Moonsol, fourth sol of Taurus.

156 Anno Coloniae Martis. 348 Anno Novae Specierum. 2574 Old Earth Common Era.

Lexi froze. ARCHON’s words cut through the haze of Honeydew. His mind shrank from the words as they fell out of his mouth, “What do you mean, ‘the extinction was not inadvertent’? Why did you just say that?”

You asked me to review research on amnesia. Specifically, you asked whether Sabine caused vampiric amnesia intentionally through the treatment. In order to refine her individual attribution, I had to review additional documents. At the time, Sabine was part of a team of researchers, although now she is solely attributed as the originator of the treatment.

“I’m aware of that, ARCHON.” He hesitated. “All her colleagues died. I knew them personally. I think I’m the last person alive,” he paused at the unpleasant realization, “who knew her whole team, including her superiors.”

He did not say to ARCHON: that’s why she pays my Honeydew bills. I agreed never to talk about them.

From 2028 to this very hour, 546 years later, Lexi had trained himself to remember Sabine’s old colleagues. He kept their names, faces, and research ever present; he reviewed details, double- and triple-checked them, and never got them wrong. These long-dead scientists were his secret friends. Their profiles played before his eyes in a familiar carousel, as though his knowledge of them alone would ensure his future survival.

ARCHON hummed. To isolate Dr. Falkner’s individual attribution, I searched her archived private notes and research papers on post-treatment amnesia. Within your clearance, there are 3,109 documents which address this topic directly. However, during the review, I found a handwritten note on Dr. Falkner’s desk. It was sitting next to one of the official publications on amnesia. I believe the camera captured the note –

ARCHON paused to ruminate on the coincidence in vocabulary.

inadvertently. The note is in Dr. Falkner’s handwriting. It states:

‘Maybe amnesia is the price we need to pay, to perfect the species. We exchange history for post-human ascendancy. Our memories will be sacrificed and no one will know that that was what it took to advance where we needed to go, while ending all human suffering. I think the way forward is now clear. The end will seem natural, and that is enough. We will go on and we will never remember the price we paid, which is a mercy. I take it as a good omen.’

Lexi shoved his chair back from the desk. “Log that note in my private archive, with all metadata, please. How does that say that the extinction was not inadvertent? You mean the part where she says, ‘The end will seem natural.’?”

Yes.

He rose with a jerk and lurched away from the desk. “She always talks like that. She could be referring to the end of memory, not the extinction.”

The room felt off kilter. Was it possible? Could Sabine have engineered the extinction? His mind shrank from this revelation.

A new fear invaded his cluttered attention as he thought it through: if that’s what happened, I was wrong about everything. It would mean that everything was a lie. It would break this society. If she did that, how many people know? How many people were part of it?

Lexi knew that Sabine and ARCHON could be monitoring his vitals. He meditated to induce a state of internal calm and trailed over to the window. Marineris slept under its dusty domes, each one emitting a dull glow under the clear Martian night. He could make out the little lights of a train, labouring from the bottom of the canyon up toward the mesa on which the palace rested.

Could that insane bitch have deliberately murdered nine billion people? His inner being began to fracture, even with the Honeydew mending his internal coherence. He felt a crossroads coming, a destiny where he might come undone.

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New to Vampire Daddy? Start Here

Vampire Daddy is set in a future where humanity is extinct and vampires rule Mars after a vampiric medical treatment transformed civilization. Lexi, a troubled five-hundred-year-old immortal, is ordered to father a child with a mysterious clone named Primeva, whose very existence defies the laws of God and science. Before her fragile body fails, they must return to the ruins of Earth, where Lexi can reclaim his lost soul – for only as a mortal man can he unite with Primeva to restore humankind.

Inspired in part by C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and George MacDonald’s Lilith, Vampire Daddy is a Martian Gothic space epic shaped by medical and supernatural horror, philosophical science fiction, political intrigue, and the mysteries of our solar system. The novel asks what happens when human life ends – but civilization continues.

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Act I: New Genesis

1. The Lab

2. Your New Friend

3. The Elixirs of Life

4. If You’re Russian

5. Bloodless Logic

6. Residua

7. A Moment

8. A Configuration

9. Two-Twenty-Two

10. Departures

11. Dome-Dwellers

12. Hallucinations

13. Gold from Tharsis

14. Psychic Fields

15. Chapel Perilous

16. Ex Nihilo

17. One Mouse

Author's Desk

Vampire Daddy Website

Vampire Daddy on Youtube

Kijo's Astrotheological Codex

A low chime interrupted him.

He turned down the veil shielding his office and suppressed his stress and irritation. “Yes.”

“It’s Francesca.”

He deactivated the veil. Her mouth was a straight line, but her eyes were compassionate. “I have your Honeydew and personals.”

He bowed. Her mouth relaxed into a smile.

“I packed your travel bag. I took the liberty of going down to the storage room to see what’s there. There was one spare jacket and a shirt. Also this – an exercise outfit that you used when you were traveling with Princess Yekaterina. I found the regolith running boots that go with it.”

He shook the clothing out and regarded it. It was an earth-toned tactical training uniform, stamped with a simplified version of Septentrion’s insignia, a bear, crossed swords, and stars. It had matching underlayers – a shirt, undershirt, and leggings. The fabric responded to the touch and melded to the hand; it was interwoven with heat-retaining threads. This was a prototype that he had worn to promote the smart fabric technology. The cloth could change states microscopically and capture body heat, store it, and redistribute it as needed. The insulated running boots were light but strong, reinforced at the ankles and forefeet while retaining flexibility. An overlayer protected the feet and legs from the toxic Martian regolith, which stuck to everything and had the consistency of ground-up glass.

The designers had paid tribute to Lexi’s archaic origins by choosing a twenty-first-century Russian military style that rejected sleekness in favour of survival. Every area requiring movement featured reinforced, segmented panels, recalling Russia’s brutal utilitarian aesthetic. The pants had reinforced hinged knee panels, a detail that immediately created a trademark Spetsnaz silhouette.

Lexi grinned, “I forgot about this! This is good!”

“Mmm-hmm.” Francesca nodded. “Here’s the rest of it – a hat, gloves, visor, even a respirator. Do you need me to go to your place and get anything?”

“No, thank you. I think this will work well. How is The Turning coming?”

“I checked with Angelo. He is half done. He should have it finished by 7 or 8 p.m. for your review.”

“Very good.”

She discreetly placed the bottles of Honeydew on the desk, along with a crystal goblet.

“I’ll come up again when Angelo has completed The Turning.”

He shook his head. “Have him send it to me. I need to concentrate. It’s almost 6, isn’t it? If Angelo doesn’t need you, please go home, Francesca. I’ll review with you both in the morning. Thank you.”

She nodded and withdrew.

Lost in thought, Lexi reactivated the shield and retired to the lavatory for a mist shower. He sank to the warming tiles, suddenly exhausted, like a disoriented mountaineer about to die just short of the summit of Everest. There were too many forces converging upon him at once. He leaned his head back against the wall and let the hot water trickle through his hair.

There must be a throughline.

He could not see it. His heart throbbed and his whole body trembled uncontrollably. His spirit began to float, disconnected from his physical being.

He could feel Primeva’s energy tugging at him, petulantly, like a child who wanted attention. He relented and allowed his psyche to open up to her.

What is it, Primeva? What do you want?

Don’t be afraid. Please don’t worry. I can feel that you’re worried.

Her hands invisibly traced across his chest. He was jaded, withdrawn. Easy for you to say. You don’t have to face – them.

It will be all right. I know it will.

He grimaced without opening his eyes as the water bathed his face. I don’t know what to do. I love you. Why do I love you?

Don’t talk. You don’t have to talk. We can just be together here. No one will know.

And he felt her curl up against him under the water, like a girl seeking shelter in his shadow from a storm. A wave of relief and understanding passed over him, sweeter and more real than the caress of Honeydew. He did not have to explain or reveal anything of his hidden self, his true feelings, the shame, the guilt. A knowing came from her that encompassed everything he was. He could feel her lips trace across his cheek and he smiled painfully, to know for the first time a whisper of complete understanding and forgiveness, without judgment, without conditions or obligations.

I love you. Please don’t worry.

She pulled away. The connection wavered and they separated. He bowed his head, eyes still closed, and wanted the moment back. He rose, turned off the shower, and dried himself, lost in thought as sacred, silent reverence gave way to profane compulsion.

He did not even remember dressing. He wore the black knitted field thermals of Swords’ military: standard Martian barracks wear. Last year, cameras had captured him sneaking out of his building to buy Honeydew at the Palladio Arcade in the middle of the night. The incident had sparked a planetwide fad of vampires wearing officer lounge fatigues.

He sat at the desk, opened the Honeydew, and paused to make a resolution.

If I get through this, I vow to stop drinking Honeydew and find another way to preserve my memories.

His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely pour the shimmering lavender hemoglobin into the goblet. One sip of the otherworldly, faintly marzipan-scented blood derivative, and his physical, mental, and psychic energies blissfully swam back together into a coherent amalgamation. A swallow, and his hands stopped shaking. He wiped sweat from his forehead, exhaled shakily, and began to focus on how he would survive this chessboard.

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Moonsol, fourth sol of Taurus.

156 Anno Coloniae Martis. 348 Anno Novae Specierum. 2574 Old Earth Common Era.

Lexi’s office occupied a spacious arched landing at the top of stairs which ran up from the Psychic Fields Research Cluster. It had a couple of adjoining Gothic monastic rooms. In his mind, he called it the Chapel Perilous. To enforce privacy, he touched a button on his desk and activated a threshold veil. Emitters in the ceiling, floor, newel posts, and walls at the top of the landing activated a shimmering curtain of lightly charged air at the stairhead. He turned the electromagnetic phase to full opacity so that the curtain took on the appearance of a dark grey mirror. He increased acoustic cancellation, then gravitic and psi-dampeners. A hush descended around him as the veil sealed him off from noise, people, and their energies in the office below.

He set his windows to privacy phase. Light from the windows dulled and the sconces automatically compensated. He could still look out into the quad below, but from outside, the windows glowed a dull, mirrored bronze.

He felt his shoulders relax. He began to meditate, sorting through the many concerns that pulled at his attention.

Silence. Go deeper.

A low chime rang at the door and he started.

He deactivated the veil slightly. “Yes?”

It was Francesca. “I have the imperial security briefing and the bookings for the train and hotel domes, as you requested.”

He got up, deactivated the veil, and took the folders from her. “Thank you, Francesca.”

“You’re welcome. The bookings are flexible so that you can leave when you want to, but you will have to be more specific with Angelo, since he is handling your main security. The name of the imperial security lead is in the folder.”

“I can’t give anyone instructions right now. Please ask the imperial team to liaise with Angelo and the Swords’ security detail. I’ll talk to you and Angelo when I know how I will approach this.”

“All right. Do you require anything further?”

“Let me work on it today and tonight. I will tell you in the morning if I need to clear anything with the imperial staff. The Turning has to go out tomorrow morning, I would appreciate it if you can support Angelo in completing it, since he also has to deal with Swords’ arrangements for the Spaceport.”

“Yes, I will do that. Will you be working late?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need anything – Honeydew?” She murmured.

“Yes.” He froze at the thought and looked around. “Better make it three bottles.”

She nodded slightly. “All right. I’ll bring them shortly. Is there anything else? Are you staying here until you leave for the Spaceport? Do you need a travel bag?”

“Yes, I think I will sleep here, then leave. I need personals for tonight and a travel bag for the trip, thank you, Francesca.”

“We have things left over here from the Grand Tour. Do you want me to go to Splendor Solis Tower and get some things from your place?” She tapped into her tablet.

“No. It’s more important that you help Angelo. I’ll go down to the storage room and work that out myself.”

“Okay. I’ll be back later.”

He reactivated the veil and realized that his hands were shaking.

He activated his handset. “ARCHON, what time is it in Ireland?’

ARCHON hummed for a moment. “It is November 15, 2574, 8:54 a.m. in Dublin.”

“What’s the current delay on laser transmissions from Earth?”

ARCHON calculated. “Approximately four minutes.”

“Please play the acoustic feed from the environmental sensors in Phoenix Park, Dublin.”

ARCHON obliged. The sounds from an ecological monitoring microphone in the park in Ireland were turned into an electrical signal. Encoded into light, they were transmitted across the void of space. They were then reconstructed through quantum compression and ARCHON’s algorithmic interpretations of missing audio. Lexi closed his eyes as static gave way to the blissful sound of wind on Earth. Then he made out the faint calls of blackbirds, robins, and the melodic songs of thrushes.

He sank down into the chair behind his desk and closed his eyes. He could feel his body trembling. It had been two days since he had drunk any Honeydew. He pondered why Sabine allowed him access to her most precious nutraceutical. Addictive as it was, it gave him something like a continuous human memory.

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“Good morning, Dr. Rönnberg.”

“Hi Walter.”

“I hope you don’t mind my saying so, Sir. But I hope you’re gonna go down there to the Spaceport and talk to them.”

Lexi half-nodded, already moving.

“If you don’t, they’ll outshine us.”

Не лишай нас.

Lexi stopped.

Не лишай нас.

Don’t leave us.

Lexi paused, slightly stunned, “Sorry, what?”

“Sorry, Sir. I said, if you don’t go, they’ll outshine us.”

Lexi’s mouth went crooked. “I’ll … do my best, Walter, Ad gladios!”

“That’s it, Sir! I’ll be watching the show this week! I know you’ll work it out. I have faith in you. Ad gladios!”

Why had he misheard Walter? Не лишай нас. Ukrainian, not Russian. Was it a memory from his military service? He realized that his hands were shaking as he gripped the banister.

He made his way upstairs to his research cluster, Psychic Fields. His work informed his weekly discussion show, The Turning, which was transmitted on the holographic mesh across Mars and Earth.

Lexi had founded the Psychic Fields Institute the year Marineris University was established, in 2308 of the Old Earth Calendar and 14 Anno Coloniae Martis.

It had been gruelingly hard work.

He had earned a doctorate in psychology back on Earth at Trinity College Dublin. For centuries, he had researched emotional and mental states of humans, vampires, and advanced artificial intelligences, which required him to study many related disciplines.

Sabine’s treatment had awakened paranormal potentials to varying degrees in new vampires: extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, psychometry, psychokinesis, pyrokinesis, levitation, and mind control.

Illusion-casting was rare, as were astral projection and bilocation. Temporal psychic talents were exceedingly rare. Lexi was not sure why, but he had secretly developed all of these, including precognition and retrocognition.

The first seasons of The Turning involved genuine research, as Lexi sought out individuals who displayed different vampiric abilities and speculated on why they presented with some powers and not others. In the fifth season, he dumped the dry chat and navel-gazing and by force of sheer charisma transformed the show into a dreamy probe into the mysteries of the Martian condition.

Everyone knew his story: traumatized as a Russian soldier, he became the first vampire to take Sabine’s treatment at the point of suicide. He was the first of all of them, now one of the Glamorati, one of the famous faces of Mars.

As the show became popular, the Emperor and Mother Tabitha took it over by funding it and providing Lexi with a staff. They sent Lexi to talk to everyone: clergy, military personnel, terraformers, colonial covens, isolated vampires in fringe settlements, factory workers, wander-women, miners, interplanetary space crews, weary vampires retreating from the outer colonies, underworld gangs at New Jade Gate, purist Nosferati, haute aristocrats in the major houses … even ARCHON himself. Over time, Lexi interviewed them all.

Except for his Grand Tour with Kijo, the all-time most-watched show he had ever done was called: Why We Can’t Have Dogs and Cats.

He was charged with pushing vampires to talk about their problems up to a line but not beyond it. He was allowed leeway around that, as long as the final goal was achieved: keep the population quiet. In exchange, he received connections, support, and perquisites from both the workers and the élites. It was an enviable position that few others enjoyed.

It came at a cost. Because of the delicacy of his work, Lexi could not voice his true opinions or feelings – ever – to anyone. But he had to appear to express care, interest, and concern at all times towards everyone he met, no matter what he actually thought.

It was a consideration that few offered him in return.

He reached the landing at the top of the stairs, and paused to collect himself. His hands were trembling.

Many people befriended him. But he felt as though no one really knew him, except Kijo and Kepa.

Kepa’s words floated through his mind: You were like the word embodied in the treatment and now – you’re like the word embodied in this place. Everyone followed you into this mess. Everyone. We followed you here. Not Sabine. Not Mother Tabitha or the Emperor. You.

Kepa echoed what others had said. It happened on his show, a lot: through focused, deeper conversation, he would nudge some memory or emotion to the surface in an interviewee, and it would bring up floods of tears. The last time this had happened had been with an elderly man, a bottler at the Primeva hemoglobin factory. “You helped me. Thank you, Lexi. You are everything to us.”

Lexi was glad to help the colonists, but he felt guilty for having brought them to this point, much less having to perpetuate the Emperor’s and Tabitha’s endgame. He felt constantly put upon, projected upon, manipulated, and controlled, never his own person, always required to cater to the needs and demands of others.

At this moment, he thought of how harshly he had treated the android who cared for Primeva, Véronique Garin. Strange, that he should regret being rude and arrogant toward a synthetic that was trying to ruin his life.

He brooded over this as he entered his office. His secretaries, Francesca and Angelo, leapt forward. The former was commissioned by the Emperor, the latter by Tabitha, to work with him, run his office, and convey orders from above.

He laughed as they both opened their mouths, “All right, all right. I’m sorry I’m late. Francesca, you first.”

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Moonsol, fourth sol of Taurus.

156 Anno Coloniae Martis. 348 Anno Novae Specierum. 2574 Old Earth Common Era.

A shadow grew in Lexi’s mind as he left Kepa’s office. The heavy basalt halls swallowed all sounds and made the university feel like a tomb. Primeva appeared in his mind and he suppressed the thought of her.

Kepa’s telepathy had felt fractured, jarred, incoherent. Lexi followed the reverberations in his friend’s field again, and encountered volatile, jangled panic. To trace the connection further was to draw closer to something Kepa had seen in the pyramid at West Candor Chasma.

His friend had withdrawn access to his field at the last moment before this revelation. It made Lexi even more worried. Almost everything Kepa had communicated left Lexi off balance, but this most of all:

We followed you here. Not Sabine. Not Mother Tabitha or the Emperor. You.

He brooded as he stalked down the hallway. I don’t understand. Everyone followed the Emperor, Tabitha, Sabine, and all the others. Didn’t they?

People he passed nodded and murmured ‘hello’ as he reached a sealed skyway which joined Ophir Hall to the neighbouring building, Capri Hall.

The skyway had a grand view of the Emperor’s palace, the Ark. It glowed under its dome, the Solarium Imperialis. He glanced out the windows and saw that Kijo’s Planetarium was parked at the palace. Then he remembered that Kepa had said that Kijo had been by, and had asked about the pyramid.

He wished he could go hide in the Planetarium and avoid everyone and everything, but that meant dealing with Kijo. He’d seen her last week at the Palladio Arcade, and it left a bad taste in his mouth. She was all jaunty challenges and high-pitched invitations: that meant she was acting as the Japanese seductress. She inhabited that role almost all the time now.

In private, Princess Yekaterina Josefina, the niece of the emperor, was nothing like Kijo, the sylph-like temptress who inflamed Martian gossip channels. ‘Kijo’ was a public role Yekaterina played. Lexi deduced that ‘being Kijo’ was a task demanded of Katya by House Aethereon. He hated that they had done that to her. It was cruel. It was insane. It was wrong.

He knew that the practice of creating a public persona for a high-profile person was one of Earth’s oldest technologies. It had been done for centuries, so that prominent individuals could bear the strain on their minds and emotions.

How or why they had done this to Katya, he did not know. He would not go through Sabine to inquire. When he had approached Mother Tabitha directly with the question, her telepathic response was dismissive. Frosty. And brief: Those people have always managed their affairs that way, Aleksej Petrovich. I await more imaginative questions from you.

Tabitha’s rebuke still stung. More imaginative? How, more imaginative?

An idea struck him: That process – the fracturing of the identity. It’s almost an analogue to Sabine’s vampiric treatment.

He didn’t like the comparison. Then he thought:

That can’t be. Why did I think that?

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The Faculty of Archaeology sat in a wing of its own on the second floor of the university’s first main building, Ophir Hall. The masons had built an arched stone gateway into the upstairs hallway, with supporting columns that ran through to the ground floor. It gave one a sense of crossing a threshold into an area of study that was forbidden. Lexi liked the feeling of being admitted to a secret enterprise.

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Moonsol, fourth sol of Taurus.

156 Anno Coloniae Martis. 348 Anno Novae Specierum. 2574 Old Earth Common Era.

The smell of Mars singed his sinuses as Lexi took a faster, unsheltered passage from the University train station platform. He had lately started exposing himself to the elements to test himself.

The cold was always a shock, even to the vampiric body. There was something specific about Martian cold that was keen, stabbing and unrelenting, like a blade sliding between one’s ribs. Today it was not too bad, around minus 10 degrees Celsius.

Even in this sheltered spot in Valles Marineris, the message was clear, as though the Red Planet took this moment to tell him: Don’t forget.

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Estimated stable subject Primeva remaining lifespan: 392 sols.

Moonsol, fourth sol of Taurus.

156 Anno Coloniae Martis. 348 Anno Novae Specierum. 2574 Old Earth Common Era.

“Would you trade extinction to end human suffering?” Sabine’s voice intruded into Lexi’s thoughts. He had just left Primeva at the ARCHON-BIX complex. The memory came to him as he stared at the faintly moving geometries in the seamless monocoque seats of the train.

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Garin chose to stress variables. She dredged up something truly human, an old model called ‘game theory.’ She felt that the best way to ensure that Primeva would have something akin to a human environment was to infuse it with incompleteness. She knew that humans had existed in their own time with chronic incompleteness: unfinished business, half-uttered sentences, uncommunicated thoughts and feelings. She wondered how such a flawed and inefficient species had lasted as long as it did. The android silently confirmed that humankind’s chronic messiness had led to the end of the species and its replacement by the vampires.

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Lexi returned to her mind. His name was not Lexi, she decided. Like the tree needed a name, so Lexi needed a name. Garin had said that his name was Aleksej Petrovich.

She mouthed it to herself: Ah – lek – say. She remembered he had a third name, Rönnberg. She wondered what that meant. Why a third name?

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He winced. “I have not forgotten your payments on the debt you owe me, Enchanted Coven Mistress. I express gratitude and await the evening of the balance between us.”

“Ever in Temperance,” she snapped, still studying her screen as she tapped commands into her console.

He raised an eyebrow. That nod to pro forma courtesy was not a good sign. It meant that he was in real trouble. “I do not think the work detail is valid. I think it’s a set-up, Coven Mistress.”

“It must be. What’s ARCHON’s goal, I wonder? Clones are unstable. Everyone knows this. The labs publicly claim 15 weeks, but the real number is 6 weeks. At first, clones function well physically and metabolically. But they do not integrate relationally or psychologically, even with your research, which, as you of course recall, extended beyond HNNV-infected individuals. When clones fail to integrate, they suffer systemic dysregulation, particularly with sleep, appetite, and the immune and endocrine systems. Cellular breakdown always follows. No human clone has ever survived past 12 weeks, much less reproduced. We can use stem cells to synthesize ova and sperm, and gestate embryos in artificial birthing crèches. Doesn’t matter. The same thing happens. We can keep the meat alive, for a time. But without a soul, there is no person. Long term survival and reproduction are impossible without ensoulment.”

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Sometimes, it contained bits of his family home from when he had been a boy. It often had fragments of other places where he had lived and worked. This time, it was a completely new combination of environments, and he was drawn, floating through an old kitchen, then a drawing room from when he had lived in Ireland. And there in the corner, he saw Rory. Again? He wondered. Wait. When did I see him last? Rory smiled, still his old, jolly self, then waved and mischievously pointed, indicating that Lexi should walk forward.

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The disaster had unfolded as he became engrossed in an affair with the woman who had treated him, Dr. Sabine Falkner, a German-Russian working for the Russian government. She had taken him in after his family had refused to see him again. He was hurt, abandoned, confused, and reeling from the treatment. And she, marveling at his new abilities, his strength, his superhuman reflexes, willingly took the treatment herself. They became vampires together, ravaging, clutching, hammering at each other’s bodies at night with ferocious joy, gulping blood from ceramic cups, while the world around them plunged into total perdition, depredation, and darkness.

Sabine was thirty years his senior, older than Aleksej’s mother, and a respected member of the team which had taken the Human Vampirism Virus (HVV) and Lyssavirus rabies, disabled their dangerous aspects, and used them to identify which pathways went active or quiet in a patient’s brain during severely suicidal, narcopathic, or schizoid episodes. They then used psilocybin to reconnect those pathways to other neural lattices that oriented the individual out of fear, anxiety and repetitive traumatic ruminations. The patient’s brain slowly adjusted to focus on the outside world again. The results were astounding, even miraculous, especially for ex-soldiers, who said, over and over, “I felt like myself again.” “The world felt completely reborn, brand new.” “I wasn’t trapped in my head any longer.” And so on.

It seemed a magnificent triumph, as though mental illness could be healed once and for all, one brain cell at a time. The treatment did not just alter mood like the old SSRI drugs. As studies progressed, the doctors realized that they had found the back door to the connection between physicality and consciousness, because an induced shift in focus transformed the patient’s whole identity and fundamental existence. For the first time, researchers were able to grasp how that shift could occur first at the cellular level but then, miraculously, move from the realm of biology and physiology into relational physics. The brain did not just change. It changed in the direction of whatever field into which it was placed. It entered the patient into a new frame of being, where their mental illness simply ceased to exist.

Lexi, as one of the test subjects in the secret black box Russian genomics program, had witnessed the scientists’ exultation. To further this process, they used a gene editor to alter the zoonotic rabies virus and HVV. They produced a new virus, Human Nocturnal Neuroadaptive Virus (HNNV), with the goal of creating in infected patients a radical physiological, physical, and emotional resilience, with reduced fear responses and trauma loads.

This treatment was hailed as a global victory over the trials and miseries of the human condition, although it provoked widespread skepticism. It would bring world peace! Finally, economies would stabilize! At last, humans would behave rationally! Critics wrung their hands and clutched their pearls. A long-forgotten moment when he was a celebrity guest on a television show flashed through Lexi’s mind as a nay-sayer pressed him: “Pain is what makes us human – can’t you see that?” The host of the show quipped: “Maybe – if you’re Russian.” And everyone laughed.

Progress won in the pre-extinction world and Russia claimed the honors of launching a global treatment for mental illness. In an unexpected turn of events, Russia took the credit for stabilizing geopolitics. A world war was averted. Just over one billion, perhaps 15 per cent of the global population, lined up to be voluntarily infected with HNNV.

The treatment gained cachet because of its whispered vampiric origins. It became trendy and cool, even after it emerged that the infected were becoming rather vampire-like in their proclivities and abilities. Vampires don’t get scared. They don’t get tired. They are wealthy. They don’t make mistakes. They are mysterious. They are strong and ultra smart. They are superpeople. Accept your superhumanity. Allow it to pulse through you. Slowly, the old vampires who were infected with HVV exited the shadows and joined a huge public debate about their rights and predatory natures, compared to the behaviors of HNNV carriers who were simply recipients of a medical treatment.

Then unexpectedly, after the first cycle of mass HNNV treatments, a third, mutated virus emerged, Global Neurodegenerative Syndrome Virus (GNSV), which acted chaotically as a collapse vector. Only much later did vampire scientists begin to understand that GNSV had done more than attack baseline human immune systems. It was existential: a cascading collapse of the time and space where humans could meaningfully exist. As HVV had altered the body, and HNNV had changed perception, GNSV changed existence. Vampires were immune to GNSV, but humans were wholly affected. Homo sapiens did not die burning with fever, screaming, vomiting, and hemorrhaging. As with honeybees in Colony Collapse Disorder, they simply began to lose their relational anchoring to reality, mysteriously drifting into a strange, terrifying, mass extinction, which the vampires, old or new, were helpless to prevent.

It took time for the vampires to understand that immunity was not a gadget one could take apart and rebuild. Either way, over hundreds of years, most of the old vampires infected with HVV accepted HNNV treatments to stabilize their systems, reduce their predatory impulses, and enable them to consume artificial blood to stay alive. There were some holdouts, but the new vampire militias hunted them down. And with that, Homo sapiens vampiris proceeded to do what Homo sapiens had never really managed to do: depart for the stars.

-- To Be Continued ...

Vampire Daddy Table of Contents

© 2026 Larissa Douglass. All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

This excerpt was originally published on Patreon on 19 February 2026.

The menu was constantly changing, with blood blends mixed with synthetic perfumes and flavorings, organic, exotic, narcotic, and symbiotic. At the top of the menu, there remained the stalwarts, consumed by vampires on Mars and Earth alike, whenever they could afford them:

- House Blend Plasma Fraction. Lightly mineralized plasma enriched with mitochondrial stabilizers. Signature warmth and a smooth uptake.

- Primeva Nocturne. The original equilibrium blend. Smooth, sustaining, and socially neutral.

- Primeva Vitae Prima. The first formula. Harmonized nourishment for long continuance.

- Cultured Reticulocyte Extract. Shots on the go. Adds a steady vitality curve.

- Primeva Hemaglucose Infusion. Light, energizing, day-cycle compatible. No spike, no crash.

- Primeva Sanguis Quietus. Sleep formula. Deeply stabilizing, contemplative, long-form sustenance.

- Primeva Meridian Reserve. A composed, metropolitan blend favored by senior Martian covens.

- Primeva Aureate. Curated tri-lineage hemoglobin blend with a cultivated finish. Refined vitality.

- Synthetic Plasma Broth. Savory, grounding, restorative.

- Fermented Erythro Tonic. Slow-release, meditative.

- Botanical Hemoglobin Veil. Synthetic hemoglobin anchored with fruit and plant analogues.

This franchise proclaimed its exclusivity by carrying one of Primeva’s rarest blends.

- Honeydew Hemoglobin. Sweet abundant fertility. Pure Paradise.

“Speak of the Devil. How are you, Lover? Where have you been?

He glanced to his right and already felt the girl’s soft breath in his ear. It was his sometime temptress, Kijo. Her artificial silks rustled against his legs. He frowned. “Not now, Kijo.” He murmured into the dispenser so as not to draw attention: “Three bottles of Honeydew Hemoglobin.”

“Aww, what’s up?” She traced her long claws down his forearm. “You’re still my Night Prince, my Yoru no ōji.” She nipped his earlobe.

“Another time, Getsu-hime. I have business at present. I will come back to you, all right?”

She purred and curtsied, but her tone sharpened, “Three bottles of Honeydew?! What are you up to?”

Well she might have asked. They cost three months of his salary.

“You getting too good for my Underworld, Tsukikage no kimi?” She paused, then stepped back with an air of thoughtful caution. She shrugged, “As you wish, my prince. Don’t keep me waiting long, Honeydew Drinker.”

Her taunt rang in his ears as he trailed back to his housing complex, clutching his parcel. Honeydew was sold with ordinary, cheap-looking wrapping so that it could not be recognized in the streets. It was expensive for a reason. Unlike Primeva’s other mainstays, it contained after-echoes of fertile human souls, which could not be fabricated. These were real energetic signatures, and for vampires, they were subtly but inexorably addictive. The black market contained much stronger versions, but Lexi hadn’t made his way there yet. Vampires who consumed such fragments of soul residua too frequently began to take risks. They might feel the urge to stand out, to feel things, to form attachments. Primeva discreetly carried this blend only at its very best outlets; the order screen warned that anyone ordering Honeydew would be flagged. It was meant for rare occasions and special celebrations, not regular consumption.

He sighed as the elevator of his building hummed. The door of the lift opened directly into the entry vestibule of his assigned habitat within the Marineris dome. He did not share the level with anyone else. Consumed with the need to feed, he glided through his quarters and carefully unwrapped the ugly outer packaging; already mesmerized, he gazed dully at the familiar mauve and gold labels on the bottles, with their slowly-moving constellations. When the stars on the label reached the end of their holographic loop, a message shimmered into view: Honeydew Hemoglobin. By appointment to Mother Tabitha, Sovereign of the Covens of Mars. By appointment to the Vampire Pope, Hierophant of Absence. Primeva, Purveyors of regulated nutraceutical supply on five planets: Earth, Moon, Mars, Titan, Ganymede; and on the dark orbitals’ capital base, Enceladus.

Despite his growing need, it was improper to consume Honeydew without cleansing first. He darted into a mist shower, put on a kimono and settled into meditation before he began to consume the precious hemoglobin. With trembling hands, he poured the lavender-tinted liquid into a glimmering crystal bowl cut from Martian salt-glass. The first sip sweetly warmed his throat and immediately released his being into flight, so that he was circling, like a bird flying around and around a tower in the light of a slowly gathering dawn on Earth, and then falling down through the churning spirals of a small dust storm on Mars.

After an hour of steady but slow consumption in minute sips which was interspersed with oblivion, then forbidden prayers, the trace elements of human soul additives kicked in and tears flowed down Lexi’s face. He could remember his human life on Earth, as a young man, over five hundred years before. He could hear his sister, Natasha, speaking softly in his ear as he regained consciousness. Lyoshenka … Lyoshenka … Lyoshenka. This had actually happened. It was a real memory, as tangible as the Martian goblet he held, a bowl fashioned from salt that had crystallized, long after the water that had carried it was gone. As if deposited through a portal in time and space, he lay there again in the hospital, after the neuroplastic vampiric treatment he had voluntarily undertaken. It was a death that was an alternative to death, a radical option intended to resolve his extreme depression and PTSD after having served on the Ukrainian front. He awoke fully, felt the bright white cotton sheets, winced at the sunlight streaming through the window, and flopped his head to one side as his bloodshot eyes focused on Natasha’s face. Instead of being happy, his sister was oddly quiet. She hugged him, but said, “Lyoshenka, we thought you were dead.”

“As you can see, I’m not dead.” He smiled weakly, “I got better. I recovered. I feel so much better, Nat!”

“We thought you were dead.”

This memory now overlapped with a later one, a bitter argument: “All I wanted was to get better, Tasha.”

“What happens after we die?”

He laughed, “I couldn’t say. I haven’t died yet.”

She did not laugh. “That’s merely your point of view, Aleksej Petrovich. You died over a year ago.”

“No I didn’t. Stop saying that.”

“A branch, broken from the tree, still looks like a branch, Aleksej. But it is no longer connected to the living tree. Do not lie to yourself, dear Brother. We no longer recognize this, this – Lexi – as you call yourself. I love you, Aleksej. Good bye.”

He awoke, curled in the fetal position, sobbing, his heart consumed with grief and despair. “I love you too, Tasha. I love you. I love you,” he sobbed. Under the influence of the Honeydew, he then began to remember what had followed in the Three Virus Catastrophe, exactly as if it had happened yesterday.

-- To Be Continued ...

Vampire Daddy Table of Contents

© 2026 Larissa Douglass. All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

This excerpt was originally published on Patreon on 17 February 2026.

Shuddering, Lexi shook off the memory. He had not thought of Rory for a long time. He inhaled and tried to walk through the doorway again, but he could not. Subtle frustration rippled through his mind, far beneath the surface of his awareness, like magma flowing from one earthly chamber to another, two miles underground, as it had done back in the old volcanic caverns of Earth.

He retreated into the hallway and raised an eyebrow.

Garin monitored everything impassively, each micro-tell, every twitch. The room was recording everything as well, storing data such as temperature, thoughts, sounds, physical pheromonal responses too subtle for even him to recognize consciously. All of it was stored for Garin to review later.

He frowned. “What’s her name?”

Garin approached the doorway, studying him intently. “A name has not been selected yet. Do you wish to name her?”

“Ugh! What is this?”

“You pioneered new options for human neuroplasticity through vampirism. Would not that research speak to a creativity enhanced enough for you to name your new friend?”

“My new friend?” The power balance had shifted. Who was behind this ambush? Against his will, his eyes trailed back to the clone’s legs, to her chest as it slowly rose and fell under the thin medical gown. Then his eyes lingered over her long dark hair. Why was the clone so damned familiar? He wondered if they had implanted him with a fake memory, just to nose-ring him into their deranged program for optimized evolution. To his knowledge, no one had worked out physical ensoulment yet. Even with exponential improvements in technology and incorporated rituals, it had taken them two hundred years to understand, then mechanize, partial energy extraction from human residua. No one had succeeded in capturing and manipulating an intact human soul. Perhaps the clone wasn’t ensouled, but they’d set up a field gradient at the doorway to bar his entry and test his response.

You know that’s not true, Lexi. Rory again. What was this?

“Your file states that you were one of the earliest test subjects to use the vampiric virus to rewire your brain to overcome trauma? You were not infected in the classic way – a love bite? You were never seduced by a senior vampire. It suggests that your re-ensoulment is possible, because you selected damnation,” she flipped through the floating screens, “as a form of psychological healing.”

Lexi realized that the clone was listening. To this! Her eyes were shut, but he could sense that she was listening to Garin – while that damned android was reading personal information from his file! “I’m not your sandbox, Garin! Cease now, or ARCHON will see trouble from my coven. I’ll take this right to the top.”

Véronique Garin blinked. “You misunderstand, Dr. Rönnberg. It was your coven who approved your selection upon matching your genetic profile to ARCHON’S directive. Mother Tabitha herself sent us your file.”

He clutched the edge of the doorway and remained outwardly calm. “That’s ridiculous.”

Garin tapped her stylus on her steel clipboard. “Are you sure you do not want to name her?”

He turned and began to stalk off – “I’m going right to the top, Garin! You’ll have to find someone else for your little project.”

***

Lexi maintained a placid, slightly disdainful expression as he passed through multiple security checks at the exit of the ARCHON-BIX research complex. Once he exited the last military checkpoint, he decided to head back to his quarters to regroup. He wanted to stop at his local bar first. He needed to unwind and think through everything Garin had said.

Moving belts carried him with pedestrians to the vacuum-tube train station. From there, he was so preoccupied that he floated through the crowds of converging publics – androids, scientists, vampire clergy, space military, colonial administrators, and civilians – to the exclusive shopping promenade of the domed capital city, Marineris.

This district was called was ‘The Meridian.’ Gorgeous, civilized, and high end, it recalled beautiful quarters of Old Europe so faithfully that it would have brought tears to the eyes of Old Europeans, had there been any of them left to weep over it. Lexi got off at the Meridian Prime station, and made his way to the head of a particularly pretty cul-de-sac called the Palladio Arcade. It was decked with artful clusters of flower- and star-shaped lunar lamps. The pride of the Arcade was a much-prized real, imported jade tree from Earth, which flourished under a small, fierce sun lamp. Lexi greeted it silently and relaxed inwardly as he reached his local, a well-appointed franchise of the renowned brand of nutraceuticals: PRIMEVA. Interplanetary Purveyors of the Elixirs of Life.

-To Be Continued …

Vampire Daddy Table of Contents

© 2026 Larissa C. Douglass. All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

This excerpt was originally published on Patreon on 7 January 2026.

“Is it okay if I come in?” Lexi sputtered. He had just tried to enter this new lab in response to a work call, but an invisible pressure on his breastbone thrust him back into the hallway. It felt like a hard shove. He had forgotten the old, savage conventions. It had been over a century since he’d experienced the divine prohibition – the need for vampires to ask permission to enter a human space.

All the humans were dead now. On Earth, and here, on Mars. The base was run by undead vampires who did not have to worry about radiation and needed no air or sunlight. All they required was artificial plasma and hemoglobin. They were the perfect Space Force.

The rest of the base personnel were robots. The female staffer in this lab was an android. So why? No vampire had to ask a robot for permission for anything, much less consent to enter an abode. The androids were soulless machines, run by an AI even more profane than the vampires. At least the blood-suckers still, from time to time, could remember God’s grace and light in tragic dreams. Lexi gritted his teeth with surprise and irritation, then asked – and waited – for the lab tech’s consent to enter.

He knew from his brief that her name was Dr. Véronique Garin. She came to the doorway, prim in her white coat. She saw that he could not enter, nodded, and tapped on her tablet. “Aleksej Rönnberg?”

He smirked. “Yeh, Dr. Garin. May I call you, Véronique?”

She did not look up from her tablet. “No, you may not. I am not programmed for personal intercourses, Dr. Rönnberg.”

He leaned against the metal frame of the doorway. “Yeh, okay, Véronique. But you must have something new in your work-up, or I wouldn’t have to ask pretty please to come in, now, would I?”

He could sense her processor whirring behind her eyes as she murmured, “The ancient convention that vampires cannot enter a domicile without permission relates to their engagement with a divinely-ensouled human, that is, a live human, with a soul attached to their physical shell. The soul thereby interacts with the environment by way of Free Will. And I am not a human. You are correct.”

He was still stuck in the doorway, confounded by the energetic wall of complete resistance at this boundary. He could not enter. “Ja – so humans are extinct. What’s going on? I can promise you, Dr. Garin, if the AI master grid is getting any ideas about controlling the vampires, there will be Hell to pay.”

“It is not my permission you need, Dr. Rönnberg – but hers.” Dr. Garin pointed across the room. He focused on a female form in repose upon the table.

“What? Is that one of your clones? You can’t be serious!”

“Serious indeed. That we are, Dr. Rönnberg! You were invited not only to test our clone’s ensoulment, which, as you can feel and see, has finally been successful. But also, due to your viral inhibitors and ex-human genetic signature, we wish you to provide seed to launch a new human generation. Beyond the inhibitors, you will need to undertake a full cure from the vampiric virus. It will be intensive energetically and spiritually as well, because you must relinquish your vampiric state, and in penitence return to your original humanity, and accept re-ensoulment. The reunion of your revitalized and healed physical vessel with your soul will necessarily generate the correct sperm.”

“Is this a joke? You picked me because why? What did I do to deserve this? Did I upset some witch queen in the upper ranks? My answer is no. Pick someone else. There are lots of vampire cosmonauts on this ship, much less across the colonies.”

“We cannot. Your genetic signature is unique. You were chosen after an extensive search of all human and vampiric genetic banks. We cannot artificially create your full life and soul signature. You descended from a continuous human line going back millennia, derived from the ur-species of Earth’s lifewave, a true Earthling, uncontaminated by Martian, Venusian, or alien strains, nor by the artificial sub-species of humans which those non-Terran humanoids generated after crossing themselves with primitive hominids. Taken together, your vessel, DNA and soul are so exceedingly rare that we feel they are in fact a fully unique complex. If I may be so bold, this means that you are descended from the true Adam. As such, your movement through time and space places you in closest proximity to a nexus point for re-ensoulment. But before you even consider any of that, she will have to accept you. As you are.”

What had he done to deserve this? He stepped backwards in the hallway. “‘The true Adam?’ Who put you up to this detritus, Véronique? There you are, watching me leave.”

The android responded by pressing a button on her controls and in response, the girl on the table shifted slightly, and sighed.

Lexi stopped.

He gazed back at her, focusing intensely at her neck and shoulders. Even at a distance of fifteen feet, his enhanced eyes traced the blood pulsing gently through her veins. She sighed again and the sound of her breath shimmered through him. He recognized it, that sigh. It felt like lost warmth, like coming home after crossing the abyss, after being lost for countless ages. He turned, and his eyes traveled across her delicate skin, her face. His desire leapt to attention. So what? That wasn’t it. He knew her. How did he know her? He felt sure that he had not met her during his human life or in his vampiric afterlife.

The girl shifted, turned her head, and slowly opened her eyes. He was the first thing she saw. Their eyes met as she focused. He felt a flock of tiny white birds fluttering through his mind. She smiled.

He could hear his old vampiric mentor, Rory, laughing inside his head. Five hundred and forty-six years, Lexi, and you’re finally gonna be a daddy.

-To Be Continued …

Vampire Daddy Table of Contents

© 2025-2026 Larissa C. Douglass. All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

This excerpt was originally published on Patreon on 23 December 2025.