Conclave...Part 7

Herne tilted his head and interjected, “What price is that?”

“Drake discovered his talent while laying mortally wounded on a large field of battle buried underneath several other foot soldiers, one of whom was slowly bleeding to death, the blood dripping onto Drake’s lips. Even as he was dying, he could feel a stirring of his Will, but there was a terrible thirst that had to be quenched before his Talent would respond to his Will. He succumbed to the thirst and drank of the fluid that was there for the taking.

“To make a long story slightly shorter, Drake discovered thatr by drinking blood, human blood in particular, he could repair even the direst of wounds to his own body. He was able to get up from under that pile of bodies and walk away from that battlefield unscathed, but forever changed.

“He didn’t, however, fight any more battles for Ur. Instead, he slipped away for several years to learn more and more about his talent, but the more he experimented with it, the more insatiable his Thirst became.”

Frau shifted in her chair, clucked her tongue and added, “He became a Vampire. That’s one critter I had hoped was but a legend.”

“Indeed, Drake’s exploits over the milennia have been the basis for most of the legends about Vampires in a number of cultures.”

Herne spoke up again, “So, his control over his body is so good that he doesn’t age, makes him stronger than any man I’ve met, and makes him almost impossible to kill?”

“Yes. So long as he has a sufficient supply of human blood to feed his Talent, he can do all of that and more. He has had thousands of years of practice and training in every conceivable martial art and form of combat known to mankind to hone his reflexes and become an ultra-effective killing machine, when he chooses to do so. He can essentially control every muscle and nerve in his body to such a degree that he can perform superhuman feats of strength, stamina and speed. He has also modified his own body, doing many of things to his own body by force of his Will and his Talent that he had done to mine with technology and magick. His bones are denser, his muscles far stronger and faster than any mere human.”

Ravyn was getting impatient. She stood up to stretch, moved around behind her chair and leaned over before interrupting. “So Drake’s a Vampire, big damn deal. What’s this got to do with him being related to any of us, and what the heck does this have to do with Bernstein’s experiments? Let’s get this story moving, Zombie-boy, the rest of us here don’t have the patience of the dead!”

“Boy, isn’t that the truth.” I quipped back at her. “OK, OK, I’ll move this along...”