Blood

We say that “vampires don’t bleed because blood likes to be inside vampires” that is a metaphor, of course, but is not an exaggeration. Is not that vampires bleed slower than humans, or not at all, because we lack blood pressure, reality is, something else entirely.

If you cut your finger and purposefully avoid the healing process, they you place a small quantity of human or animal blood on a rule, and keep your open cut some 30 centimetres from the blood, after a couple minutes you will be able to measure the movement of the blood in direction to you. Even if the rule is inclined and the inclination would take the liquid on the opposite direction.

Older we became, stronger that effect is. When someone like our ‘uncle Bob’, two and a half million years of experience as a vampire, enters a room where a slaughter has happened. You hear the blood vibrating. If he has any wound on his skin red rivers flow up walls on his direction. Like tentacles going after the forbidden orifices of Japanese high-school girls in those comic books you enjoy. Hentai, or whatever. That is not a power, just an element of vampiric condition. Those humans who hunt vampire hoping to drive us into extinction sometimes use this to identify vampires trying to pass as humans.

There is a vampiric power that uses this specific property in an interesting way. “Trickster Seed” they call it. A vampire with this seed developed can teleport drops of blood from one or more people nearby directly to his, or her, hearth. Target can be one individual, or everybody blood-source present in reach. It is a trick. Except in extreme cases of immensely powerful elders who have dedicated a lot of effort to sharp this power the volume of blood that can be taken in a second is not significant enough to make difference in combat.

It is a very discreet trick even most elder vampires never notice when someone use it against them. To take blood from someone much older than you is hard, but possible. Of course, like most vampiric power, having the power developed gives you the best possible defence against it, when you are the target.

Ongoing debate exists about whether or not it is a power worth developing. Because vampire houses use their blood to build and spread bioweapons. Designed to cripple or destroy anyone who drinks their blood. Users of trickster seed are particularly vulnerable to those, when they sip from vampires from other houses, or from their blood thralls. Some situations exist when the power brings significant enough advantage to compensate that.

When your body was completely burned by sunlight or by fire, most vampires will stay powerless as a statue of petrified charcoal until someone drops blood on them. Those with this power slowly recover if any sources of blood exist in their reach. Also, they awake considerably better from their long sleep periods.

If you are good enough, and the combat lasts long enough, and there are enough sources of blood in reach and you are confident that you don’t need to worry about being poisoned drinking from all sources you can reach. Yes, under those circumstances the trickster seed may represent a significant advantage.

Also, of course, if you happen to be someone like Caroline Golden-Coin. She is a Appriser, one of the vampires with the power to identify the blood seeds, awaken or not, in the blood of humans and vampires. This power provides one of the best layers of defence against poisons and bioweapons transmissible by blood. The trickster power grants enough blood for the appriser to make its reading.

Also, Carol has the Alchemist Seed, the one used to make most the poisons and bioweapons capable to affect vampires. Her appraisal seed allows her to discreetly spy the defences and the offensive capacities of other houses. In order to have time to create counter measures for her people.

Born from the human side of the Golden-Coin family in the year 1417 she was identified as the most promising candidate to a sitting among the immortals, since her uncle Urtys, 80.000 years before. She as living up to the expectations until 1917, when an alliance between 3 rival families resulted in the slaughter that almost completely erased the Golden-Coins.

As only survival, she was able to escape destruction hiding among the undesirable and the lowlifes, at the border of civilized nocturnal society. She lost her mind, or is pretending to be insane.

Those who almost extinguished the Golden-Coin may not think she is high priority but they also never stopped searching for her, to finish the job and eliminate any risk of she finding a path for vengeance. Being in that situation, and having such useful powers, make her an ideal candidate for this vampiric house we are working to stablish.

For now we have the Extraterrestrial Elder Vampire, based in Italian by passion and by choice. Uncle Bob, or Bobborgorru Thashyival, remains a guest. Still thinking about our offer. Then, of course, we have you and the rest of the people from home. You are the only one who accepted the offer to turned into a vampire, so far.

We really could use another vampire. One with such a great portfolio, and some centuries of experience, would be reason for celebration.

Unfortunately the Italian could not come with me. I was still getting used with this intra-cranial cell phone she got us. Talk with people inside my mind, access different layers of internet, all those possibilities, is overwhelming. I still cannot entirely believe there is no magic involved in any of it. No “extra-dimensional technology” I mean.

“Supernatural” being only another word for thing gifted to us by the Creator Race.

Sorry, I am a bit nervous here! The Italian send me the maps reach this place. I am somewhere in the north of Berlin, but this is one of those ruins we would not be able to see when we were human. I think. Some long-forgotten battle ground between vampires, tainted with stuff that make it fall in the blind-spot of human cognition. Has a sinister atmosphere, this place.

I would ratter not be alone here. Least have someone to talk makes it easier. Not really need to speak anything is convenient too. I am trying to be furtive here.

Easy for you to say I am being ridiculous! You are sitting comfortable in this Italian mansion right now. I am the one following the image of a holographic 3D map to try locate a safe house in those WW2 ruins consumed by supernatural energies I would ratter not think about.

I know that. I may not be defenceless, I may even be a uniquely blessed vampire, that do not change the fact that I have no experience with this sort of negotiation.

Most vampires a million years old may not be as powerful as I am. Regardless of that, about any vampire knows what there are doing better than me right now. I am improvising here, and I don’t think I am doing a splendid job, let me tell you!

No, wait. I think that is the mark I was supposed to look for. Somewhere in that direction should be the door that leads to the basement. Where the entrance to the tunnels is.

Yeap! Here it is, I think. Those are definitely stairs going down.

Sorry, I have another call. The Italian.

“Hello, my dear king and husband.”

“Nice talk to you, V. I have not yet found miss Caroline.”

“About that, love. I have some updates to you. Actually.”

“My attention is all yours”

“Caroline Golden-Coin is no longer in Germany, looks like. She left this area couple weeks ago. I can no longer find her. The good news is that her laboratory is still there, few meters ahead, bellow your current position”

“How that helps us?”

“Oh. There was a group of local hunters surrounding the place, tracking her. I believe they are now surrounding you. Three groups, according to my orbital drone. 24 hunters close to your position, they probably have traps planted around this entire place, and are now closing for the killing.”

“I fail to identify the silver line in this information”

“You have mastered using the Puppeteer Seed on dozens of hundreds of rats, a cat, and five Doberman dogs. You are stuck in that. A horse or a bear would not do you much good by this point, you needed a real challenge. To use your newly acquired powers against an actual treat”

“I am not killing human beings, V! Certainly not on purpose.”

“Well, it is too late to walk away from this. Hunters hardly give up an ambush after they have managed to get that close. You can always try to talk your way out of it. Use diplomacy.”

“I though you have said that vampire hunters are fanatic zealots who want nothing more than destroy vampires.”

“That is my experience, but it should not prevent you from trying”

Somewhere by my side there was a low explosion, and immediately I felt the steel line against my neck.

They prepared this ambush for a vampire half a thousand years old, a woman, and one who does not have stronger physical capacities than the average female vampire at her age. As far as basic physical capacities are concerned, I am the equivalent to a vampire one million years old.

Sure, I am immensely incompetent in the use of my capacities. Still, the line they prepared to decapitate Miss Caroline is not having the expected effect here. The bombs explode in sequence. Just to push me ahead, to fall in another trap.

Fuck that! I can still not hear their tough, my mind potential is supposed to be on the same level of my physical capacities. I am useless with that, still. Cannot manage the simples command looking my target directly in the eyes.

I broke some lines in that net they have dropped on me, but there are three layers of it, and then they start using flamethrowers.

Vampire hunters make their plans carefully, seeking to not use too many explosives. Because they know they need the vampire’s heart intact. Only that way they can expose it to sunlight in the morning and destroy the vampire for good. However, I am fairly sure that this people carry additional toys to deal with unexpected circumstances.

Experient in situations like that, their pack leaders must have noticed I am not who they expected to catch tonight.

I try to catch some breath, in order to talk with them. The air is full with something that burns my lungs. Vampires do not need air to stay alive, but the sensation of having fire in my lungs is still extremely painful. I pass out for instants.

They have me surrounded. Machine guns now. I cannot be sure how many.

Only 3 of them are .50, I suppose the ammunition was fabricated to pierce military combat cars heavy armour. They are painful. I don’t think they are going deep in my flesh.

I realize now, if this continue those human hunters may find a way to actually destroy me. I didn’t came prepared for a fight, I am not even half full of blood. If surrender was an option, I would do that. Instead, I push forward. Too many lines, too many cables.

I may be strong, but I am not heavier than I was as a human. Weight counts more than we realize when we try to push something back and open our passage.

Something corrosive, sulphuric acid if I am not mistaken.

I am still healing as fast as I am hurt, but this is not annoying. This is torture.

More explosions. My clothes are gone, my shoes too.

The floor open under my feet.

I desperately need time! A moment of peace. To recover, to think.

Without more hesitation, almost without thinking, I push them out. The rats. All of them.

Blood, turning into sewer rats, their tiny independent brains, will and personality, back and manifested. Not really alive, undead versions of themselves, but identical in every detail. Moved by irresistible will to obey me. Puppets. Running by themselves, dodging the traps, attacking the humans with suicidal furry. I feel the blood in each rodent’s mouth. I am them. They are me.

Many are destroyed, just to came back to me. I can keep summoning them again and again. Instead, I push the dogs from my dark, isolate, mental core. They emerge from my blood and shadows.

Their presence, somehow, has a tranquilizing effect on me.

The hunters are strong, brave, well equipped. They don’t give up immediately. I finally manage to free myself from the nets. Climb up, the claws and the balance of that cat.

A vampire hunter invests against me, with a machete. Half bling by anger, half trying to escape. Not knowing the right direction to do so. He is my first human victim. And the first human I consume, entirely, he dissolves in my blood and mind.

I cannot deal with his mind right now, it is closed to me by his mind-shield discipline.

Three of my dogs are gone, destroyed by fire or by explosions, the other two will not last longer. Most the rats are destroyed too. Back in my being. I push them all out again.

Start moving, start hunting those who had tried to destroy me.

Things evolve fast. Feels like eternity and on the same time, I was surprised by the consumed line of events as if past and future had been chewed out of shape like bubble gum.

I take my fly back to Italy.

Physically, nothing has changed in me.

However, 61 human minds are screaming now inside me. The hunters, all of those in the front-lines. Some of their backup and logistical support. Their will still challenging mine, their resistance dissolving in my being. I feel sick but on the same time it is the most transcendent and gratifying sensation I ever felt.

I shall know everything each one of them knew, make their mind-shield art mine, understand their unbreakable hate for our kind. Use that understanding in my own benefit. In the benefit of my family.

So, this is my life now. I am beginning to feel in my blood what the vampiric condition has in stock for me.