Blood...

Mr. Crepsley spent a lot of his time teaching me about blood. It's vital to vampires. Without it we grow weak and old and die. Blood keeps us young. Vampires age at a tenth the human rate (for every ten years that pass vampires only age one), but without human blood, we age even quicker than humans, maybe twenty or thirty years within a year or two. As a half-vampire, who aged at a fifth the human rate, I didn't have to drink as much human blood as Mr. Crepsley - but I would have to drink some to live.

The blood of animals - dogs, cows, sheep - keeps vampires going, but there are some animals they - we - can't drink from: cats, for instance. If a vampire drinks a cat's blood, he might as well pour poison down his throat. We also can't drink from monkeys, frogs, most fish, or snakes.

Mr. Crepsley hadn't told me the names of all the dangerous animals. There were a whole lot, and it would take time to learn them all. His advice was to always ask before I tried something new.

Vampires have to feed on humans about once a month. Most feast once a week. That way, they don't have to suck much blood. If you only feed once a month, you have to drink a lot of blood at one time.

Mr. Crepsley said it was dangerous to go too long without drinking. He said the thirst could make you drink more than you meant to, and then you were probably going to end up killing the person you drank from.

"A vampire who feasts frequently can control himself,"he said. "One who drinks only when he must will end up sucking wildly. The hunger inside us must be fed to be controlled."

Fresh blood was the best. If you drink from a living human, the blood is full of goodness and you don't need to take very much. But blood begins to go sour when a person dies. If you drink from a dead body, you have to drink a lot more.

"The general rule is, never drink from a person who has been dead more than a day,"Mr. Crepsley explained.

"How will I know how long a person's been dead?"I asked.

"The taste of the blood,"he said. "You will learn to tell good blood from bad. Bad blood is like sour milk, only worse."

"Is drinking bad blood dangerous?"I asked.

"Yes. It will sicken you, maybe turn you crazy or even kill you."

Brrrr!

We could bottle fresh blood and keep it for as long as we liked, for use in emergencies. Mr. Crepsley had a few bottles of blood stored in his cloak. He sometimes had one with a meal, as if it were a small bottle of wine.

"Could you survive on bottled blood alone?"I asked one night.

"For a while,"he said. "But not in the long run."

"How do you bottle it?"I asked, examining one of the glass bottles. It was like a test tube, only the glass was darker and thicker.

"It is tricky,"he said. "I will show you how it is done, the next time I am filling up."

Blood...

It was what I needed most, but also what I feared most. If I drank a human's blood, there was no going back. I'd be a vampire for life. If I avoided it, I might become a human again. Maybe the vampire blood in my veins would wear out. Maybe I wouldn't die. Maybe only the vampire in me would die, and then I could go home to my family and friends.

It wasn't much of a hope - Mr. Crepsley had said it was impossible to become human again - but it was the only dream I had to hold on to.