How to Train Your Vampire

Jane halted her MRAP fifty meters from an isolated Danish farmhouse and gave her computer screens a final check. A stealth UAV showed Makenna and Charles were still inside the building. Four F-16's circled off the coast, waiting to deliver any munitions Jane might decide to call in. Jane grabbed the tablet controlling her vehicle's 90-kilowatt Firestrike mount and stepped out onto the black Baltic soil.

The nomads she hoped to capture surely had heard her truck pull up. Automotive sounds did not normally attract much attention from Jane's kind, but these were not normal times. Vampires were disappearing all over the world, and no vampire understood why. Except for Jane, of course. She paused long enough to double-check the sync between the truck's primary weapon and the heads-up display in her helmet. Then she began walking toward the front door, her combat boots crunching softly in the gravel.

Seizing isolated nomads these last ten weeks had been easy. Two nomads together was a different matter. Jane's gift would enable her to immobilize Charles, of course. But that would leave Makenna free to attack, and Jane was useless in close combat.

She halted ten meters from the porch and waited for Charles. "What do you want?" he eventually demanded from the home's interior. Then he poked his head out. "Jane? Is that you? We thought the Volturi were dead."

"They are dead," Jane replied, momentarily surprised the man could recognize her despite all the gear she was wearing. "Here's my problem," she explained. "I've been tasked with imprisoning both of you at the Vampire Detention Facility in Langley, Virginia. But I'm not sure how I can get both of you there safely. I'm reckoning I'll probably have to kill one of you and take back the survivor. That'll make it harder for me to meet my quota, though. And it'll do nothing to convince my boss I have a brain. So it would be great if you could think of a better idea."

"Maybe we'll just run away."

Jane smiled. "Try," she said.

Charles stayed where he was. Jane knew it was her Volturi reputation that held the terrified vampire in place, the dread she had built through centuries of enforcing Aro's will. It was annoying that Owen considered the hard-earned reputation worthless.

Makenna came around the far corner of the house. She snarled and charged. "No!" Charles shouted, but then he leapt from the doorway to support his mate.

Jane shrugged. Using the interface in her helmet she ordered the targeting computer in the MRAP to prioritize the female attacker and engage. Flames burst from Makenna's abdomen; her body fell to the ground in two blazing pieces. "Pain," Jane pronounced, engulfing Charles in mental fire. He collapsed at her feet.

Jane let Charles writhe for a while as she pondered Makenna's burning form. Maybe I don't have a brain, she thought. But I do have a kick-ass laser cannon.

A nice thing about vampire prisoners was that they required...nothing. The Vampire Detention Facility in Langley consisted of a 25-meter wide circular plate of polished tungsten-carbide. The eight prisoners could stand or sit on this metal surface as they saw fit. There were no walls or roofs, much less bars or plumbing. Flat, open grassland stretched a mile in every direction. Laser mounts on the distant perimeter kept the prisoners on the plate. The ashes of the two who had attempted to run had long since washed away in the spring rains.

Jane delivered Charles to the plate on May 25, raising the prisoner count to nine. They were a motley crew for the most part, loners now forced to endure membership in what Owen had dubbed the "WC Coven" in honor of the chemical formula for tungsten-carbide. Jane, however, simply called them "Platers." She noticed their eyes were starting to change under the steady diet of deer. That couldn't be helping their mood. At least Jane still looked like a predator: she got all the bags of donated blood she wanted.

To Jane's knowledge none of the Platers had special abilities. Nevertheless, one member of the group did qualify as special: a striking blonde vampire named George. Like Jane, he had his origins in the murk of medieval England. Like Jane, he was cunning, cruel, and brash. She had been fortunate to capture him in the early days of the purge, before word had gone out and the smarter vampires had become more cautious.

"Has it ever occurred to you," George challenged, "that one day they might just throw you in here with us? That could be a bad day for you."

Jane kept a ten-meter cushion between herself and the edge of the plate: room for the lasers to work in case anyone was foolish enough to step onto the grass.

"I like the hazel eyes," Jane replied. "George the gerbil."

The captive's nostrils flared, but he stayed on the metal.

"What's it like serving on a human leash, Jane?"

"It's a long leash. And they don't control my thoughts."

"Indeed. Then enlighten us, Jane. Tell us what you're thinking."

"The human hunting us, Owen Wheeler - he's killed four shadow-feeders since 1984. That's all he's focused on. But now suddenly he knows about us, and it's caused him to reconsider everything. The shadow-feeders are animalistic. They don't engage in long-term thinking, they never interact with each other. Sunlight kills them, bullets kill them. In Owen's words, they don't present a 'strategic threat.'

"He thinks our kind's totally different. He thinks a day's coming when we figure out how dangerous their technology is becoming. He thinks we'll try to destroy all their progress, put them back to horses and subsistence farming. He calls it a war between science fiction and fantasy. Science fiction is winning, he says. He wants to make sure it keeps winning."

George smirked. "He's so afraid we're going to wake up and notice their toys." He pointed at the laser batteries in the distance. "I wonder if his prophecy is self-fulfilling. In trying to keep it from happening, hasn't he made it happen? I never knew what an energy weapon was before. I sure as hell know what one is now."

"True," Jane acknowledged. "But my guess is he'll kill you when he's finished experimenting on you."

"He hasn't done experiments. All they do is collect venom samples."

"He wants to render our bite venom-less," Jane explained. "Keep us from reproducing."

"Sounds like the logical response is to create a few million newborns. That should knock the science fiction lovers on their ass. Why not? Secret's out. Time to switch strategies while we still can. Spring us out of here, Jane. Our very survival's at stake."

Jane sighed, looked north toward Owen's headquarters. "I think he's daring me to do exactly that," she said.

"Why?"

"Everything's part of the training, part of the test. I don't understand him. What he's doing. He's so much smarter than Aro. I'd say he has listening devices in place, that he's listening to our conversation. But why bother? He's already figured out everything we're going to say to each other. In fact, he's counting on it."

"My dear Jane! Bested by a human."

"You haven't met him. He never lies, George. It's unsettling. How do you think I know so much? But that's not the worst of it. He wants to make me smart. Not just smarter than you or Aro. Smarter than him. He wants me to become smarter than him. How does that make sense, George? And what will it mean when I actually do understand it?"

Lucy arrived in the training hall about an hour after sunset. Jane wondered what Lucy did during daylight hours. Did she sleep in a coffin? Catch up on email? Jane was afraid to ask. Something about the shadow-feeder completely freaked her out. So pink and vulnerable, at least compared to a real vampire - yet there was no way Jane was going to risk touching that soft, undead flesh.

Lucy picked up a tablet and began typing. Her words appeared on a large wall screen: Cullen Strengths. "List them," Lucy said.

"Bella can shield a group against mental abilities," Jane began, "which proved decisive in the final confrontation with the Volturi. Edward reads minds, Jasper affects emotions, Alice sees visions of the future. The Cullens are strongly devoted to each other. They also exercise a useful alliance with the local tribe of shape-shifters. They are perhaps more comfortable with modern technology than many of our kind. They have cultivated a worldwide network of friends, although that network is now in a state of disintegration. They possess extensive financial resources, although these funds are easy to track."

"The trick," Lucy replied, "is to turn these strengths into weaknesses. If and when we attack the Cullens, we want to make their strengths the key to our victory. In other words, we end up winning because Bella shields, and Edward reads minds, and Alice sees the future."

"How do we do that?"

"Well, for starters they are probably overly dependent on their gifts. They could develop other early warning systems, for example, but because they have Alice they haven't done so. It's like how Aro never taught you what to do if your power was blocked. If we can neutralize their powers, they may not know what to do. But I want more than that. I want their powers working fine - and biting them in the ass."

Lucy put a lot of feeling into this final statement, which confused Jane. What did this shadow-feeder have against the Cullens? Or had she simply internalized Owen's quest so completely that his hates had become her own?

"Why do we exist?" Jane blurted, immediately afraid Lucy would laugh at her. But Lucy's expression became reflective, not mocking.

"That we ask the question at all indicates we are not animals," Lucy began, "so there must be more to our lives than sex and survival. And our core purpose can't be hunting vampires, for that would be to say we exist to destroy ourselves. Given that none of us was born this way, I think the logical starting point is to ask why humans exist, and then decide if our change in ontological status has produced a corresponding teleological change. Do we still exist for the same end as man, or is our purpose now fundamentally different?"

This response took Jane aback. English-speaking vampires rarely used big words. She couldn't help herself. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I was a scientist. A molecular biologist, back during the discipline's infancy. I try to keep up, but it's hard: there's so much more to know these days. And Owen keeps me busy."

"Why do you serve him?"

Lucy smiled. "There's a lot of water under that bridge. He hunted me many years. Maybe we just got so used to our lives being intertwined, we couldn't imagine life without each other."

"Do you love him?"

Lucy's face hardened. "Sharing his bed doesn't mean I love him."

"But..."

"He understands me," Lucy said. "That may not sound like much, but there's no one else on earth who does. He understands me, and he accepts me. There comes a point when that matters almost as much as love. And he's put me in charge of this mission, which means he respects me, too. Put all that together and it's enough."

"Enough for what?"

The shadow-feeder closed her eyes and shook her head.

"But he's going to kill you," Jane declared.

A tear ran down Lucy's cheek. She turned and fled from the room.

As Jane watched her leave, she couldn't help asking yet another basic question: What the hell is going on around here?

Jane walked down a poorly lit alley known to be frequented by MS-13 gang members. She wore the outfit and expression of a runaway. Her eyes were black with hunger, so no need for contact lens. Thirst burned her throat, threatening to drive her mad. Jane wondered if she had been this desperate for blood since her year as a newborn. A painful precondition for the night's test: kill, but don't feed.

Jane settled onto the pavement and waited. By the time three heavily tattooed men appeared with a thought to kidnap her, the moans rising from her chest were not fake. How could she possibly slay without eating? The smell of their blood would shatter her restraint. She tried to imagine some sort of blunt force trauma that would break bones but leave skin intact.

A scream echoed off the walls, causing the men to look over their shoulders in panic. Then they, too, screamed. A woman was descending out of the sky - if she could be called a woman. She was unclothed from the waist up, flying by means of fearsome wings that extended from her back. Jane's vampiric senses enabled her to note the creature's mottled and sickly face, the claws extending from fingers and toes, and the eager yellow light that shone from her eyes. Then the monster pounced.

Jane had witnessed feeding frenzies before, but not like this. The shadow-feeder rent and tore and gored, her insane cries of lust and rage shattering the night. Jane pressed herself against a brick wall, terrified, as the old-school vampire settled on the body in the fewest pieces and began drinking.

The smell threatened to overwhelm Jane. This thirst consuming her insides - this was what being on the receiving end of her ability must feel like to others. She thought of running, but dared not draw attention to herself.

The shadow-feeder's appearance reverted to human form, though her wings remained. She stood up and began approaching Jane slowly, calmly, blood dripping from her arms and face. Then the shadow-feeder smiled, and Jane recognized Lucy.

Jane had never wanted to use her power so badly. She would immobilize Lucy and run. She had to. Owen couldn't expect her to just stand here while a blood-drenched angel of death forced its undead stench into her personal space. Except that was what Owen expected. And Jane realized that this was the real test - not if she could keep from eating random humans, but if she could keep from paining her personal tutor.

Lucy got within six inches of Jane and pressed a finger to the stone vampire's lips. Jane squeezed her eyes and started shaking. Her thoughts drifted back to burning at the stake: this was the same combination of agony and beauty and horror and ecstasy. Her mind began to splinter.

A whisper broke into her delirium: "What is the Cullens' greatest power?"

"Self-control," Jane croaked.

"What does it mean?" the whisper demanded.

And at last Jane did understand what it meant: the Cullens were unbeatable.