Before Finnegan Wakes

Oliver Row had spent a lifetime seeking out the modern world's monsters.  He had obtained a book that outlined everything he needed to know, including their origins in the days before the flood.  Each of them had found their way into legend, but they also existed in reality, or at least so Oliver attempted to prove.

One day he heard of the existence of a centaur.  Like all monsters it had acquired the ability to hide its true nature from the world, a trick of the eye that hid half its body from observers, so that only its human half was visible, the equine somehow tucked out of sight.  Oliver didn't know how it was done, perhaps the gift of a higher power, or perhaps something lower.

The centaur worked in a bookstore, hidden away in one of the fringe commercial areas of a minor city called Colorado Springs.  Her name, at least as of the moment, was Eva Dallas, and when Oliver entered the store he found that he was as convinced as anyone that she was only human.  There was nothing to give her away.  Knowing better, however, he decided to approach with caution as well as calculation.

"Tell me what you have on mythology."

"We have a fine selection," Eva replied, seeming to give her full attention to him in an instant.  "I can show you if you'd like."

"I hoped you would be so kind."

"Of course," she said.  She was apparently a woman of her forties, pleasantly filled out with the world's pleasures, cheery as you'd expect from a typical sales professional.  They headed toward the back of the store, past rows and rows packed full of books.  Oliver skimmed the shelves, grimaced inwardly at their untidiness.  But his standards were more precise than others, and he came from a very different world.

They stopped in front of a wall dominated by the same kind of bookcase that populated the rest of the store.  Eva gestured at the mythology section, pitiably small by Oliver's strict standards, but this was not an occult shop, so he cautioned himself to not be so surprised.

"Thank you."

"If there's anything else...?" Eva offered.

"Now that you mention it.  I want to see you."

"I'm afraid that's not going to happen, but I am flattered, I really am," Eva said, maintaining her chipper demeanor.

"That's not what I mean.  I think you know."

The woman hesitated for a moment, then motioned for Oliver to follow her a little further.  Apparently the employee area was not far away.  As soon as they left the common area Eva's true form began to reveal itself.  Her back legs bucked as if to assert themselves.

"It's true, then."

"You weren't certain?" Eva said, finally dropping one level of her jauntiness.

"I'm never certain of anything.  It's what makes my line of work possible.  I've always been fascinated by centaurs.  You'll forgive me if I stare."

"You can't tell anyone," Eva said, losing another level.  There was true concern lurking behind her eyes.  It was unmistakable, at least to as keen an observer as Oliver Row.

"If I weren't careful, the world would know a lot more than it does.  You needn't be concerned.  I don't want anything from you.  You were merely a curiosity.  In truth I've got a more important matter on my mind, a far more troubling one.  There is a man, a priest of all professions, who is also a dragon.  Don't ask me to explain it.  I don't think even he understands it.  I expect your kind has had a very difficult time of it.  You've buried your true selves for too long.  This man is in desperate trouble, and it has nothing to do with his true nature, though I suspect it has everything to do with it.  A vampire has attached itself to his sister. I think the vampire is trying to accomplish the very thing I've dedicated my life to learning, what it means to exist in this world when the world says you shouldn't exist.  It's such a complicated matter.  Again, I apologize.  I'm now beginning to suspect I was rather rude in seeking you out the way I did.  It's just, I'm nervous.  I'm afraid of what I will discover, what will happen, if I pursue this.  The man needs me.  His sister is in danger.  I may be the only one capable of sorting it out, but it will come at a great cost.  You've confirmed something for me today, and because of it, I'm afraid I will reveal the layer of the world that separates all the truths we've attempted to deny. I am not a religious man.  I believe in too many things.  But only faith will help me now.  This is something I've already learned from Plato Finnegan, the man I've been speaking about.  I'm sorry.  Please excuse me."

Oliver walked all the way out of the store and didn't look back, and couldn't bring himself to even speculate on what the centaur might now be thinking.  The day was drawing to a close.

Excerpt from Finnegan

Here's an excerpt from Finnegan, a funny little story about vampires, history, and the weird ways family and strangers can intermingle in fantastic and frightening ways.  The following only suggests about a tenth of what is actually in the novel, but it's a good look into the thought and depth of the characters and the vastly complicated situation they find themselves in:

Actually, it’s completely different.  On some level, such relationships, such real dilemmas, must be how those romantic comedies were once conceived.  A situation like Romeo and Juliet, who would have been happy together except their families were blood enemies, that might have been a possible source, or another successor.  This isn’t to say that it’s unnatural for a vampire and a mortal human to fall in love, because love is blindness, but that it’s a basic contradiction.  Unless the vampire makes their lover into a vampire, they are dooming themselves into unhappy, temporary lover.  You can make an argument that eventually, one of the two could come to find some peace in the arrangement as it is originally introduced, but even in that, it will become to the vampire, in time, as if it never really happened.  Long life already undergoes enough change.  The purpose of intimacy is to retard it, as much as possible.
     Since it is hardly likely that most people would introduce themselves with their least savory characteristics, it’s natural to assume that this will almost always be a problem.  A vampire meeting a human will never come right out and say that they are a vampire, which at the offset complicates everything.  Since humans and their thoughts are inherently private matters, thought is almost always kept private, and as a result, privacy is held as one of the most valued traits we possess, the thing that serves as the barrier and obstacle across the entire world, which in almost every case remains standing throughout the lifetime.  This is where secrets, deception, and betrayal come from.  It is from the privacy of thoughts that evil arises, the belief that no one can truly understand or accept each other, so that perhaps it doesn’t matter, you can tell yourself anything, and you will almost never be contradicted.
     Were there to be a vampire culture, mastery of the privacy instinct might be considered the primary goal of the community.  If there were free and open relations between vampire and humans, lines of perfect transparency might be the first ones to be fostered.  Being a vampire would be no different from hailing from a certain country, speaking a certain language, or practicing a certain religion.  In its essence, vampirism is really no different from these things.  It is, only a distinction; it is “different” only in the way that all people are different in some way.
     Except vampires are solitary creatures, and they remain legend at best to the common human experience, a fiction.  Their origins are hardly known at all.  Did God say, let there be vampires?  Are they descended from angels, perhaps, or demons?  Eolake might have found an easy piece of conversation on these lines, making the transition in his relationship with Fiona.  It was something he had to tell her, because being a vampire is not something that she would have noticed herself.  What was there that would have given him away?  He looked no different, behaved no differently.  To all intents and purposes, he was human, like the athlete who isn’t tell, gaunt, or muscled, who when they aren’t engaged in their sport, look no different from anyone else.  The vampire is not pale, their hairline is ordinary, and they do not shrink from blood, or sunlight.  They dress like anyone else.  They simply have different biological characteristics.
     In the beginning, it didn’t matter.  Eolake was a vampire, but Fiona wouldn’t have cared.  She fell in love with the Eolake she was presented with.  He was charming.  He was polite.  He was, in the chivalric tradition, a gentleman who presented a comforting, loving persona right from the start.  He seemed like he loved all mankind, and Fiona was lucky enough to be there and win his affections on a more intimate level.  In time, she noticed things that put chinks in his armor, but she was okay with them.  She wasn’t interested in those things.  She was interested in Eolake.
     At the point he began wondering if he should tell her, she wouldn’t have cared.  She had grown used to his presence, and if he had told her that he was a sofa, she would have gladly placed him in her living room and told her cat to not leave too much fur on him.  Real love was that Eolake was allergic to the cat, but was willing to take medication so that it was not a problem.  If there was medication for taking away the vampire, Eolake would gladly have taken that, too.