xvi
You see, vampires had managed to gain their social acceptance – where they had managed to gain it – because the living citizens of those communities were thoroughly convinced that their soul was eternal.
Before the Lens changed their paradigm, their blood and their flesh – their life – were all people really had. Even the afterlife churches were suspiciously greedy with their mortal coils. But after the Lens, blood and flesh were merely temporary possessions, commodities, to be bartered away if one wished. After the legality of the will-to-self was ratified, blood and flesh were the most temporary possessions one had.
But if those same people understood that their soul was at risk… If they knew that when a vampire drank blood, they sipped from the grail of the spirit, and could even consume them entirely… Well, the public life of the vampire would be short-lived.
Of course, I didn’t actually know any of this. I made guesses, made inferences, drew patterns, but it all fit. Not that even my vague sources were inviolate. Reading the journals of the Refinery frontman turned South American xenophobe militant wasn’t exactly like reading a scientific journal or hearing it from the fanged mouth itself. And the vampires’ detractors were worse than politicians when it came to exaggerated smear campaigns. This whole exercise was a long shot, I knew it, but I had everything to lose and nothing to gain – it was perfect.
But now… now I had Claire’s reaction.