"Hunting the Blue-Blooded"
(Science fiction/horror - alien/vampire)

Angela Kessler from the vampire magazine Dreams of Decadence told me she liked this one, but the science fiction tale intertwined with the vampire story ultimately killed it. She said she'd read and re-read it, but finally decided it wasn't quite right for DoD. Can't blame the woman for staying true to her vision. Anyway, Dawn Callahan at the former Night to Dawn had no qualms with the SF aspects, and ran this one.

The first person narrator is a vampire, caught in the act of a late night feast by a stranger who doesn't seem quite human...

 

“Hunting the Blue-Blooded”
(Excerpt)
by David M. Fitzpatrick

I fly now, alone, trying to think of anything besides what happened tonight. I can’t.

I put on a burst of speed fueled by immense, superhuman adrenaline, and angle up. My body skyrockets until the lights of the city below are but so many eyes glowing up from a black hell -- much like the way I feel; my damned, soulless self.

I can see the curvature of the earth on this cool night, I am so high. Soon I won’t be able to. I’ll be dead again, and others will build their cities upon that curvature.

I stop gaining altitude. It’s about a half hour before sunrise, if I were on the ground. Higher altitude means earlier sun-seeing. I am wracked with mixed emotions, and I remember earlier this night, like some horrid daymare I’d rather forget. But this was no dream... this was the near future rearing its proverbially ugly head, as inescapable and sure as that sun will rise soon, whether I am on the ground, in the air, or beneath the soil. Soon shall I meet such a sun, grateful for the ultimate power it holds over me, and return to the earth: ashes and dust.

*   *   *

Alone I sped earlier that terrible night, silent and black as the air that surrounded me, my lips parched and dry from the cool winds of my flight that blasted them. Recounting the events chills my heart with a different sort of cold than I’ve endured these past seven centuries -- the cold of a sheer terror I have not had the occasion to have visited upon me since I was first brought over so very long ago.

I flew, alone. Always I hunt alone; we aren’t a pack mentality, like the lycanthropes. We congregate, bond, teach and learn together; but when the hunt is on, it’s every one for himself. The werewolves are team killers. I don’t envy them for their methodology, but I do envy them for what is happening to us all. My kind will certainly be no more, and very soon. The werewolves will undoubtedly be able to survive, at least a little longer. Meat is meat, after all, once all the blood is gone. Or will it be that way at all? They need only to tear and rend flesh from bone to satisfy their desire, to eat that flesh to survive. We just need blood. Red cells, white cells, platelets, oxygen-rich, iron-based.
Woe to the vanquished, someone once said. Woe to us.

I sought, seeing the ground a thousand feet below as if in daylight. As if I remember what that’s like.

Of course, I know now what daylight is like. Now it’s burning alive under the fierce fires of the sun, terrible azure skies like blue-hot flame to complement it, billowing clouds like flying creatures taunting me. I’ve been caught after sunrise, and it’s the hell you hear about for my kin. The movies make it out that one pretty sunbeam will kick us out of the existence in a quick, disintegrating POOF!; but it’s not quite like that. It’s like any mortal would be if you stuck one in the oven and turned the broiler on to 500 degrees. You’d have a little time to try and force the oven door open, but once the mercury climbed high enough, you’d be burning.

Before my sire brought me over, the daylight skies were important to me. A painter, I was, in Northern Italy -- and a damn good artisan I was. The towering, majestic mountains, the lush, green forests, and especially the beautiful blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and that lovely golden sun -- all were absorbed by my awed eyes and spewed forth from my fingers, out my brush, onto the canvas. The hardest thing about becoming a creature of the night was the loss of my days. I painted moonlit landscapes, starlit fields, cities of the night; but for seven centuries of nothing but such features, I had long ago tired of painting in grayscale.

When I watch a movie on my VCR, I am forever rewinding and replaying sunsets and sunrises and shots of beautiful days. I thought nothing would pain me quite like my lack of days.

My eyes caught one of them alone. I banked sharply and zeroed in on her. It looked female -- breasts are breasts and hips are hips, but these days you never know what the boys are stuffing their clothing with.

In moments I was close enough to smell her: female, all right. Wearing some foul-smelling perfume. The scent of alcohol, which explained her foolishness. And she was menstruating. Such would be one of the last treats in a feast for me.

I swooped down, glided silently closer. No sign of anyone. She was all alone, and this street was so dark. Surely she must have been crazy. Most of them don’t believe in us, but there are some serious bad-guy mortals out there, certainly in this big metropolis. Her mistake. I wouldn’t take her life; we’ve such a bad reputation about that. Too many vampires on this earth would make for too few humans.

I saw the overdone makeup from the side as I banked in and was upon her. She saw me only as I was right there, and she didn’t even look startled. She simply said, “Jack, fly?” Yes, that was some drunk.
I wrapped around her as I flew, a black monsoon embracing, and swept her stuttering, drunk form into the shadows of the alleyway ahead. She sprayed me with a mouthful of rank spit and then I was dumping her on the ground, straddling her midsection, her head gripped tightly between my powerful hands. Somehow her dress had torn up the side and she was exposed. That monthly woman thing was coming along nicely, to be sure, and she wasn’t taking good care of her hygiene in her intoxicated state. So much the easier.

“Jack...!” she slurred, trying to push up against me, oblivious to the burning reds of my eyes. “Jack... get offen me, not gonna mood tonight...”

She wouldn’t even remember it. I wouldn’t have to help her forget. I growled like an animal anyway. She wasn’t scared. I bared my teeth and dived for her throat, twin quarrels from a crossbow finding their marks and sinking deep into her flesh.

She let out a sucking gasp, but the power took over and she couldn’t move. I felt the flow of her blood fill my mouth, pouring over my tongue, a waterfall of life force, rushing down my throat. I sucked, a creature enraptured, forcing myself not to crush her delicate head betwixt my hands.

I listened, drinking, to her heart. Racing, proud and strong, pumping the blood through her tiny body and down my throat. I could taste the alcohol -- not too bad, sort of like sweetening the coffee with sugar. Her adrenaline level wasn’t too high, but I wasn’t complaining. I muckled my lips tighter around my impaling teeth, suckled more feverishly. She twitched a bit beneath my straddle, her arms moving. It was reactionary. Her throat was mine to feed from, her blood mine to feast on. She was mine.

I was lost a bit myself. There has always been a powerful eroticism in the act of drinking blood; something I suppose you wouldn’t begin to understand unless you were a vampire. At first, seven hundred years ago, the idea repulsed me, but to survive I eventually had to drink. Once I did... my victim, blood pumping into me, her body trapped beneath me, her mind submissive and open -- it was better than any friendship, any family, any sexual experience I had ever had. And had been since, night after night, over a quarter of a million nights.

I reached my peak and exploded, a sort of orgasm of mind and body, an incredible sensation of ultimate achievement, of domination, of content. I exhaled finally, carefully withdrawing from her throat, and closed my eyes. Relax. Regain strength. She would sleep a while...

I heard him then, behind me. He’d come very close. Our hearing is better than that of any dog’s, but so involved had I been in my joining that I had not heard him. I lifted my head, straightened my back as I sat atop her, and turned my face about. The dim light on my pale face and red eyes would certainly make whoever it was think twice about even coming near us, never mind the blood on my lips. I showed my teeth to him as he stood quietly watching from fifteen feet away.

“Good evening, citizen,” I said menacingly, blood trickling down my chin. “Come closer.”

He regarded me in a way no other human ever had once knowing who and what I was, and unless this person were very culturally devoid, he had to be making some sort of connection -- to a movie, a childhood story, anything. But he didn’t. He stood with his arms to his sides, wearing a nondescript one-piece blue jumpsuit, head cocked to his right and bearing a look of confusion on his face. He didn’t come closer.

“Why do you do this?” he said simply.

I rose, wishing I had a Dracula-esque cloak to flourish; but only black jeans, black pullover, black sneakers. I flared my teeth some more, stepped forward that the light from the street might illuminate me a little better. I wanted him to be sure of the eyes, the fangs, and the blood now drooling down my chin. “You’re next, mortal,” I said viciously.

He regarded me, unafraid. “You bit her neck. You swallowed blood from her body. Is she dead?”

He was certainly a bold one. I admit to a bit of confusion on my own part. “Of course she isn’t. I’m not in the mood to be siring another of us tonight.”

“Siring another of you?” He cocked his head in interest. By now I was standing before him, only three or four feet separating us. “You’re not like them, are you?”

I laughed, trying to sound menacing, but something inside me was unsettled. Maybe it was the way he seemed interested, the way he was uncaring of who and what I was. The way he just wasn’t scared.

“Of course I’m not, mortal.” I was still dazed from my feeding, my senses impaired, and I couldn’t smell him -- his body, his blood.

“Why did you swallow her blood?” he repeated.

It was all I was about to take. I widened my eyes, hissing, “Because I was hungry, fool -- and I’m not full yet!”

I moved like a hurricane, crossing the few feet before he could blink, and I was upon him. I wrapped an arm about him, grabbed his head with my free hand, and brutally whipped his head aside to expose his neck. I growled again, dived for his throat. Sunk my teeth in for the second helping that night.

I should have known something was amiss when I couldn’t smell him. I had attributed it to deadened sense from my feeding frenzy, but even still, that close to him, I should have been able to pick up the scent of his blood. My teeth tore deep into the flesh on his throat, and his skin seemed tougher than the average mortal’s. I’m a very powerful creature, of course, so I simply tore right through until I felt hot liquid against my tongue. I sucked, long and deep. His life juice thundered down my throat.

I choked. My tongue burned. Shocked, I tore my mouth away even as the man began to holler. I was still gripping him about his back and head and I spitting the vile blood from my mouth when he hit me. I felt the impact on my chest and I was airborne, not of my own control. I hit the ground and rolled, dazed.

I was on my face, trying to get to my knees, choking and coughing and spitting it all out. I watched the gobs of ooze splattering the ground inches from my face -- not the red, salty drink I was used to, but far different. First, it had burned like sunlight. Second, it had tasted like... anything but blood. Sort of like curdled milk. And third, it wasn’t red, not even close. The thick, congealed substance spewing forth from my mouth was bright blue. Somehow, though, it was blood. It looked different, was thick and textured like hot butterscotch, and smelled all wrong, but some of the horrid stuff had gotten down my gullet and I felt the familiar feeling -- albeit bizarre -- of the satisfaction of the feast.

“You bit my own throat,” he said from behind me, and I heard his footsteps approaching. “I was willing to learn from you, but since you’re all going to die anyway...”

He was coming for me; I could hear his footsteps as I hacked in my sickness. I had to recover, had to get control--

“...I’ll happily start with you...”

I shook my vision back to normal and got fully to my knees even as he reached me, his foot flying out to kick my ribs. I was fast, of course, very strong, and ready this time. I locked all the joints and muscles in my powerful body and took his kick. It hurt, very badly, stronger than any human ever was, but I withstood it. At fifty miles per hour from a standstill, my hand rocketed back and grabbed his leg, yarding it out from beneath him. He went over backwards and thudded the pavement.

I was on my feet the next second, standing over him. I was ready to kill this thing, whatever he was, and then I saw the wound on his neck, oozing blue crap everywhere -- but it was closing up. I watched, stunned, as the wound healed right before my vampiric eyes. It was faster, even, than one of my kind.
“I am beginning to piece this together,” he said calmly from the ground. “I think we are both wondering the same thing: if neither of us is human, then what are we?”

I had to admit, the thought was crossing my mind. “Your blood is not human,” I said quietly. “I listen now, and can not hear your heartbeat. I smell nothing of you that is familiar. And you are far stronger than any human.”

He raised his arm to his face, looked at some wristwatch he was wearing, and tapped a button on its face. “You, too, are stronger than any human,” he noted. “I’m reading your blood as nothing quite like any living thing on this planet. It has elements of all human types -- A, B, AB, and O -- but no Rhesus factors. Something very different--”

I stepped back. Something told me to fear this thing, but I didn’t want to. Seven hundred years of unliving hell, deprived of the bright days that were once my only love, I was damned if I would allow anyone -- anything -- to not fear me. “How do you know this?”

He moved to sit up, leaning back on one hand, smiling up at me from his wristwatch from another. “I’m not that well-versed, really. My uplink compared your body stats with the information in our master computer. It’s telling me that the most logical deduction it can come up with is that you are a... a vampire. A mythical creature that drains the blood from humans and can turn them into such. It seems that this part of folklore has a bit of truth about it.”

My mind swam. I took another step backward. My ferocity was draining. “Then you have me at a disadvantage.”

He smiled and worked his way to his feet. Everything in me told me to strike him down, put everything I had into it, and tear him limb from limb. Like those damned lycanthropes. I wasn’t interested in feasting, not anymore. I wanted this inhuman bastard dead. Odd, how often my kin have been referred to as inhuman bastards. Irony, et cetera.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

Our antihero has one option: use his vampiric powers to probe the mind of this alien creature... and discover that the alien's intentions are far more horrifying than anything a race of vampires could to to all of Earth.

Night to Dawn is no longer available. I'll save this one for an anthology!

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