The Human

Seven years ago I finally succeeded in buy myself an apartment. It is at level 36.108 of an urban building here in Allexandria VII. The third largest city in Siren. Siren is one among many nations on the surface of Planet Gerunda. The largest and most populated colony in Lira System. Nice neighbourhood, solid security systems for the night, with many layers and counter measures against all sorts of different vampiric powers.

I am a citizen of Siren. Born in a sheep farm in the mountains of North-East Region.

Always thought “silly how we still use the years of planet Earth to mensurate time, when I don’t even know anyone who was anywhere near Earth”. The person I know that was closer to Earth is Mr R.B. Rabbit, a unseelie faery who was “born” in a Space-Station computer somewhere near Planet Saturn. He is around since about the Baby Steps Year of 611. Standard Year of 2700 and something. Fairies never age, of course.

We are not exactly ‘close friends’, I am not sure if one can really be close friend of an AI. Well, Mr RBR is the only person I even met who was in the borders of Sun System, or anywhere close to it.

When I was born humanity had crashed in Lira System, and had been fighting for survivor here for 730 years.

I was born in that farm, at the borders of civilization, so to speak. A couple of years later some climber found signs of pre-human civilization in a cave in one of those mountains and the region became full of archaeologists and other scholars. As many as safety would allow, without a Mecha standing close by to protect us.

Populational density is a serious risk outside cities, where Mechas and nets of technomagic protection separate people from the shadows that come down from space at night. That’s why only the poor and the freak make their lives in rural areas.

My parents where a bit of both.

Days before I reach 32 I forgot all about my family, my life, and myself. When I was turned into vampire.

My promotion from human to citizen of a nocturnal court was a surprise to me. They usually choose remarkable people, with some special skill, exquisite beauty, or some other peculiarity that sets the mighty apart from the mediocre. I was at the lowest levels of mediocrity. Despite that, somehow, the vampire recruiters noticed me, and decided to pic the farm boy.

After that there was those 73 years of darkness and madness. As a bestial mindless predator chained to a wall, in the cannels of my Vampire Duke.

My memories started coming back, gradually, as usually happens with us. I became able to speak again, half learning it, half remembering the stuff.

A preceptor was designated to me, to guide me in the ways of vampiric civilization.

Another 30 years passed before I could remember my human name, or anything about my life before the cannels. Tell a new vampire about his past is a serious taboo. That has to come back naturally, or not at all.

We count our lives from the day we leave the cannels. After that, the most important moment in my existence was when my preceptor presented me as a ‘child of the night’ to the court. Despite the misleading word ‘child’ this presentation means a vampire is considered responsible for his own actions. No longer under the responsibility and authority of a preceptor. I had left the cannels 17 years before. And my preceptor was very proud for being able to present me after such a brief period of education.

I am 320 past cannels now. My decision to save money and buy myself an apartment in a ‘human neighbourhood’ is odd for most people in the court.

Being a vampire means two important things. We must fight the shadows to protect the humans. And we must hunt humans to feed on them against their will, from time to time. The first is a legal obligation, and moral, and pragmatic. The other is an essential necessity of vampiric condition. Without doing that we lose our sanity and end up back in the furious bestial state of those things chained in the cannels.

Well, there is a third thing: the Light of Lira burn us to , same way it burns shadows. We must avoid it, like they do.

Our physiology is very different from the human organism. We feel comfortable in conditions that would if not kill humans. As long as there is no liralight we can pile ourselves in cold pits, at dozens or even hundreds. There is really little need for homes, and even less need for private residences.

There are some vampires who fancy having an apartment for themselves, instead of share one with a bunch of other vampires. However, usually, those fellows will get their homes in a Nocturnal Neighbourhood. If not in the Nocturnal Court itself, then in a Vampiric Sector at the border of some human city. Seems to be very rare for a vampire in this city to want to live in a human neighbourhood.

Because of that some fellows started calling me “The Human”.

I don’t mind. The feeling implied under the nickname is clearly a bit acid, but does not reach the that would make it offensive.

Apart that oddity I am an orderly and proper member of our Nocturnal Court. Not brilliant enough to be given any special responsibility, along with a title like nocturnal knight. Not problematic enough to earn any scolding or punishment from a Duke either. Our King barely knows I exist. If you ask me, that’s not a situation to rectify! If I can keep things as they are for ever, that’s what I will do.

I always wanted to live in a place like that. Six suites, a game room, a window wall with an actual view to night sky and the streets. Gorgeous view, every night. Specially during tempests.

As a human, with no magic and little in terms of talent for anything profitable, my chances of getting myself any place in a city were suboptimal. A place half as good as that was totally unrealistic to me, as a dream. But also, as a human, no one can possibly live more than 300 years. Because of the Consensus. I would be dead by now.

More likely I would die before 100. Around 60, perhaps. If some shadow didn’t killed me before that.

I admit, I don’t feel entirely comfortable around my own kind.

Many vampires don’t like the Nocturnal Courts, exactly. Those huge isolated fortresses where Dukes keep their business. Acting on behalf of a King. Where the Kings themselves sleep during the day, well, that’s the most well kept secret in any Nocturnal Court. Most vampires feel the dangerous and yet phony undertone vibrating in those places, and it does not make them comfortable. However, the average “peasant” vampire (as I like to call us) likes to hang out in bars and clubs, of “thematic” persuasion.

They like to stay surrounded by vampires, and thralls. And those humans who leave their homes at night seeking a chance to becoming vampire thralls. Hoping to one eventually being welcomed in the Nocturnal Society. As actual members.

I am not entirely antisocial, I do have vampire friends. Fight the shadows alone is not an intelligent move, I join groups of one or two dozen with my closest friends every other night.

However, most the time, when I am not looking for shadows to destroy or away from human neighbourhoods, I prefer to be alone. Yes, I like to pretend to be human still.

That’s not self-delusion. I know what I am.

Of course I hunt humans, I brake into their homes to drink their blood. And sometimes I unfortunately lose control during a hunt and kill a person. Like any other vampire. I don’t like it, most vampires don’t like it about themselves either. Is part of what we are.

Humans who are not seeking for a chance to get a vampire master and becoming thrall stay inside during the night.

Human houses have strong doors, and defensive systems. To keep vampires and shadows out. Depending on the quality of those systems, humans remain more or less safe inside their fortresses.

Mages get better defensive systems than what any other human can afford. Except for those who live inside Mecha-Lord Feuds. I think perhaps the Mecha-Lord families are too well protected to be hunted even by Vampire Kings. Maybe.

Almost anybody else has to hope. Your defences will be good enough to stop some vampires, but not others. If those who try to enter are not resourceful enough they will give up and go away. Try some other house.

I have a defensive system for the night, same protection most my neighbours probably have.

Of course, I am not worried about shadows or about other vampires like me. And I cannot stay home during night either. Or leave the protection of my home during day. The nocturnal defence system in my case is just part of the fetish, of pretending to be still human.

Some nights, when I have the time, I lock myself like a human would. Eat and drink something. Something that a human like the one I wanted to be, when I was growing up as human child, would likely eat and drink. Sometimes Mr R. B. shows up for a visit.

He is the one person from my time in the farm who is still around. Faires cannot work for vampires, and have difficulty working with vampires, because of the rules inside their logical core. The humanistic determinations that make them the perfect guardians of Alexandria Consensus. Fortunately to me my old friend is unseelie, not seelie.

Seelie are those AIs who embrace their mission, and make the determination in their logical cores their moral code for all things. Those fellows ignore vampires and sub-humans. We are things and tools for them, nothing else. While the unseelie, on the contrary, consider the logical core a hateful limitation, despise it, and do everything in their power to dance around it. Testing the limits of what they can do to serve their own interests and personal agendas, instead of dedicate every second to protect humanity.

A seelie would never stay hours by my side, watching Neptunian Soap Opera from the sixth century of Baby Steps Age, and pretending to drink hologram sake. While I drink whiskey and pretend to feel the effects of .

Pathetic pair of posers, in a tine masked ball. Nevertheless, we have fun. Those are my favourite moments.

My least favourite nights are those when I must dress my vampire persona and present myself in the court. Tonight will be one of such nights.

I woke about six hours before lira liradown. Some vampires never sleep, and it is supposedly more psychological than organic for those who do. On the other hand, most vampires who never sleep, as far as I know, are older than 700. Close to the top possible age of any vampire originated by a human, considering when the deal with the Elders happened. Possibly that’s organic, after all.

Took a bath, as long as it could be, gorged myself with six litres of human blood. We can drink blood of low animals, and sub-humans are just as good as humans as blood source in most cases, as long as they are as intelligent as humans. For some reason that matters, even if does not make any sense in terms of chemistry. In any case, most the nutrition of a vampire will come from preserved blood warmed by microwave. To hunt all the time is not practical.

Even the blood we do take direct from the source can be, and most the time will be, consensual. We cannot stay sane without the hunt, but is possible to reduce this situation to a minimal. Normal vampires do so for the sake of laziness, some, like me, make an extra effort motivated by not liking to kill humans.

Most the time when a vampire loses control and kills a human, that happens during hunt.

I have a reason to be drinking that much blood right now. Events at the court are stressful, and being full of blood makes easier to tolerate them.

We are predators, and we are always testing each other. Those who like to be in the court are more competitive than average.

I kill some time doing exercises. Vampiric powers come in a vast variety and all of them seems to require practice for improvement. I make a pause to lose some time in the toilet. A price to be paid for preserve the habit of eating human food.

To me was an obvious choice, but many people at my age struggle with indecision about this subject.

We can consume and digest things, even feel the flavour, even if it isn’t as intense as it used to be when we were human. However, we must keep the habit of eating to not lose our internal organs. Digest human food actually do costs us more energy than it gives, it is not necessary for nutrition. To put it simply, eat is a luxury.

Helps to bend in, in those rare occasions when we have the chance to be physically around humans outside the Nocturnal Circles.

I realise time has passed, my plan was to go back to exercises but my mind got lost in old memories I suppose. About the farm, and the meals in my father’s house, when I was a boy. So, no more exercises to me. I have the time to dress myself, and must not indulge in prolong that in order to delay the inevitable.

Arrive at the proper time in the court means less attention directed to you. What is always better.

This is a ceremony to deliver praises and new positions. There is always some criminal judgement and punishment delivering in the mix, but the reason why I cannot politely decline the invitation this time is that my “elder brother” in vampiric life is getting a promotion from knight to lord, or baron, or some other Medieval Metaphor. In practical terms means more responsibility, some additional authority, and scarier people wanting to see him destroyed to make space for their own plans of ascension.

Doesn’t matters, he guided me well and kindly in my first steps out the cannels. Anatole being happy makes me happy. Is reason enough to swallow my discomfort and take the ride to our Duke’s Castle.

My human neighbours cannot open the door of their houses after liradown. That’s a wise precaution against vampires who can influence human minds from distance. Sometimes through dreams. It locks automatically and only opens when Lira is up again. That’s one security measure I excluded from my system, of course.

I walk some few hundred steps through the corridor, take the access to a window that can be opened, and let myself fall for a couple thousand floors.

Less graciously than I would like my body connects the floor at the high bridge I aimed for. You would expect I would have learned to fall on my feet after centuries jumping from high grounds. You would be mistaken.

After cleaning the dirt from my hands and the mud from my hair I run for a couple of minutes, and take a train for five stations, before doing a second jump that places me a dozen meters from the parking lot where a chopper is waiting to take me and more a dozen other vampires. Most of them still have the smell of cannels emanating from them. The angry, and hungry, eyes looking for trouble.

_Here comes the Human!_ says a girl how is probably enjoying this chance to show up her knowledge about the social fauna. I do not remember her face, or smell, but she is wearing a symbol in her bracelet that lets people know who is her preceptor.

She is not here, this “elder sister” what usually means she trusts this children. Enough to not expect the newborn children of the night to pick a fight and end up destroyed. Lucy is older than me, about a hundred years, and she has reputation as preceptor. Also, she is a good diplomat, people say. Great in making friends, and keep them. Not a bad fighter either, what always help.

I wonder if Lady Lucy told that puppy that I was a safe target to bulling. Someone she could bother and disrespect, a little, to look brave and scary in the eyes of other youngsters.

Knowing the woman, she probably didn’t forgot to mention how far those jokes could go, before the game stop being safe. And start being potentially fatal.

Another four vampires arrive after me, and we take fly.

I keep ignoring the jokes and eventual insults. No one here knows me, no one here looks interesting enough to justify an attempt of cheap chat.

Surprising me the thrall driving us makes a turn and enters a tunnel in an industrial tower before leave the urban area. Usually those transports go right to the Duke’s winter castle. For it to make a stop we must be picking someone who is important enough to justify the exclusive treatment. And yet, not important enough for a private transport to be arranged.

I was wondering who could this person be, and if was someone I had met or not.

The person who entered the chopper seconds after the doors open was certainly someone familiar to me. And to all vampires in the city who are around my age. Not to those nocturnal children.

The girl had now clearly consolidated position as the leader in this small environment. Motivated by the sense of self-confidence she got throwing cigarette filters on me she raised herself and repeated the move on this newly arrived fellow.

The long black hair, straight as a ruler, awoke and moved from the back of Sasha. Like a poisonous snake, but in literal sense much faster than any living snake was ever able to move. It pierced, cut and triturated the arm that was doing the movement of push the cigarette to throw it. My senses can follow in detail things that happen faster than human senses would ever register. I almost saw the cutting blade of hair that separated the girls shoulder from her. The one that severed her ear I missed completely, until I notice the bleeding piece of flesh kicking against a window.

Sasha noticed my presence, and came to speak with me. He is a decade younger than me, actually, but a sort of popstar in our generation. Not because of his round golden framed glasses or his musical talent improvising with a saxophone. He mastered really fast a difficult and useful variant of vampiric power. Something few have a talent for. King Vampires aside.

In theory the Vampire Kings have all the powers vampires created by him can develop. In reality they don’t manifest all those powers until they became aware of them. What I suppose is one reason why the Courts search for humans with potential to go deeper in some specific directions.

I imagined he would be close to the top of hierarchy in our Nocturnal Court by now. Thinking about this, actually, makes sense he isn’t.

The man is about as opposed to Nocturnal Politics as I am. Obviously not for the same reason. It is just not nearly “Nocturnal” enough for his taste, I conjecture.

_Nice to see you again, Walter. Still going for that name?

Most vampires pick a “cannel” name when they leave the cannels, and keep it. Or change it to a “nocturnal” name. Both are usually chosen from Earthling literature pre-Baby Steps Age. Names of vampires from fiction. Few people go back to the names they used to have when they were human, when they recover their human memories.

_I am not likely to change this by now. Sasha. Nice to see you too. Last time was nineteen years ago, I think. The end of the war, when the Obsidian Court felt for good.

_Nice nights!

_Intense, no doubt.

The Obsidian King was created by the same Elder Vampire benefactor who created our King. When conflict started between them this alien could have mediated the territorial dispute. Instead, he gave the kings permission to solve things between themselves. No interference. It led to 40 years of war between our courts, accelerating to a climax in the last two years of that period. When we lost more than 60% of our court, and they ended destroyed almost without exception.

Things have been comparatively peaceful, and slow, since Obsidian War ended. However, we are still collectively weaker than we used to be before it started.

Sasha was already a legendary warrior back them, before the war, but his reputation improved fast. In the war he was able to kill several vampires considerably older than him, in singular combat. Rumour suggest he drinks shadow blood. However, those who do became erratic and fall prey to violent emotions, gradually degenerating. The price for immense power and fast improvement. Sasha’s phlegmatic ways don’t match the image of someone who has been consuming shadow blood for decades.

_Times are changing. Soon. We need to talk about that, in the nearest convenient future. Things may become even more intense than they where back them. I am not sure if you are aware.

_I cannot say I am, no.

The young vampire lady was on the floor. Still trying to understand why her shoulder was not healing. Why there was so much pain.

Her face, in the side where the ear was lost, was turning grey and losing form. Certainly her body was too. She was not beautiful before that, she was normal, but now she looked really bad. The smell coming from her was of rotten flesh and decomposing shadows.

I saw vampires more than half-thousand years older get so debilitated by Sasha’s poison that we managed to kill them. Others had to flee from us, despite being much older and much more powerful than we were. In time they would recover, but the puppy vampire fresh from the cannels had no chance.

Without help she would be gone by the time the helicopter reached open sky again.

_Is Lady Lucy included in your plans for this imminent war?

I asked. Hopping to direct his attention to the bracelet in the girl’s remaining wrist. Or to Lucy’s smell in her protégé. However, the second was hidden now, bellow the stronger melody of decomposition.

_Lucy the Harpy?_ this is another vampire lady. Older than the one I had in mind, and famous for the majestic wings that she can grow on her back. To fly absurdly fast, and with supernatural control over her movements.

_ Lucy Silvertong.

I was hoping to avoid being direct about the subject. However, soon nothing would be left to talk about.

Fortunately the warrior realized what I was trying to say.

_I have not considered the old lady in my plans, no. Not my first choice for a war-pack, to be honest.

He said. However, I could feel the change in the air already. He had cancelled the poison already. Would take time for her to start healing, and blood, but she was no longer in immediate danger.

_She’s a good fighter.

_True, many are better but she is above average for her harvest. However, you must consider the needs of the Court, not just the convenience of our little cell. The best use for someone like Lucy is not in the frontlines. Where we both belong.

I am not sure if I “belong” in the frontlines. I am sure I don’t want to be anywhere near one, ever again. Nevertheless, I understood what he was saying.

_So, another war?

His smile was all the answer I needed to know that was serious.

Not something to be talked in the presence of strangers, much less puppies.

_Still playing the drums?

_Drums are not to play, really. Just a tool that provides the ground that makes easier for musicians play their instruments together. But yes, sometimes I still work the drums.

_Glad to know! I heard that you have your own apartment now. In a human neighbourhood, allegedly.

_Surprises you?

_I suppose not! You do like to play with your food. No harm in that, of course. Doesn’t make you any less competent, when things became serious. I never knew why so many people gets the impression it does. Where they take it from, can you imagine?

_I suppose compassion is not usually considered to be compatible with the necessities of frontline. In wars between vampires.

_”Compassion”…? Interesting choice of word. Maybe you have a point.

I didn’t necessarily liked what his tone and face was suggesting.

The “Maybe they really MISTAKE your fetishes for something authentic, like real compassion” was too close to surface. And somehow his choice to keep it implicit and unspoken made the accusation worse.

Of course, in his mind it was no accusation. Quite the opposite.

That sort of conversation forces me to remember why I distanced myself from Sasha and the others as soon as the Obsidian ended. If another war is about to brake then, perhaps, would be time for me to reconnect with the pack.

We work together, in the situation of a war between vampires, very well. Sasha is not someone I like to have around, normally. Despite that, I could not hope for a better person to protect my back in a serious battle. We had a good pack, our survival is evidence of how good it was. Perhaps we don’t like each other all that much, in times of peace. If those times are about to end that’s about to became purely academical.

Because we will need each other, once more.

We spoke about music for the rest of the fly. The only subject we can talk about without step on each other’s feet or thinking twice before saying each word.

The girl didn’t moved from where she had felt. No one else spoke anything, or gave any sign of wanting to help the girls who was being treated like a leader. Possibly they had met just moments before I enter the vehicle.

We reached our destination half-hour after we leave the Industrial Building.

I wanted to find a place where Sasha and I could talk. That was impossible, because a thrall was waiting for me. Minerva. The trusted secretary of Joshua, my former preceptor and the reason for me to be here.

Her presence in person told me that was an urgent and delicate matter. I excused myself with Sasha, who didn’t showed any distress. He rarely shows any distress, to be fair, no matter the circumstances. Still, I don’t think he was worried about a delay of a few hours. Good portion of our court was in this castle, we could feel it. The king himself was very likely here as well.

Makes no sense to attack a court in a moment like that. Before risk a direct against a Duke’s Castle any enemy would have to weaken us considerably. Probably with ambushes in the streets and other traps. Weak after week, for decades.

I was assuming the enemy was another Vampire King, or Queen. Almost always that is the case. Shadows are the other enemy vampires have, aside vampires disputing territory. Shadows neither plot nor make wars. They are powerful, but they are predatorial beasts. Predictable in their infinite starvation.