Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Enchantment of Vampiric Desire

“Ah!” To the vampire man's surprise, the scream did not come from the suddenly-appearing Arab, but from the boy he was holding. The man had grabbed young Harry by the collar and, as if flinging aside a torn sack, hurled him away.

Young Harry was utterly bewildered today. Why couldn't he bite? He'd clearly seen the man's thick veins and was about to sink his teeth in, but in his daze, he was seized and thrown aside. He crashed into a huge cross, then tumbled to the ground, bouncing back and forth like a rubber ball. When his body finally came to a stop, a foot pressed down hard on his chest. Looking up, he saw it belonged to the unfamiliar man. Trembling, he asked, “Are you a vampire hunter?”

“I told you, I'm just passing by,” Liu Yunfei replied, pressing down a little harder with his foot. Harry was already struggling to breathe.

“Brother, please let him go. I apologize on his behalf—please forgive him.” The vampire man walked over and tried to pull Liu Yunfei's hand away.

Liu Yunfei felt the other's hand cold as ice. He turned and looked at that pale, bluish face, feeling a chill in his heart. He loosened his foot, and the boy took the chance to roll away and hide behind the man's back.

“Take this as a lesson. If you dare to do evil again, I’ll take your life,” Liu Yunfei warned Harry once more.

“I’m sorry. Please forgive him—he’s still just a child. Thank you, young man. I am Rudolf, the current chief of the Roman bloodline, the Xitai clan. Perhaps you overheard our conversation just now. Little Harry has committed an unforgivable crime, but I beg your pardon for the sake of his youth.” Rudolf continued to apologize.

“I heard you mention someone called Henry. Is he about this tall? Nothing particularly distinctive about him?” Liu Yunfei gestured, but Henry’s face had no special features. “Oh, right. Are vampires afraid of sunlight? He’s clearly a vampire, but he can fly about in broad daylight.”

“Yes, yes, that’s him. He’s the vampire hunter,” Rudolf nodded repeatedly.

“Vampire hunter? Isn’t that the same as a vampire?” Liu Yunfei was puzzled.

“They’re not the same. A thousand years ago, in the cold Scandinavian mountains of northern Europe, vampires—whom we called the bloodline—first appeared. At that time, vampires survived mainly by feeding on human blood, so many humans who had lost loved ones banded together to form an organization to fight us. That was the origin of the vampire hunters,” Rudolf explained.

“So, vampire hunters were humans?” Liu Yunfei interrupted.

“At first, yes. But they soon realized their power was too meager—even dozens or hundreds of them were no match for a single vampire. So, using all sorts of threats and inducements, they forced a vampire to turn them into offspring. Thus, vampire hunters are also vampires,” Rudolf continued.

“So, to humans, vampire hunters are like kin or allies?” Liu Yunfei asked.

“I can’t really comment on their relationship with humans. Over the centuries, though, vampire hunters have changed. They no longer kill vampires for revenge, and vampires no longer feed on human blood. Now, vampire hunters hunt us for their own benefit.”

“What benefit is there in hunting vampires?” Liu Yunfei wondered.

“Plenty. First, vampires enjoy eternal life, and over the centuries, each has accumulated unimaginable wealth. Killing them and seizing their hoarded treasures is the simplest reward. More importantly, however, is another motive: the power inherited from vampires is not enough for them. Because for vampires, only another year of life brings another year of strength. Beating old vampires is impossible for them, so they’ve devised a wicked, despicable method: killing vampires and absorbing their strength.”

“So the more vampires they kill, the stronger they get?” Liu Yunfei realized.

“Yes. And since they’re originally human, they’re not used to living in dark, deserted places; they want to walk in the sun. So they have to kill more vampires to increase their power. That Henry is a rising star among northern vampire hunters. He’s only five hundred years old, but his strength is astonishing—he could have killed me four hundred years ago.” Recalling the past, Rudolf shuddered. “That was during the great European plague of 1554—corpses of people and animals everywhere. I wandered for three months without finding suitable prey. We cannot drink the blood of the dead or the diseased. Starving, I ran into that dreadful vampire hunter Henry in Prague. He could easily find me, but he was young then and didn’t kill me outright. I was too weak to escape, crawled into a slum, and ran into little Harry. He brought me to his home, where the only possession was a cow. He let me drink my fill, and only then did I have the strength to escape.”

“Oh, so in gratitude you later turned him, granting him immortality?” Liu Yunfei guessed.

“No, no, we vampires rarely make offspring. When I returned to Prague with many jewels to thank Harry and his family, I found them all dead—except for him. His parents, two brothers, three sisters, uncles, aunts—all his kin—were gone. The cow was the property of a nobleman, left with them for safekeeping. In those days, a cow was worth more than ten lives. Because Harry was cute, the noble didn’t kill him but sold him to a brothel as a boy prostitute. So, I rescued him, slaughtered the noble’s entire household in vengeance, but it was inconvenient to travel with a child, and he had no family left. So I turned him into my offspring. Really, don’t blame him for killing—this is all my fault. When I first became a vampire, I didn’t even dare bite chicks or ducklings; I’d bite and then let him drink. He was originally a kind boy.”

“I think I understand. So, tell me why you’ve lost hope of turning back into a human?” Liu Yunfei asked Harry.

Realizing Liu Yunfei was not a vampire hunter, Harry was no longer afraid. “Now, we vampires only possess part of the spell. The other half was held by our previous chief, who didn’t want all vampires to become human again, so few ever knew both halves. He hadn’t told me the other half before Henry killed him.”

“So nobody knows the other half of the spell?” Liu Yunfei was disappointed.

“No, before he died, the chief passed the spell to Henry. If Henry were willing, he could tell us, but why would he? He only wants to kill us. If we became human, he couldn’t steal our strength,” Harry said dejectedly.

“Why would he pass such a secret to an enemy before dying?” Liu Yunfei wondered.

“That’s the old chief’s cunning. He knew if he died, the secret would be lost forever. By giving it to Henry, someday someone might get it from him. But Henry uses this secret to lure desperate vampires hoping to become human, only to kill them,” the man analyzed.

“Then let’s go find Henry,” Liu Yunfei said decisively.

“No, no! It’s too late—the comet and the moon will align in a straight line tomorrow night. It’s too late. Even if we could defeat Henry—which we can’t—just traveling to his place and back would take more than a day,” Harry said, his face filled with despair.