Free In the Blood by Jackie French

mother separated them, of course. It was horrible, but kids do perverse things sometimes, just to see what will happen if they do. Curiosity, innocence, nothing more was thought of it. It was only two years later, when the same child was five or six years old, that the first incident was remembered.’
    ‘The first incident?’
    I nodded. ‘This time a child was found drained…’ I swallowed. ‘Drained of blood. His throat had been cut and…’ I found I couldn’t go on.
    Theo’s voice rescued me, as calm as if we were discussing the apple harvest.
    ‘I take it the modified child was responsible?’
    ‘Yes. Of course, it might have been just an aberration, nothing to do with the child’s modification at all. But then other children with the same modification showed the same symptoms. The same craving for blood, the same absence of conscience in acquiring it.’
    ‘It sounds a little…incredible,’ he said softly. ‘I’m eighty-four and I don’t remember hearing anything about it.’
    ‘It wasn’t publicised. It’s in the records, but not the public records. You’d need to have access.’
    ‘What happened to the children?’
    ‘You can’t change a modification like that. The process was stopped at once, of course. The affected children were institutionalised. I suppose they still are.’
    ‘But you think one of them might have escaped?’
    ‘It fits doesn’t it? But that’s not what’s worrying me—not what’s really worrying me.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Modifications have side effects. What if it’s happened again with another modification?’
    He shook his head. ‘It still seems too incredible. Vampirism?’
    ‘It’s not incredible at all. It has happened many times, even before humans started tinkering with DNA. It’s almost as though humans have a…basic tendency towards vampirism, a recessive tendency if you like.’
    ‘You mean something more than folklore?’
    I shut my eyes. I always found information retrieval easier with my eyes shut, and building data patterns too. The others used to laugh at me. ‘Locking herself in the machine,’ Michael used to say. And then Mel would…
    I forced myself into the present, my mind to the data. ‘France, 1826. An outbreak of what was thought to be smallpox. The survivors weren’t scarred, as usually happens after a smallpox outbreak. But the disease did have other long-term effects. Daylight made the survivors nauseous. According to chroniclers of the time, the entire surviving village “became ghouls of the night” tearing both children and animals apart for their blood.’
    ‘Dear God,’ said Theo. ‘What…what happened to the village?’
    ‘There is no record of it after 1827. I would imagine either the authorities—or their neighbours—took action. Do you want to hear more?’
    ‘Go on,’ said Theo quietly.
    ‘Wassingham, England, 1782, a similar epidemic, a similar outcome. The army had to be called in. A villagein Denmark the same century. Another possible incident recorded in fourth century BC Athens, although the date of the actual event is probably much earlier. A village near Athens was haunted by the survivors of a strange disease. But this time they drank horse blood, not human.
    ‘More? Victorian London: police records of a mysterious assailant who left his victims drained of blood. It was probably one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker’s Dracula .’
    Theo looked at me with amazement. ‘So much detail?’
    I sighed. ‘If I’ve scanned something, I remember it. And I was able to scan very fast indeed. The contents of an average databank would take maybe three days.’
    ‘But to remember it!’
    I shrugged. ‘I’m young. Perhaps there would have come a time when my brain simply filled up. Or I became lost in the sheer complexity of data. We’ll never know, will we?’
    Theo bit his lip, then returned to the matter in hand.
    ‘Surely…surely the records you’ve quoted are dubious. Might have been