Aphrodisia

Originally written Saturday, January 7, 2006

Moshe was staring at the table, but this made him start chuckling. “She gave me her number. Then she went back inside. I don’t even know her name. Just her number, and I only know it’s hers cuz these two saw her give it to me.” Voluntary mortals seem to experience vampires’ bloodsucking as erotic in a way that vampires only sometimes do; while I’ve seen older vampires choose their prey as if attractive members of the preferred sex were singularly valuable conquests, and while some (like Trudy at the Crypt) may approach those they find appealing because they desire more than a hearty meal, most I’ve known have described the actual ingestion as a fairly utilitarian process.

Nonetheless, there’s a kind of phenomenon that lends a perverse sort of credence to some Darwinian theories. That is, the sexual draw some mortals have toward giving of themselves to vampires is specifically what allows the latter to survive until their souls begin to deplete: some of the ensouled truly don’t care enough to worry, but most of those who remain connected to humanity need some sign that their “partners” (for lack of a better word) are, well, getting something out of it, too. And although I obviously don’t know if there’s any actual biological chemistry to take into account, with pheromones or some kind of equivalent, it does seem as if vampires, as a species, have evolved to be attractive to humans, or to a critical mass of them. It makes quite a bit of sense: the most attractive are also most likely to pass on their “genetic” (or whatever) material to those humans they spawn into further vampirehood. Ms. Bite-and-Bail had to have possessed much of this material, since Moshe, in only a month’s time, had developed into a much more intriguing individual than he’d been when I first met him.

“Yeah, actually I didn’t make it over until after the number-giving thing. He wasn’t gonna kill her.” Patrick seemed completely certain about this.

“Yay for me,” deadpanned Moshe.

“Well, congratulations, kiddo. Guess you’re not the one I’m supposed to watch.” I was speaking to Patrick and referring to Medusa’s warning about letting mortals channel the energy. It didn’t sound like that’s what he was doing, strictly speaking, though. It was impressive, at least, that he hadn’t tried.

“I figured.”

“And you don’t remember anything at all,” I said, recapping the important part of Moshe’s story. Instead of responding verbally, he just gave me that glare again, heavy-lidded, eyebrows raised.

Trudy jumped in again to offer, “He’s been drinking human blood for a while.” She would have been able to tell if she’d taken note of it when she and Patrick first found him. The comment sounded slightly non sequitur. I was sure it didn’t seem that way to Trudy—his unconscious dining habits would certainly be relevant if his first human quarry, the woman at the club, was more representative of them than his last, the woman at the diner—but it sounded almost like she had been waiting deliberately for the moment to report that part of the story.

The events of this day to be continued...