Erasure and Affirmation (Hypernaturals 11)

Vampire Coma

Vera's temperature rose, and she drifted off into her coma four hours later.

"That was fast." Jessica said.

"Faster than I went." Morgan agreed.

Angel stood there, and I saw tears in her eyes and running down her classic cheeks as she looked down.

I went over to hug her. "Angel: Vera is not stressed at all. You should have seen her after she took the hits. Confidence itself. Not the slightest stress. Not in her scent, and not in her vitals. Vera was not worried about this. She'll be OK. She is healthy and strong. She has the best care there is. Right here." I said.

"It's not that." Angel said.

"What then?" I asked.

"Will she still want to marry me?" Angel asked. "She'll be Vampire. Not Siren."

"You think that the reason she loves you is that she is Siren?" I asked, catching up. "No, no, my Angel. That may be how you got her into bed, but that is not why she loves you. I promise. I'm Vampire. I love you. You are her Angel, and you are the person that has loved her unconditionally from the start. Besides: You are past the passing out stage with Vampires now. She'll still want to marry you. There will be changes: Not going to lie, but at her core, she is still Vera, and you are still you."

"Annoying and all." Helen said.

"She can't hear you sniping her." I told Helen.

"I know. That is part of what is annoying." Helen replied.

Danny, not feeling at all useful, went to the house to play with the kids and give Rachel status. Nakoma came up and looked over Vera's sleeping form, checking all her stats, and looking at the log Lori has been keeping.

"She went under fast. Is that because she is a Siren? Or is it because she took so much?" Nakoma asked Mom.

"No idea, dear. I am guessing that it is the latter." Mom said.

"Why two doses? It says here that one was a million times a bite in terms of viral load." Nakoma wondered. My future Doctor.

"Because Vera wanted to be sure she turned." Angel said. "She picked out the two people thought to be the most actively infectious. The most likely to turn her. It was more than Adrian and Morgan are the two she is closest to. She wanted to take no chances of staying Siren."

Angel looked at Helen miserably. "She hated being a Siren. Hated her nature and fought it with her entire being all the time. Hated that no matter what she did, she was never going to be good enough for you."

"I never understood that. Her self hatred. I saw it: I did not understand its source." Nakoma said. "I didn't think about that. Her wanting that approval from Helen. So obvious now that you mentioned it. I still have a lot to learn about being an Astral. Putting together cause and effect. Why people feel bad about themselves when they are amazing. Vera is amazing, Mom. My sperm donor may have been a garbage pick because you were young, but you picked right this time. The passion, the energy, the loyalty. She is everything you need. I can Astral-see that all day long."

Helen looked like Angel and Nakoma popped her in the nose with a 1-2 punch.

"Yes. Well. She found a way out of that now, didn't she?" Helen said.

"One injection is a million times a bite, and this was two million times a bite... What does it mean that some went directly to her brain and the other her heart? Anything?" Nakoma asked, ignoring Helen's defensive tone.

"She was being symbolic?" Helen asked, rhetorically. Still on the defense against the idea that she is in part the reason Vera is in a coma right now.

"When a Vampire bites the neck, the turn does not matter if it was artery or vein." Jessica answered Nakoma. "It's viral. The dose that went to her heart will get the broadest distribution first. The virus in the artery will cross the blood / brain barrier as well, then race down to the heart to catch up, so the real question here is only which of the two strains takes the majority hold in her body. Will it be Adrian's or Morgan's? Will it be a mix? We have not sequenced this yet. There is 'IS1', 'GS1', 'GS2', and 'M1'. That's Melissa though. There may be ISm, ISa, GS1m, GS1a, GS2m, GS2a, and finally Mm and Ma. Eight subtly different organisms. We have no idea where the mutations of Adrian and of Morgan reside. Morgan's lack of fangs is probably on one of the two GS organisms list of things to do that it botched."

"So Vera could have any mix of those eight. If I understood all the dinner time discussions after you all came home, since they may mutate to adapt to a host, now they may be creating ISv, GS1v, GS2v, and Mv?" Nakoma asked.

"Exactly right, my brilliant daughter." Jessica smiled in approval, happy Nakoma has been paying attention. "So that morphing to adapt could be baselined off any combination of the input organisms. Or does that even matter, since Adrian and Morgan are so close to each other, and have looped so many times that their Vampire Viral Blood Biome is indistinguishable? We must sequence Adrian and Morgan's VMC's. Then in a few months once they are fully established in Vera, sequence her VMC, and see what is what. All I know right now is this: Vera being a Siren was no defense against the VMC takeover. Whatever the evolved resistance to Juice was in Siren's, it is not generalized to be able to defend against this all-out viral invasion she just launched. In terms of whether this will work on Sirens? The question Victoria and Denise wanted to be answered? The answer is a qualified 'yes': At least a double dose will. Now we wait and see."

Mom looked down at Vera, head cocked in silent consideration. "You surprised me with this one, young lady. I think perhaps the only one you did not surprise with this move is Adrian."

"I'm not surprised." Angel said. "I just hoped she was happy enough with me that she would not do something rash like this. She was always going to take the change. We both were. Are. I have to now, don't I? Someday. Our eight years age difference meant nothing when we both thought we would see 200. Now she is going to live centuries longer than that. I am the one that turns into the old lady almost instantly relative to her. She is going back to being twenty-five and staying there."

Angel wiped at her face again. She is really worried that Vera will not love her anymore. I grok that. I spent seven years wondering the same things. How much Siren-ness will she lose? How much of her attraction to Angel was that mysterious Siren / Astral chemistry? No way to know. I told Angel I think Vera will stay with her. and I do think that. I could be wrong. Helen has never had much faith in Vera. Helen always thought I was wrong about her.

I squared myself as I thought about that. I'm not. I know Vera. I know her core. I always saw it. Angel reached it. That core is why Vera did this. Maybe now Helen will see it too.