CHAPTER 4
Two days later
Chaim sat in a small conference room, waiting for someone—he wasn’t sure who. He’d been brought here to a small town in Tennessee after agreeing to come with Rabbi Mendel. When he’d arrived they’d given him a suite of rooms, complete with a seventy-inch state-of-the-art television and a mini-fridge stocked with a couple of bottles of whole blood. Not quite five-star-hotel quality, but still rather posh and very comfortable. And since the suite was in a floor that was totally underground, there were no annoying sunbeams oozing through the cracks and gaps of blinds and drapes, which Chaim appreciated.
The television had one of the most advanced game consoles Chaim had ever seen tied into it. It made him kind of wish that he was more of a gamer, but he never had been. He realized that was partly because he’d never been very interested in them. He’d never cared much for animated movies, either, and he wondered if the similarities of the mediums might have been a factor. Add to that the fact that he’d never had the time available to play games enough to get very good at any of them. Between his extra studies in Torah and Talmud which his father had insisted he do and his time with the Boy Scouts which his mother had insisted he do, the concept of “free time” never really existed for him. About the only time he’d been able to squirrel away for himself was when he’d lock himself in the bathroom and read science fiction novels on his phone.
Yeah, life for Chaim might have been easier if he’d been a gamer. He’d still have been a nerd, but at least then he’d have been part of a group of nerds. But instead, he’d been a solo nerd. Not much fun there.
Chaim had to wonder if this whole being a vampire thing was going to be a variation on that theme—if he was going to be the ultimate solo nerd. Despite the evidence of Mordechai Zalman, who’d ever heard of Jewish vampires?
Every day when he woke up from restless slumber, Chaim awoke with the hope that the last few weeks had simply been a bad dream—that this whole experience had been some kind of viral infection or weird disease or maybe a mental aberration, but that his body would throw it off and let him go back to his real life. It hadn’t yet, but he kept hoping. That hope was growing more forlorn with the passing of each day, but it still lingered in his mind.
The door to the room opened just as Chaim heaved a big sigh. Mendel chuckled as he entered. “Yes, you are tired of waiting for an old man. I apologize for the delay. Sit, sit.” The rabbi waved a hand as Chaim scrambled to his feet. Mendel was smiling as he took a seat across the table from the young man. Mordechai Zalman grinned as he took his own seat, and a third man, an older man with thinning gray hair, took the seat at the end of the table. Mendel gestured to him, and said, “Chaim, this is Dr. Israel Hurwitz, who is directing the team that will be conducting the studies we will be running. Dr. Hurwitz?”
“Chaim, thank you for coming here and putting up with our poking and prodding you. This work should give us some invaluable data for a baseline of vampiric beginnings. We’ve never had this before—have never been able to get this. What little reliable data we have is from studying Mordechai and one or two other very older vampires. We are all incredibly excited about this opportunity. Thank you.” Dr. Hurwitz absolutely beamed at Chaim. Hurwitz was a genial fellow, and it was hard not to feel good around him.
Chaim smiled back in response. He still wasn’t sure he should be doing this, but if it could give him a better understanding of who and what he was now, or if by some divine miracle they could figure out how to reverse it, he needed to be a part of this work. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Hurwitz. I’m here to do what I can. Can you tell me what I can expect to be involved in?” He listened carefully as Dr. Hurwitz began to explain the team’s plans and protocols.
“For all intents and purposes, you can think of the next few days as being a super-physical exam,” Hurwitz began. “We’ll begin by measuring all the normal body metrics that your family doctor would check if he was giving you a physical: height, weight, body fat measurements, cholesterol, blood sugar and blood chemistry, lipids, and a few others like EKG and EEG. Then we’ll do full-body CT scans and MRI scans. After that, a few more specialized tests: thyroid, liver panels, prostate exams. While we wait on those results, we’ll do some gross physical tests like run a cardiac stress test, how fast you can run, how far you can run, some weight lifting measurements. After we review all those results, we may come up with a few more tests.”
“Are you considering doing biopsies?” Chaim asked.
“Not at this time,” Hurwitz replied, “but we’re not going to absolutely rule them out. If we decide we need to, though, we will discuss it with you first. Muscle-density measurement, for example, may require it.”
Chaim winced at that one. He nodded. “Yeah, whatever that takes, I guess. So, when do we get started?”
“How about in an hour?” Dr. Hurwitz raised his eyebrows hopefully.
Chaim stood. “I’m game. Let me go change into some shorts and a T-shirt and you can have at me.”
* * *
Later that day, Chaim was again back in the same conference room, waiting. He looked up as Rabbi Mendel and Mordechai Zalman entered. Zalman closed the door and flipped a switch on the wall which lit up a small sign that said secure, then they settled side by side across the table from him. Zalman was carrying an attaché case, which he set on the table long enough to open and take out a recorder, which he also set on the table, along with three microphones, of which one was placed in front of each of them. He closed the attaché case and set it on the floor under the table.
Chaim looked at the recorder, raised his eyebrows, and looked at the other men. “Umm, what’s this about?”
Rabbi Mendel folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Before you get too immersed in Dr. Hurwitz’s testing regimen, Mordechai and I want to interview you about your experience in becoming a vampire. We want to record it, so we don’t have to take notes and risk being distracted. We will have a transcript prepared afterward. The transcript itself will remain sealed, but data will be extracted from it in a report. Not a redacted transcript, but an anonymized summarized report.”
“Okay,” Chaim said slowly. “But why? I already told you what happened.”
“We are not so much concerned about what happened,” Mordechai said. “What we want to develop are as many details as you can recall about the woman—rather, the female—who changed you.”
“And to some extent what she did.” Mendel’s voice was quiet. “You are the first vampire we know of who was ‘converted’ in recent years. There are almost certainly others”—he waved a hand palm up—“non-Jews, of course, but we have never been able to find one just after the event. The majority of them don’t last long. Mental deterioration, we think, combined with internecine conflicts. There are some old, old stories that can be found in mythologies and obscure folktales, but sifting them for the real truths behind them is almost impossible. So not only do you represent perhaps a treasure trove of information on the physiology of a new vampire to Dr. Hurwitz, you also represent valuable data about vampire behavior and predation. We need to develop and capture as much of that information as we can before it becomes stale in your mind and starts fading.”
“Oh.” Chaim sat back in the chair, and mentally called himself an idiot. Of course they would want to know that. In fact, now that the subject had come up, he was surprised they hadn’t jumped on him about that at that very first meeting at The Dove. “I’m…not sure how much help I’ll be. Most of that time is very foggy in my mind.”
“We’ll work with you,” Mordechai said, “and I’m sure you’ll get tired of hearing questions asked in different ways, but we think we can help you recall more than you realize you know.”
“Okay, I guess.” Chaim shrugged. “What do you want to know about this vampiress?”
“Too romantic,” Mordechai said. “Think of her as a disease vector.”
Chaim looked at him wide-eyed for a moment. “Huh. I never thought of her like that, but I guess you’re right.” He placed his hands on the table before him and interlaced his fingers. “So where do you want to start?”
“Don’t mention any names in this,” Mordechai cautioned as he reached toward the recorder. “And”—he pressed the record button—“begin.” He paused a beat, and presented the first questions. “You told us at the restaurant that she was ‘almost tiny,’ had long, blonde hair, and green eyes. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Can you elaborate on that? Provide more detail? What age she looked, for example? Shade of blonde, and was it dyed?”
Chaim thought back to that night, to the time she entered the club and made her slow progression around the room. He remembered how he hadn’t been able to look at anyone else, and the shock that he’d felt when he’d realized she was coming his way and eventually took the stool beside him at the bar. He took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m five foot nine, so I’m not very tall—at least, not by California standards. But I was almost a head taller than she was, and she was wearing four-inch sandal-strap heels. Without the shoes, she couldn’t have been much taller than four foot ten—if that.” He paused for a moment. “Her hair…I’d have to say honey blonde, and I don’t think it was a dye job. The color was even; there was no hint of shade differences, even at her roots, and her eyebrows were the same shade. It was perfectly straight and hung to at least the bottom of her shoulder blades when she was standing. No hint of curl or wave. It looked like it had been cut recently, because the ends were even.”
“Do you recall anything about its texture?” Mendel spoke for the first time.
Chaim shook his head. “Nothing unusual. It was smooth and soft, but it wasn’t little-kid fine and wispy. Not super thick or coarse, either. Just…nice.” His voice trailed away, and he stared between the other two men at a spot on the wall behind them.
“Was she petite? Stocky?” Mendel asked. “What was her frame like? Was she well-muscled? Hard? Soft?”
Chaim looked down at his hands for a moment, then back up. “I remember her as being very petite. She almost looked like she was fourteen, except for her face. Not soft, but not an athlete, either.”
Mordechai spoke up. “You said her eyes were green. Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I…” Chaim began, but before he could continue the picture in his mind wavered. “I…” Suddenly Chaim wasn’t sure of anything. “I don’t know. I thought they were, but…now I’m not sure.”
Mordechai leaned forward, tension in his frame. “What shape was her face? Round? Long? Heart-shaped?”
Chaim held his hands up to stop the flow of words. His head was starting to spin. “Stop. Please…just stop.” He put his head in his hands and rested his elbows on the table. Taking deep breaths, he closed his eyes and pressed on his temples, trying to hold onto himself and bring himself back to solid ground. After some moments, the whirling sensation slowed and stopped, and he opened his eyes and lowered his hands.
“That was weird,” Chaim muttered. Mordechai raised a hand palm up and beckoned with his fingers, obviously encouraging him to keep talking. “I thought I remembered what she looked like, but while you were talking, I got dizzy all of a sudden. Now, it’s like I’m seeing two pictures at once: what I had described to you before, and now someone different, but my mind keeps telling me it’s the same person.”
“So what does this other person look like?” Mendel was the one leaning forward intently now.
“About the same size, still small and petite. The hair is still straight and long, but it’s a dark blonde that’s almost brown. Her eyes are not green—they seem to be so dark a brown they’re almost black. And her face—she reminds me of Hannah Goldfeder, a girl who used to go to our synagogue before they moved to Colorado a couple of years ago.”
“Was this Hannah Goldfeder a beautiful girl?” Mendel was still intent.
Chaim shook his head. “No. Distinctive, but somewhere between handsome and cute. Of course, at fourteen, that could describe a lot of girls. But both of them had somewhat triangular faces, except this woman’s face reminds me of a fox—only prettier.” He suddenly started furiously rubbing at his nose with his right hand, then grabbing it between the thumb and forefinger and twisting it back and forth. “And now my nose is itching like crazy!”
When the itching finally stopped, Chaim settled back in his chair, and cautiously released his now tender nasal appendage. “Wow.” He looked at the others, noting that they were sitting in a relaxed manner, in stark contrast to the tension they had been showing just moments before.
Mendel looked at Mordechai. “Pheromones?”
Mordechai nodded. “Pheromones. If we can prove it, we may find they bind to the histamine blockers, and when they finally fade away…”
“Itching,” Mendel said.
“Exactly.”
“What do you mean, pheromones?” Chaim asked, resisting the urge to rub his nose some more.
Mendel touched his fingers together before his chest for a moment, then pointed at Mordechai. “He has always said that all vampires exude changed pheromones, but that some of them could act almost like drugs to normal humans. It seems he may be right.”
Chaim frowned, then nodded as he recalled, “That’s right. You said that I had vampire pheromones when we met at the restaurant.” His eyes widened and he snapped his fingers. “Tiffy!”
The others looked puzzled. “Tiffy?” Mordechai tilted his head in a bit of an angle.
“My mother’s dog. She growled at me when I was at home for a little while a week or so ago. She almost never growls at anyone, and she’s never growled at me.” He looked at Mordechai. “Pheromones?”
“Almost certainly. Most dogs and almost all cats object to the presence of a vampire, even if they knew him before the change. You’re lucky she didn’t bite you.”
“Heh. She might have been able to nibble a few skin cells off the end of my pinky.” Chaim smiled as he stuck out the finger in question. The smile faded as he sobered. “So you’re saying I was for all intents and purposes drugged?”
Mordechai nodded. “There have been some vampires who have very strong control over their pheromones. It might not surprise you that the ones I’ve known of or followed over the generations were female.”
Chaim shook his head. “No,” he said bitterly, “that wouldn’t surprise me at all. So it was a setup?”
Mordechai shook his head. “No, I would judge you were simply a prime opportunity. The fact that you were converted means that if she wasn’t looking for you specifically, she was looking for someone like you. How many times did she feed off of you?”
“I…I don’t know for sure. Once…twice…”
Mordechai stood. “Take off your shirt and shoes,” he ordered.
“What?”
“Just do it. We need to verify something.”
Chaim took a deep breath, but didn’t say anything. He toed his shoes off his feet, bent over and pulled off his socks, then stood and removed his shirt. Mendel offered a flashlight to Mordechai, who clicked it on and approached Chaim. The light was bluish, and he shined it on the sides of Chaim’s neck.
“Confirmed one”—he touched the left side with a fingertip—“and two.” He touched the right side. Mordechai’s voice was matter of fact. “Hold your hands out in front of you, palms up.”
Chaim did so. Mordechai shined the light across his wrists. “Confirmed three,” he touched the left wrist, and shook his head. “That was enough to convert you, right there. But she wasn’t done.” He touched the right wrist. “Confirmed four.”
Mordechai moved back a couple of steps. “Sit down and raise your feet.”
“What? What are you looking for?”
“You’re the medical student,” Mendel said. “How much of your blood is in your legs?”
Chaim sat down slowly as that realization dawned on him. He lifted his feet and placed them on the table. Mordechai shined the light on the instep and ankle of each foot. “Confirmed five,” he said, touching the inside of the left ankle. “Confirmed six”—touching the inside of the right ankle. He turned the light off and handed it back to Mendel. “Get dressed, lad.” Mordechai sat and tented his fingers before his lips while Chaim restored his clothing and resumed his own seat.
“What was that about?” Chaim demanded, tension flooding his own body.
Mordechai sighed. “That light reveals slight differences in skin temperature due to injury or trauma resulting in subtle scarring. Once I can see them, I can feel them. Contrary to popular fiction, it takes more than one feeding to generate a new vampire. Everything I’ve heard and seen over the generations would indicate it takes at least three feedings in close succession. You were smart in your feedings in the wild, so to speak, to take only a single feed from each subject. She took six.”
Chaim shook his head, trying to fathom what Mordechai was leading up to. “What…what does that mean?”
“It means,” Mordechai said grimly, “that your conversion was not an accident. You were not a mistake. Your conversion was not happenstance. And your conversion had nothing to do with sex. You were a project.”
Chaim shook his head, bewildered. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Mordechai continued in that same grim tone. “She came to that club that night for the express purpose of creating another vampire. One of the reasons the world is not awash in vampires is because most of them cannot control their urges. By the time they get to the third feeding, they’ve almost drained the subject, and death rather than conversion is inevitable.”
There was a pause before Mordechai resumed. “But she, whoever she was, controlled herself enough to feed six times. I repeat—you weren’t an opportunity—you were a project. She crafted you with intent.”
“Why?” Chaim’s mouth was so dry that he felt like his teeth were pebbles and his lips were sunbaked leather.
Mordechai shook his head. “I have no idea. I’ve not heard of something like this being done before. The odds of finding her aren’t good, but we will look for her. And if we can find her, and more importantly, if we can hold her, maybe we can discover what her goal was.”
Chaim sat, staring between the men at the wall behind them. He shook his head. “But why the feet?”
“There is a sizable vein that runs across the top of the inside ankle,” Mordechai said. “She was almost certainly aiming to make sure and certain that you converted. Three infection sites minimum, four to be sure. Six? I’d say overkill, if it wasn’t a bad joke.”
Chaim stared at him, a memory rising to the front of his mind—the sensation of her small hands holding each foot, while her tongue laved them, arousing sensations that fired neurons in strange ways that were almost unbearable. A sudden wave of nausea washed through him, and he bolted to the large rectangular trash can in the corner and bent over it. He didn’t vomit—quite—and he was glad he didn’t because he wasn’t sure he could any more. But it was a near thing, and the quivering of his arms and legs and the tension in his back and neck drove a spike of pain through his head.
He didn’t know how long he hovered on the edge of that disaster, but he finally was able to step back from it, uncurling his fingers, taking a deep breath, and straightening before he turned around to face the others.
“If we find her,” he said in the coldest voice he had ever produced, “she is mine. You can drain her of information first, but afterward…she is mine.”
* * *
The next day about noon, Chaim’s phone rang. The only reason he knew it was close to noon was from his watch. He hadn’t seen outside daylight for quite some time.
From the ringtone, he knew it was his mother. He started to walk out of the room, hesitated, and went back and picked up the phone.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Chaim? Is that you?”
“Yes, Mom,” Chaim said, suppressing the long-suffering tone that was trying to get out. “Who else would call you Mom?”
“Well, you never know.”
Chaim rolled his eyes, glad that she couldn’t see him. “Mom, I…”
“Chaim,” she interjected, running over what he had started to say, “what kind of work is it you’re doing?”
“Mo-om!” Chaim’s frustration bled through and produced the two-toned two-syllable word that used to get him in trouble a few years earlier. “I can’t tell you that. I told you guys, I signed a nondisclosure agreement. That agreement says I can’t tell anyone what I’m doing. It doesn’t say I can’t tell anyone except my mother and father—it says I can’t tell anyone. So stop asking—please!”
Chaim heard a matronly sniff over the phone, followed by, “Well, all I can say is that a company that won’t let a boy tell his mother what he’s doing is not so much of a company. All mysterious, and everything. It makes me wonder if they’re involving you in something illegal.”
And there was the difference between his mother and father, Chaim thought. His father’s first reaction about Chaim’s job would be, “Is it righteous?” His mother’s concern was more practical: “Is it legal?” Similarly, his father had insisted Chaim study Torah and Talmud, while his mother had pushed him into the Boy Scouts. Chaim had to admit, it had added a certain diversity to his
growing-up years. He shook his head.
“No, Mom, they’re not doing anything illegal. In fact, what they’re doing is very important, but they can’t talk about it until all their research is completed. I promise you, when they finally announce what they’re working on and go public with it, I’ll let you know.”
“Hmmph.” That graceless syllable meant that his mother was going to change the subject, but Chaim knew she had not given up on it. He knew it would come back up again in later conversations. “So, are there any Jews where you are now?”
“A few,” Chaim said in a resigned tone.
“Any girls?”
Chaim sighed. “Mom, if you don’t stop with the prying and the matchmaking, I’m going to start calling you Yente. You’re not a shadchanit—you’re not a matchmaker. So stop with it, already.”
“Any mother wants her son to be happy, to be married, to have children.” Her voice was serious, now. Chaim’s head tilted to one side as he considered that. “You’ve already moved out at such a young age. We hardly see you. I hardly get to talk to you. Don’t begrudge me my hopes and wishes and dreams.”
There was an almost plaintive note in her voice, but Chaim didn’t think she was trying to guilt-trip him—this time. His mouth quirked a bit.
“All right, Mom. But you have to leave that up to haShem, all right?”
There was silence from the other end of the connection, but Chaim knew she was still there, still listening.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, forcing a change of topic, “do you remember any old folktales or stories from Lithuania? Would Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa have told any stories about weird stuff?”
“What do you mean, ‘weird stuff’?” his mother asked, her voice a bit wary.
“Oh, like vampire stories, and stuff like that.”
“Pfft! What makes you think of trash like that?”
“Oh, some of the guys here were talking about vampire stories and movies the other day, and how Dracula came from Transylvania, and it made me wonder if there were things like that in Lithuania.”
“No, not that they ever said. But if vampires were real, I think the old stories have it wrong.”
Chaim’s eyes widened. This was unexpected. “What do you mean?”
“According to the Tanakh, those few places that mention the awful, evil night demons, lamias, or Lilith, they were always female. So they got it wrong when they give the power to males.”
“Um,” Chaim said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I was sure you hadn’t.”
He heard the smug tone in his mother’s voice. He shook his head again. It was time to draw this to an end before she said anything else to upheave his worldview.
“Listen, Mom, I have a meeting in a couple of minutes. I need to go. Thanks for calling, and tell Dad I’ll try to call again soon.”
“All right. Be careful.”
“I will. Love you. Bye.”
“Goodbye.”
Chaim thumbed the button to end the call, and heaved a big sigh.
Hmm. A feminist view of monsters, and from his mother. Who’d have thought it? But it bore thinking about, now that it had been drawn to his attention. Wow.