"The venom doesn't kill—it incapacitates. It works slow, widening the veins so much that, once bitten, our prey is in too much physical pain to escape us.
"Mostly superfluous, as I said. If we're that close, the prey doesn't escape: we do, with blood mustaches. Of course, there are always exceptions. Carbomb, for example."
"So... so if this... venom... is left to spread...," I murmured.
"It takes a few days for the transformation to be complete, depending on how much venom is in the bloodstream, and how it enters the heart. As long as the heart keeps beating, the poison spreads, healing, changing the body. Eventually the heart stops, and a vampire is born. But all that time, every minute of it, the victim would be wishing for death. Total death. Forever."
I shivered at the thought.
"It's not pleasant, you see."
"No way."
"It's pretty bad."
"Yes. Well, Fredward said that it was very hard to do... I don't quite understand," I said, "why he said that."
"Well don't forget, we're also like sharks as well. Once we taste the blood, or even smell it for that matter, it becomes very hard to keep from feeding. Sometimes even impossible. So you see, to actually bite someone, to taste the blood, is to begin the frenzy. It's a demon hell-ride for both sides—vampire and human."
"Damn, that's a cunt sandwich."
Alice shrugged. "I dunno. For everyone else, the pain of transformation is the sharpest memory they've ever had of being human. I remember nothing." Her voice was wistful.
We lay silently, wrapped in our individual meditations on life and death.

415

Chapter 20

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