Let’s just say it right out in the open: Salvador Kingsley is a vampire. Maybe not a Hollywood vampire, or a Dracula, but he’s an immortal undead monster who drinks blood and makes more of his own kind by feeding on humans. That’s close enough for government work.
In his pact with the Elder One, Salvador became patient zero for a monstrous infection. Those he drains to death with his feeding rise again as the undead. Their victims rise again as well. In theory, this exponential growth should shortly cover the world in a plague of the undead from which there is no escape. In practice, there are some serious limits to the way Salvador’s spawn can increase their numbers—the primary one being Salvador himself.
Salvador’s use of the black blood of the earth to increase his powers and bind himself to the land of Barrow County means that he only needs to feed on human blood about once a week. He rarely drains his victims dry, preferring to drink deeply enough to cause fatigue but not serious or permanent damage. This isn’t out of kindness on his part; he’s smart enough to know that reckless feeding would rapidly deplete his supply of victims. Since he can’t set foot out of Barrow County, he can’t afford that. Salvador also doesn’t permit his “children” to feed recklessly, though most of them will happily drain someone if they think they can get away with it.
Salvador draining a mortal dry can result in one of two outcomes: nearly mindless creatures of pure hunger he calls “zombies,” or much more intelligent and better-preserved minions he calls “leeches.” What he gets is mostly a matter of time and care. Sucking a person dry in one sitting results in a zombie, unless he takes special care to destroy the body afterwards. Making a leech takes weeks of careful feeding on a mortal, culminating in a final draining and feeding the poor wretch his own foul blood in return.
Leeches are hollow caricatures of the people they were in life, their complexities and contradictions filed down to the sharp edges of hunger and their worst personality traits. These bloodsuckers are ruthless sociopaths who view ordinary humans as cattle and one another as competition. If they weren’t all so terrified of Salvador, they’d be fighting each other for dominance almost constantly. As it stands, Salvador keeps the numbers of leeches low just to avoid having to deal with their nightly bickering, backbiting, and pettiness.
Beyond the time and care needed to create a leech, Salvador has one more major limitation: he can only turn natives of Barrow County. His tie to the land is so strong that he can’t pass on the full power of his curse to anyone who wasn’t born on land corrupted by it. It took him decades to find out about this limitation, and it constantly frustrates him, since it prevents him from turning useful outsiders into his minions, forcing him to rely on the less-educated natives as fodder or bringing outsiders into his service through more mundane means.
Leeches can’t make more of their own kind, no matter how much they’d like to. Anyone they drain, whether they take a long time or do it all at once, rises again as a zombie. The zombies they make are loyal to Salvador as well, not to them. This means that when a leech wants to drain a mortal dry during feeding, they must destroy the body completely to prevent it from rising again and tattling on them if Salvador gets curious about where it came from.
Zombies are pathetic wretches, consumed by their hunger and with only faint traces of their former personalities left in their rotting corpses. They look monstrous, with tattered flesh hanging from yellowed bones, sharpened teeth, and eyes that glow red when they catch sight of prey. They’re smart enough to use simple tools, but they’re incapable of long-term planning or restraint. If they see a mortal, they’re likely to attack unless they’re currently under orders to the contrary—and they can’t keep more than one or two orders in mind at a time.
Zombies are entirely able to subsist on animal blood, but they prefer human blood. Their victims generally get torn limb from limb as the zombie tries to get every drop out, so most zombie attacks don’t leave enough of a body behind to rise again. Animals can’t become zombies—at least not most of the time, see the Zombie Bear Savage Tale—so it’s easy to feed zombies if Salvador cares enough to bother.
Leeches require at least a pint of human blood every night to avoid starvation. They can “bank up” by draining someone dry once a week instead, but Salvador doesn’t generally permit it more than a couple of times a year. Salvador’s family mainly survive by feeding on the prisoners kept in the dungeons beneath Raven’s Lodge, rotating through the poor wretches and keeping them just on the edge of death.
Neither zombies nor leeches can die from hunger, but starvation can do awful things to them. A zombie that goes long enough without feeding shrivels up into a mummified corpse and falls into a stupor, probably burned up the next time the sun rises unless they were lucky enough to collapse indoors or down a deep hole. They revive instantly if something warm and full of blood comes near. A similar fate befalls leeches who go hungry, but they remain fully aware and in pain the whole time. The ones who return from this torpor are usually quite mad.
Salvador can command any zombie that can hear him speak, and they will follow his orders slavishly, even unto their own destruction. They fear nothing but fire, sunlight, and symbols of faith. Because of decades of vampire activity in the County, there are literally hundreds of the foul fiends wandering around in the wilderness, looking for a meal. Fortunately, running water confuses their senses, and they can’t be active during the day. This means that every little creek and runnel in the County is effectively a wall to zombies, and Barrow itself (which is surrounded on three sides by rivers and the last by a mountain) basically a fortress against them.
Vampire Powers
Zombies basically don’t have any “powers” of note, other than being undying, incredibly strong, damn hard to kill, and ugly as sin. Leeches are somewhat better off in this regard.
Every leech can blend in with the herd since they still look mostly human. When they feed, their fangs grow in, their claws extend, and their eyes start to glow, but until that happens, they just seem a bit paler and more intense than the average person.
Vampires can’t be killed by most attacks. Getting shot or stabbed still hurts like the dickens, which can slow them down for a few seconds, but it won’t put them down for the count. The only things that can do them permanent damage are fire, decapitation, or being pierced through the heart with a silver bullet or wooden stake—and sunlight, for zombies.
Even staking a leech doesn’t kill it outright—unless it’s subsequently decapitated or burned to ash, removing the stake lets the vampire reanimate a few moments later. (Salvador punishes unruly leeches by staking them and burying them in the caves under his manor for a few years or decades, until he decides they’ve learned their lesson.)
A leech is vastly stronger and tougher than a normal mortal, easily able to snap a grown man’s neck with their bare hands or flip a car in a fit of anger. They can extend lethal claws at will, and they have fangs that can bite through a tree branch. They’re supernaturally fast and agile, as quick as a jungle cat—and just as silent on the hunt. They can see in the dark, and they can track by smell.
Popular legend speaks of vampires being able to control minds, but leeches don’t have such abilities. They do possess a bizarre kind of charisma—an intensity that draws weak-willed souls to them and lets them dominate mortal predators with ease. Trained guard dogs slink away from leeches with their tails between their legs, while coyotes and wolves will obey them like faithful hounds.
Oh, and they can fly. Not very fast—about the equivalent of a slow walk, and no more than twenty or thirty feet off the ground—but they can definitely hover menacingly outside a second story window at night.
Salvador has a few unique powers of his own as well, which are discussed in his entry.
Vampire Weaknesses
It’s well known that vampires and sunlight don’t get along. For leeches, the sun is a painful inconvenience that can be blocked out with dark sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, and heavy coats. For zombies, it’s outright deadly, with even a few seconds of direct exposure turning one into a tiki torch. Even Salvador prefers to walk at night and wears heavy shades on the few occasions he’s forced to be out and about by day.
Zombies get easily confused by natural running water, even if it’s only a few inches deep. They can also be turned back by prominently displayed religious symbols, regardless of the symbol’s origin. Most folk in Barrow County are Christians, but zombies are also repelled by the traditional dreamcatchers on Dusk Hills homes and the Star of David worn by its few Jewish residents. Leeches are only repulsed by active displays of strong faith, not simply inert objects, but they can’t set foot on consecrated ground.
Zombies have problems with mirrors—they have reflections, but seeing their own reflection tends to provoke intense confusion or insane rage. Leeches also have reflections, but those reflections don’t always behave right. Their reflections sometimes move on their own, or act out their inner thoughts, so leeches avoid mirrors in public whenever possible. A leech’s shadow is similarly unruly, though it’s harder to tell since they don’t often go about in bright light.
Fresh chicory, garlic, or wildflowers are repulsive to vampires of all kinds. Zombies won’t willingly go near them or enter a house where they’re hung at the entrances, while leeches struggle to contain their nausea at the smell. Preserved or cooked garlic don’t have a similar effect (Anna Karloff is particularly fond of Italian food).
Speaking of food, zombies can’t eat it. They have no interest in it—only in the hot blood and warm flesh of the living, devoured fresh. Leeches can eat and even seem to enjoy doing so, but they derive no nutrition from the act. A leech that eats three square meals a day still wastes away and starves if they don’t drink blood nightly.
Leeches have one additional weakness not possessed by zombies: they can’t enter a home uninvited. A “home” for this purpose is any permanent dwelling inhabited by living people, who must have slept a night in that dwelling sometime in the last season. A paid-off double-wide trailer counts as a home. Public businesses aren’t homes, but if the owner lives in a unit above their store, their apartment counts. “Invitations” have to be explicit to work. Holding the door open and standing aside doesn’t count but telling a leech “Why don’t you come in here and say that?” totally does.
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