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She adirl, you&039;re a vampire You are not equal, you can&039;t be equal You have risen above&039;

Croft swivelled in his chair, and addressed his circle

&039;Friends, get this: Katharine Reed is still here, eighty years AD Consider the Galapagos turtle They can live for centuries Like us But they hatch in the sea and new-borns have to crawl across the beach to safety Sea birds, predators, haunt the beach, and snatch - howfrenzy Carnage The slaughter of a generation Of the weak, or the unlucky, or the unwary It was like that for new-borns in the wake of the Dracula Declaration Most didn&039;t make it across the beach Kate Reed did Study her, learn her secret It may save your life&039;

She was uncomfortable DeBoys eyed her wolfishly

Anna - as Kate&039;s age or older - looked at the floor Croft had never made a turtle speech about her, evidently

Of course, in this story, the Professor was the butcher bird Some new-borns of the 1880s succumbed to disease or carelessness Not a feere killed in the Terror The regime&039;s chief shrike was Caleb Croft

&039;What is your secret?&039; asked Ar, notebook ready

&039;"Diet and lots of sleep",&039; she said

&039;That&039;s from Elisabeth Bathory&039;s paperback,&039; said Mo?se

&039;And she took it from Herbert von Krolock,&039; Kate responded &039;Als ascribed to vampire socialites are Herbert bon mots passed around and polished up Most of us lose the ability to be funny after a century or so If an elder makes a joke, he usually has to say "ho ho ho" afterwards to be sure you know to laugh&039;

&039;Point of etiquette,&039; said Scrawdyke &039;Generalisations are unhelpful Give specific instances&039;

She sed

&039;You&039;ve ducked the question, luv,&039; said Keith Kenneth Or was he Kenneth Keith? &039;Keeping your secret?&039;

&039;It wouldn&039;t be a secret if I blabbed everywhere, would it?&039;

If Kate had a secret, she didn&039;t knohat it was Not of the Dracula bloodline, she escaped the rot which cut down eneration, but it wasn&039;t as if she was particularly careful She&039;d put herself in harm&039;s way often Too often How many ti it off? On the principle that a tightrope walker shouldn&039;t look down, she didn&039;t like to consider the occasions when she&039;d nearly tu questions from cubs

&039;I wouldn&039;t takewrote that down

&039;What are your thoughts on the Before?&039; asked DeBoys

&039;Point of explanation,&039; said Scrawdyke &039;DeBoys means&039;

&039;I knohat he means,&039; she said, hastily &039;BD Before Dracula I had little experience of it We didn&039;t knoas coe We weren&039;t told the thing would happen, given a date to expect it by and charts in the papers to learn so you&039;re ready for it When I was a girl, when I arm, we&039;d barely heard of vaels or ghosts or the soul or a truly good man we talked often about whether those existed My father wrote A Counterblast to Agnosticism He was one Protestant who took the "protest" part seriously He had decided opinions on Irish beliefs At a ue, he told Parnell that Ireland would never be a nation until we stopped wittering on about the wee folk He had no patience with the Celtic folklore hich some Nationalists dressed up the Cause Before the Dracula Declaration, vampires seemed like fairies Children&039;s stories The scholars who credited theinal crackpots One thing which happened AD was a revival of all manner of nonsensical beliefs on the principle of "if there are vaons or the Easter Rabbit or two-headed llamas? That took a while to die out There aresaucers or the vanishing police box&039;

If more people knew about the Mother of Tears, the epideain That was the least of the reasons why Kate hadn&039;t written about the creature who secretly ruled Rome

Scrawdyke tried to put up his hand, but several of the others stopped him

&039;So you admit you can&039;t understand what it was like for Caleb BD?&039;

DeBoys used Croft&039;s Christian name The name he had taken Why Caleb? Was the for with his initials? Vampires often did that, so their nae Or else they went in for anagraht be working his way through Bible names Caleb of the Tribe of Judah was one of the spies Moses sent into Canaan, who came back and said the land could be taken

&039;Oh, I can understand,&039; she said &039;I can understand what it was like - what it is like - for a lot of people in a lot of situations It&039;s called empathy A trait not often associated with varinned

&039;but it has its uses&039;

&039;There were glories in the old days,&039; said DeBoys &039;When there was e e - vampires - weren&039;t so common&039;

The Black Monks would defend their Black Abbot, of course

&039;I didn&039;t expect to hear that at a university Aren&039;t children today into throwing off the dead weight of history? It&039;s the tie of Aquarius, the Now Generation, the Happening Thing Aren&039;t you with-it?&039;

&039;Mr DeBoys follows his own course,&039; said Croft With pride, or resignation, or so else?

&039;And we folloith hi to show he saw the joke in that &039;Black Monks all, and hellfire to quaff&039;

All the students snapped their fingers A private joke A prearranged response to a trigger phrase

Scrawdyke snapped so hard he broke bones He winced, gripping the finger while it healed

Eastainst the joke, scowled Kate decided she liked hiotten how disgusting that was

&039;What are the Black Monks?&039; she asked

DeBoys&039; fangs glinted &039;We are va vampires,&039; he said