The only person at the DMS who disliked me more than Aunt Sallie was Dr. William Hu, the head of Church’s vast science and research department. Hu was a couple miles beyond brilliant, and he had what would have been a fun pop-culture sensibility if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a totally amoral asshole. If there was a plague totally unknown to science that was killing thousands of people an hour, Hu was as happy as a kid on Christmas morning because he had a new toy to play with. By comparison, Hu made Dr. Frankenstein look like Jonas Salk. Granted, Bug had some weird detachments from the real world, too, but Bug had a heart. I’d need a full autopsy of Hu before I believed he did, and I’d pay for that procedure right now.

For his part, Hu once described me as a “muscle-headed mouth breather.”

“Doctor,” began Church in a rather more commanding voice than usual, “I would like you to give Captain Ledger some useful feedback on his theories.”

I heard Hu quietly mumble the word “theories.” “Sure,” he said.

“First up, what the hell are the Upierczi? Are they vampires?”

“I’d need to dissect one,” Hu said, sounding jazzed at the thought, “so I can only speculate on whether the model of the traditional vampire is medically possible. It isn’t. Not as Hollywood shows it. Therianthropy is—”

“Whoa—what?”

“Therianthropy,” he said, pronouncing it slowly for those of us on the short bus. “From the Greek therion, meaning ‘beast’ and anthropos, meaning ‘human.’ Creatures who can change their form. Also known as ‘shapeshifting,’ but it’s mythology, not science. Refers to creatures that could change shape from animal to human, or human to animal.”

“Like vampires turning into bats.”

“And werewolves, which would be subclassified as lycanthropes. Folklore’s filled with crap like that. You got cynanthropy, which is transforming into a dog, ailuranthropy, turning into a cat, yada, yada, yada. There is no evidence of any credible kind that humans can transform.”

“What about sunlight?”

“Possibly. Photophobia is a fear of sunlight and a morbid fear of it is called heliophobia, but Auntie said that your ‘theory’ was that these Upierczi have increased resistance to radiation. That would contradict a fear of sunlight unless the fear was purely psychological and not physiological.”

“Isn’t that likely here?” I asked. “If we’re going to talk about vampires of any kind existing, even if they’re just faking it somehow, then they are going to have to be aware of the myths and legends.”

“Okay,” he agreed grudgingly, “there are a couple of takes on that. Either the Upierczi are some kind of vampire, in which case their unusual nature inspired some of the legends about what we popularly think about vampires. Storytellers, campfire tales, and fiction writers filled in the rest.”

“Or, maybe the Upierczi deliberately provided their own disinformation campaign,” I suggested.