As technologically advanced as the Others were, they may have manipulated their own genes to create their super strength, speed and agility, but they had been civilized for far too long. They did not have that which a Vampire had. A savage, primordial heart!
“I would almost welcome a visitation.” I said, twirling my cane. Hidden inside its length, a mere twist of the handle away, was the cold steel of a walking cane sword. If I were suddenly to have to use it, it would not be the first time, nor would I expect it to be the last. Sonafi was similarly though differently armed. She carried more weapons than I would care to count, every one of them hidden away, invisible in plain sight.
“I do not relish the thought. Nor will we continue always to be victorious.” Sonafi said, though there had been times when she would very much have relished the thought. When the savage glut of killing the Others was all she lived for. “The Others are far from ignorant. They are capable of evolution, as well, and nothing engenders evolution more rapidly than the threat of extinction. We are that threat!”
“I think we are less a threat than an annoyance.” I said. “They would like to see us eliminated, but they aren't going to move mountains to stop us.”
“I do not agree.” Sonafi said, never one to quibble, always willing to say just exactly what was on her mind. “It is more than arrogant annoyance. We are still able to infect Humans with our blood. Our blood is the stronger. Humans have already become much the same as the Others and yet we are still able to infect them. So consider. What if we were able to infect the Others as easily as we infect Humans? Think of the possibilities.”
“Infect the Others?” I asked slowly, thunderstruck. “I have never even considered the possibility. “Where did you get such an idea?”
“It wasn't really my idea, I admit.” Sonafi said. “I do think it has a great amount of possibility, though. Think if we could plant a colony within their midst!”
“A fourth species with no potential ties to any of us?” I asked, not sure I liked the idea, not sure what new terror that might not be unleashing on the Universe. “More easily suggested than accomplished, I think, as well.” I added.
“I think that time is running out for us. At some point we must attempt something.” Sonafi said. “Some of the younger generation made the suggestion. They wanted to bring the idea to you, but I must admit, I did not think that would be a good idea. I did not think that you would be agreeable. But now, with what you have just said, I decided that maybe now is the time to mention it. Maybe you are ready for such an idea.”
“You meant to leave me out of the loop?” I asked, astounded.
“You're rooted in your old ways.” Sonafi said simply. “We did not know how you would greet this as a scientific theory. You may not believe it, but the Community very much revolves around you. You and what you think. We were afraid that if you were against the idea, you would turn the entire Community against it, and there are a great many of us who want to do something, are tired of the incessant attacks. Though there have been none for fourteen years, anywhere, we have reason to believe the lull may be over. So we have devised this plan.”
“You have a plan?” I asked, further surprised. I stopped to look at her. The glow of the brilliant moonlight was bathing her face making her appear alabaster and slightly to glow. Though direct sunlight would burn a Vampire, the visible light reflected by the moon did not. Whatever the elemental particles were that the sun produced in its fusion process, that neither the Others nor Vampires could tolerate, could not be reflected by the surface of the moon. They bored into it, possibly even all the way through it. I did not know. Even though dark hued, Sonafi still looked eerily undead in its ghastly glow, hence the legends that Vampires were not true, living beings. “What plan have you hatched?”
“We hope to capture and infect one of the Others.” Sonafi said, bluntly ignoring my sarcasm.
I didn't say anything for several long moments that I spent staring into the star-studded expanse of the firmament above. Which of the stars above me were more than stars, I wondered? They were still up there. I have seen their ships many times. More than just the occasions they had meant to be seen. Their activity could almost be considered frenzied. Constant. Yet they went almost entirely unnoticed by Humans.
Since there was nothing that could be done about it when they were noticed, Humans had come to a fait accompli acceptance of what could not be altered. Humans were aware, but there was nothing they could do about it, so they denied it. They blocked it out. They were in massive denial. They ignored what they could not affect.
“I can think of nothing more dangerous.” I said. “Can you imagine what that may precipitate?”
“It will depend on that individual’s will to live. If it reveals it has been infected or if it hides it from the rest of its comrades.” Sonafi said, then added, almost imperceptibly; “What do we have to lose, if what you believe is true? That soon we may not have a place to hide.”
“I didn't say I think it's an imminent concern.” I said, now balking at the intensity I was seeing on her moon bathed face. “I see that you have been thinking about this a lot, though.”
“Quite a few of us, actually. We're fed up.”
“I thought you wanted to move?” I said. “Now this?”
“I have to admit to having an ulterior motive.” Sonafi admitted.
“Which is?”
“They want to use the house.”
“Who is they and do you mean our house?”
“Yes. Our house.” Sonafi answered, with mildly exaggerated exasperation. “We think it has a number of advantages.”
“The 'we' represents?” I asked, not failing to notice that I was asking this question for the second time.
“Quite a number of us, actually.”
“Brid?” I asked, suddenly sure my rabble-rousing son was at the heart of it. He was the epitome of the modern generation. Hacker. Gamer. Designer. Anything and everything technical. Aware of the modern issues and politics- though there was no effective way a Vampire may participate in any mainstream or political organization, many of us were very socially aware- and not that any of it mattered, in the end, after all, when it was the Others who intended to inherit the world.
Brid was too smart for his own good, I have thought since the day he was born. He had been fearless, cock-sure and arrogant from the moment of his birth. Vampires are even worse than their Human counterparts when inclined towards arrogance. Vampires are bullheaded, fiercely independent beings, and I have been expecting him to come to a violent end at any moment. Arrogance is not a healthy trait in a Juvenile Vampire. The Elder Vampires take violent exception. A Vampire does not have to go rogue to turn in violence upon another of its brethren. We kill one another all the time. It is why the Community is as fractured and disjointed as it is.
Why was I surprised?
“Brid and a dozen others.” Sonafi admitted.
“If we fail, we'll see an escalation in their efforts to eradicate us.” I said. “Have you thought this all the way through?”
“I've thought of little else. It's all I've thought about. But it may be our best, last chance.” Sonafi said seriously. “I don't see how we have a choice.”
“Nor do I, really.” I agreed, looking into her set, determined features. “Nor do I. You're right, what choice do we really have?”
“We don't have options. None.” She said. They were already planning it, with or without me, I could see, so it may as well be with me.
At least if I were involved, I could keep a watchful eye over my son. Any time a group of Vampires got together there was likely to be trouble. The killing kind of trouble.
“Brid is a foolish Juvenile.” Was all I could say.
CHAPTER 3
Human blood was the only blood a Vampire truly thrived on. We could sustain ourselves with the blood of any of Earth's fauna, but none matched the healthful benefits of our Human kin. If I did not feed on Humans, I would soon find myself i
n a much weakened state, compared to other Vampires who did feed on Humans, and thus susceptible to Vampires much junior to myself.
Still, I find myself plagued more by conscience as I grow older. I am troubled when I must cause pain or suffering to another living being, and by 'being', I do not necessarily just mean Humans, Vampires or the Others. Telepathic, I am subjected to the thoughts of all living creatures. In the last century that has not been an attractive thing. Slaughterhouses, live animal processing plants, even the modern farm and its inhumane, factory-like way livestock is now treated. In many cases the mental anguish is overwhelmingly extreme, even for a predator. It would undoubtedly drive me insane if I had to spend any great amount of time near one of these places, though there are a few of us who I thought might enjoy such things. Do enjoy such things. Among Vampires, like our Human kin, there are both good and bad, in similarly balanced numbers.
I do not like that there are so many Vampires who lack consciences so utterly and completely. We all feed on Humans but some kill their victims on a regular basis. They enjoy killing. It is oftentimes a difficult struggle I wage with myself, with my conscience, that I should allow those others who are so lacking to continue the horrors they perpetuate, but if I attempted to set myself as Judge and Executioner above all other Vampires, those who found themselves at odds with my high handed ethics would soon join together, at least temporarily, to destroy me en-mass. I am the eldest, strongest Vampire, but I am not omnipotent.
We walked back into the city, casting about ourselves with our telepathy, looking through the minds of the Humans who slept in their beds, behind the thin walls of their homes, so close around us. The houses here were mere feet from the sidewalk and only separated one from another by narrow concrete sidewalks. The life-force around us was incredibly thick and heady. Humans lived here like sardines packed in a tin.
We chose a home and removed our shoes, hiding them behind a bush in the front yard of the property. I cast my consciousness into the minds of those above and shortly thereafter the window above us opened. A face showed itself, peering down at us momentarily, and then disappeared inside.
We moved to the wall and began to climb. The loose mortar and deep beds of the masonry joints made ideal finger and toe-holds. We scurried up the wall like monstrous insects and slithered into the home through the open window. A Vampire has pliant, not brittle, bones, and we slithered in like boneless earthworms. We slithered in through the open window and rose, a single, sinuous motion. We stood before the couple awaiting us.
Like dumb beasts they awaited our coming. Docile, seemingly unaware and unresponsive, yet they had opened the window for us, they wanted this. They wanted us. Humanity had been genetically tailored to be accepting of the Others Visitations. They had no choice but to be so of us, as well. The woman moaned slightly as we drew near, an autonomous response as her brain pumped endorphins into her system in preparation for the ecstasy of the union. The union with a Vampire. For the Human, the bite and the sucking of the blood was an intense pleasure. The autonomous reward that was also wired into the system for obeying. A pleasure this couple had experienced many, many times.
I moved to take the man. Sonafi did likewise the woman. Merely logistics. The man was larger. Had more blood to offer. Neither of us had a wish to harm the Humans we fed upon and we only visited the same Humans infrequently. Too frequent visits, or the drawing off of too much at once, would be harmful to our hosts. We did not want that. We did not want to be parasitic to the point where we damaged them. We had come to a comfortable equilibrium. A long adjusted balance. Fourteen years we had been here.
I drew closer to my man. Sonafi the same the woman. As I leaned in I saw Sonafi suddenly stiffen and pull back. I drew away as well.
“What is it?” I asked her, but then I perceived. I perceived the beat of a third small heart. Almost too small to notice. Almost imperceptible. Possibly two or three cells, only. The first stage of what it would later become. A new life growing within her womb. She was pregnant.
“I can't do this.” Sonafi said. I could see that the hunger was upon her, but she forced herself to draw back. It was a struggle, I saw, being this close and prepared to feed. Even a Vampire as old as she could not completely conquer her primordial instincts to the point where she would not be inflamed by the nearness of prey when she thirsted. A Juvenile would not have been able to draw back once so committed. Some Juveniles could not draw back until they had completely pulled all the life from their victims, so Sonafi and I were careful to chaperone our own offspring until they could be trusted to feed on their own, without killing those they fed on.
I have sired cruel offspring. Monsters I was loathe to turn loose on society, but a progeny I have sired directly demands more regard than a similar Juvenile created through a transfusion of blood, and so I have never killed one of my own, at least not while they were young. Such cruel, brutal Vampires seldom lived long, anyway, often antagonizing one or another of the Community to the point where they are killed, though it is not always the case. There are several such very old Vampires. Careful Vampires. Vampires who thrived on the pain they could inflict. Who lived just for that.
As hard as it is sometimes to face the things I do, the things I have done, the monsters I have created, in my own defense, I have lived a very long life that I did not choose for myself. This life was thrust upon me not of my will. The unwanted byproduct of an egregious experiment gone terribly wrong, yet was I so terribly different from those who had created me? Am I not compelled by the same physiological needs as every other living being, to survive, to eat, to procreate and expand my kind. Does the lion feel guilt that it sires a cub that will, throughout its life, if it can even survive to adulthood, kill and eat many thousands of living, breathing animals. It does not!
Yet I do. I have to live with the horror a conscientious being knows that I have caused endless suffering. That I will continue to do so. That I can see no end of it. Not in the foreseeable future.
There are yet things I will not do.
The woman, suddenly deprived of the bite she craved, stepped forward to embrace Sonafi, but Sonafi side stepped her. She was no longer where she had been and the woman's arms closed on empty air. Without a backward glance Sonafi went out the window and was gone, as if she had never been. She may as well have for the woman's meager ability to perceive her movements. The woman moaned piteously. Bereft and abandoned, she turned to me.
“Not this night.” I told them. “Return to your slumbers.” They turned immediately to do as they had been bid, but not before the woman cast a last, imploring look my way. I remained implacable and my command drove her onward to her bed. As if they had never awoken, they were asleep as soon as they were under their covers. I climbed quickly out the window, my fingers adhering to the rough brick and mortar. Like a spider I hung there then closed the window one handed. Quickly I scurried to the ground, faster than a Human could run. Sonafi waited for me on the sidewalk.
“She had been trying to get pregnant for some time.” Sonafi said when I joined her. “I suppose it is our fault she has had such a hard time.”
“I suppose that is probably true.” I agreed, but said no more of it. We gathered our shoes and began to walk. We would have to feed somewhere else, but there were many hours left in the night and thousands of people in this area upon whom we could visit. We were herders. Humans were our flock. The only difference being that we did not have to slaughter our herds to feed. Was this not more humane? Were we not a notch better?
“I find that, as I age, I have a harder time doing the things a Vampire has to do.” Sonafi said quietly as she walked at my side. I had known she was going to say something about it. It was a cruel twist that all Vampires had to face sooner or later. All but the very worst of us. I had seen it building within her for some time now, something that we tried to avoid facing, because there was nothing we could do about it. A mellowing with age of the instinctive Vampire urges, like Human evolution as a who
le, the rise from primordial beast to thinking, reasoning animal. A rise which the Others had exacerbated but not caused to occur. Men would have eventually evolved fully, left the cradle of their birth-world, reached for the stars and their destiny there (barring a catastrophic world shaking event) without the Others interference. And the Others weren't helping humanity. They were stealing it. Now Sonafi was evolving, as well. Her Human half asserting itself. Slowly learning to take its full place within her. Its full half share. Asserting its humanity.
I did not think our Human halves would ever rise far enough to rid us of our physical dependence on fluid blood. I did not even know if the Others could eat solid foods and our need for blood some strange anomaly created through the admixture of species. I did not know anything about the Others. Not even what they called themselves. All I knew for sure was that Vampires had to drink blood. It was the only food our dual physiology could digest. Anything else simply sickened us and weakened us. In these weakened states, we would become blood thirsty, ravening animals. With extreme blood-lust came the complete loss of our faculties of reasoning. Better controlled feeding than the latter. Better for all involved.
The arrangement that Sonafi and I had adopted was the least ruinous to our hosts that we were able to devise. Even so, we wreaked considerable havoc upon them. A difficulty getting pregnant was only a small factor in the overall damage we did to them. Exhaustion. Anemia. Susceptibility to disease and lowered immunological response. I could go on. We are not unaware of what we do.
“We will have to be more careful. Spread out and injure each less,” I said, “but we will never be able to escape what we are.”
“It's more the way I feel about myself than what we do to them.” Sonafi said. “And what favor do we do them by being careful not to inhibit their pregnancies? What future do they have to look forward to? They are slowly being eradicated. No. That is not it. It is the Others whom I rail against. I am glad you know our plans. I'm glad I spoke up. I very much want to participate. To at least attempt to strike back at them.”
The Vampire-Alien Chronicles Page 3
