The Time of the Cold Sun
Vampires are people, too. They are not undead. They were ordinary people who got vampire blood in their body, and from that moment on, they continued to live without aging. That is, if they continued to drink the blood of a non-vampire of their species. Starvation in vampires shows as ordinary aging, that eventually would lead to a vampire dying of old age. Their body rejects non-blood food, as well as blood from an organism not of their species. Vampires who used to be humans, can only be nourished by human blood.
Being able to turn into a bat, not having a reflection in the mirror, an aversion to religious symbols and garlic—are all folktales. Decapitation, burning alive, and sharp physical trauma to the heart whether from a wooden stake or not—these would kill vampires, because they would kill anybody. The one thing that was true about vulnerabilities specific to vampires, was that their bodies were overly sensitive to sunlight.
Vampire civilizations developed alongside ordinary humans. They tended to be fewer in number, with respected and experienced elder vampires encouraging would-be blood-binders (vampires who turn humans into vampires) to have high standards of whom they turn. The eldest vampires who sustained their ambitions through the centuries or even through millennia, were able to develop a sort of self-perpetuating culture and central government that could negotiate with other central governments. Younger vampires could ally and educate themselves to the elders, or stay away and live quiet and solitary lives, or form covens and families that rival one another—but anything that would compromise the sustainable vision of the elders would be corrected with gradually stronger suggestions that might end in the offending vampire's death.
Then, something changed. Vampires began to discover that they could expose themselves to sunlight without harm for a period of time, that seemed to be random occurrences… and then the vampires figured it out.
Some non-vampire humans have a compound in their blood that, if ingested, allowed the vampire who fed off them to survive— even enjoy —exposure to natural light. These non-vampire humans came to be known, colloquially, among vampires, as Quenchers. It became forbidden among vampires to turn Quenchers into vampires, because blood from vampires is not nourishing for vampires to drink, and vampires who had been Quenchers no longer had this immunity to sunlight, let alone the ability to carry it over. It became particularly discouraged to drink Quenchers dry, when it would be of a great advantage to vampire kind for these Quenchers to pass on this trait of their blood onto their children and have more Quenchers in the world.
The vampires bided their time and continued to conspire. When there were enough vampires to cooperate, and enough recorded Quenchers to sustain them, they took over human civilization. They collected Quenchers, imprisoning them and turning them into livestock, and drank most other humans dry. Then, the vampires took the place of human beings. Industries continued to run—farms were no longer needed, so that industry was abandoned— and the vampires hailed the Time of the Cold Sun.
This is the story of the fall of this golden age.
Vampires have taken over the planet. Of course they have: They outnumber non-vampires. If they aren't killed and they get adequate amounts of non-vampire human blood then they can live for thousands of years in the eternal youth of the age that they were turned into vampires and they can be as smart and as strong as any human.
Mina Harkness has grown up in the wilderness because vampires have taken over civilization. As a way of defending her home, she and her tribe lead an attack against a new settlement of vampires. Lily Lanier, a woman who has been hiding in that settlement of human-allied vampires, is almost attacked by Mina. She tells Mina that they are exiled vampires because they supported an alliance with non-vampires and that Lily herself has found someone with the key to a cure. She tasks Mina with the care of Jon Willis, who is a very special sort of Quencher. Unlike most Quenchers, the ingestion of whose blood allows vampires to walk in the sunlight, Jon has the sort of blood that, if ingested, would allow a “vampire” to walk in the sun and age and eat food. He himself cannot turn into a vampire even if he drank vampire blood. Mina, who led her tribe to attack the vampires with the full expectation that they would be fully eliminated and dead to the last one, finds herself torn between her own death wish and the pleas of the strange ex-vampire Lily and of Jon himself. Mina chooses to rescue Jon. Lily leaves Jon with directions to a secret store of serum-made blood like his located back in a vampire-populated city.
Mina and Jon initially dislike one another as the martial Mina considers Jon to be impossibly naïve, whereas happy-go-lucky Jon considers Mina shrewish and violent.
When Jon proves his mettle against one of Mina's surviving tribesmen who tracked Mina down for revenge, and Mina softens up while talking about the history that her parents told her of non-vampire civilization, the two grow closer together and pledge to pursue something more substantial than survival.
While Jon knows how to turn a vampire back into a human, he recognizes that not many would want to be turned and to avoid the largest moral offense that the vampire elders first made—to turn people into vampires without their consent—he wouldn't want to turn an entire population back into humans if they didn't want to be. That's even if they can reach that sort of mass, which Jon certainly can not do with the vials of anti-vampirism serum left to him by Lily in some secret location in the city.
Mina thinks up a plan to find the serum in the city and give it to willing Quenchers rather than the vampires who are slightly larger in population than Quenchers. The Quenchers are not allowed to be turned into vampires any way, but vampires might not like it if they fed on a Quencher and then turned human. This would only be a danger to Quenchers who are treated well, but many are treated like animals.
Mina's plans go as well as she meant them to, and the vampire elders of that city become human. Fearful of their fellows, the vampire elders (who are now human elders) agree to Mina's and Jon's demands to restructure the city based on equality.
CHAPTERS
Chapter one: Mina, who lives out in the wild meadows and woods, hears from one of her tribespeople that “city folk” or vampires, have moved into the meadow, and look as if they have time to settle. Outraged that vampires continue to build settlements while non-vampire humans must live as nomads always running from vampires who would take them to the city and drain their blood, Mina organizes a strike against these vampire newcomers.
Chapter two: During the strike, one of the vampires persuades Mina that she is human. When Mina wonders why the vampires left her alone, Lucy tells Mina that these vampires fought for non-vampire rights and that Lucy herself used to be a vampire but found a way to turn back into a human. Lucy introduces Mina to Jon and gives Jon directions to a stock of the forbidden serum hidden in a distant city. Mina takes Jon and runs.
Chapter three: Mina continues to live like a nomad which Jon is only just learning how to live like. They argue over Jon's sloppiness and Mina's ruthlessness and Mina wonders why she should go through all this trouble to “cure” vampires when not all of them want to be cured especially since they're a plague on people like Mina, it's faster and more effective to kill them. Jon challenges Mina to kill him and she declines to banish or kill him, but she also declines to help him get to the city Lily told him to get to.
Chapter four: One of Mina's tribespeople returns, accusing Mina of leaving everybody else to die in the raid of the vampires while Mina herself gets away free. When the tribesperson becomes aggressive, Jon gets defensive on Mina's behalf to the point that he kills the tribesperson. Jon wonders, in a bad way, how he could have had that in him—whereas Mina wonders how he could have had that in him when Jon was not even directly threatened. At least Jon has had ill luck enough to know what it's like to be pushed to the brink of breaking one's personal code of ethics.
Chapter five: As Jon continues to feel unworthy of life and bleakly depressed, Mina tells him about the non-vampire civilization as her parents told her. Jon is reinvigorated with the prospect of righting this oppression with the vampirism-reversing serum. Mina also wants to do more than survive—or even win—but to do something right.
Chapter six: Jon and Mina sneak into the city during the day because it seems, in this city, Quencher's blood is rationed, so everybody takes a day off— and finds the serum that will only work on a very small population—not the entirety of the city. Mina plans to liberate the Quenchers, instead, and dose them.
Chapter seven: They target willing Quenchers whose blood is most likely to be delivered to the vampire elders. Jon and Mina wait out their plans coming to fruition and confess that they love one another. They begin to send volunteer Quenchers back to the city with messages to the vampire elders about how this surprise transformation was how they treated non-vampires and to wonder how vampires will treat them now that they are no longer vampires. A final Quencher is sent back to the city with demands from the ex-vampire elders to integrate non-vampires into the city as people rather than cattle. The vampire elders agree to Mina and Jon's terms.
CHARACTERS
Jon Murray
Age: 27 Height: 5'8” Hair: straight, brown Eyes: blue
Jon has always been lucky. He had no family to lose during the rise of the vampires. He was exposed to vampire blood in his own system but it had no effect on him, and while he is a human non-Quencher (vampires do not gain the ability to walk in the sun by drinking his blood) he has not been preyed upon and drained dry—a sort of kill that the vampires in charge would never condemn, as non-Quenchers no longer have value in a vampire-ruled society. However, the vampire Lily singled him out for a rare blood type that Lily Lanier considers a different kind of Quencher. The effects—of reversing vampirism—are not carried simply by drinking the blood of somebody immune to vampirism, but a compound of their blood must be treated and distilled into a serum.
Mina Harkness
Age: 31 Height: 5'6” Hair: frizzy, strawberry blond Eyes: brown
Mina has had a difficult life that has left her embittered. When she meets Jon, however, she begins to build a new hope and vision for a better future.