One Hundred Percent Human

The Break Up

After two more days and two more dates, they took a picnic lunch to the hills south of blood sea. Chel-C had been skeptical of the choice of scenery, but she discovered it to be a thing of beauty. The sea wasn't actual blood, though technology would have made something like that possible. Instead, it was an ocean rich with red-pigmented micro-organisms. The shore was decorated with long branching flowers with coiling red-rimmed flowers. Vincent used his considerable wealth to keep it as a natural preserve.

Knowing this one thing about him made her begin to love him.

When he kissed her beneath the rainbow sky, she forgot herself in breathless wonder. He could have melted away her self-control right then, but instead he remained a gentleman.

Was he the one?

"Would you come to church with me tomorrow?"

He glanced away. She held her breath while she waited for an answer.

"I'll go with you," he said. He still didn't look at her. "However, I prefer to stay outside and pray in my own way."

She sniffed, trying to decide what that meant. "I'm a traditional girl from the Church of Purity. Our beliefs go all the way back to the plague days on early thirtieth century on Proxima Centauri."

"I have traditional beliefs as well," he said. Another vague answer.

Chel-C found her thoughts focused on Vincent instead of the service, both during the sharing of wisdom and the symbolic, ceremonial infusion of the prophet's blood. Was he truly praying as he'd said? What did his own way mean? As short a time as she'd known him, she was shocked to discover how much she cared about the answer.

When the service was over, she found him kneeling in the small, genetically pure garden. She waited, quietly, for him to rise. Time melted silently away while he sat with a bowed head. Eventually, she came and put her hand on his shoulder.

"The service has been over for some time now, and I thought we might get some lunch."

He rose. Whatever he'd been praying for, he'd poured a lot of emotion into the request. She hoped it had something to do with the future of their relationship.

A shiver ran up her arm at his touch. There was something strange about him now. What?

He took her hand and led her along a path strewn with crystalline flowers.

"Is it too early to talk about marriage?" she asked. Her cheeks flushed. "I'm sorry," she said, hurriedly. "Sorry."

"It's all right," he said.

He stopped and gazed deeply into her eyes with his black ones.

Black? Hadn't they been blue?

"Two things," he said. When he spoke, the tips of white fangs extruded from below his lips.

"First, I've lived for more than thirty centuries and I've never loved a woman the way I love you."

She blinked.

"Second, I'm a vampire," he said. "Not one of these genetic creations of the modern age, but the inspiration upon which they were designed. I'm a creature older than space travel itself."

His words made no sense. Something inspired the creation of vampires? Something more than thirty centuries old?

"But your heart..."

"Beats for a time after I've fed. Likewise, my teeth retract and my eyes lighten. I survive on stolen drops of life, but have none of my own."

Chel-C's eyes stung. "I don't--how could--"

"Before I believed in the Divine I knew Evil. It appeared to me as a bloody dove, a dying woman's breath, and a moonless night. Thrice it offered me immortality in exchange for my soul." He laughed. It was a sound like poison set to music. "Like a fool, I accepted."

Her mouth worked silently.

"Let me feed on your life. Perhaps in your love, I can find the redemption I've sought for so long."

Chel-C fled.