fewer words and has a nice ring to it,” Aeron said.
“The man has a point,” I said.
Leif threw up his hands and laughed.
“You two are hopeless, but even I will admit these movies are quotable. Some other movies Aeron slips into regular conversation aren’t good at all.”
“That’s because you have no taste,” Aeron said.
I nestled back into their arms.
“What kind of movies do you like, Leif?”
“Science fiction and movies based on books, but I always get so mad when they change the plot because they are trying to market it to people who haven’t read the book.”
Aeron snorted.
“He gets irrationally angry about that. He gets on message boards with other geeks, and they nerd complain about it. You don’t even want to be in the theater with him when he’s watching. He rants through the entire movie, and people throw popcorn at him.”
“I can’t remember, but I think it makes me angry too,” I said.
“It does!” Leif said. “We talked until six am about this once!”
That was when it hit me. There was this graphic novel series I had been a massive fan of. It was vampires, but like, twisted serial killer vampires with no remorse about ripping into a carotid and lived underground. It wasn’t vampires going to high school and living off bagged blood or animals. I was into that too, but sometimes I wanted my vampires a little twisted. Oh, shit, if angels and zombies were real, were vampires also?
I got Leif hooked on the graphic novels right around the time a movie based on them would come out. We were so excited, and we wanted that to be our first date, but they still hadn’t dropped the bomb about my father, and I thought they were just two harmless guys I’d met online that would eventually make their way to California and come to a softball game.
Leif mowed his way through the graphic novels, and we kind of had a date. We ordered delivery and talked on the phone until it was time for the movie. We both went alone, then rushed home to talk about it. They totally neutered the graphic novels. All the blood, gore, and group sex were taken out to turn it into some tame love story between one vampire and a human. In the graphic novels, everyone was fucking everyone or eating them.
“Blood Feud!” I yelled. “I just remembered, and I’m still mad about it.”
Aeron just laughed and yanked me back down. Leif snuggled into my back.
“The two of you were miserable in chat after that movie came out. Vampires are totally not my thing.”
“Are vampires real? I mean, I’m lying here with two angels, and Satan paid a visit just to wipe my memories.”
Aeron and Leif both started laughing, and I got the feeling they were laughing at me.
“Usually it’s humans that are the scary thing that goes bump in the night. Vampires, werewolves, and things like that aren’t real. Science created even the Rage Heads out there. Isaiah used something not found on Earth, but it was engineered by human scientists who did it for a paycheck.
“Think about it, Ariel. Your father did this with human acolytes. Everyone who mistreated you at that lab was human and had no problems terrorizing a child for the right amount of money. Even if Isaiah lied and said he was trying to do something great with all the blood he took from you, at some point, someone would have realized he had something bad planned. There would have been a whistleblower. Someone would have leaked an anonymous tip to someone that the water supplement would be tampered with. People knew and said nothing,” Aeron said.
“I’ve studied the Rage Heads, Ariel. Angel blood doesn’t do that to people on its own, and neither does Nephilim blood. Angel blood is not compatible with humans. It’s not even the same color, but it can’t bring the dead back to life, and it’s not like your vampires where it has magical healing properties. The reason it took so long for the Rage Mutation is that it took that long to manipulate your blood into doing that and then put it into a form for mass consumption.
“There would have been an army of scientists working on this over the years. There would have been countless people in and out that would have realized what Isaiah’s creation could do if it got out to the public. Aeron and I were here, listening and watching for anything that would