The Vampire Years

Fifty years ago, vampires went to war with humanity. Humanity was crushed beneath their boot. What’s left of the human race has been relegated to the Res: gated remnants of the old cities out of sight of the opulent, technological marvels the “bats” flourish in. Humans are gifted just enough food and supplies to keep from dying, and, since the development of synthetic blood, there hasn’t been a case of a vampire killing a human to feed in Shea’s lifetime. That changes when the vampire liaison to the Res comes to visit along with his daughter, Vikka, on a cold, winter’s night. Shea finds a dead human lying in the snow, drained of blood from two punctures in his neck. Eric Del Carlo brings to life a taut mystery when Shea and Vikka must defeat an unknown killer, as well as their own misunderstandings, before the truce between their races is destroyed.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Vampire YearsBy Eric Del CarloElder Signs PressCopyright © 2017 Eric Del CarloAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-934501-82-5CHAPTER 1TONIGHT, FOR THE FIRST time, Vikka would go with her father to the Human Reservation.She couldn't remember a time when the humans hadn't fascinated her, but it started to get serious for her when she was ten years old. She'd read; she'd asked a lot of questions, especially of her father who was Liaison to Reservation #44B.It didn't do any good to ask her mother about the humans. All Vikka got then was a lecture about how inferior and dirty and dangerous the humans were. But Vikka kept collecting information, everything she could. As she grew older and understood things in a more sophisticated way, she decided that she simply had to see the humans for herself.None of this was to say she was a "human sympathizer," a term people only whispered. To be one of those was a bad thing. It meant you thought the humans should still be in charge of the world. Vikka didn't think that.She'd pled and argued every week to go along with her father on one of his official visits. Her mother declared it absolutely out of the question, of course. But Vikka was intelligent and persistent. The arguments she made were good ones. She'd gone to school until this year, when she had turned sixteen. She'd learned science and mathematics and all the other basics she needed.Now she was out of school. It was expected that in her sixteenth year she would decide on a career, and sometime afterward begin an apprenticeship in her chosen field. She hadn't yet officially picked her career, despite her long interest in the humans. Very few people were experts on humans. Maybe she would teach about humans at one of the prestigious Academies. Maybe she would become a Liaison like her father.Or maybe she had a destiny with the humans that even she couldn't guess at. Something still held her back from a final decision, but she had this whole year to figure it out. Right now, all her instincts pointed toward Reservation#44B, which was just a few miles from her home.Despite how smartly she'd presented her reasons, it took four years for both her parents to agree to let her go on this official appointment."I want you to wear your cloak," her mother said, her mouth tight and her eyes a little faraway.Vikka didn't point out that it was four hours until sunrise. She said, "Yes, Mother," and spun the long dark cloak over her thin shoulders."And your mask, your goggles, your gloves ..."Vikka took the items as her mother handed them over. Now wasn't the time for an argument. Vikka worked so hard to make tonight happen. She wouldn't do anything that might upset either of her parents, though her father, as always, was behaving a lot more reasonably. He'd already gone outside to the car. This was just another trip to the Human Reservation for him, to meet with #44B's representatives. For Vikka, though, it was the fulfillment of a young lifetime of curiosity and interest."Did you have your Dose tonight?" her mother asked."Yes. We took it together, remember?" The Dose was the swallow of gooey yellow liquid that she and all her kind needed to take every night to sustain themselves. It was created chemically, in labs. Once, Vikka knew, her people had fed on the humans. But the truce ended all that long ago.Her mother had been hovering and fussing with her for five straight minutes in the house's big marble entryway. Vikka caught a sidelong glimpse of herself in the tall mirror mounted on the wall. Every inch of her was covered. She was quite physically fit, but you couldn't tell that with this cloak she had on. Her mask and goggles made her face invisible. Even her short spiky blondish hair was covered up. She could be anyone under all this.At least it meant her mother wouldn't see her rolling her eyes as she gave her daughter one last lecture."The humans hate us," Vikka's mother said, bending to peer into her goggled eyes.Her mother, who was named Dominika, was a tall woman. Her lean pale face had a bone structure a lot like Vikka's, though Vikka had warm blue eyes, same as her father did. Her mother's eyes were dark and large, and now they no longer looked faraway. Her gaze was intent and worried."The humans lost the war to us, fifty years ago," Vikka's mother went on, "and they'll resent us forever. They know they are an inferior breed. We are physically stronger and have much longer life spans. The Maker created us, whereas the humans evolved out of the primordial slime. We were merciful to them, after the war. We gave them those places to live, the Reservations. We could have done otherwise, and they know that. They fear us, and they are right to fear us. We are their masters. That fear creates their hate, and that eternal hate makes them dangerous."Her mother drew a long breath, still bent over. Something softened in herface, and she lifted a hand to brush Vikka's cheek through the fabric of the mask."Just ... be careful. Okay?" The lecture had ended. Now she just shared a concerned parent.Instead of rolling her eyes, Vikka smiled beneath the mask, which Dominika still couldn't see. "Okay, Mom," she said, then turned and hurried outside to the long black car pulled up to the steps of the estate.* * *Her father studied the screen on his Scroll. Vikka could tell he was annoyed, though he did a good job of hiding it. Her father, whose name was Cornelius, belonged to a branch of that Government, the Human Relations Corps.No one had ever told Vikka that the HRC was a highly respected part of the worldwide Government. No one ever would tell her that. In the school for bodyborn children that she'd attended until this year, some of the students said nasty things about people who worked with the humans. Even students too young to properly pronounce the word "Liaison" said how humans would contaminate her father, how he was going to start walking around in the daylight, how ...Well, it didn't matter what they'd said, Vikka told herself firmly. Whatever people thought about the Human Relations Corps, it gave her father a job and provided the big house where her family lived. Not to mention this fancy car and the escort that came with it. Being Liaison had a lot of perks."I'll just be another minute, sweetheart," Cornelius said, eyes still on the Scroll, his handheld information device. His blue eyes were moving rapidly over strange symbols and numbers, none of which Vikka could read. He and Vikka sat together on the plush rear seat. The vehicle hummed around them. He added, with a little smile at the corner of his mouth, "You can peel off that headgear if you want."Vikka grinned, and removed the goggles and mask, slipping them into an inside pocket of the cloak. "Thanks," she said, combing her fingers through her spiky hair. "It was beginning to get itchy in there.""Your mother means well," he said, but it was an offhand mutter. He was completely focused again on his handheld device, which connected him to the data streams of the Government."Why is your Scroll all funny?" Vikka asked.He let out a barely audible sigh. "It's encoded now. A new protocol, just started. I've had to learn this gobbledygook.""That looks hard," she said, glancing again at the seemingly impenetrable code. "Why is the Government doing that?""It's because — well, never mind why. Nothing for you to worry about."Vikka looked out the car's windows. The city glittered and glimmered. The buildings were beautiful, like sculptures. The streets were busy but not crowded. Traffic always flowed smoothly, even at the peak hours of the nighttime. Everything was skillfully regulated. Also, this city, like all the others built in the years since the war, was not overpopulated. Numbers were kept at a comfortable level, so that people could enjoy their environments, and so that resources would not be used up.She'd learned these facts in school, but they were obvious just by looking at her surroundings. The city functioned very well. Nobody suffered, and everyone contributed in some way. Her people were wise and intelligent, and they took better care of the Earth than the humans ever had.That last wasn't something she'd picked up from her mother. It was just the truth. Humans had fought wars among themselves, something that Vikka's kind never did. Humans polluted and overpopulated the planet. Vikka's people used the clean energies they had developed. They controlled the number of bodyborn children produced each year. Of course, those were the only kind of children now. There were no biteborn anymore, not since the end of the war and the truce with the humans.Even the war her people'd fought with the humans wasn't exactly a war war. Her kind lived on this world for many, many centuries. They'd always been an intelligent, wily people. Early on, they'd infiltrated the high ranks of humans, their royalties, governments, and areas of high finance. They'd worked in the shadows, building vast fortunes and influencing humans, setting them against each other sometimes. They'd weakened the lesser species, and moved in on them when they were most vulnerable. The final war was over almost before the humans realized who they were fighting.Vikka looked away from the window and the passing cityscape. Ahead and behind their car were the escort vehicles, menacing-looking armored cars. But Vikka ignored them too, glancing again at her father. He was a biteborn. So was Vikka's mother. They came from a time long ago before the war. Her people lived a very long time, unlike the humans.Cornelius' face was smooth. His hair, darker than hers, had no gray in it. But he had an adult look to him, with his features filled out, his body fully grown. Vikka was still growing, as the bodyborn did. One day she too would look older, like an adult. Then aging would end for her, and she would maintain her appearance for a long, long time.She knew how humans looked as they aged. She'd seen pictures. Their skin wrinkled, and their hair got gray or fell out. They looked dried out. They were ... fragile. They were so unlike her people.Maybe that was the biggest reason why they were so interesting to her: because they were just different.Her father snapped shut his Scroll and put it in the pocket of the dark suit he wore. He turned to her and smiled."Are you nervous?" he asked."Yes. A little.""Good. A little nervous is good. You need to stay alert when we get in there."Vikka wondered if he was going to tell her how dangerous the humans were, but that wasn't his way. A Liaison had to be quite tolerant of the humans, unlike Vikka's mother Dominika.Her hands twitched on her lap. This was very exciting. She'd waited so long for this night. But she'd lied to her father. She wasn't a little nervous. She was very nervous, now that she was facing the reality of actually going into the Reservation. She'd heard so many stories about the humans, how they couldn't be trusted, how they were like animals.It was that nervousness that made her suddenly blurt, "Mom said we come from the Maker and that the humans are from slime."She blinked afterward, stunned at her own words.The smile left her father's face. Something glittered darkly in his blue eyes as he sat silently a moment. Vikka had heard him and mother argue about religious matters before. Dominika believed in the Maker, who at the dawn of time had created the first of their kind. That original being, supposedly, had then slowly over the ages created their entire species. Meanwhile, the humans had clumsily evolved from lower life forms.Cornelius, however, had a different view."If the humans are slime," he said in a soft but cold voice, "then your mother and I are both a part of that slime. Long ago we started out as human, both of us. So did every biteborn person in the world."They didn't teach about the Maker in school. Instead, it was the familiar biological history of Vikka's people, which said that they were the next evolutionary step above the humans. Nature, not the Maker, had created their superior race.Believing in myths, the way her mother seemed to, was something Vikka didn't really understand. Still, it was a shock to hear her father say the truth so bluntly like that: We started out as human ...He had been one of them, a long time ago.In that same soft but intense voice, he added, "I am glad you were born pure, Vikka. You never had to be a human. You aren't a biteborn."Vikka's breath caught. This was something else she had never heard her father say so plainly.Cornelius reached over to pat her knee, and the gentle expression came back to his face. "All right, sweetheart. Get ready. We're coming up to the gate."Their big black car was slowing, with the armored escorts still ahead and behind of them. They'd crossed the few miles through the city streets. In front, lit with swiveling searchlights, was the high, razor wire-topped wall of Human Reservation #44B.This is it, Vikka thought with a mixture of excitement and fear.CHAPTER 2LIANG — WHO WAS ALSO THE-GUY-WHO-CALLED-HIMSELF-SHEA'S-DAD — HAD gotten drunk yesterday and hadn't picked up the fuel ration for the stove. So at about two in the morning Shea Whitlock woke up shivering and annoyed.In the late autumn and winter months he slept in his clothes, with the two blankets he owned wrapped around him like a cocoon. That didn't keep him warm enough to sleep, though, not if the stove went cold.He threw off the blankets and grabbed for his coat and shoes. It was pointless to wake up Liang. The-Guy-Who-Called-Himself-Shea's-Dad was snoring on the other side of the squat stove, hanging half off his mattress. Shea stood over him for a moment in the small dim room. Some part of him wanted to give the old man a kick in the head, but instead he bent down and pulled Liang's frail body back onto his thin mattress, then tucked his blankets around him.Liang slept through it all. Shea could smell the alcohol on his breath. Disgusted, he went out the door, stepping quietly in the night. He had their ration book in his coat pocket.The old building creaked all around him as he moved down the stairs. Lots of people lived here — too many. It was crowded. Some of the rooms were occupied by real families, made up of parents and their kids. Other people had just gotten thrown together, like him and Liang. Shea was fifteen years old, and his mom and his real dad had both been gone since he was five. The Rez Committees said he needed a guardian. So he'd gotten the-Guy-Who-Called-Himself-Shea's-Dad. Some guardian.He stepped out onto the street, shivering worse now. He could see his breath float on the cold air. The zipper of his coat was broken, but he'd sewn on buttons. He stamped his feet on the ground, trying to get his blood circulating. He shook his dark brown hair out of his eyes. His hair had grown down past the line of his jaw.Around him the Rez was quiet. It wasn't like this in the daytime when everybody was out, working and hustling. Shea took in the crisp peacefulness for a minute. It was almost worth being gotten woken up by the cold for this quiet moment. Almost.He started walking.Above, the stars were out, dozens of them. Folks said there were millions up there, spread all across the galaxy or the universe or whatever it was. But folks said lots of things, and maybe half of what they said was true, Shea figured. He'd lived all his life inside the forty square blocks of this Rez, and he knew people could be liars and thieves. He wanted to trust everyone he met, but that just wasn't smart.The reason he could only see those few dozen stars in the sky was because of the bright glow from the city that surrounded the Rez. That city belonged to the bats. At night it was lit up, and that light spilled over the high walls that encircled the Rez — or Human Reservation #44B, as the bats called it. The light turned the sky a kind of yellow-gray, and that was why only the brightest stars could shine through. Or so folks said. This, at least, Shea was willing to believe since it made sense in a scientific way. He liked stuff like that.The old sagging buildings stood on either side of him as he trudged along. Once, this city had been new, a long time ago. People built it and lived lives here that were very different from those of its current inhabitants. Shea had seen pictures. Vehicles filled the streets. Folks wore clean clothes. Everyone looked like they got more than enough to eat. But that was another time, and Shea, even when he was a little kid, never fooled himself into thinking that things would ever be like that again, not here, not for his kind.The bats had won the war fifty years ago, and that was that. The truce promised they would never feed on people again, but the humans had to stay on their Reservations. (Continues...)Excerpted from The Vampire Years by Eric Del Carlo. Copyright © 2017 Eric Del Carlo. Excerpted by permission of Elder Signs Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Author

Eric Del Carlo's short fiction has appeared in Asimov's and Strange Horizons, as well as many other venues. His novels include the Wartorn fantasy novels written with Robert Asprin and The Golden Gate Is Empty, which he co-wrote with his father Vic Del Carlo.

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