Exsanguination

  Phillip shook his head. “When it comes out, humans will perceive us as being even more of a threat. Diminish their status? It could very well cause all sorts of problems.”

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed. “And what did vampires evolve from?”

  The doctor sighed. “That’s where things become very cloudy. While there were a variety of species of proto-humans, all of which disappeared over time, nothing of a proto-vampire has ever been found – no trace of a primitive version of your species,” her lips compressed. “Look, I’m a scientist and, as such, I dislike conjecture but, in the absence of facts, it may be all I have.”

  “Go ahead and theorize,” Vanessa nodded.

  She looked around the room. “It is possible that your species didn’t originate here on earth.”

  Nikki laughed. “Woo hoo! You mean we’re space aliens?”

  “I know. When you put it that way, it sounds silly but your existence doesn’t fit with anything Darwinian. If you’re not from here, you’re from somewhere else,” she shrugged.

  “Great,” Phillip grumbled, “now we’re going to be seen as an invasive species!”

  “But you’re only publishing facts, correct?” Vanessa’s eyebrows raised.

  Doctor Hill nodded. “Of course. I would never consider postulating anything beyond the facts.”

  “No aliens or anything of that sort?”

  “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t consider speculation.”

  “So, we’re still left with primacy.”

  The doctor nodded. “You are.”

  Azar’s brow furrowed. “At one time, doctor, we were quite vulnerable and not nearly as powerful as we are now. Is there something that accounts for that?”

  “Yes. One might first think of evolution but, due to the way in which you . . . reproduce . . . sorry,” she frowned, “that isn’t an appropriate term . . . proliferate, adaptation is the only reasonable possibility.”

  Vanessa spread her hands. “So, who is it you think would try to stop you?”

  “If my boss had a boss, which is very likely, then he or she would.

  She nodded. “So what do you need to publish this information?”

  “Just my laptop at my apartment. Everything is on that. I’ve been working on this for some time.”

  “Well,” Vanessa sighed, “let’s go get it. It would be nice if there would be no resistance,” she looked around. “Same teams.”

  Everything went off quite smoothly. The apartment was still locked when they arrived and the doctor’s laptop was where she expected it to be. They collected it and packed some of her personal effects.

  “Should I take this to mean I’ll be staying at Smythe house for the time being?”

  “Well,” Vanessa responded as she got back behind the wheel, “it will be the safest place for you. Not much happens other than religious nuts shooting at us or trying to blow us up.”

  The doctor frowned. “I don’t know if I should feel reassured or not.”

  Vanessa laughed. “They’re very bad in their attempts. Usually, they just get themselves killed for their trouble,” she tilted her head. “What did your superior mean when she said everything would be destroyed? That society would end if this was revealed.”

  “She believes . . . believed,” she corrected herself, “that once this data established the fact that vampires are an actual species, only related to humans in appearance, it would change everything in society. It will, without a doubt, but,” she waved her hand, “that’s none of my affair.”

  “Change what?”

  “I’m sure that most people have already been made nervous as your powers have been exposed. There may be many that have yet to be seen . . . I don’t know. With all of that, and then it’s revealed that you’re a distinct species . . .”

  Phillip interrupted. “The average Joe is going to begin feeling like a Christian Scientists with appendicitis.”

  Vanessa gave him a confused look and Nikki spoke. “Surgery is against their religion.”

  “Ah,” she replied as she took out her phone and dialled. After a moment the call was answered. Vanessa smiled.

  “I need you over here now, Blake. Something has come up.”

  Pause.

  “No, it can’t wait. This is why I have you on retainer, Blake. How often have you actually done work for me? Right. Never. Get over here,” she disconnected the call.

  Phillip frowned and spoke softly. “Who is Blake?”

  “He’s my barrister, darling. I pay him a retainer and he’s never done a stitch of work for me. It’s time he earned his keep,” she raised her eyebrows and looked at the doctor. “Are barristers a separate species?” There were chuckles around the room.

  Vanessa’s brow furrowed and she spoke to Doctor Hill. “There’s another calculation in this mess.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You mentioned other species of what you called ‘proto-humans’ that seemed to disappear for no apparent reason.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “I think I know what happened to them.”

  “Oh, my God,” the woman said slowly.

  Vanessa nodded. “Most likely we hunted them to extinction all the way up to and including the Neanderthals. It doesn’t take rocket science to make the connection and I don’t think it will play well with the human population.”

  An hour later, Robert showed Mr Blake into the drawing room.

  XXXVI

  Mr Blake was unaccustomed to keeping such strange hours and it showed on his face as he yawned. “What is so important, Countess?” he asked as he accepted the glass of whiskey from Vanessa.

  She gestured toward the doctor. “That is Doctor Janet Hill and she is writing a paper for publication in the Journal of Palaeontology. It promises to create quite the stir. Do you see that skull on the mantle?”

  Mr Blake got close to the artefact and squinted. “An uncle of yours?”

  “Very humorous. It’s over half a million years old, Mr Blake. Hundreds of thousands of years older than any of the first modern humans. We, vampires, are, in fact, a completely separate species from humans.”

  “Hmmph,” the man grunted.

  Phillip spoke up. “I just don’t think that we’re descended from something alien – creatures from another planet.”

  “We’re not,” Azar said flatly as she got up from a desk and pointed at the open laptop. “The sons of God came to earth and mated with the daughters of men. We are the result – the Nephilim.”

  “I’m not buying the religious stuff,” Nikki responded. “No God . . . no sons of God . . . no invisible sky daddy . . . nothing like that.”

  Azar shrugged and chuckled. “Then we’re back to aliens.”

  Vanessa coughed. “The point is, Mr Blake, we are a completely different species. When one of us turns a human, that person becomes our species.”

  “Yes, you’ve said that before on the tele, I believe.”

  “True but this is proof positive. Hard evidence.”

  And what, if anything, do I have to do with all this.”

  “You, my illustrious barrister, along with whoever you need with you, are going to argue this before the High Court. We want legal recognition as a separate species. We no longer want to be grouped in any manner with humans. Neither criminally nor civilly.”

  Mr Blake’s brow furrowed and he began to mull it over. Finally, he sighed. “I’ll need a team.”

  “Then get one,” she responded flatly, “but you try to fleece me and I’ll have your throat.”

  He held up his hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Countess and I’ll get on this first thing tomorrow,” he began to walk to the foyer and Vanessa called after him.

  “Don’t bungle this, Blake.”

  He waved over his shoulder as he left.

  Phillip poured her a glass of wine and then one for himself. “So, what do you expect to get out of this whole mess?”

  “Right now, in some ways, we are second-class citizens. Humans s
ee us more as aberrations than anything else – defective humans. The only thing they’ve seen us do that’s extraordinary is moving very quickly. They really don’t know about the rest of our abilities. Thus, we’re not much more than oddities – useful for killing lycans but, outside of that, not much else.”

  Phillip nodded. “Pretty much accurate.”

  “If anything, it should be the other way around. The humans are, by far, the inferior species. I want to see that fact, ultimately, recognized by the authorities and the general human population as well.”

  “Don’t you think that will create resentment? They’ve been in charge a long time.”

  “Let them resent us. We’re more than able to deal with whatever may come. The days of vulnerability are gone, Phillip.”

  “I still like the Nephilim idea,” Azar sighed. “Or, there’s always the ‘descendants of Lilith theory’.

  Phillip looked at her. “You remind me of that bit of poetry from Longfellow. ‘There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid.’”

  She smiled at him and blew him a kiss.

  Phillip laughed softly and shook his head. He turned to the palaeontologist. “So, Doctor Hill, what are the odds of figuring out where this fellow came from and what kind of ancestors he might have had?”

  “She, and our odds are not very good at all. If we could find the dig site and go back to it, we might find other evidence but, barring that, we’ll likely never know.”

  He frowned. “I saw something on TV a while back. They put little pegs on the skull of an unknown person and then filled in with modelling putty or plaster or something. Then they gave it skin tone and such. It put a face to the skull. Could something like that be done to this lady?”

  She nodded. “I don’t see why not.”

  “It would be really interesting to see what she looked like.”

  “I have a colleague who does that sort of thing. I can get hold of her tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “That would be cool.”

  “I’ll have Robert move your things to your room and he’ll show you to it,” Vanessa smiled.

  “Oh, thank you. It’s been quite the exhausting day and, I’m afraid I’ll likely have nightmares about some of it.”

  “Ah, yes,” Vanessa cocked her head. “If you wish it, I can remove the memory of that from your mind.”

  “What?” the doctor’s eyes went wide. “You can do that?”

  She nodded. “If you’d like.”

  Janet shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. That’s a bit too spooky for me.”

  Vanessa smiled. “I understand. If you change your mind at any point, just let me know.”

  Three days later, on a Saturday morning, Janet Hill happily announced that her findings had been sent off to several journals in hopes of publication.

  “That’s wonderful!” Vanessa exclaimed.

  “It will be wonderful if any of them decide to publish,” the doctor sighed.

  Vanessa looked out the front window. Groundskeepers were moving this way and that, performing upkeep on the area surrounding the home. It was a significant part of the cost of maintaining the estate. She frowned and glanced at Azar, who was sitting in a comfortable stuffed chair by the fire. At her side, knelt Toady, his head resting contentedly against her thigh. Slowly, Vanessa smiled. Turning back from the windows, she clapped her hands together.

  “Tomorrow, being Sunday, I am going to be the guest speaker at the Church of the Divine Stigmata.”

  “What?” Phillip looked at her in shock.

  “Oh,” she waved her hand, “they don’t know it yet. I’m going to lay down the law and we’re going to handle things a bit differently going forward. Azar, I want you to come and it’s important that you bring Toady with you,” she frowned. “You don’t, perchance, know his real name, do you?”

  “I think one of his fellow terrorists called him Ollie,” she turned to Toady, tapping lightly on the side of his head. “What’s your real name?”

  “Toady.”

  Azar sighed. “Before your name was Toady, what was it?”

  “Ollie, my Lady.”

  Vanessa slowly walked to the two and pulled a chair up for herself.

  “Toady, do you have a family? Parents? Brothers? Sisters?”

  The man nodded.

  “I see. Would you like to go back to them?”

  He quickly hooked his left arm around Azar’s calf as if holding on for dear life. Trembling, he shook his head violently.

  “It’s alright, Toady,” Azar tousled his hair. “No one is going to separate us.”

  This seemed to calm him considerably and he eased his death grip on her leg.

  “I’m guessing that you’ve threaded compulsion through most of his mind, emotions, and decision making processes?”

  Azar nodded. “To the point where he can’t conceive of life without me.”

  “Good.”

  “You’ve turned him into an automaton?” Phillip asked, wincing at the thought.

  “Not at all. He’s free to make any decisions he pleases. Toady could walk out the front door right now if he chose to do so.”

  “And quickly lose his mind due to separation anxiety?”

  “Probably,” Azar shrugged and smiled. “What of it? Toady is just chock full of internal conflicts but he has one drive to which all others are sublimated - the drive to please me,” Azar chuckled as she leaned over and kissed the top of Toady’s head.

  Phillip thought for a moment and brought up one of his new absorbed, less savoury memories.

  “Still wrapped up in your cloak of human morality?” she laughed lightly. “Fortunately, your approval is irrelevant and, I would remind you, this man was just one of a team that was going to blow us all to bits.”

  “No,” he frowned and shook his head. I’m okay with it now.”

  He turned to Vanessa. “So, what are you going to tell those people tomorrow?”

  “That we’re not going to kill them but that there will be consequences if they attempt any hostile action or speak out against us.”

  “What kind of consequences?”

  Vanessa led him over to the front windows and gestured outside. “See those men out there? Raking leaves? Pulling weeds?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I suspect you’ve no idea what that service costs me on a yearly basis.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “What if . . . in return for all that work, all I had to do was feed them and put a roof over their heads?”

  Phillip sighed. “You’re talking about slavery?”

  “Oh please. Humans are already slaves. Slaves to their jobs, to alcohol, to their desires. Look at Toady,” she nodded toward the man who knelt at Azar’s side and Phillip turned to look at him. He was smiling up at Azar. “Do you think he has the slightest idea that he’s, in fact, owned?” Vanessa continued. “The man is as happy as a clam! Before this, he was a slave to his pastor and to an entity that doesn’t exist.”

  “He’s under compulsion, Vanessa,” Phillip grumbled. “His desires are artificially created.”

  “Do you imagine they feel any different to him? News flash. They’re as real to him as your desires are to you and you need to get your priorities regarding humans and vampires straight,” she said, sharply.

  He looked at her, stunned. She’d never snapped at him before. Vanessa saw the expression on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “It’s just that I have no problem subjugating people who try to harm us. Compulsion eliminates the threat and makes those people useful.”

  “Doing what you tell them to do,” Phillip responded.

  “Precisely. If you’re going to act like an animal, you’re going to be treated like one even to the point of ownership. I can’t imagine the memories you took from Azar have faded already but, if you want a real tour de force . . .?�
�� she held up her wrist toward his mouth. “I’ve got a few that will curl your hair and not all of them are thousands of years old.”

  Maybe that’s what he needed, he thought. Phillip bit her wrist and a small amount of blood trickled into his mouth. Based on how people were dressed, more recent scenes were only a few hundred years old and they were, without exaggeration, horrific. One, he thought, would stay in his mind forever. A young woman – a vampire – screamed as she was broken on the wheel, her bones smashed to splinters by a huge man with an iron bar. Phillip felt nauseated by the memory. He covered his face.

  “Humans,” Vanessa’s voice reached his ears. “Like any species, even our own, most are reasonably good. It is the bad that needs to be dealt with and I have no problem enslaving those to keep them under control and protect us from harm.”

  He took a deep breath and nodded. “You can count on me.”

  “I never really had a doubt, darling.”

  XXXVII

  At Vanessa’s request, everyone dressed conservatively on Sunday morning. She, Phillip, Azar, Toady, and Nikki loaded into the Escalade and headed for the church. When they arrived, they took seats in the back and no one seemed to notice or recognize them – something that astounded Phillip. Surely these people had televisions. Then again, he thought, are they the kind likely to watch the Susan Harris show? Probably not. Approximately halfway through the service, the pastor began his sermon. It was hellfire and brimstone and a lot of it was directed against the evil ones of society – those blood-sucking demons – the vampires. Vanessa let him spout for a while and then stood up. With a determined gait, she slowly walked to the front and stopped as she stood next to him. Firmly gripping the cross that hung on his chest, he turned to look at her.

  Her eyes met his. “Go and sit with your congregation, pastor,” she said in a firm voice so the individuals in the front row could hear clearly.

  He looked confused for a couple of seconds and then stepped down and found a seat several rows back.

  Looking at the few hundred people in the building, Vanessa spied a young girl at the end of a row, just at the middle aisle. She was, at most, eight years old and stood next to two older siblings. She smiled at the girl and winked. Then, looking up, she spoke.