Episode 030
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- A listener asks if THE VEINGEL will see print…
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With that off my chest, I sit up to gage Mercy's reaction. Her eyes are closed.
"Are you still awake?"
"Yeah, I'm just…speechless. You were right. That is the craziest story I have ever heard."
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
"No," she says, her eyes still closed, so I can't read them. "I believe Jesus walked on water. This is on par."
"Any questions you'd like to ask?"
She'd better have a few. If she doesn't, then I was right to doubt her conviction earlier.
"Of course I have questions. But we'd be up all night…"
"That many, huh?"
She opens her eyes and props herself on her elbows to look at me. "There is one thing that would help me sleep easier…"
"Shoot. No more secrets."
"Sit up," she says, "I need to see your eyes."
She squints through the dim light, a narrow green ring of color around her fully dilated pupils like the negative of a snow moon.
"Come forward more. Lean closer," she says, and just at the instant I start to smile in bewilderment, she grasps the silver cross hanging from her necklace and mashes it against my forehead like a rubber stamp low on ink.
"Hisssss-ahhhhh-hissss!" I yell out, alternating mock cries of pain with my spit-whistle impersonation of sizzling flesh.
Mercy jerks the crucifix away from my face and scoots back so fast on the bed that she bumps her head against the padded wall which serves as a headboard.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Oh my God, oh my-so sorry-so-are you OK?-oh dear Lord Jesus-I just needed to know if-Jesus-if you were really a vampire."
She's almost in tears as I start laughing. "Gotcha."
"You're not hurt?" she asks, after she stops holding her breath.
I shake my head. "No. Why would I be? And when have you heard me refer to myself as a ‘vampire?' This time it's funny. But please, don't ever call me that again."
"OK. But you said you and your people drink blood, doesn't that make you a-"
"No. vampires are something else."
"So vampires do exist?"
"Yes, but-"
"-So what's the difference?"
"There's a soul-lot of difference… because a vampire doesn't have one," I say. "There are degrees of death. A vampire is what happens to those infected with our curse when their physical body is killed, but either the heart is not destroyed, or the blood is not drained."
She takes a deep breath and relaxes herself away from the head board to sit cross-legged. "So clarify something for me: you weren't harmed by my crucifix because you're a Naphil, not a vampire-but a stake through the heart, that lore's legit? Right? Works on Nephilim and vampires?"
"‘Works on?'"
She raises her hands up in front of her. "Sorry. I didn't mean anything… I'm just confused. Help me out."
"It's understandable. A stake through the heart prevents a fallen Naphil or Veingel from becoming a vampire, because it destroys the heart so that it can't start back up again-can't pump any infected blood that might still be left in the body. Draining all the blood from the body would also do the trick-the blood is the life-but it can be a difficult and messy process. And it doesn't have to be a stake; a bullet hole, a puncture wound from a knife, same diff'. Think of it this way: infected blood, flowing through a live body, equals either a Naphil or a Veingel-someone like me born with the curse, or in the latter case, a non-immune human who contracts it while I feed. A vampire on the other hand, equals infected blood flowing through a dead body.
"As for the crucifix, wishful thinking. Sure, if the vampire's decayed enough, it might sink into their rancid flesh and leave a mark, which might look a little like a burn-scar t-but anyone who got that close wouldn't live to tell about it."
"What about sunlight?"
"I try to wear sunscreen when I'm in the tropics, but otherwise, no ill effects. Vamps don't like it because it spoils their flesh faster. It's cooler at night."
"Garlic?"
"Clears the sinuses. Never eat it before a date. It does the mask the smell of putrid meat, though, so if you didn't want to smell an approaching vampire, it might be good for that."
"Holy water?"
"More wishful thinking promoted by the church. In fact, pretty much anything you may have heard about vampires, with a religious connotation associated with it, is utter fantasy. It's the stuff with a biological basis that usually has an element of truth."
She straightens her legs and leans back against the wall again for support. "So tell me Jequon: how do I know you won't bite me?"
"You're just going to have to take my word for it."
"It would help if you gave me a plausible reason."
Why indeed… It would help me if I had a plausible reason. The only one I have is some kind of lightness in my chest I can't seem to find the words for.
"Because I respect you," I say. Close. Not quite right, but close.
"I don't follow," she says, fingering her necklace.
And that's the crux-ifix of the matter isn't it? I promised her, no more secrets, but I've told her too many already only to scare her away with this one. But if I don't tell her, then her fear of me biting her is a perfectly good reason to bolt.
"I won't feed on you, Mercy, because if I did, and you became Veingel, your soul would be damned to hell, regardless of your current relationship with God."
"Well that's not exactly comforting-or reassuring, for that matter, given your contempt for the Creator. Does that mean you disrespect all the people you do turn?"
She has a point. But I'm too tired to get into another debate on religion.
"Look, you're just going to have to accept this on faith, Mercy. Pretend I'm God."
"Don't go there," she yawns, sliding down the wall until she's supine with her head on the pillow.
"Worst case, I bite you. It's not the end of the world."
"Just my immortal soul? What a relief."
"Damnation is only a problem if you die."
Good words to live by, but maybe not the best way to make a point with a believer. Sometimes, though, I just can't help myself. I wait for one of her cruel comebacks but she still won't say anything. I start to say her name but a snore cuts me short. Wow. I've heard asthmatic smokers with sleep apnea who don't rattle that loud.
I give her a few minutes to get truly comatose and ease my way out from under the covers; stand up slowly so I don't wake her on my way to the fore bunk.
She's a light sleeper. "Where are you going? I'm cold…"
"I can't sleep in my clothes. Especially these coveralls, they're too bulky," I say, not bothering to mention that my freshly-healed eardrum might also be in danger next to a set of pipes like hers.
"Whatever. Just keep me warm. Please."
Maybe she's so tired she doesn't realize I'm commando beneath the coveralls? I wasn't about to borrow a pair of Frank's ratty Fruit of the Looms.
"I'm not getting any warmer down here," she mumbles groggily.
Fuck it. Her eyes are closed, so I step out of the borrowed clothes stark ass naked and-
Mercy's lids spring open faster than a B-movie corpse, and she helps herself to an eyeful, or two. More like three.
"Turnabout's fair play."
"Now we're even," I say, shielding myself with a corner of the bedspread, and slide underneath beside her, anatomically perpendicular as before.
"You know, Jequon, you're feet aren't all that warm," she says, pleading with a high-pitched puppy-dog whimper at the end to get me moving.
It hasn't occurred to her yet to ask me for details on the feeding process, so she doesn't realize the all but inevitable outcome of a situation like this; doesn't understand how much will this is going to take for me to suppress my instincts.
For increasingly obvious reasons, I roll over so my back's to her; turn myself around so we're both pointing in the same direction.
She drapes an arm over me; squeezes my chest with her hand as she spoons herself into me, her breath warm on my neck.
Is she coming on to me? Doesn't she see I'm too tired to resist? She-she snores again, out like a…me.
Author: Jeremy James
Shelved In: Episodes
Main Topic: vampire lore
Keywords: CHAPTER 29 • church • crucifix • Damnation • death • Jesus • Mercy • Naphil • Nephilim • vampire • Veingel •
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