A Natural Selection

Matthew Kirshenblatt

She was my experiment. Once I came to this new land – this island where the Saxons ruled and their inbred descendants now dwell in smog and filth – I knew I would have to be careful and proceed with matters delicately.

Blood is potent. Blood is power.

Too little blood and you make little more than a revenant: a rotting brute or a mindless hungry doll. Too much blood and you can create a twisted voracious fiend more obvious and even more powerful than anything even the Scholomance can put down again. My wives are a testament to the latter. I do not think of the former much.

I will rule this absurd little island of coal-fired steam trains and gaslights. I will take its Empire and dominate the world. I have plans and contingencies in place. These are the easy parts. Centuries of existence can afford one a certain amount of… patience and perspective.

Yet even that has not been enough to perfect my bloodline. Even now, she wanders around in her grave dress: abducting children and little babies. That is how they all begin. My Lambton Worm, my poor White Lady. She was so alive and vivacious when I first found her. She was strong. She had hungers and appetites that gave her potential.

We all go through this stage. The “child-brain,” so-called experts like Van Helsing call it. Granted, it is like a second childhood but I remember all of my memories and strengths from my previous life. I know where my power lies.

My women in Romania have barely evolved – evolution being a very quaint English notion – from this state. And it seems she will be no different. Perhaps it was a mistake draining and turning her within her somnambulist state. I toyed with her: changing her mindset slowly… carefully. Certainly her sleepwalking made her more suggestible and from the biological and alienist texts I’d gathered, sleepwalking puts the brain into another, more malleable state of consciousness or subconsciousness.

Unfortunately, manipulation of the blood is not a precise science and more like the alchemy with which I was once so adept. She is more… quiet than the others: almost docile by comparison. I wanted to make a new dominant personality for her: to create a being like me – strong and intelligent – but bound to my will. A worthy consort.

Sadly, her willful personality did not translate over well. Even when I give this white-robed revenant more of my essence, she only spouts more gibberish. She even thinks gibberish: though it is fascinating to see that insanity pierce the realms of time just as her existence does life and death. As such, her state does tend to give me good… insight, I’ll grant one that. She is tied strongly to the ancient and fragmented spirit of this land.

But no matter. She is an interesting experiment and I believe a good step in the right direction.

I must perfect my new race upon this Empire. I do not want mere shades of people, but greater, more intelligent beings: beings worthy of my blood and power. Of my will. Even the sheep here have among them those that know the weak must always be ruled by the strong.

Yet, as I said, my blue-eyed lady is merely an experiment, a “prototype” as some in the “auto-mobile” industry call their own inventions. It is her friend I’m now more interested in. The dark one. Jonathan Harker’s woman. She is strong and very intelligent.

I think after I’m done with my little doll, she will do nicely.

© Matthew Kirshenblatt 2012 All Rights Reserved