So You Used to Be Human - Book 3 (Original Version)

Chapter 17: The Price of Immortality

And yet, there I was, trying to run from it again.

"Can I get the TL;DR version of this?"

Madame Vera gave me such a look then that it froze my heart and all joking went out of me.

"The next time someone points a gun at your head, or is about to slit your throat with a knife or broken beer bottle, you might consider that it might be the last time you're going to die. At some point, you're just going to stop coming back. The irony of this lies in the fact that in order for us to have long sustained lives, every hundred years or so, we have to die or we will slowly lose our minds."

"Could you back up a little to the part where you said I'm going to stop coming back to life?"

"Well at least that got your attention."

"Self-preservation wins the day over smart-assery."

"Each of us has a limited number of times we can come back. For some of us it could be forty two or two-hundred, or as low as ten. It's not like we have a number printed on our bodies that tell us how many times we have left to die, but I can tell you this: the more times you die, the more likely it is that your next death will be your last one."

I let that ruminate for a bit.

"And how many times did I die in the past couple of days?"

"Seventeen times. Give or take a few."

Fucking ow. My mind went to Jaime then and that sinking feeling, that hollowness that had been gnawing at m me for sometime came back in full force as I realized what she had meant by "too many times". She was going to need some serious therapy after this.

I blinked back to reality, fighting that ball of emotion and telling it to fuck off for a bit. The damage was already done with Jaime and Madame Vera thought this was important enough for me to know about, so time to shut the fuck up and really listen.

"I thought death was a kind of cheat code for vampires? The way Beatrice made it sound, I'm supposed to be stronger, faster... better. Something about the way our bodies heal from death. Now you're telling me that I have a 'death number' that nobody even knows what it is?"

"Essentially. I've been running this facility for over sixty years. It started solely as a way to help my fellow vampires recuperate. I saw a need for my services, so I provided the service and the clientele has been extremely grateful. But over that period of time I also began to notice that not all of my clients came back to life. Patterns began to emerge over time and for the first time in a long time I actually felt afraid of dying.

"It was the most human I had felt in a very long time..."

I was shaking my head by this time, a pained amusement beginning to churn inside my chest.

"I knew this was a conversation I really didn't want to have. Should have listened to myself, but no..."

"I like you Robert. For whatever reason, I actually feel some kind of fondness for your brand of idiocy-"

"Thanks I think?"

"-So I'll be brutally honest with you. You're a horrible vampire-"

"So much for my ego." I thought for a long second. "So all I have to do is stop dying so much?"

"There is something I haven't mentioned..."

"Of course there is. Hit me with it one time and get it over with. Let's go!"

"There is another reason I built this place. We cannot go on forever without dying. Something happens to our minds the longer we live. Our brains can only retain so much memory, training, instincts. The brain doesn't get any bigger you see and that retention of information will eventually drive even the best of us, completely insane. Death seems to be the only way to reset the brain. Beatrice has suffered through one of those episodes and she can tell you so much more of her own experience. I don't believe that she ever recovered from it."