15Please respect copyright.PENANA4IrPGkRpZl
My education at the Order continued the next day. First, Bessie helped me with my homework on Spanish and math. The rest of the school assignments I completed on my own. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I took my schoolwork seriously instead of wanting to get it over with quickly, as usual. I wanted to test Uncle’s assurances that our brains worked faster than those of humans, so I was only too glad to fill them with physics, chemistry, biology, and geography. Having done half of the homework piled up during my absence, I took a break and asked Bessie to continue her lecture on vampiric physiology and anatomy. She was happy to oblige.
“You wanted to know how conversion works the last time around. It is not like in the books. Humans are converted not by being bitten but only by getting some vampire blood into their bodies. And it takes quite a lot of blood. How much exactly depends on a number of things, from the human’s age and body mass to his individual traits. The way blood is transferred also matters. If a human is being converted by drinking vampire blood, it will take much more of it than by injecting the blood directly into a vein. Accidental conversion, even if blood gets into an open wound, is practically impossible. As I have told you before, mavrocytes, the main components of our blood, are very complex organisms and act similar to viruses. They, so to speak, infect human blood, absorbing erythrocytes and actively multiplying. After a certain concentration mavrocytes begin to affect the bone marrow, causing irreversible changes in it. These changes are analogous to what happens when a natural-born vampire reaches puberty. A marrow begins to produce fewer and fewer erythrocytes and more and more mavrocytes. The increasing numbers of black blood cells cause changes in other tissues and organs, leading to the consequences you already know – appearance of enlarged fangs, increased light sensitivity, superhuman strength and so on. Natural-born and converted vampires transform the same way, but there is one crucial difference: the process takes years for natural-born vampires, but a week or even just a couple of days for converted humans, depending on individual traits and the amount of vampire blood received. Such drastic changes in such a short time take enormous energy, so in their first days the converted need plenty of blood to drink. Also, the transformation is very painful and frequently results in neurological disorders, from hallucinations to acute psychosis. There are many recorded cases when the converted fell into a frenzy and literally tore apart their friends and relatives.”
I recalled Uncle’s words that Rettle had been converted against his will and how he literally bathed in the blood of Nazi soldiers. Now it all made sense. If after conversion the coach truly had been able to restrain his demons and let them loose only on enemies, he was worthy of respect, not censure. Even I, being a natural-born vampire, had nearly torn into Chris’s neck, so for a converted one to hold back was a real feat.
Bessie went on with her lecture.
“In principle, other things being equal, a converted vampire is inferior to an original one in every way. But that is not always the case. A converted vampire who drinks human blood is going to be stronger than an original one, subsisting on an animal-only diet or one who drinks Bloodberry. Has Mike explained to you the difference between human blood and its substitutes?”
“He has. Human blood makes us stronger, faster and heals our wounds,” I replied.
“Exactly. Human blood is a kind of ambrosia to us.”
“What’s ambrosia?”
“Food of the gods, from Greek myths. Ambrosia kept the Olympians forever young and immortal.”
“About that, Uncle said we could live for a thousand years on human blood, but eventually, we would still die from old age.”
Bessie nodded in confirmation.
“How else can we die? A wooden stake in the heart, a silver bullet in the head, maybe a cross and holy water?”
“No, as I’ve told you, we are not some fairy-tale characters, and silly stuff like water with a spell spoken over can’t harm us. But a stake to the heart would probably work, only the choice of material makes no difference. We may be a different biological subspecies, but we are still closely related to humans. Almost everything that kills a human is fatal to us, except human diseases and most poisons. We can drown, die from electric shock or suffocate in a fire. But here we also have considerable differences: our bones, our muscles, and even our skin are much stronger than human ones, so it takes a great deal more force to inflict lethal damage on us. A human would die from a fall from the fifth floor, and in our case, it’s the tenth floor. We are also better at tolerating cold and heat. A vampire’s body is cooler by nature, again, because our metabolism is more effective and we waste less body heat, therefore we can withstand temperatures twice as high and twice as low as those, deadly to a human. Generally speaking, the most popular cause of violent death is loss of blood. Whether it’s a stab to the chest or a bullet to a leg, tearing through an artery, humans more often bleed to death than die from organ injury. In our case death by bleeding is very unlikely. Thanks to mavrocytes our blood is much thicker and clots right away when exposed to air. Our wounds close by themselves, and in a few minutes regeneration of the damaged tissue begins. We hardly ever even need stitches, unless the wounds are very deep and extensive. It’s not that simple to stab or gun us down but it’s still possible. Like humans, our lives depend on the work of internal organs, and if our lungs are damaged, we won’t be able to breathe, and damage to the heart will stop the circulation of blood. Comparatively small internal organ injuries lethal to humans are a fairly minor problem to us, but large wounds are something else. This brings me back to the stake-to-the-heart question. A stake or anything else that is long and hammered into the chest and able to damage most of the heart tissue would definitely cause a fatal injury. The influence of silver should be specially mentioned. Garlic and sunlight only cause burns of various degrees – very unpleasant ones, but, in general, not life-threatening. Silver, however, is an anticoagulant for our blood, in other words, it is a substance that suppresses the blood's ability to clot. It singes skin on contact, but when its molecules penetrate deeper and react with mavrocytes, our blood begins to thin out. When a great number of silver molecules get into the blood it becomes even thinner than human one, and a vampire can bleed to death in a few seconds. Silver-bullet wounds are very dangerous, as there is no way to stop the bleeding until the bullet is extracted. Even then the vampire may die, if silver has already spread the length of the vascular system.”
Bessie stopped and looked at me.
“That, more or less, is all I can tell you on that subject. Do you have other questions?”
“Do we have any other superpowers besides speed, strength, and survivability? Like… mind reading or seeing the future?”
“Unfortunately, no, dear. All our superpowers are just enhanced human abilities. What they can’t do, we can’t either. Although some say that there are psychics. Maybe if we convert one of them, we’ll get the first vampire mind-reader.”
Bessie gave me a friendly smile. I nodded back.
“This is it, then. Vampire Studies 101 is over. I could tell you a lot more about the history of our kind, about Fleming’s studies, more scientifically and in greater detail explain all this, but you probably don’t need that. Certainly not now. So let’s do it like this: you can ask me any questions if they come up. And if they don’t, that’s fine too. No reason to stuff your young head with the information you’ll never need,” Bessie winked at me, cunningly. “I guess, it’s more interesting for you to practice all those cool things with Rettle. Has he assigned a personal column to you yet?”
“Yep. Did he make you smash concrete too?” I asked.
“Of course not, dear. Only paladins need to break columns to pass the exam.”
“Who are paladins?”
“Paladins were medieval knights from the upper classes, the most loyal and the bravest. But in our Order, we traditionally call paladins the members of the organization who personally fight nighttime vampires.”
“Fight? Nighttime vampires? What do you mean?”
“You, me and everyone else in the organization are daytime vampires because we don’t use humans as a food source.”
“Yes, yes, uncle Mike told me. But what did you mean by fighting?”
“The Order of the Night Guardians exists to protect not only daytime vampires but humans as well. This organization was initially created in order to ensure peaceful coexistence of our species. The first Night Guardians tried to turn nighttime vampires into daytime ones peacefully, by preaching our doctrine. But the nighttime vampires reacted as Roman pagans did to Christianity or as Catholics to the incipient Protestant faith. They simply exterminated the majority of the original members of the Order. The survivors learned their lesson. They continued to preach peaceful coexistence with humans but also started to hunt nighttime vampires. Actually, in those days all vampires who weren’t the Night Guardians killed humans, so it was impossible to fight them all due to scanty resources. That’s why paladins tracked down and executed those who had really crossed the line – fed on children or butchered whole families. And this good tradition of protecting humans from nighttime vampires has continued for a few hundred years, with paladins on the front lines.”
“And who are the paladins now?”
“Rettle, your uncle, Lumberjack, and Stoker.”
“Only four?”
“Why have more? It’s not 15th-century Romania, killer vampires don’t lurk behind every corner.”
“So what do they do, when they find a nighttime vampire?”
“Ah, dear, I think I’ve told you too much already. Mike won’t be happy at all. He was probably going to talk to you on the subject himself. And here I am, spilling all the beans. Old fool!” Bessie tapped herself on the forehead.
I was about to promise not to tell my uncle, but there was a knock on the door. Rettle stood on the threshold, which meant it was again time for martial arts training.
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