Struck (A Vampire Novel) ✔

Eight

Aveline sat behind me on the bed brushing through my hair while I absently stared at a page of The Biology of Vampyre. It wasn’t that I didn’t find vampires interesting, in fact the book itself held a plethora of information about how vampires ticked and their feeding patterns and plenty more. But several passages were in Latin and a lot of the English bits were very complex with medical terms I couldn’t distinguish the definition of. The only parts I could understand were the ones in simple English, describing basics of vampires, and a lot of the pictures explained themselves.

It also didn’t help that I was confused about current events. Xander hadn’t come back from wherever he had disappeared to. I hadn’t showed any signs of amazing speed or things similar. Aveline hadn’t bothered to explain what had just happened. And I hadn’t gathered the courage to begin asking my questions, much less figured out what questions I did want to ask. Instead, I just let Aveline absently stroke my hair while I picked through what felt like a book in a completely different language.

From what I could gather, vampires were similar to humans in some ways. Their heart beat, though at a constant and slow rate. They didn’t need human food to survive or drinks. They only needed human blood, and even then could live for centuries without it though it would leave them in a crazed state. They had an infinite lifespan as long as they avoided the things that could kill them. The list of things vampires were susceptible to included: silver to the heart, beheading, fire, and sunlight. Silver did hurt them, but only kills if it strikes the heart or is used in a weapon to behead them. There were also herbs that can harm them, make them weak or sick, but none that are known to poison them to death.

The book described their fangs as being a layer of bone hiding over the canine teeth in the gum. They could extend the layer over their canine teeth at will, though sometimes it occured automatically. It’s associated with the senses, which causes the pupils to expand ridiculously large in order to maximize their senses completely. I imagined if one where to shine a light directly into a vampire’s black eyes, it would be especially irritating.

A vampire’s blood was described in extreme medical terms and twisted through pages of Latin. I could only find small bits of English that only stated it was powerful and could be used to heal humans in a form of life force sharing, similar to bonding. The book didn’t state more on it in simple terms.

The interesting part was what I learned about a vampire’s saliva when biting their victim. Apparently, a vampire could emit multiple types of venom through their saliva. It was similar to how some spiders can choose between their venom, whether to paralyze their prey for feasting or just to kill the prey completely. With vampires, they could choose levels at which their bite affects the victim. This included a spectrum on the pleasure and pain scale. Their venom also could decide whether they’re biting to feed or biting to turn. If the vampire wanted to turn a victim, they merely willed it into their venom, and when feeding their blood to the human it wouldn’t just heal the bite, it would complete the turn.

I was reading fertility in Royals versus infertility in turned vampires when I finally gathered the nerve to begin bothering Aveline with my questions. “Aveline?” I approached her name carefully, allowing her to silence me if she wished. I continued reading, learning shortly that Royals only remained fertile typically within the first century of their life, becoming infertile afterwards. Turned vampires were infertile for some reason, the turning of human life to vampire apparently damaging their ability to breed in the process.

“Go on, ask your questions,” Aveline sighed, already knowing it was coming. I still hesitated, not sure exactly which questions I wanted answers to first and knowing that I probably would only get the first few answered.