Serum

-Eight-

“Well, I think we should continue our discussion.” Lana said briskly as she walked into the room. Conner blurred out of his seat, seemingly embarrassed. I simply straightened up and gave Lana a stabbing look.

“Where were we? Ah yes, blood types. I think I’ve about covered that.  I would add that animal blood can be consumed, but it doesn’t always suit with our digestive properties. It’ll keep you alive in a pinch, but can cause you a mess of digestive problems. Experience will have to do other than that, you learn more or less by your mistakes. Now you need to get back to practicing those new abilities of yours.  Your speed’s still not up to appropriate levels, and we need to teach you how to bite.” I groaned imagining the beating that I was about to sustain. Lana seemed to delight in my torture.

Lana started me out by trying to get me to move as quickly as I could in a complex arrangement of motions. I stumbled through them to the best of my ability. Well, as much as a vampire could stumble. Mainly, Lana kept complaining that my movements were too slow, weren’t fluid enough. Dissatisfied, she eventually headed into the kitchen, and returned holding the knives, showing me her finger.  She rubbed a bead of blood from it while I eyed her warily, unsure of her intent.

“As you can see, this is now completely healed. However you will not be if you don’t learn how to move.” And with that her arm blurred.  In my mind’s eye I saw the knife slowly revolving its way towards me. Whatever vampire instinct I now had took over. I shifted out of the way, sensing as another blade whirred towards my new location. Jumping across the room, I was fully immersed now with the vampiric mindset. Life was just a complex series of evasions designed to keep me alive, nothing more or less was required, and everything else just fell away. I wove in and out of furniture and the flying knives, finally putting on a great burst of speed, trapping Lana’s arm before the last knife was released.

“Very good, you’ve officially passed my test of your abilities.” She stated simply. I blanched, trying to relax. My body was still on edge, ready for another attack. With all of my senses alert, I suddenly noticed Conner had disappeared, and my head swiveled wildly, looking for him. Lana drew my attention back to herself.

“Now onto your teeth. You will notice, if you care to take a feel of your “fangs” as I believe humans call them, that the teeth are just slightly curved inward, and uneven on the inside. There should be somewhat of a hollowed out groove on the back side of your teeth and corresponding depressions in your inner lower lip. Those in your lip, as I’m sure you’ve observed, are there to ensure you do not injure yourself with these overly long canines, thus your teeth will fit directly into those depressions when your mouth closes and you will not nick your delicate tissues. Those gentle curves on the underside of your teeth both help your mouth close without your teeth rubbing, and somewhat help with the “straw effect” you will need to garner nourishment from your prey, forming a sort of hollow tube through which you can extract blood through an open wound.” Lana explained.  To complicate things, she began showing me how to insert my teeth without causing too much tissue damage around the blood source. Obviously, a messy wound meant a harder time extracting blood and more chances to kill or damage your prey irreparably.  And then there was always the risk of getting captured. A sudden whooshing sound interrupted her when Conner entered the room. A teenager followed close on his heels. The boy was somewhat scared, I could tell by his heart beat, the sound loud in the sudden quiet, but he seemed curiously proud.

“Unless I am much mistaken, the last two days have stolen quite a bit of your strength, but not so much that you must go on the hunt. Conner has therefore gathered up a young friend to help us in teaching you the proper places and intensities of bites.” Lana proceeded to point out the major blood collection areas of the human body. The neck was obvious, wrists, inner elbows, inner thighs, top of the feet, and ankles not quite so much so. However the thinner the skin, the more tricky the bite, and it was a bit difficult to bite at someone’s legs unless they were already unconscious. Next, Conner and Lana demonstrated the pressures needed for the “perfect bite”, one that was hard enough to pierce one arterial wall, but not go through the other. Clean bites left no bruising, and minimal tissue damage.  My head was swimming.  Too much information too quickly being dumped on me, and all of it completely necessary for my survival.

“You must attempt the bite now.” Lana requested gently. The boy’s heart rate increased, as the human side of me shrank from the thought.  I wasn’t ready for this!  My expression must have given me away. “Adrian NOW!” Lana demanded.

“Don’t worry about hurting me.” The boy murmured. Pity welled up inside me for the boy, especially considering Lana’s uncaring attitude. I stared at him, swallowing hard. A sudden jolt across my head made me growl and I turned, on guard for what I was sure would be another slap from Lana. Her body was tense, poised and ready as if to attack, the threat obvious in her face. Once again, I felt the vampire instincts taking over as Lana repeated her demand that I take blood from the boy. It wasn't hard to push me over the edge. I was stressed, overwhelmed, my entire body tense and alert from the work-out she'd given me. I was ready to snap. I could feel my lips pull back into a snarl at Lana, but something in me told me she was too dangerous for me to handle. Taking my frustrations with Lana out on the only weaker being in the room, I jumped across the remaining distance between myself and the boy. Carefully trying not to hurt him, I sank my canines into the soft flesh of his neck.  It yielded so much easier than I expected, popping under my teeth like a ripe peach skin, which nearly startled me out of the bite. Blood poured into my mouth, hot, wet and carrying a flavor unique to this boy alone. What was left of my humanity recoiled, but it was too late for the rest of me. The vampire was merging fully with my psyche, doing what came naturally, and I began to drink greedily.

“Three heartbeats.” I heard Conner instruct softly beside me. I forced myself not to snarl and turn my body away to hide my prize from him. Instead, I counted off silently, when I reached three of my own slow beats, I released the boy. He quickly clamped a hand to his throat to stop the slow trickle of blood seeping from his body.

“Outstanding.” Lana remarked from behind me. “Minimal blood loss, hardly any tissue damage, exact timing.”

“Oh yeah, then why do I feel so sick?” I asked weakly as I sat down on the couch, burying my head in my hands.  Dizziness, nausea, and an uneasy feeling of just something wrong plagued me.  I groaned.  I was pretty sure I might vomit.

“That is just what is left over from the human part of you.”  Lana waved a hand dismissively.  “But take heed, you have hardly injured the boy, and you will not have to worry about going insane and killing more people than it takes to feed off of in a week. It is an ugly truth to you now, but it is a necessity. This is a curse that you will learn to live with, however revolting it is to you. Feeding will become nothing more than an instinct with time, just as eating was to you before. A mere bodily function.”

“Yeah, great.”  My voice started off soft, but grew louder.  “But I couldn’t even eat animal meat then, and now you expect me to feed off of live human beings!” By the end of it, I was practically shouting. Disgust at what I had done, and the unstoppable satiated feeling from the vampiric part of me had combined in a volatile mixture. I desperately wanted to vomit. If vampires could even vomit, I thought wryly.

“Well, there are other ways to get blood.” Conner jumped in. “There are animals, but it’s an inexact art and you have to go after far more victims that way. And every time you hear of a blood bank getting robbed, it’s usually a vampire or group of vampires that feels the way you do, that it’s cruel to harm humans, to feed off of them. But at the same time, they are causing more damage because they are allowing innocent humans who may need that blood later on to die; they will never receive it because of the vampire’s needs.”

“Beyond that,” Sniffed Lana “frozen days-old type blood is not as nutritious as fresh blood from the body. It takes at least twice as much to feed a vampire, which means that many more dead humans because of stolen blood. I see it a lot at the lab where I work.”

“You can’t expect me not to feel bad though.” I cut in. I still had my head buried in my hands, so I didn’t bother to look at either one of them.

“Not yet, no, but when the 6 year old leukemia patient dies because her blood type was stolen by “conscientious” vampires, when she could have been spared by those same vampires simply using what nature intended, then maybe you will feel differently. The vampire is not cold hearted or cruel. Nature has designed us to be well adjusted to hunting the perfect prey: our human counterparts. We have no real advantages other than those nature deemed fit to give us. We don’t fly or turn into bats like the horror films, we merely must learn to be fast enough to move out of sight, and quiet enough to remain hidden.” Lana’s words were not necessarily harsh, but they stung regardless. Mulishly I thought it over. I didn’t want to believe it, but a dim acknowledgement came from a part of my brain that I really didn’t want to recognize. I sat for a few more moments absorbed in my moping, trying to wrestle the vampiric part back. It wasn't working.