Talk:Psychic Vampire

Psychic Vampire

Fascinating. I think you have entered entirely new territory here. And you are doing with both seriousness and panache. -- "The Magister 22:13, 24 July 2019 (MDT)"

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There was an annoyed glitter behind Ysidro's hooded eyelids-a grandee, Asher thought, who did not care to be reminded that he'd been overpowered and manhandled by the hoi polloi. But he only regarded Blaydon levelly for a moment and asked, "Do you really believe that any of this will do you any good?"

"I'll be the judge of that," the pathologist said, rather sharply. "Go on with what you were saying. If you forced James...?"

"To drink my blood," Ysidro said slowly, unwillingly, his champagne gaze fixed upon Blaydon's face. "That is how it is done-the physical part, at least. But the-perhaps you would say mental, but I think spiritual would be a better term, though these days it is an unfashion-able one-"

"Let us say psychic," Blaydon put in. "That's what we're really talk-ing about, aren't we?"

"Perhaps." That faint, wry flick of a smile touched Ysidro's narrow-lipped mouth. "In any case, it is the giving of his spirit, his self, his conscious, and what Herr Freud politely terms his unconscious into the embrace of mine, for me to show him the way over that abyss. It is the yielding of all secrets, the giving of all trust, the admission of another into the most secret chambers of the heart. Most do not even join so close with those they deeply love. To do this, you understand, requires an act of the most desperate will, the all-consuming desire to continue in consciousness at whatever the cost." The shadow flung by the lamp on the wall behind him, huge and dark, echoed the slight movement of his white hand. "Under this set of circumstances, I think James would find no point in making so desperate an effort at survival, though I suspect that under others he might."

You will never know,Brother Anthony had whispered, deathlessly sorting bones in the crypts below Paris. Asher shook his head and said quietly, "No."

Ysidro turned his head to look down at him, without any expression in his eyes. "And they say that faith in God is dead," he commented. "I should think that your conscience, more than another man's, might make of you a coward,.," He turned back to regard his captor. "Whether or not James has that will to live, how many of those scum of the gutters whom you purpose to bring for me to transform into others like me would be capable of it? When a master vampire creates a fledgling, it is in part the master's will and in part the fledgling's trust which act. I do not believe myself capable of creating fodder, even did I consent to try. I certainly do not believe that one person in a hundred, or a thousand, has that will to survive."

"That's balderdash," Blaydon said uneasily. "All this talk of the will and the spirit..."

"And if you did get lucky," Asher put in, trying to shift his shoulders to take some of the pressure from his throbbing right arm, "what then? Are you really going to stay in a house with two, three, or four fledgling vampires? Fledglings whose wills are entirely subservient to their mas-ter's? The start of this whole affair-Calvaire-was a careless choice on the part of the woman who made him. Are you going to be choosier? Especially if you're giving Dennis specific orders to bring in none but the unfit, the socially useless, and the wicked?"

-- Chapter 20, Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly

https://novel68.com/those-who-hunt-the-night

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