHAPTER 14
The pages were heavy stock paper, not papyrus. It was all handwritten in beautifully crafted cursive from what appeared to be quill and ink. Lia’s writing style was clinical and unembellished, for the most part. This was not written for enjoyment, more like a doctor researching and documenting some medical condition that needed attention and understanding. Thorough, precise, and knowledgeable. Despite the book reading more like a medical journal, everything she wrote was fascinating.
There was just so much of it. She supplied statistical analysis and documented her experiment results, recorded every amount of data she had collected, sometimes even admitting inconclusive facts based on incomplete data. Brandt had no idea where she got all this data or where and how these experiments were performed, but he didn't doubt their authenticity. She even created diagrams and noted resource references. Before introducing the more technical information, the beginning of each subject had a summary of conclusions and hypotheses. The summaries were the easiest to read, and were enough of what Brandt really wanted to know.
They read like this:
Vampyrism: A Comprehensive Study and Guide to the Affliction.
Authored by Natalia Viktorovna Zakharyina.
There are two types of vampyres. For the purposes of this book, we shall refer to them as the Living and the Undead.
THE LIVING:
All vampyres begin as a living human with the affliction of vampyrism. A Living vampyre is someone that remains in this state. This is different than the Undead vampyre, which will be explained later.
All vampyres must consume or inject blood from warm-blooded animals in order to survive. The chemicals and properties of blood create and maintain a vampyre's energy and life-force. For an Undead vampyre, we can call this a vampyre's essence, but for the Living vampyres, we shall simply refer to it as energy. Every part of a vampyre's body utilizes blood for all its energy and operational functions. Blood flows to and from the heart, functioning in most ways the same as it would in any other warm-blooded animal. Vascular systems, muscles, organs all function much the same way. But in vampyres, the heart, brain, and organs also continuously convert the blood into a new chemical compound that replaces normal blood. The transference is an efficient system that increases strength, flow, processing speed, and healing, and reduces the body's requirements for survival and optimum performance.
The “Turning.”
The affliction enters the body and acts much like a virus, although it is not a virus, but rather is a complex grouping of living cells packed with information, much like an egg or sperm, whose job is to deliver its payload and unpack that information into its new host, similar to an intrusive symbiote. It immediately sets to altering its host once inside the body. Each cell that comes in contact with it has its properties altered. Those cells alter each other in a chain reaction. It is a permanent change that is similar to the effect on certain materials when they are electrified, heated, burned, or exposed to air or water, like when a piece of wood is burned, it oxidizes, which permanently alters its composition to charcoal rather than wood. No attempt at reintroducing the removed elements will change the charcoal back to wood. The reaction that the symbiotic cells create also makes the altered cells attracted to each other, combining into a larger organism and creating a kind of human-sized virus within the body. Once the Living vampyre body dies, that simulacrum organism lives on independently and can then operate and drive the Undead body, as well as leave the body as a projected representation. That will be
discussed further in another chapter.
Blood.
The ingestion or injection of blood from warm-blooded animals is the primary and essential requirement for vampyres. Although usually ingested, it is not processed like food, but rather converted to a kind of plasma energy that both nourishes and replaces the existing plasma energy already inside the body. It not only flows through veins, but is also absorbed in the body’s muscles and organs, and is burned up like pure energy. Conversely, ingested food bypasses the nutritional absorption phase and simply becomes waste product. Although a vampyre can consume food, it can only process a limited amount at a time or the vampyre will feel sick and orally eject it. And since it does not benefit the vampyre body in any way besides the enjoyment of taste, consuming food is usually avoided. Organs are devoted to converting the blood into the liquid energy, and in turn are supplied energy from the same blood they are converting, creating a close-circuited kinetic flow.
With no outside interference, and consistent replenishment, the converted blood will maintain a body’s energy, hydration, and nutrition five times longer than a normal human body. The vampyre body does not use more energy than a human body, therefore the energy stored lasts five times longer. The stored energy has a beneficial effect of reinvigorating worn and stressed cells and hyper-charging muscle reactions. This gives a vampyre increased muscle reaction speed and strength, as well as significant enhancement of sensory organs like the nose and ears. It also results in rapid healing and greater longevity of all organs and muscles.
Longevity and Healing.
The liquid energy created also constantly nourishes and replenishes the organs that create it, repairing damage to the organs incurred from both wear and injury. Natural human life-spans are dependent on the amount of stress and wear their bodies receive from both daily function and external forces. The human body cannot repair itself fast enough once the body passes into adulthood, and slowly diminishes its ability to overcome wear as it ages. Eventually, this wear breaks down organs and muscles and the result is the inevitable death of the human body. A Living vampyre body delays this eventuality and reduces the wear and damage on all parts of the body. As mentioned before, the factor of five times the energy output and storage is the basis for this, and in theory should increase the longevity of a body equal to that factor. However, the chaotic nature of biological organisms, injuries, flaws, and incalculable chaotic elements does not allow for a direct one-to-one energy output to longevity ratio. There are very little statistics to refer to, as vampyres are not typically a social group. The affliction is rare, and most vampyres isolate themselves out of either need or fear. Comparisons using myself as a longevity subject would produce atypical results as I am a rare case amongst rare cases. Discounting myself as a control, I had to use other methods of research. I have dug into eyewitness accounts, journals, reports, medical studies, my own experiments, stories, and myths, and have made educated guesses based on these resources. My best guess is that a typical Living vampyre survives three times longer than a normal human. This is only an estimated average and not a limit.
Non-severe cuts, burns, and assorted damage can be healed anywhere from five times the normal human rate to twenty times that rate depending upon how much energy is stored in the system at that time. Some things may even be regrown and replaced if the things in question are of a less complex nature like muscles, or simple organs. Complex things like the brain or heart can sometimes be repaired but not regrown or replaced. Traumatic damage of that nature is usually fatal, and in general, the kind of severe damage that would result in a human’s death would also cause the death of a Living vampyre.
In the case of non-fatal but significant damage, a vampyre will often hibernate for the duration of the healing.
No vampyre, Living or Undead is known to be immortal.
Teeth.
The affliction changes chemical structure, cell structure, altering the body to both create and require the blood energy. Once the process starts, it exponentially accelerates the rate at which those changes take place. In short, what should take eons, is fast-tracked so that becoming the Living vampyre happens within days. The affliction carries the memory blueprint needed to accomplish this form, like instincts in animals. It sets to work immediately, creating the most efficient form to meet its new survival requirements.
One result of the process is the growth of retractable fangs. When an adult is afflicted, this alteration happens immediately, usually within several days of the affliction. The change can be excruciating. The skull is deformed to allow for the new growth of a joint that will shift the top teeth over and allow a retracted tooth to extend or contract like a feline's claw. Under normal circumstances, these teeth do not show and are concealed under the human teeth. But when stimulated to feed, or aroused by some feeling of danger or excitement, the fangs will emerge. The emergence is not typically voluntary, but there are cases where vampyres have trained themselves to extend the fangs at will. Besides feeding, the fangs have been known to extend on sexual arousal, as is the same with many fanged animals. Most animals that have this unfortunate trait either do not maintain mates or their mates perish. This is no different for vampyres, as mating can lead to unchecked blood draining, hence the death of the mate. This only happens to those who are not able, or interested, to train themselves to restrain their feeding impulses during sexual interludes. The sudden feeling of euphoria and overwhelming obsession demands a strong willpower to overcome, but is no different in principle to the restraint needed for humans against addictive things like alcohol, cigarettes, or other drugs.
Mating and Offspring.
Because of the typical lack of restraint in blood draining, vampyre mating is rare, and vampyre children are rarer, but on those rare occasions, offspring are usually born with the affliction. Many aspects of the affliction will stay dormant until adolescence, but upon adulthood, all aspects of vampyrism are fully instituted within the body. Typically, more than a century will pass before a body will noticeably deteriorate from how it appeared when it first entered adulthood. I am a good example of this phenomenon as I remain as I looked when I turned twenty-one, although my actual age is vastly greater. I will not discuss my age here.
Despite the rare mating, a Living vampyre has the same reproductive and sexual capacity as a normal human. As we will discuss later, that is not the case for an Undead vampyre.
Sun and Effects on Skin.
Radiation affects vampyre skin as it would affect any animal. However, one of the effects of vampyrism is the removal of normal evolutionary protections, like the defense that human skin has built up to sun radiation, specifically UV. Because the UV defense has been removed, vampyre skin is almost instantly burned by direct sunlight. For an undefined reason, the blood energy acts as a kind of magnifying glass to radiation, and its effects are exponentially greater on vampyres than a normal human. Typically, exposure to direct sunlight will cause severe burns in minutes. And like human skin, once the skin is burned to third-degree, it is not reparable to pre-burn levels. Lesser burns that do not reach third-degree levels can be repaired, the speed of which ranges from minutes to days, depending on severity and amount of stored blood energy. But should a vampyre have insufficient blood energy at the time of the burns, the healing could be stunted.
Radiation exposure depletes the blood energy trying to stabilize the damage as it occurs. As the energy drains, a vampyre can lose consciousness. In essence, the vampyre will pass out while burning. Should exposure last too long, it can cause death.
Weight and Strength.
The vast changes in a Living vampyre's body by the new matrix make many human necessities no longer valid. Water, for instance. Vampyre's bodies are hydrated and lubricated by the liquid energy produced by the blood transformation, and do not need the same amount of water required by a normal human body. More than 60% of a human body is comprised of water, but a vampyre's body is less than 10%. Most of the water does
not expire and has been retained from the original human form before the affliction. There are rare circumstances where a vampyre will require rehydration, but it is not typical.
Because the vampyre's body has less water-weight as resistance, and accelerated energy flowing through the muscles, a vampyre's muscles will operate at higher efficiency and faster reaction speed. A vampyre will tend to be several times stronger and faster than a human.
Myths.
Undead vampyres, not Living vampyres, I suspect, are the source of the supernatural myths associated with all vampyres. Living vampyres do not have the same abilities as the Undead. A Living vampyre cannot fly, disappear, or shapeshift. They are not impervious to any projectile or weapon. They look the same in mirrors and photographs as any human. They have living brains and willpower to control bloodlust. They only crave the nutrients and elements to survive, primarily blood, and only when they feel the need. As stated before, any warm-blooded animal will suffice for that need, so there are many Living vampyres that subsist on only animal blood. Vampyres that take human blood do so by conscious choice. Unfortunately, it projects a terrible reputation for all vampyres and has given birth to rampant fears throughout populations. Because of this perception, vampyres tend to isolate themselves, preferring to stay hidden.
I have read of improvements in manufactured blood, but to date, no manufactured blood has the exact properties needed by vampyre systems.
The bite of a vampyre, Living or Undead, has no effect on an animal other than the draining of its blood. No vampyre bite will “turn” anyone into a vampyre. Though there are topical enzymes in the mouth and lips of a vampyre, none of those chemicals, or any property of the fangs, cause or contribute to the affliction. What small amounts of vampyre plasma that might have the building blocks of the affliction would not survive the vampyre saliva and other chemicals. There are secretions that come from a vampyre's mouth and lips that both cleanse the area being bitten and anesthetize it. The enzymes have properties similar to opioids which are reported to cause a temporary pleasurable feeling. Injecting or ingesting vampyre blood is the only known way to contract the vampyric affliction. This rarely happens accidentally, but has happened on occasion ingesting vampyre blood without prior warning as to the effects.
