“I don't necessarily accept seniority and brute force as valid reasons for you to hold the power of life and death over me,” Roger said.
Volnar seemed more amused than outraged by his defiance. “Young man, you have two choices. Either accept my authority, or be cut off from our people. You won't be persecuted—as long as you do nothing to attract dangerous attention—but no one except other outlaws will associate with you. And believe me, you wouldn't like most of them.”
Thinking of Sandor, Roger believed that. He sat down, poised on the edge of his chair. “What does accepting your authority entail?”
Volnar laughed softly. “Nothing onerous or degrading. When I give direct orders, I'll expect obedience, but they'll be rare, and always for your own good.”
Roger wasn't precisely reassured, remembering how, in childhood, he'd reacted to commands delivered “for his own good.” But if the alternative was to be cut adrift from his mother's race, he could swallow his pride. “I accept, then—provisionally. Only because I do want to learn what I am.”
“I've seldom heard a more halfhearted pledge of loyalty,” said Volnar. “Good enough—if you were too submissive, you wouldn't be one of us. I acknowledge that I may have misjudged in your case, carried the experiment too far. Perhaps I should have told you the truth earlier. When your adoptive father was killed, all doubt about your status was removed.”
Roger shifted position irritably. Why must the man speak in riddles? Drinking from the almost forgotten glass in his hand, he said, “What do you mean?”
“You were in the car as well; you almost died in that accident. Or so it appeared. What do you remember?”
“About the accident itself, nothing. But they told me I shouldn't have survived the crash to begin with,” Roger recalled. “I was comatose for over forty-eight hours, and except for the EEG all vital signs ceased. Permanent damage was expected, if I ever regained consciousness at all. Yet when I did, the attending physician said I looked as if I'd been healing for weeks.”
Volnar nodded. “Not a typical human pattern, is it? The incident confirmed that you inherited your mother's nearly indestructible constitution and her rapid healing ability. Therefore, almost beyond doubt, her extended lifespan. Have you ever had an infectious disease?”
Roger's awestruck silence answered the question.
“You see, while you share some outward characteristics ofHomo sapiens , essentially you are a vampire.”
“Why must you use that word? Can't you come up with anything more accurate and less—vulgar?”
“As I told you, we borrow our language from the human population we live among, and of all the terms available, ‘vampire’ fits us best. It is, in fact, the most ‘accurate'—for you as well as the rest of us.”
Hearing the word applied to him by this dominant figure forced Roger to face the implications head-on. “You're saying I may live—how long? Forever?”
“For millennia, at any rate, assuming your capacity for healing is a reliable indicator.”
“You don't really know, though,” Roger said. “You don't know anything about hybrids.”
“So far, observation suggests that you are typical of our species, except for your inability to transform, which Sylvia mentioned to me—and minor details such as your greater tolerance for sunlight and ability to consume solid food, which are actually advantages. You should live on indefinitely unless your carelessness gets you killed first. You can't even starve to death. You'd simply lapse into suspended animation until a food source became available.”
Roger tried another drink of the Courvoisier and found it was making him queasy. He set the glass on the table. “Suppose I'd never discovered my—special needs—on my own? You had no right to abandon me.”
“How did you discover those needs? How old were you?”
“The first stage must have occurred in my early twenties,” he began. “I discovered that when I was—intimate—with young women—'heavy petting,’ in the argot of the decade—I no longer needed masturbation to be satisfied. In fact, I'd become incapable of ejaculating.” He felt himself blushing but forged on, over-riding his self-consciousness. “Their passion satisfied me by itself. That just fortified my growing conviction that I was abnormal.”
“You never suspected it signified something more than simple deviance?” Volnar asked.
Roger irritably shrugged off the question, similar to the ones Sylvia had frequently badgered him with. “How could I? The possibility didn't exist in my consciousness. As far as I could see, I'd become impotent for no reason whatever. I didn't seek treatment; the prospect was too humiliating.
“After that my development remained static until I finished medical school and entered residency. You probably know that a future psychotherapist has to undergo analysis himself. That brought on my crisis. For months previously I'd been—unwell.” Roger felt his neck and shoulder muscles tighten at the memory of the blood-drenched nightmares and the constant, gnawing hunger that no amount of raw steak appeased.
“On top of that change, the twice-weekly sessions with Dr. North were an almost unbearable strain. I censored everything I told him, naturally, but maintaining the censorship was stressful in itself. Trying to compensate by siphoning increased amounts of energy from my off-duty companions—of whom I didn't have many—didn't help. North was bright enough to suspect I was holding out on him, and he insisted on hypnotizing me.
“I agreed, confident I could override his will.” He recalled his brief contest with North, no battle at all, culminating in his swallowing up the therapist's resistance like a shark engulfing a minnow. The small conquest had quenched Roger's superficial psychic thirst while activating a deeper layer of appetite whose object bewildered him.
“Five minutes into the session, I had him in deep trance. Wondering what to do with him, trying to concoct a screen memory to make him leave me alone from then on, I stared into his eyes, absent-mindedly fingering his wrist.” Roger heard his own breathing quicken as he relived the moment. “Instead of planning my strategy—I'd never tried such comprehensive mind-control before—I found myself listening to his heartbeat and respiration, background noises I usually filtered out. I'd long since pigeonholed that ability to hear sounds other people couldn't as more of a nuisance than an advantage.”
Volnar took a long drag on his cigar. “With all that going on, how could you still assume you were an ordinary man?”
Roger thought of the webs of rationalization he'd woven to keep himself from falling to pieces. “Those abilities could have been a delusion. Since I didn't dare mention them to anyone else, I had no reality test. Now I caught myself enjoying the sound of North's heart and the tactile sensation of the pulse in his wrist. Suddenly I realized I wanted to lift his hand and touch my lips to that spot.
“I'd long suspected my mental balance was shaky, and this bizarre urge seemed to confirm that. While the analytic part of my mind was reviewing cases I'd read, searching for one that matched my symptoms, I was already raising his hand to my mouth. The office walls seemed to close in on me—my senses contracted to that point where my lips touched his skin. Warm, damp, salty—” The memory made him salivate. He took a long swallow of the brandy. “I certainly didn't bare my teeth on purpose. I didn't know my incisors had grazed the skin until I tasted—God, I couldn't believe what I was doing. It disgusted me, but I couldn't stop with that rush of energy flooding—”
“Enough,” said Volnar. “Don't be so graphic. You are upsetting yourself.”
“I went lightheaded, saw sparks behind my eyelids. Like lightning bolts in a night sky. Believe it or not, the first thing I thought of was epilepsy.Petit mal does manifest itself in peculiar ways. On the other hand, I could hardly have suffered that for years without noticing. I considered alternative explanations the whole time I kept drinking. Defense mechanism—if I didn't think about the act, it wasn't really happening. When I finally surfaced and checked my watch, almost twenty minutes had passed. Good thi
ng the man was healthy for his age. I wasn't up to concocting an elaborate tale for him. I gave him a generalized suggestion that I was mentally sound and he didn't need to waste time with me.”
“You started late,” said Volnar. “Most of us acquire our psychic talents in our early teens—as you did, didn't you?—but start needing human blood soon thereafter, around sixteen.”
“Children don't?” said Roger. He'd had trouble visualizing an infant or toddler feeding on a human adult.
“Of course not,” Volnar chuckled. “Babies are born with two needle-like teeth—the only time we have those absurd rattlesnake fangs beloved by Hollywood—to feed on the mother's blood as well as her milk. You didn't, thanks to your human half. At weaning, three or four years old, we lose the fangs and switch to raw meat, milk, and animal blood.”
“Makes sense,” Roger said. “Growing children would need the calories in solid food.”
“In early adolescence the ability to digest it disappears, when we lose our wolf-like incisors and canines, to be replaced by a more human-appearing set for drawing blood inconspicuously. It's a good thing you didn't undergo those changes, or you could never have passed for human.”
“I'm still baffled about the way you manipulated me. Why this ‘experiment,’ leaving me to flounder through those develop-mental stages alone? Why did you care whether a hybrid was ‘viable'?”
“Quite simply,” said Volnar, “because we aren't replacing ourselves. Long-lived predators have to breed slowly in comparison to their prey, to avoid overrunning the food supply, but in recent centuries our low reproductive rate has become a crisis. Females more often than not go into estrus without conceiving. The incidence of miscarriages has increased, too.”
Roger set down the brandy and stared at him. “You're looking for new blood, aren't you?”
Chapter 11
HE WINCED AT his unintentional pun. “You think human DNA might revitalize your gene pool.”
“Exactly.” Volnar smiled as if pleased at his quick compre-hension. “Some of the elders consider it contamination, but I've overruled them. Including the ones who make derogatory re-marks about ‘lap dogs pretending to be wolves.'”
Roger felt his chest tighten with anger. Though he wasn't sure he wanted to be a wolf, he didn't care for the proposed alter-native.
“Some of them,” Volnar continued, “cite the fable of the Ugly Duckling, which they think ends on a note of unwarranted optimism. What kind of a swan could the creature become, crippled by a barnyard fowl's conditioning?”
“Are you deliberately trying to goad me?”
“Only preparing you,” Volnar said, “for the hostility you're sure to encounter sooner or later. Not that it's universal. Most of those who know about your existence either tentatively approve or are indifferent.”
“The nay-sayers have a point,” Roger said. “Do you happen to have read Mark Twain'sPudd'nhead Wilson?”
“Actually, no.”
“Two boys are switched in infancy, half-brothers, the son of a slave woman and the son of the mistress of the house. When they reach adulthood and the truth is revealed, the young man who's grown up thinking himself a slave suddenly becomes the master's heir. One might expect a Cinderella conclusion, but that doesn't happen. The slave turned master proves utterly unfit for the station to which he was born.”
“You don't have to apply that pessimistic tale to yourself. You've done better than that.”
“Oh, have I? Not from my viewpoint.” Roger took a deep breath, then coughed when he inhaled cigar smoke instead of fresh air. “How can you stand that blasted thing?” He wondered whether the smoke was a test of his willingness to accept Vol-nar's domination. When he'd cleared his throat, he said, “What you've made me is a misfit among both vampires and my human peers.”
“On the contrary, you've done remarkably well, considering how you were forced to ‘flounder,'” Volnar said. “Not unlike Tarzan in Burroughs’ novel, who, after being reared by apes, as an ape, taught himself to read and eventually functioned not only as a civilized man but as an aristocrat of the most civilized nation on earth.”
“A pulp fantasy,” Roger said. “Real-life feral children more often become mental and emotional cripples.”
“That didn't happen to you, however,” said Volnar, “so I suggest you stop wasting energy on resentment.”
“But I haven't turned out like Tarzan. More like a badly socialized puppy.”
“In what way?” said Volnar.
“Well, I understand that if you take a puppy away from its mother and litter mates too soon, it doesn't know how to behave like a dog. On the other hand, if you leave the separation too late, the pup can never fully adjust to life with a human master. Either way, you have a maladjusted dog.”
“It's true that there are critical periods in our childhood and adolescence—times of imprinting, as with ducklings. The adaptability of young vampires is a double-edged weapon.”
Roger stood up, too restless to hold still. “Sylvia has a fear of religious objects—that's the kind of thing you mean, don't you?”
“Yes. Her advisor was too lax. She was exposed to excessive human influences. She almost thought, in her mid-teens, that shewas human. Then she drifted the other way and picked up a cluster of absurd superstitions about her nature.”
“Then I'm not the only child whose upbringing you people royally fouled up.” He simmered with tension, half tempted to take a swing at Volnar just to discharge it.
“Learning how you've dealt with your highly specialized problems may help us avoid mistakes with future generations.” Volnar rested the cigar in an ashtray and strode to Roger's side. “Don't let anger blind you to the possibilities, young man. This stage is only the beginning. The next is to breed you with a female of our species.”
Roger jerked away from the elder's outstretched hand. “What? Do you think for one minute I'd consider that? Creating another child to suffer what I've gone through?”
“He or she wouldn't suffer the ‘identity crisis’ you've had,” Volnar said, walking over to pick up his unfinished cigar. “The child will know his or her nature and destiny from the start. I'll serve as its advisor myself.”
“All the more reason why I'd run miles to avoid the whole thing.”
“Nevertheless, I do expect you to consider it,” Volnar said. “I've contacted a young woman, born in the 1880s, who has proven her fertility. She conceived more than once but miscarried each time. With you as the sire, perhaps a pregnancy might—”
“Not interested,” Roger cut him off. “I can't condone any more of your damned experiments. And what makes you think this woman would accept being forced into mating with a—a halfbreed?”
“Not forced! Our women choose their own mates, subject to veto by the elders, to prevent inbreeding. I've already explained your background to her, and she is enthusiastic.”
“She may like the idea of being a reproductive machine for you, but I don't!” He almost wanted to rush out of the room and drive away, but the need to learn as much as he could stopped him.
“Juliette doesn't fit that description in the least. She teaches English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and writes historical romances under anom de plume —far from a mindless breeding machine. However, she does want a child, and her next estrus is due fairly soon. Think it over.”
“I don't need to think,” Roger said, baring his teeth. “I'm absolutely sure that I don't want to serve as sperm donor to a woman I've never met in support of a project I don't believe in.”
Volnar said, “Aren't you curious, if nothing else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Many of our males live out their first thousand years—or more—without once being chosen to mate. This may be your single chance to experience fully consummated genital sexuality.”
The notion disturbed Roger, though he couldn't say why; he certainly felt no physical urge for the act Volnar alluded to. “You keep mentioning est
rus, as if vampire females went into heat like—”
“Dogs? Wolves?” Volnar's lips quirked in amusement. “They do, and male vampires can consummate the sexual act only when stimulated by a female in heat. Mating lasts through an entire night of repeated copulation. If an unwanted conception occurs, the woman can mentally compel her body to eject the embryo.” He became more serious. “Not that this problem comes up very often anymore. We do need your genes, Roger. Your potential hybrid vigor.”
“I don't want to discuss it.” Suddenly he recalled his recent conversation with Sylvia and the heady scent she had begun to emit. “Wait a minute—you wouldn't suggest that I breed with Sylvia, would you?”
“Certainly not. Did she invite you to?” At Roger's nod, Volnar said, “Mate with her recreationally, if you wish, but breeding isn't an option. She's too young for motherhood. The first estrus is almost always barren. And she is too young emotionally, as well. She's hardly out of adolescence.”
“From the standpoint of knowledge and experience as a vampire,” Roger said bitterly, “so am I.”
“You have a half-brother who believes I've treated you abominably,” Volnar said. “If I hadn't absolutely forbidden it, he would have intervened long ago to give you that knowledge.”
Surprise at this new revelation sidetracked Roger from dwelling on his anger. “Sounds like an intelligent man. I want to meet him.”
“You will, in good time. However, you've probably seen him without knowing it. I daresay you watch vampire movies?”
“And read the books,” Roger said, “idiotic as most of them are. I hoped to get some sort of perspective on my—condition.”
“Well, your brother is Claude Darvell, the actor.”
Roger sank into the chair, felled by sheer astonishment. “The horror film star? Good Lord!”
“Not that I approve. Claude calls it a ‘purloined letter lifestyle'—hide in plain sight. It could only work in a peculiar cultural climate like the present.” Volnar shook his head. “He also speaks in a silly-ass-Brit dialect like something out of P. G. Wodehouse; he claims it's his way of appearing harmless. Altogether, a thoroughly irritating young man.”
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