“So why tell me this now?”
“Because I love you and I want you to know the full truth about me. There must be no further secrets between us, Edwina, none at all. I do not want you looking at me in horror one morning after we’ve been married for thirty years as the full truth dawns on you.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “That’s happened to you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for the pain that caused you.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“What is the full truth Klaus? How many other shocks do you have in store for me?”
“Look at the DNA, Edwina. God gifted you with an exceptional mind. Use it. Everything about my physical life is encoded there on that strip.”
“What happened to the original Klaus, the one whose form you took?”
“He died.”
“Did you kill him?” She hated to ask that question, yet she couldn’t help herself. She needed to know exactly what kind of man this was standing before her.
“No. He died from a fever. The body was given a Christian burial and I took his form.”
“That’s convenient. Who did they think they were burying?”
“My former form, the grandfather of the family. I was able to change the child’s appearance to conform to that of my former form. I’d had that form for almost ninety years. It was time to move on.”
She sighed. “This is all quite a lot to digest. And I don’t even want to know how you could replace an old version of yourself for a younger one.”
“Yes, I understand. It is a great deal for now. I strongly debated about telling you any of this. But I wanted you to know.”
“Again, why?”
“This is the third time I have told you the answer. I don’t want any secrets between us,” Klaus said patiently. “Your decision to be in my life has to be free, conscious and informed. I could easily bend your will to mine. Yet I want you to maintain your free will and make your own choices. To do that you have to know everything.”
“You said the abnormalities were acquired. How were they acquired?”
Klaus sighed. “There is only one way, Edwina, to acquire this condition that is through a subject mixing blood with someone who has the abnormalities. Near as we can tell the exchanged blood acts as a reprogramming agent for the subject’s DNA. We’ve been trying to understand the reprogramming mechanism for many years. The science is just about to the place where we are beginning to get our first glance at the real nature of the process.”
“Reprogramming? Like a retrovirus?”
“As near as we can tell, it seems to be a retrovirus that causes this condition.”
“Understanding and duplicating that mechanism could be the key to curing a number of diseases,” she thought aloud.
“Yes. It could be. Also, we might eventually be able to reprogram our DNA to allow us to walk freely in the sunlight and thus improve our quality of life.”
“There is that,” she allowed.
“I know that you haven’t been prepared for this, Edwina. And that it has to be a shock to you.”
“You’ve talked to me about having children. What would the chances be of this being passed on to them?”
“There is no chance of that. The genetic condition is filtered out in the production of egg and sperm. My children, even children by women who have these same abnormalities, have always been fully human. There is no sex linkage between my condition and future offspring.”
She rubbed her neck in hopes that could dispel the threatening tension headache and she looked at him. “So it’s an organ specific retrovirus,” she observed. “Hmmm…That’s interesting.”
“As nearly as we can determine, yes, that would be a good description of the situation.”
“How many children have you had, Klaus?”
“Five hundred and eighty seven that I know are mine. None of them are now living. Most of the lines of their descendants have died out.”
“There remain other people like you? You are not the last of your kind on earth I take it?”
“You take it correctly. There are others, men and women, in every nation on the face of the earth. There are also many other persons with lycanthropy. They—at least—have the saving grace of being able to walk in the daylight, although they do not have the immune system modification my people have and they do not live beyond a normal mortal span. Legends about people of my kind have sprung up in every country—similar legends with different names and gross distortions about who and what we are. It’s in the folklore. It’s in popular horror literature. It’s even made it to children’s television programming and sunglass advertisements.”
“What are you?”
“I am only a man who loves you Edwina. That is the only important thing I am. Everything else fades into insignificance.”
She looked at him for a very long time as she forced herself to put aside preconceived ideas about reality and deal with the data before her. “Vampire. You are what is known in legend as a vampire,” she said on a breath as everything kicked into place in her mind. The idea was absolutely unbelievable. Yet that was the only answer fitting the data before her.
Klaus nodded and smiled. “I knew that you could come to the correct conclusion Edwina if given the access to the evidence. Your reputation for thinking outside of conventions is well deserved,” he answered with a mixture of pride and satisfaction in his voice.
“You don’t spontaneously combust in sunlight.”
“No. However, UV radiation is extremely harmful. With a long enough exposure to the sun any of my kind would die.”
“What is long enough exposure?”
“That’s debatable. We try to avoid all UV because we just don’t know. But sometimes we need to go out during the day. That’s why we developed high level sun-block lotions, UV filters in contact lenses, and a relatively new line of UV shielding clothing. We do everything possible to shield ourselves from harmful effects.”
“You don’t hunt people and kill them for their blood.”
He sighed heavily. “That much of the legends at least has some basis in fact. There was a time when my kind did prey upon normals. I’ve never taken enough blood from anyone to kill them. I know people of my kind who have done that. We—the council—have made them pay the price for their murdering ways. It’s been over a thousand years since I’ve gone hunting for blood at all. Most of us discovered that it wasn’t at all necessary to hunt.”
“Why is it not necessary?”
“We learned to take what we need from a sexual partner during intimacy while distracting them with pleasure and no one was the wiser. There was a degree of lassitude in our partners afterwards, but they easily recovered. It was no worse than the lightheadedness some people get when leaving a blood bank after donating a unit of blood. We never take more than that.”
She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. “Have you fed from me?” she finally asked. “Klaus, did you take blood from me last night or just a few moments ago?”
“No, Edwina Elizabeth, I did not. There was a moment I was tempted to do so. But I did not. I wanted to love you, not to use you. I haven’t taken blood directly from a person in almost forty years. These days, I simply channel units off of blood banks. We have found that we can take the units that they would destroy for being out of date and use those. The corporation takes them for ‘research purposes.’ We still get the benefits and there is no potential for harming anyone. It is not the same but it works. Like the difference between picking an apple off the tree and eating canned applesauce, it is not the same experience.”
“Most of you have given up hunting, you said.”
“There are still a few who fail to conform to the international conventions. When we find them we stop them.”
“How?”
“We handle it legally, according the laws of the council and the rules of the international conventions. Three convictions for hunting means that
the community imposes capital punishment. We have to live in peace with other people. We can’t have the hysteria that once gave rise to mobs of vampire hunters. No one wants a war. We may be stronger and faster than normal humans but humans outnumber us greatly. We are content to coexist peacefully, preferably with a human population who is mostly content to think of us as tales from folklore and the mentally ill.”
“Three convictions in what time frame?”
“There is no time frame.”
“For a race that is virtually immortal that is rather steep punishment.”
“It is not as draconian as the former law that allowed summary execution of anyone found hunting.”
“With the talk of executions, you can die other than from a stake to the heart or sunlight I presume.”
“We can die from a good many causes. We have a tremendous immune system that fights off every disease that we’ve ever come across. We heal comparatively quickly from most injuries. But we can die from any trauma that would kill any other person, as well as from exposure to UV radiation. And we are no more mentally stable than any other population, so we have our shares of serious depressions and resultant suicides.”
Edwina sighed. “I see.”
“Do you?”
“Klaus… Is that really your name?”
“Close enough. My original name was an earlier version of this name.”
“Klaus, this exchange of blood that makes one a vampire is it usually done during sex?”
He looked at her for a long time. “It can be. It usually is, as it is less traumatic when the transition is cloaked in a sensual haze.”
“Transition. Yes. That was the word you used in my dream.”
“What have you dreamt, Edwina?”
She told him of her dream.
“I see,” he said quietly. “I have run across very few souls with your gift for seeing.”
“I’m not so sure that it is always a gift Klaus. Have you the ability to interfere in dreams?”
His eyes grew hard for a brief moment, and she knew that she had angered him. “No. None of my kind has that ability. We can influence waking thought, make people forget things they’ve witnessed or experienced, and substitute other memories for those things we wish to be forgotten, but we can not influence dreams. That sort of thing is done only by spirit entities like your resident ghost.”
“I’m feeling my way here, Klaus. This all is so like fantasy. In the last few months, I’ve had to come to terms with the reality of all manner of what would be called the paranormal—spirits, and now werewolves and vampires.”
He nodded. “It is difficult to adopt a different way of thinking about reality. Yet, you are doing quite well with it. I admire your resiliency.”
She blew a large stream of air out between her teeth. “I’m still processing all of this.”
“And you will be for some time. I’ve given you much to think about.”
“You say that you want me to make a conscious, free and informed choice. That sounds all well and good. But I do not know any others of your kind.”
“How do you know that? We don’t wear red fangs on our lapels declaring our status.”
She was silent for a moment. “There was a professor while I was doing my doctoral work who only taught at night. He was allergic to sunlight.”
“Carl Roddenberg.”
“Yes. Roddenberg. Is he one of your people?”
“I’ve known Carl for well over a hundred years. He’s a good man.”
Edwina sighed. “This is getting even stranger by the moment.”
“I’d imagine that it seems that way.”
“Immortality.”
“Not quite. We are quite mortal but our life span is long. We don’t age.”
“This longevity comes with a price. Never to be able to lie out on a beach during the day and feel the sun.”
“That’s not particularly healthy for anyone.”
“Not to be able to work in a garden by daylight.”
“There is that.”
“Not to be able to run and play outdoors with one’s children during the day.”
“That’s the hardest part of this state of life. Watching one’s children grow up and being unable to share their lives fully with them, knowing that you will watch them die in what is a truly short time.”
“The other side of this question of immortality is to be able to carry out one’s work to its logical extension. To be able to continue to make progress with one’s research, to make a real difference—that is tempting.”
“There is a downside to that as well in that you always have to read and stay current, have to relearn, unlearn, and learn fresh new things. Having to change form every eighty to one hundred years so that people don’t grow overly suspicious about you, is challenging. It is hard to be an adult in a child’s body.”
“I can’t begin to understand how that feels,” she admitted.
“Think about this fully, Edwina. Once that barrier between your state of life and mine is crossed, there is no way—at the moment—of going back. Aging as you know it stops.”
“But you do age?”
“Not as you understand it. We have no decay, no arthritis, no diseases, no wear and tear. But the years do come to sit heavily upon some of us. We live in time yet outside of time.”
“Stupid question.”
“There is no such thing. I’ll tell you anything that you want to know.”
She sighed. “Do you have fangs?”
Klaus smiled at her as he did, his canines lengthened. Then they shortened. “It’s something we control as an aspect of changing form. At one time, the fangs were a tool for acquiring the blood we need to survive. Now, they are something like human wisdom teeth—something that we are evolving away from.”
“Will you show me your original form?”
“If you would like, Edwina. It truly isn’t that much different from this one.”
She watched as he slightly, ever so slightly, changed appearance. He shrank several inches in height and broadened out more through the chest and shoulders. Even then, he was a handsome man.
“Thank you.”
He changed back to the form that she knew him as possessing. “Have you any further questions?”
“You understand that I need to think about this.”
“I understand. I’ve given you a great deal to think about. Just know that I love you, Edwina. I will love you whether you decide to marry me or not or whether you decide to transition to my state or not. Those decisions are independent of one another. All I ask is that you do not discuss this with people. I have not broken rules by talking to you about it, however doing so is profoundly discouraged. If you choose not to transition, I will have to remove the memory of this conversation from you. It is easier if I do not have to chase down others to whom you may have talked and look into their minds, then scrub them of this knowledge as well. If you need someone to talk to, I can arrange for you to speak with my chaplain. He knows everything.”
“Is he another of your kind?”
Klaus smiled broadly. “Your mind is a treasure, Edwina. Yes, Fr. Sebastien is one of my kind as you so delicately put it.”
“I understand the restriction on speaking to others. That is a sensible precaution for the safety of everyone.” Edwina lightly kissed his cheek. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“How could I be otherwise? I love you.”
“Oh, Klaus!” she said quietly. “I’m trying to think of this as your simply belonging to another race or nationality. This is hard to get my mind around. Your DNA means that you are the equivalent of a different species from me. I am more different from you than an ape in a zoo is from me. It feels odd.”
He nodded. “I understand. But, don’t think about it that way.”
“Don’t some of your people think of it that way?”
He sighed heavily. “There are some in the community who tend to look down on normal humans,” he admitte
d.
“Or to look at us as just a source for nutrition, companionship, and sexual satisfaction, much like a cross between a cow, a dog, and a whore?”
He was visibly taken aback by that comment. “There are times that you see too much,” he admitted reluctantly.
“The legends about holy water, crosses, and other Catholic items being harmful to your kind are just legends?”
“Since we were made to be evil in legend, it was only logical to make good things antithetical to us in legend.”
“All vampires are not Catholic?”
“No. We’re a pretty diverse lot, just the normal population. You will find Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Hindis, Moslems, Atheists, you name it, among us. There is one religious order in the Church that draws its members primarily from my group. They live their lives in silence, darkness, and prayer when cloistered. When outside of the cloister, they generally are under the protection of another of my kind.”
“What about garlic?”
“A blood thinner. It’s not lethal, but we tend to avoid lots of it. A little never hurts.”
“Do newly transitioned vampires get cautioned not to play with their food?”
“Edwina, you are becoming hysterical,” he warned quietly.
“No, I passed hysterical some time ago,” she told him in an all too controlled voice. “I’m trying to hold it together. I really am. I need to think about this Klaus. I feel betrayed. I fell in love with you. But you aren’t the man I believed you to be.”
“I am the same man, Edwina. I think you’ve known all along who and what I am. The problem is that you haven’t had to realize that you knew it.”
She closed her eyes. “You may be right,” she admitted. “I have to have time to think this out.”
“Take what time you need. I want you to be absolutely certain.”
She touched his face. “Odd feeling or not, betrayal or not, I still want you, Klaus.”
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