The Vampire King's Mate

Chapter 5: Biological Weapon and Broodmare

Matthias.

She blinked. I'm not sure what reaction I expected, but I thought it would be bigger than that. I thought there would be fear. Disbelief. Terror... Something. But Rose regarded me calmly and waited for me to go on.  Her expressionless brown eyes made me feel nervous... that's not an emotion I've felt in a very long time."In reality, its nothing like you read in books or see in movies. Its a virus. A virus which kills and then re-animates human cells. It causes certain mutations... makes us faster, stronger predators. Stops us from aging."

"Makes you all beautiful?" she said unexpectedly.

"Yes, in a way. It removes a lot of the physical imperfections which make humans less than attractive. It makes each of us the strongest and most powerful version of ourselves. And s*x-appeal is also a part of that... the ability to attract humans, to get close enough to spread the virus... self-replication and survival is ultimately the aim of the virus."

She nodded, as though that made perfect sense. "But you aren't burning up in the sun."

"Not literally, but we are extremely photosensitive. We don't produce the melanin that would protect our skin from burns, and no virus survives long in sunlight... so yes, sunlight exposure is painful. But not normally deadly."

"The Victoria's Secret model... the red haired woman who busted up my door.  She was a vampire too?"

"Oh yes. She is called Daniella. She is a very old and very powerful creature. You are lucky to be alive."

"Thanks to you, I suppose. So vampires. What does that have to do with me?"

"My dear, it has everything to do with you," I assured her, just as a waitress came out and set a huge plate of fragrant Belgian waffles, covered in fresh crushed strawberries and a pile of fluffy whipped cream in front of her.

"What would you like for a beverage?"  the waitress asked politely.

"Um.. could I have a cup of tea please?"

"Cream and sugar?"

"Just sugar."

The waitress departed. She looked at me and then looked at her plate. "I suppose you aren't eating."

"I can eat, if that's what you are asking. I actually enjoy meat dishes on occasion. But this type of food offers me no nourishment or pleasure. Would it make you more comfortable if I ate with you?"

She waved a fork at me dismissively. "If you don't like it, don't bother. I can eat by myself." She cut off a bite of waffle and stabbed a strawberry, and popped it in her mouth. "Oh, mmmm. This is so good." She had no idea how the noises she was making were effecting me. "Please continue to enlighten me sir. I can listen and eat at the same time."

She was so funny. I had to smother a smile as I watched her swirl her next bite in the whipped cream. "So as I was saying... its a virus. The virus is normally spread through infected bites. But on rare occasions, a vampire is born of a woman, like an ordinary baby. I am one of such." 

Her fork paused on its way to her mouth. "How is that possible?"

"Ordinarily its not. A human woman can not carry an infected child. Before the cells even start to divide, the virus has killed the zygote. But there are a very few exceptional women who are born with the antibody to the virus. We call them "Flores Vitae". It is said that God never let a disease on earth but that he didn't also provide the cure."

She chewed thoughtfully before she admitted, "I don't understand."

"If I took a drop of your blood and a drop of my blood, and we put it under a microscope... your cells would immediately attack and destroy mine."

"Me?" She squeaked, barely glancing at the waitress who brought her a cup and a steaming pot of black tea. "I have the antibodies?"

"Oh yes my dear."

"So if a vampire bites me?"

"They die."

"Ahhh... thats why she said kill me, but don't bite me." She swirled a spoonful of sugar into her tea. "But wait... how..." Her brow crinkled up. "I don't understand the biology... you are saying that such a person... can carry a vampire baby. Wouldn't the mother's blood destroy the infected fetus?"

I spread my hands a little helplessly. "Its not something we have been able to study in depth, I'm afraid, as it so rarely happens. And it gets more interesting when you consider that when a vampire and a flower mate... the baby isn't always a vampire." She looked confused, and I was struggling to explain things in terms that she could understand. "My mother was a flower. My father was a vampire. I had a sister and a brother from the same union. My brother was an ordinary boy. He grew up, he lived, he died an ordinary human. My sister carried the flower gene."

"Wait.." She stopped me. "Why do you call it the flower gene?"

I chuckled. She was quite clever, this girl. "You have a scent. A very strong floral scent that is different from any other human scent. It is delicious and hypnotic... it draws us to you, makes you extremely appealing. Any vampire who smells you feels and immediate desire to feed from you. You smell like flowers my dear... the most exotic and sweet flowers on earth."

"Okay... so three genetic possibilities... human, flower child, and vampire." She prompted me to continue from where she had interrupted me.

"Exactly. It becomes more complicated than that... it seems like for the flower gene to express itself... the father must be a vampire. See, my sister married and ordinary man, and she gave birth to ordinary children. Beautiful, perfect, but ordinary children. I followed her line for many generations, until it was completely wiped out in the Spanish Influenza... but never again were any flower children born."

Her fork clattered to her plate. "So you are telling me that my father..."

I nodded, "Most likely... or at the very least your grandfather."

"Oh my god," she scrubbed a cloth napkin across her mouth. "No wonder my mother didn't want me."

"No," I reached across the table and took her hand, "I'm sure your mother loved you very much. But in order to protect you, she had to hide you."

"Hide me? She abandoned me in the bushes behind a church and left me to die."

"No, she left you to be found... and hid you in plain sight. It was brilliant in fact... you were entirely swallowed up and lost inside the foster care system. As soon as anyone got close to tracking you down, you were already moved into a new placement. The fact that you survived into adulthood, that you made it all these years without discovery...is remarkable."

"But why? Why did she have to hide me?"

"You are an extreme threat to the species, my dear. Your blood is the most potent weapon against our kind. The flowers have been hunted down and slaughtered for millennia. You are a walking biological weapon... and you have the unique ability to produce more like you."

She pulled her hand away from me. Two spots of high red color were blooming on her cheeks, and she held on to the tea cup until her knuckles were turning white. "So why did you save me?" There was a hard edge to her voice.

"From the day you were born, I knew you, I felt you. I dreamed of you. I have been searching for you forever. You are my destiny, my soul mate."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously... there was even a subtle shift in her scent, which became, if possible, even more potent. My eyes were drawn to the pulse in her neck. Her heart rate was accelerated, and her face was flushed. It took me a long moment to realize that this was NOT a good passion rising in her. She pushed back her chair and stood, staring down at me with sparks in her beautiful brown eyes. "A brood mare." She spat out. "You brought me here, expecting you can buy me off with beautiful things... but you intend to use me like a f*****g brood mare to carry your infected children."

Her words hit me like a slap in the face, and with that she bolted, tipping the chair over and running for the stairs that lead down from the porch and into the gardens.

Rose

I had no idea where I was going, I just had to get AWAY. Away from his beautiful face, his cool touch, his piercing eyes... and into the sunlight. A part of me knew I couldn't really run from him. He could move faster than my eyes could track, and apparently he could smell me from a mile away. But he let me go. Of course he knew I wasn't going to escape... the whole place was surrounded with walls, razor wire, electric fencing, security cameras. He had his people patrolling as guards. It wasn't really a rescue, was it? It was a kidnapping. My dream was in fact a prison. And everything that had seemed too perfect, too good to be true...was. My little fantasy of heaven had just been blown to bits. I ran as far and as long as I could, but I'm no runner. I was soon gasping for breath, and the half a waffle I'd eaten was threatening to come back up. I had run through the gardens and into an orchard. The trees were neatly pruned, and the grass underneath had been trimmed. I threw myself into the shade of one big tree, and stared up into its branches.

Shouldn't I have been shocked that there were vampires wandering around? That there was this whole bunch of them living in a castle just a couple hours drive from the city? I hadn't really thought of such things before. I had seen some movies and read a few novels, but I thought that was all pop-culture. Still in every legend and fairy tale, isn't there usually some nugget of truth? Wasn't there some common thread in all these stories of vampires that had captured our imaginations? Its like we all know they are out there, and we make it comfortable by romanticizing it into these stories. And Matthias's explanation made it all so simple...a virus. A contagious, blood-born pathogen.

Well I suppose the good news was, if he was telling me the truth, nobody was going to turn me into a vampire. I guess I'm immune. The bad news... he brought me here to knock me up. I was going to refuse of course, but was that even possible? I mean, he could definitely over-power me and rape me. Hell, he didn't even have to use force... he'd almost had me quite willing and ready in the bathtub last night. What the hell had I gotten myself into? Why was my life always such a s**t-storm of disaster? And lets say I had his kid... then what? What would he do with me once he had gotten what he wanted from me?

I felt hot tears of self-pity on my cheeks, and brushed them away impatiently. I didn't cry. I wouldn't cry. I looked up instead into the blue sky and watched the clouds passing. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Out there, they would hunt me and kill me. In here? Rape me and impregnate me. What options did I have? I placed my hand on my heart which was just beginning to quiet down after my little sprint from the breakfast table. Again I started to contemplate taking my own life. It seemed like that was the only way to escape... and the only option where I controlled my own destiny. I looked back at the castle. Built as it was, the towers on the south and the north corners were built out over a precipice, so the drop from the top was much higher than the height of the towers. I don't know why jumping off of things was always my first thought. There were always other ways. I could hang myself from that beautiful shower in my master bathroom. I could find something sharp and cut my wrists. Hell, if I could get my hands on a bottle of aspirin, even that would do.

I wish I could shut off my brain and just stop thinking... but I couldn't.

The thing that hurt the most... was that for the tiniest moment... I'd let myself believe that he wanted ME... me for me and nothing else. But no one in my life had ever wanted ME. Only what they could get from me. And this was more of the same.