Bloodlines

by Drew D'Amato

  “But—” Vlad continued as he got closer to Pacami, “—I can tell you these powers drain our important power source, fresh blood.”

  Vlad took a small knife off his desk that he used to open envelopes, but was sharper than an envelope opener. He grabbed Pacami’s right hand and sliced the top of it leaving about an inch-long cut. Vlad put his mouth to the hand and licked the blood. Pacami should have felt pain, but watching the vampire drink his blood took his mind off it.

  “I needed that.”

  Vlad released Pacami’s hand. Pacami held his hand, feeling the pain that now rushed back into his consciousness.

  “That is the most pain I will ever cause you, but you needed to see that demonstration.”

  Vlad sat back down in his chair behind the desk.

  “These powers cannot be used when in direct sunlight, which is why I closed the blinds. It’s not a day/night type of thing; it’s about sunlight/no sunlight. Inside, out of the light of the sun I can use them right now, but if we were outside I would be powerless, but not human. I couldn’t be strangled to death, or die from a high fall. I just cannot use my powers. The folklore has been mixed up and confused over time; however, some of the folklore is true. For instance, we cannot cast any reflections, or be photographed.”

  Vlad rotated the turned off TV on his desk toward Pacami. Then he walked over and stood in front of it. Pacami noticed that he saw himself in it, but not his new acquaintance, even though Vlad stood closer to it.

  “I could show you in an actual mirror, but I don’t own one. Maybe that will help prove my point. We are vulnerable to living water, fire, and silver in our hearts. That will kill us.”

  “Not a stake through the heart?”

  “I think that idea got created because of my life as a human. People believed that since I impaled so many in my life that to kill me you had to put a wooden stake through my heart, but that is not true. Fire and running water—water like oceans and seas—kills us, because I think you know that they both represent the Holy Ghost. Silver kills us because of Judas. Silver was what Judas received to betray Jesus Christ, and so this metal when placed in our hearts betrays our immortality. It is the unholy metal.”

  “I also heard about decapitation in a lot of the old myths. What would happen if your head was chopped off, would it grow back?”

  “No, our limbs do not grow back. I will demonstrate so that you can see what does happen though.”

  Vlad grabbed the same small knife he used to cut Pacami. He held the blade of the knife over his left index finger. He curled his other fingers back so that only his index was under the blade.

  “This is going to hurt a bit, but for the sake of science.” Vlad winked at Pacami and then chopped off his finger. Not much blood sprayed out and the wound quickly self cauterized. He held the severed finger in his right hand.

  “Now, if nothing happened, I would go through all of eternity with one less finger. But once the limb gets close, like within a few centimeters to where the appendage was…” Vlad put the severed end of the finger next to the knuckle where it had come from. Then Pacami watched in amazement as skin from both the knuckle and finger sprung out toward each other. In front of his eyes the finger fused back to the knuckle without leaving a scar. “It is as if nothing ever happened.”

  Vlad opened and closed his hand to get the feeling back before he continued.

  “Our limbs have the ability to reattach, so decapitation is not really practical. If I chopped off the head of a vampire, and somehow that head was put back on the neck, the vampire would come back to life. You would have to chop off the head and then destroy it, or keep the body parts forever apart from each other. This is truer to what the old myths of decapitating a vampire state—that the head had to be buried separate from the rest of the body.

  “Silver, fire, running water, and sunlight are our four main weaknesses, representing the four elements—earth, fire, water, and wind. A crucifix on our skin will burn us but will not do much more. Holy water has the same effect. I have no any idea where the hell this garlic notion came from, though. I love it on my pasta.”

  “So if crucifixes and holy water hurt you, it must have been painful to sit in a church?”

  “It was, but I never touched any of them so I felt no pain, just a little queasy.”

  “But why did you risk it? Just to see me, to see if I would keep my mouth shut about what happened that night.”

  “Not just that. I want to tell you the truth about vampires, not what books or what Hollywood has taught you over the years.”

  Vlad looked out his favorite window at the ocean.

  “I am the third son of Vlad the second, otherwise known as Vlad Dracul. He was a favorite of King Sigismund of Hungary who later became the Holy Roman Emperor. Sigismund formed a secret order for his knights and brave warriors called The Order of the Dragon, a group sworn to protect the Catholic Church. My father was asked to join this order a little before my birth in 1431. On Sundays they would wear this.” He opened his arms in a wide position to show off the outfit.

  “My father was respected in the Order. So much so, that he was given the name Dracul which meant dragon, as if the order was on his behalf. The a, as an ending, means son of. So that is how I have the title Dracula. In my old language dracul also meant devil. So Dracula also literally means, son of the devil.”

  Vlad stood up.

  “The Order of the Dragon was created from the ashes of another powerful order, and had in their possession the same power this earlier order had. The original order was the Knights of Templar, and the power they had was the Blood of the Betrayer. The blood of Judas Iscariot. The Templars had acquired this blood during the First Crusade. This blood gave them the power to create vampires. They created vampires and the vampires persuaded the kings of Europe and the Church to abide by their commands. That was how they rose to power.”

  “Is that somehow tied to the Holy Grail?” Pacami asked. “Was it really Sang real—royal blood?”

  “Well they really called it the Blood of the Betrayer, but yes, it was referred to as royal blood or sang real to hide what it truly was. It’s not a coincidence that after a thousand years of Christianity, this concept of a Holy Grail didn’t come about until the after the start of the Crusades in the 12th century. It was a spin job, a misinformation campaign. Let people think it was the Cup of Christ that was their great secrect, and not the Blood of Judas that can make one a vampire.”

  “How did they get the Blood of Judas?”

  “He gave it to them.”

  “What?” Pacami said shocked. “Judas hung himself.”

  “There is a lot of ambiguity as to the fate of Judas. The conventional answer is that yes, he did hang himself. That comes from the Gospel of Matthew. But according to the Acts of Apostles he purchased a field with the thirty pieces of silver he sold out Jesus for. When he came to the land, he fell head first, and his bowels burst open and poured out. It mentions nothing of his hanging.

  “The truth is the idea of him hanging himself is a work of fiction, along with some other parts of the Bible. There have been changes made to the New Testament over the years, more of it happening before the invention of the printing press, so most of the public didn’t even notice it. Some of the changes are just misspellings and some involve even the more famous stories, like Jesus and the stoning of the prostituite, where he asks who is without sin to cast the first stone. That’s not in any of the oldest texts of the Bible at all. There is actually a study being done now in New Orleans to document all the changes to the New Testament.

  “These changes, additions, and eliminations to the Bible also affected the fate of Judas too. This idea of him hanging himself was an addition. You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to know that the excerpt doesn’t make any sense. You just have to know about the term ‘hanging’ itself. The earliest know use of the word for that meaning was in A.D. 1300.”

  “But there it is, right in the Gospel of Matthe
w: and went and hanged himself.”

  “Yes, and that was added in the early 14th century, along with the deletion in Acts of what happened right before to Judas to make him fall and his bowels burst open.”

  “But his bowels did burst open?”

  “Yes, and they did pour out onto the land bought with the thirty pieces of silver he got from betraying Jesus. That land is named Akeldama, or ‘field of blood.’ It is to the south of the valley of Hinnom. The Templars found this land, and built a large building on the south side of Hinnom that they used to bury pilgrims killed during the Crusades. While there, they also found Judas—the Prime vampire.”

  Vlad could see the questions arise in Pacami’s eyes. He sat back down and tried to explain as quickly and as clearly as he could.

  “The Prime vampire was created by God, not the Devil. The Devil cannot create anything, he can only tempt creations.”

  “Why would God create a creature like a vampire?” Pacami interjected. “Did he want his existence to prove that there was a divine Lord? To warn people not to go against Christ?”

  “You’re getting the cart before the horse, but I like that your mind is open. However, God did not want the world to know about Judas. He actually warned Judas not to reveal to the world his existence.”

  “Why, then there would be no more doubt that there is a God?”

  “If God wanted the world to no longer doubt his existence then he would have just come down and ended all doubt. Faith is believing in the unbelievable, once it is a fact it is no longer faith. This entire existence of us humans is a game between God and the Devil. Life is a test, sex feels great but don’t sleep around, avoid temptation, kill your son for me—Abraham, I was only kidding—these are all tests. God does not want people doing good just for the reward of Heaven, he wanted them to be good for truly being good. So Judas, when reborn, was warned that if the world learned that he existed, that he still lived, and no more doubt about the divinity of Christ, then this game of good and evil would be over, and would force The End of Days prematurely. It would also damn Judas’s soul.”

  “His soul was not damned already?”

  Vlad looked deep into the priest’s eyes. “Father, have you ever heard of the Gospel of Judas?”

  “That Gnostic text? Yes, I know about its premise, but I never read it. It’s heresy.”

  “Sometimes heresy is the truth. Do you really think the New Testament is the only word on the life of Jesus Christ? An astute study of history would show you that the Roman Empire decided over the course of many councils—not just one, like what Dan Brown would tell you, and definitely not at the Council of Nicaea—which books to include in the New Testament and which to keep out. But this was still decided by men living three to four hundred years after Christ. Could you really then decree the other books as having no sound leg to stand on?”

  “But the Gospel of Judas portrays Judas as a hero, that Jesus asked him to turn him in to the Jewish priests.”

  “And is that really hard to believe? Is it easier to believe the son of an omnipotent God was instead fooled, tricked by a mortal man, like how the four canon Gospels portray it? Jesus had to die, and someone had to turn him in. That someone was Judas, and in actuality, he made Christianity possible.”

  Vlad got up and walked to his bookcase. He took out his copy of the Gospel of Judas.

  “The name Judas actually means ‘God is praised.’ He was Jesus’s favorite apostle. The only one Jesus felt who understood ‘the mysteries of the Kingdom.’ I can tell you one of those mysteries.”

  “And what is that?”

  “God likes to make a good thing out of a bad event. He likes to take the works of the Devil and use it against him. You want a holocaust against the Jews, fine, but out of that the Jews finally returned to their homeland like it was prophesied. And so he used Satan’s temptation of Judas to turn Jesus over to the Romans, to establish Christianity.”

  “And Satan entered into Judas, who was called Iscariot, belonging to the number of the twelve. Luke 22:3,” Pacami said under his breath.

  “Yes, Satan decided to tempt Jesus’s favorite apostle Judas and turn him against Jesus so that he could be killed. But Satan’s actions were actually doing the Lord’s work. So you see, Judas himself was not evil.”

  “So why then was he punished to become a vampire? Why did he not just go to Heaven?”

  “Well, Judas was still not completely innocent. Do you have any close loved ones Father?”

  “I have a younger sister.”

  “If she was dying from cancer and asked you to end her suffering, her life, and you did it, would you still feel completely innocent?”

  “I don’t think I would even be able to do it.”

  “Why not, she asked you for it?”

  “What if a miraculous cure was discovered? And even if she still had no chance, I still don’t know if I could actually end her life.”

  “You’d feel conflicted, wouldn’t you? And so did Judas when the greatest man he ever met, the Son of God, asked him to turn him in. And in his confusion of what was the right thing to do, the Devil tempted him, and he succumbed to it. He thought he was doing the right thing, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Satan wanted Jesus dead before more knew of his message.

  “But we know that Jesus’s death had in fact made it so that all of the world—whether they believe or not—to at least know about his message. Satan’s plan had backfired, but Judas still willingly turned in an innocent man who happened to be the son of God. It was another test and he still had the free will to refuse it. So, he at the same time had done both what Christ and the Devil asked from him. An action that was both good and evil simultaneously.

  “So what could then become of Judas? He couldn’t be sent to Heaven with the blood of the Messiah on his hands, but he couldn’t be sent to hell after he was responsible for letting this Messiah prove his divinity through his resurrection.”

  “But Jesus asked him to do it according to your Gospel of Judas?” Pacami argued. “How could he be punished for obeying Christ?”

  Vlad had found the passage he was looking for in the Gospel of Judas.

  “First it is our Gospel of Judas. Second, Jesus did ask him, but he also warned him of what would happen if he did.” Vlad walked over to Pacami and pointed out a passage from the Gospel of Judas.

  Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the Kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal.

  “His fate was not necessarily a punishment, but a trial for him to reach his salvation,” Vlad continued after Pacami read it. “All greatness is not without sacrifice. Jesus also told him in this Gospel—which is not a narrative, but a series of conversations between Jesus and Judas—that he will be cursed for generations but then he will come to rule over them. Judas was told beforehand that if he did this, he would be rewarded, but he would still have to pay.”

  “So him being a vampire was a form of penance?” Pacami asked.

  “Yes, you can say that.” Vlad returned to his desk and sat down.

  “But why was he made a vampire? I can understand him walking the Earth until the End of Days as a punishment similar to what is believed to have happened to Cain, but why all this power, why does he drink blood, especially if he was to hide this from the world?”

  “What is the root of all evil Father?”

  “Money.”

  “Really, so before there was money there was no evil?”

  Pacami nodded to the point. Vlad continued.

  “The answer is power, Father Pacami. Power is the root of all evil. A dictator with a lot of power is evil, the peasants are not. You can be pretty evil if you are a king, you cannot be too evil if you are a slave. God gave Judas this power to prove his worth. He had to kill to live, now would he kill the evil or the just? He could also rule the world, he had the ability to make an army of vampires, but would he, or would he stay humble and live in the s
hadows? It was another test. That was why he was given so much power—to see what he would do with it.”

  “Now, Judas’s Gospel ends after the arrest of Jesus but does not say anything more of his fate after the arrest. Here is what happened next. Judas did accept the thirty pieces of silver from the priests, if for no other reason but to let them think that he was doing this simply for the money, and not because Christ asked this from him. He was afraid if he didn’t take the money the priests might suspect this was all part of Jesus’s plan, and then not make a martyr out of him. But after Jesus’s death, like the canonical Gospels say, he returned the blood money and it was used by the priests to buy Potter’s Field. Then the eleven other apostles who were unaware that Jesus had asked Judas to turn him over, chased Judas to this land and from there he was stoned to death. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas told Jesus he had a vision of the other eleven apostles stoning him. This in fact did come to pass. Peter hit him with a stone in his stomach, he fell, and his intestines poured out onto Akeldama and he died. The part about the apostles stoning him is what was deleted from Acts, and why it just says now that he fell and his bowels burst open.”

  “But why were those changes made?”

  “I’ll give you some time to figure it out, before I explain it. Now, when Judas awoke an angel explained to him his fate. He now needed blood to survive. If you wonder why blood and not some other part of a human, think of it as constantly needing communion for the sake of his soul. Do you not drink wine symbolic of the blood of Christ at every mass? His drinking of blood is a similar type of offering. So he was made to walk the earth until the End of Days, hated throughout the world. But, if he kept his secret from the world, was humble, and drank blood from only those who were evil—the opposite of drinking the blood of Christ in essence—he would be let into the kingdom of Heaven at the Final Judgement.