"See no evil. Speak no evil. Listen carefully."
A family akin to a modern Adams' Family moves into the derelict house across the street from Kota. Intrigued by the beautiful doll-like daughter, he and Nathan attempt to befriend her while trying to u...
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Owen sits at his desk, half hidden in the dark of his home office. The clock's pendulum swings loudly with every lunge from side to side, just across the room. Resting his mouth on the edges of his laced fingers, he glowers at the pendulum in deep thought.
There were many ways he figured the night would go. Not a damn one ended up even close. So much for thinking her mentally ill or a cannibal. Now he's left wondering if he's the one mentally ill.
He sits forward in his office chair and goes through the photographs Phil Roberts gifted him. Some are simply photographs of depictions too old for touch anymore. On the outside of the black Manila folder, written in silver ink are the words:
'When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. After he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died. ~Genesis'
Owen's lips purse, a single trail of sweat crawling down his spine from the collar of his shirt. He just isn't ready to deal with this. Everything that once made up his reality has been half shrouded in lies.
Owen opens the file fully, staring hard at the hand drawn diagram from the Renaissance Era. It depicts a male with his chest cavity opened, the skin pinned back to a surface not visible. Inside his cavity are ink drawings of organs that look identical to any other human being's. The scribbled side notes are the only hint that something is amiss at all with the cadaver, that and the maw full of razor sharp teeth.
The Vampyre is a lie of humanity, hiding under the pretense of being one of our own. This is the creature's camouflage, how it lures prey out to devour at its leisure.
The heart beats an average of five beats per minute in a healthy vessel. This particular vessel arrived healthy and well fed. My experiments have led me to the conclusion that our blood, our god given life force, keeps them further away from the door of death. The more I starved the creature, the slower the heart rate. I kept this vessel for a year. The heart rate didn't begin to decrease until six months after its arrival to my tower. This drop in heart rate accelerated after the first change in its mechanisms. Three beats at nine months. Two beats at ten months. One beat less than a week later. The creature perished the next day of starvation.
The organs are not red like our own. They are black like necrotic flesh, yet aren't as fragile. Reproductive organs seem functional. I'll need a female vessel to study their reproductive health further. The blood is always in a state of sludge, as if in the beginning stages of coagulation. Human blood seems to thin their blood and makes their organs more pliant. This I've witnessed after slaughtering a vessel after a gorge. I'd dissected his abdomen to see the changes first hand.
