Soulstice: Luna's Dream. Lance Jr. Dow

technical, but we are born with bone morphogenetic proteins and osteoblasts cells like humans. These are the basic building blocks of bone formation. Then your human blood provides the minerals we need to create our bones. So our bones grow fast and very strong. Our strong bones and skeletal structure are needed to support the physical things we do.

      That’s a basic lesson on why we are how we are.

      No, we can’t really fly. But we can jump-- some of us farther and more graceful than others. I myself can jump quite far now and can position my body aerodynamically, thereby reducing friction and going farther. It’s very cool to be able to do this and it’s one of the things I really like to do-- that and diving off the cliffs. These are the mothers of all swan dives. I’m up to a quarter of a mile out when I knife into the Pacific. That’s one-thousand three-hundred twenty feet. That’s the length of over four football fields. I launch off a seven-hundred foot cliff. My life may be complicated and angst-filled, but it sure can be fun sometimes.

      They say there are some vampires that have learned to use the Earth’s magnetic field to levitate themselves and “fly”. It’s supposed to result from some type of reverse polarization of the iron ions in our blood from all the iron in the human blood we consume. I’ve never seen it. I can’t do it. I think it’s one of our own myths.

      While we were satisfied to live our lives in the deep woods, our food source; humans, exploded upon the planet. So many of them, so few of us; by our own hand and by nature’s own design. You can understand why most vampires did not openly confront the human world. Your numbers were just overwhelming. Humans also began to create weapons that more than leveled the playing field and those weapons as years passed, grew even more efficient and deadly. And the will to use them to get what is wanted has always been there in humans.

      One thing you humans excel at is making weapons to kill things; no matter what it is-- even a bacterium. If we were found out and it was decided by humans that we needed to be eradicated--- you would certainly develop the weapons and tactics to do so. A simple sun test is all that would be necessary to identify a vampire or a light source that imitated the spectrum of rays that are damaging to us.

      We are just as intelligent as humans, but for some reason we didn’t pursue these types of advances early on. We had no need. We could survive and live our lives without them.

      By the time we realized that weapons were also a defensive measure we were too far behind humans. Our society decided secrecy was the best way forward. As long as we remained just a myth we would be able to live, survive and even prosper alongside the human race.

      There are those vampires that want to take the planet as our own. They want to subjugate the humans and harvest what we need. But our progressive society of tribes, clans, and governance has prevailed. Though not many cling to the whole tribe-clan thing anymore, it’s from yester-year. The family-unit is our core societal unit now. Mostly we are left alone to live our lives. Our government steps in, only under the most extreme circumstances, letting the natural forces of society to exert their will on a more local basis. And as in your world, natural forces come down to power from wealth. Natural forces also mean natural strength as well. The animal in us makes us yield to the strongest of the pack. The strongest of the vampires tend to rise to the top of the social ladder. Some, like my parents, don’t want all the rest that comes with being in the upper echelons of vampire society. My parents are very strong vampires but they want a simple life for themselves and us, their children.

      As evolution would have it, female vampires of age can only bear up to three children within a window of time between the approximate ages of twenty and twenty-eight-- yup, a real strict biological-clock. Go figure evolution. It makes strange and weird happen sometimes. It all works to regulate and limit our population vs. the humans.

      I’m probably going into areas you’d rather not hear about. I’m still dealing with the whole “birds and the bees” thing myself and I still feel that twang of “ew” running up my spine in a nervous shiver ending in a spasm in my jaw and face. I understand boys get this same feeling when they think about getting kicked in the “you-know-what’s.” My older sister Christian, tells me this “ew” factor will surely pass and it will become the “Oh yeah” factor.

      Vampires aren’t a curse. Well, most of us aren’t. There are some vampires that are just vicious and cruel. The “Killer Bees” and their clan are such vampires. I’ll get to them in more detail.

      There are some vampires that for whatever reasons didn’t join the evolutionary progression of vampires to become modern-age vampires, or splintered off from the whole of vampire-dom. It’s like if human Neanderthals still existed in some far-off arctic ice canyon, or a cannibalistic headhunting tribe deep in some never seen or long forgotten place in the world.

      Most of us simply want our sustenance and to live our lives. But there are those vampires who love the hunt for the power they feel when feeding, and those who love the rush of a kill. Although killing victims is forbidden in progressive modern vampire society, there are vampires who do. They are usually from elite and powerful clans, which is how they get away with it. The “Killer Bees” are such vampires. They were definitely born to kill.

      The Bees come from such an elite and powerful clan. The clan is headed by the parents of the worst Bee of them all-- Nadira Vidal.

      There is talk that the Vidal’s have humans imported for “special occasions.” Like a container-load of humans that they buy in bulk. I don’t know if it’s really true, but it would be one more reason for me to hate Nadira more than I already do.

      As we vampires evolved alongside humans, and as human populations exploded we found we could move out of the deep woods. We could move away from the battles for turf with the animals and with our brutal nemesis, the werewolves. We could now be closer to humans and therefore closer to our food source. Closer equals less effort. See how much we’re like you? Give us a comfy couch, a big screen TV, a good movie and we’re chill.

      Werewolves are extinct. At least no one has seen one for over a century. They seemed to appear from almost nowhere. But we considered them another animal in the forest. They were no different to us than the wolf with the exception that they consumed other species like no other. They didn’t consume humans for some reason. Maybe our scent was around humans and they feared us. Somehow they sensed we were superior and they had all they needed from the animals so there was no direct conflict. The werewolves population kept growing however as there were no checks on them. They had no predators or natural forces to keep them in check. This affected humans as humans needed the animals to eat. This affected us as humans began to die in large numbers from starvation. That’s when our society began to kill werewolves. That seemed to keep them in check and now they were like a pest management situation. If we killed enough of them, enough animals survived for the humans to eat. Our efforts ran into the laws of unintended consequences. Werewolves had to consume massive amounts of food to feed their equally-high metabolism; something we both had in common. They began taking humans. And once they got a taste for human flesh it got bad real fast. The werewolves would wipe out an entire clan or town of humans overnight. It was as if those humans had just disappeared off the face of the earth. Nothing was left of them. Their victim’s bones would be crushed to bits between massive jaws and teeth becoming thoroughly consumed. Their digestive systems would extract every bit of nourishment leaving only a small amount of excreted material back in the deep woods. That would be the only thing to remain of these humans.

      Werewolves were almost eight-feet in height when standing upright. They were powerful and equally agile despite their size. They could leap great distances with their massive leg muscles recoiling tendons of steel and then releasing the energy like a catapult. Their jaws and necks, along with their teeth were meant to do one thing; rip, tear, and crush. Their thick, tight fur, over tough leather-like skin protected them with a flexible form of armor.

      We sent our vampire warriors out to kill them. But something changed. Our vampires were not returning. The werewolves’ intelligence was growing. Not only were they able to kill us, but they were beginning to consume our dead. The turning point came when they began to attack our enclaves. They had no fear of anything anymore. Driven by their insatiable hunger the werewolves