A Vampire’s Guide to History: Volume 1, Chapter 9

Victor is unkempt. His hair needs a wash, his beard is patchy, he looks to be in his 20s but his laidback 70s wardrobe makes Patrick suspect he’s been around for a bit longer than a couple of decades.

Add to that how he’s obstinate in a way that doesn’t feel youthful but rather zero fucks to give and Patrick wonders if the 70s wardrobe is due to preference rather than nostalgia.

Firstly, he refuses to acknowledge the transgression of turning Patrick into the living dead without Patrick’s expressed permission. Victor points to the note that said sorry but he couldn’t just leave Patrick there to die when he had the means to ensure his survival.

Secondly, he refuses to apologize for leaving with nothing but a vague note for an explanation. An accusation he’s rather offended by since he thought the note was nicely written and conveyed his sentiments quite clearly and concisely.

Patrick remains unimpressed.

But here is the vampire responsible for his predicament — answers will be had.

Victor tries to skirt the question of why he’s ended up in Patrick’s room until Patrick makes him confess to the fact that he’s in a bit of a pickle with the vampires Patrick met at the gathering. In fact, he was in his car about ready to haul ass out of Oxford when he hit Patrick and had to make a detour to get Patrick home safe.

How did he know where Patrick lived? Victor says that he asked the random Oxford students a-plenty as they passed by, pretending Patrick was drunk in the passenger seat, until he hit jackpot and someone gave him solid directions. Patrick says he’s lucky he didn’t come across someone Patrick knows. They wouldn’t have thought he was drunk for a second.

Patrick thinks the whole debacle was overkill for a stranger but Victor shakes his head. Vampires look out for each other. He’d just turned him. He wasn’t going to leave Patrick to deal with the confusion of sun sickness out in the open like that. Anything might’ve happened.

Patrick chooses to leave asking about ‘sun sickness’ and opts to focus on what sort of predicament Victor’s in. Victor admits he broke the cardinal rule: he fell in love with a mortal. Patrick doesn’t buy it and Victor relents and says he stole a shitload of gold and hid it away for a rainy day and Linus found out and is pissed. Understandably since most of the gold is his.

Short story even shorter: car broke down, Victor needs a place to hide, they never bother with the newbies so he’ll be safe here. The gilt invitation they left for him is standard. They size you up and discard you for the first century or so. Let you live until you’re jaded and maybe then they’ll allow you into their boring boring boring conversation. Truly it is so fucking boring. Victor is determined never to turn out like them. Eternal life isn’t going to go stale on him. He’s going to live it to the fullest.

Hence the thievery?

Yes. Eternity costs a lot. At least if you’re doing it in style.

Patrick still doesn’t know what to make of the stranger but he’s not sure he would’ve preferred to be dead than undead so he’s growing divided on whether he owes Victor a thank you.

Victor knows Patrick has more questions. They should do it twenty-questions style.

Ready. Set. Go.

Does sun sickness mean the sun burns them alive? No.

What does sun sickness mean then? They don’t do well in the sun. It makes them lethargic, the heat of the day drains their energy. They’re nocturnal. Just how it is. Don’t overthink. Also, no one really knows. There’s no handbook for this stuff and very few vampire scientists performing tests to find answers. Like zero, actually. Accepted fact for vampires: stay the hell out of daylight and you’ll be fine.

Do they have to drink human blood? Yes. There’s this thing that happens when they drink the blood of another and it’s subconscious and a real trip but if you drink enough of a person you sort of connect with them. If you start feeding on only animals… Well, things can go wrong very quickly. It’s the same as for humans, really. 'You are what you eat’ and all that. Except for vampires it’s amplified times one thousand.

Victor knows Patrick must be hungry. He hasn’t eaten, has he? Patrick doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to feed on another human. Victor grabs him by the arm and pulls him to his feet.

They have an hour until dawn. Plenty of time for dinner. He won’t take Patrick’s protests seriously since refusing to drink means you slow down until you can’t move anymore and you slowly waste away forever. Does Patrick really want to spend his eternity as a living corpse? Of course not!

They won’t kill anyone, if that’s what Patrick’s worried about. They’ll just have a few mouthfuls. Maybe slightly more than a few. Baker’s dozen ought to do it. If they feed properly tonight it means that their very, very slow metabolism ensures they won’t have to feed for at least a few weeks.

Patrick, startled by the idea of becoming a living corpse (and believing it since he remembers how the way to stave off the hunger was to lie perfectly still on his bed) follows Victor, unable not to still feel apprehensive about the whole thing.