My blood approves

“You get blood from the Red Cross?” I pictured Mae and Jack going down to a Red Cross and asking for a pint of blood for the ride home.

“No, not exactly.” Mae let go of my wrist, gently touching my knee as she did, and then smiled at me. “There’s a vampire blood bank. People think they’re donating to some place like the Red Cross, but it’s for us. So we have a fridge in the basement full of blood.”

“Not that Peter or Ezra ever really get into it,” Jack muttered, and Mae shot a look at him.

“They lived too long in the times before blood banks,” Mae said, looking rather apologetic. “They’re purists.”

“So… they… what? How does that work? They just find some random person and bite them?” The thought of Peter biting anyone else made me feel vaguely nauseous.

“No, they have clubs where people willingly donate, and a lot of times, they can pick up girls, who think they’re going on a date and getting a long kiss on the neck, but really they’re just getting a snack,” Mae clarified.

“You’re okay with that?” I asked Mae. Ezra was her husband. It would have to be painful knowing he was biting other people. “Ezra’s out and about dating and drinking other women?”

“It’s not pleasant,” Mae admitted, with a pained expression. “But it’s the nature of who we are. And I’d rather have him seducing a woman than just attacking someone and killing them. It’s the price of eternity, love. I can be with the man I love forever, but he has to kiss other women.” She smiled sadly at me, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to come to terms with it like she had.

“I drink almost entirely bag blood,” Jack interjected brightly, and I turned my attention back to him.

“The night you picked me up, were you going to bite me?” Then, remembering how suddenly drowsy I was and that I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home, my eyes widened. “Did you bite me?”

“No!” Jack put his hands up defensively under the scrutinizing glares from Mae and me. “No! I didn’t! Honest!” Then he looked sheepish. “I’d actually just come from the club, and I’d … fed, right before I saw you.”

“You mean the clubs I was trying to get into?” I wondered if Jane had ever been picked up by a vampire without knowing it. She probably had, and that served her right.

“No, it’s a vampire one. Well, I guess I don’t know where you guys were trying to go, so you might’ve. Most people don’t know it’s a vampire club. In fact, that’s how I turned.”

“Peter picked you up at a club?” I raised my eyebrow skeptically.

“Nope,” Jack grinned. “I followed these two hot chicks in, and they turned out to be psychotic vampires. Peter was there, looking for something to eat, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me cause I’m a guy, and it’s harder to feed off somebody that isn’t attracted to you. But the girls went crazy and left me for dead. People can lose a lot of blood, but not all of it. Peter found me in the alley behind the club, and for some reason, he took pity on me. He took me back here, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Do you have to be dead to turn?” I asked.

“No, you can’t be dead,” Jack clarified. “Once you’re dead, you’re dead.

That’s it. Vampires aren’t undead. We’re just a different form of people. Ezra explained it to me that vampirism is a virus, sorta like AIDS, except whereas AIDS makes you sick, this makes you better.”

“It’s a virus?” I looked skeptical.

“I guess.” Jack shrugged. “That’s what Ezra told me. It’s like an evolutionary mutation. As far as Ezra can tell, the oldest known case of vampires only dates back about 1000 years ago, the first time the population reached 300 million. Naturally, as the population grew, so did the amount of vampires. But his theory is that people have no predators. The only thing that really takes people down is weather and disease. The plagues actually helped keep the population in check. When cities were overflowing, a plague would come and knock the numbers down. A vampire is just another kind of plague.”

“Yeah, that’s great and everything, but a virus?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How can a virus do this to you?”

“Again, Ezra is more of an expert than I am,” Jack began. “But it just makes you more efficient. We get exactly what we need all the time. We don’t have to process anything. We live on pure, fresh nutrients. I think it actually kills a lot of the organs in our body, because so much of the human body is spent digesting and utilizing food. We don’t do that. It’s just there already. And it stops decay. When we die, we’re like Styrofoam. We’re here forever. When we get injured, we heal at an alarming rate, because we’re all blood. Blood, skin, muscle, and bones that are stronger than metal.”

“You guys are really vampires?” They had been explaining stuff to me for a long time, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Jack laughed and leaned on the counter.

“That was my reaction at first, too,” he grinned.

“I think that was everyone’s,” Mae agreed.