Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
“We eat as well.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We eat,” he repeated.
“How?”
“I am certain, just as you do,” he said, giving me a smile.
“What do you eat?”
“Fish mostly,” he told me. “Fruit and vegetables, and we have chickens, goats, and sheep.”
“And you eat all that?”
He nodded.
“Vampyrs eat?” I asked Zev.
“It would make sense. The original mutation, possibly due to lack of available resources, allowed the first vampyrs to drink blood and survive. In Ophir, without enough blood to go around, since all the iceni blood isn’t going to each other, but to the nobles, a change had to happen to allow them to live in addition to blood.”
“I get the reason for it. I simply don’t understand the how.”
“Just because all the vampyrs you’ve met don’t eat or drink anything but blood doesn’t mean their bodies have forgotten how. Evolution doesn’t work like that.” He sounded like Varic. “How could I not be able to digest a piece of meat? Meat is still blood, right?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Take fruit, for example. What’s the difference between drinking juice and eating the fruit? It’s the same source, and you can digest both. Apparently, the iceni in Ophir can also do both.”
“So the ability to digest other things isn’t absent in vampyrs.”
He shook his head.
“From how it’s been explained to me, I thought you lost the capacity to digest food because maintaining the digestive pathways—I mean, why would there be a need for that?”
“There’s no need, but it’s also not an impediment, evolution-wise. Vampyrs learned how to subsist on only blood—that’s a mutation that allowed many to live through whatever event killed off those who couldn’t,” he reminded me. “It makes sense that it could work, over generations, in reverse.”
I exhaled deeply. “Sorry, I—I had no idea.”
“I didn’t either.”
“So technically, you could have a steak if you wanted.”
He was quiet a moment. “There would be no point, as I couldn’t get anything I needed from that. That steak won’t sustain me in any way, just as iceni blood would not.”
“But you’re not a noble.”
“True,” he said with a grin, “but I am old.”
“Okay, so nobles need noble blood, richer blood, never mixed with human, and so do you because you’re ancient.”
“You make it sound so terrible.”
“Don’t be funny. I’m trying to understand.”
“Sorry. So yes, correct. Iceni blood, or a steak, would be useless to me. Iceni, back in ancient times, had been vampyrs who bred with humans. They have mixed blood, and even if they have only one human ancestor, that slight dilution of blood can be tasted. Older vampyrs can smell that ‘un-pure’ blood through the skin. I’m curious to find out how drinking only iceni blood is working for Decimus’s court,” Zev admitted. “I can’t imagine how blood from people who eat food is sustaining a noble.”
“I’m blown away to hear there are vampyrs who eat. I had no idea that blood was not the only protein source available to some species of vampyrs.”
Crazy.
I wanted to ask Sorin to see his teeth, but that would be rude, so I didn’t. I wondered if the inside of his mouth would look like Varic’s with the double canines, but instead of the other teeth being sharp, did he have molars like me?
“This is so interesting,” I told Zev. “They eat in Ophir because the number of people is so small that they can’t rely solely on blood. The holding wouldn’t have survived if there were only blood drinkers there, so they evolved.”
He nodded.
“How did Ophir come to be?”
“All those who live there originally followed Decimus from Rome to Greenland. Some were slaves, so they were taken, and others, the nobles, followed him because they saw the empire falling and didn’t want to stay and figure out what was next with Magnus, and so left with Decimus. Vampyrs all over the world had to decide: stay in the evolving world with Magnus, and then Messina, or retreat from society to Ophir.”
“And now, thousands of years later, everyone who’s there is stuck. Their ancestors made a decision, and they’re living with that choice.”
“Well, some of them are the exact ones who resolved to go with him, but all the original iceni who made that trek are gone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they don’t live that long.”
“Oh God, why?” I asked, imagining some horrible lottery system that was used to keep the number of people in Ophir at a specific carrying capacity.
“It only stands to reason that if the iceni eat and process food like you do, like a human does, that they would have other commonalities with humans.”
I had to figure out what he meant. “You mean they have short life spans.”
“Yes.”
I turned to Sorin. “How old are you?”
“I am thirty-five.”
Which, if he were human, I would have thought he was. “This is crazy,” I said, and unable to stand anymore, I slid down the steel surface of the door I was leaning on and settled on the floor. “What the fuck, Zev? We have to go and change every part of how that holding is run. The iceni aren’t free, and they have to be. All vampyrs should be free.”