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

Chapter 17: The Price of Immortality

"What vampires fear most is dying and not coming back."

Madame Vera paused to let the gravity of this statement sink in, but I totally wasn't getting the severity of it, or at least giving her the reaction she seemed to want. I tried to look suitably impressed and awestruck, but I'm a horrible liar, so that didn't turn out too well. Madame Vera just rolled her eyes and continued speaking.

"I'll speak more plainly so you can completely understand Robert. We vampires are not immortal. At least not in the true sense of the word. True immortality is an unchanging state for all time, but as you know, we are not unchanging and yes we can die, but part of the allure and the advantage is that for us, death is a not permanent state. This is something you're no doubt acutely aware of due to your recent experiences... but I fear it is an area you need to tread more carefully."

I still wasn't getting it. Maybe it was the distraction of Madame Vera herself or the fact that she used such formal language that would be better left for the stage or even poetry. Until I had met Madame Vera I'd never actually ever heard anyone speak as eloquently and the part of my brain that could follow along just hadn't kicked in yet.

Madame Vera had sent Jaime off to find the kitchen, a very accommodating Vern leading the way after I stressed to him just how much money we currently didn't have. He had looked more disappointed that I had ruined his little game of demanding exorbitant sums of money just for doing his job, but as he escorted Jaime away I had heard him crank up the charm all the way to thirteen and he had gone in for the hard sell. I almost called to Jaime then to warn her, but then I didn't figuring that she could use the distraction of the mental wrangling that was required when dealing with Vern.

"I already know that we're not immortal. I've died. Lots of times. Lots and lots and lots and lots of times..."

"It goes beyond simply dying Robert. Some vampires die and come back, but sometimes they just stay dead."

"Say what? Like dead, dead?"

"I've met a lot of vampires in my time. The past ninety years have been a very educational time for me especially since we've had to adapt so quickly in order to survive and it's brought us vampires together where we can thrive and plan for our futures. Where we previously had to depend on a handful of acquaintances, suddenly we had an entire community. It was an event unprecedented in our entire history, that number of vampire getting together and talking and sharing and realizing that none of us ever wanted to feel alone again, and that we didn't have to. Now we can be anywhere in the world and be in touch with each other. That level of communication brings great insights into how communities have developed and thrived... or in some cases, have failed. And it provides us with a sense of history and a way to make sense of events that had previously had no explanation.

"I had been a vampire for over forty years before I met another vampire outside of the three who had become my only family in the world."

I'd begun eyeing the door about two minutes ago, especially since it was beginning to sound like I was about to be given a history lesson or even worse, a biographical history and for some reason I couldn't explain, learning anything about vampire history was a major turn-off for me. Which is surprising since normally I'm into all things historical especially if told well, and the occasional interesting story on the History Channel could still grab my interest for a while... at least until they started blaming it all on aliens. The fascination with history was something that only struck me several years after I'd left school and then had come across an alternate history of the Mayans, written speculatively from their perspective and had raised the simple question of how well they would have technologically if they'd actually developed the wheel and how that development had been hindered by the fact that they had no damn horses. You know, because they lived in the mountains. Things would have gone quite differently for the Spaniards is what I'm saying. Anyway, that blew my mind and got me to really look deeper at history and the perspectives that were offered, which usually had a tendency to be about sixty percent full of shit. So what I'm saying is that vampire history should have been right up my alley.