Anybody for a science lesson?

 

    So, I get a lot of questions about Dead Night regarding how my different Night races work, things that I have not yet had chance to properly explain in the novels. Things along the lines of “So, do Vampires feel the cold?”, “Does Avangelene have to drink blood?”, “Why does it seem that Cybelle can only blush sometimes” and “Why is Cye heavily Vampire, and Lina heavily Witch?”

    The short answer is this: It’s all to do with Night genes and percentages.

    To expand, if you belong to the Night in any way, you have supernatural ‘Night Genes’. These can belong to almost any kind of Night race; Witch, Fhearie, Wizard, Vampire, Werewolf, etc (The only non-applicable one that I can recall is Sirith. You cannot have a Sirith gene, for reasons I am about to explain). So basically, if you are purely of one race, you only have one type of Night gene. For example, Lizzie is an Aristocrat Vampire, therefore her blood is pure, she only has Vampire genes and Vampire is all there is to her.

    Now, if you have Night blood and human blood, that’s a little different. The Night genes will basically do battle with your human half constantly, changing what I call the “gene percentage”, which is essentially how much of you belongs to a certain race. Your percentage will always average though, you will have a “dominant” or more powerful gene, and this is usually subject to how much of it is in your family - it will usually be the Night one (Turned Vampires do end up ALL Vampire, by the way, their human side is basically eaten away by Vampirism). A classic example is the Chimera family, Witches originally, but so many humans made their way into the lineage, that it overpowered the Witch gene with every generation. Only a tiny bit remains, so at the time that Dead Night takes place, they are hardly Witches at all, and their dominant side is human.

    Hybrids, in quite the same vein, also have dominant genes whether or not they have any human blood. So somebody with 50% of two different genes will still have one that is more powerful. As I said, they constantly do battle with each other. The best example for this is James, half Vampire and half Lyca. His dominant gene is Lyca, he can go Wolf near enough whenever he wants (he doesn’t though, but that’s another story) and does not rely on blood to live. Note that James’s Vampire side does occasionally show itself, but not often, due to that ever changing percentage.

    Now, I mentioned humans who are turned Vampire end up ALL Vampire, because the Vampire gene overpowers the human in a person, as it is the weaker gene. However, this is really only the case with humans, since all Night genes are of more or less equal strength.  If you were a Night person before, but gain Night genes at a later point in your life (see Avangelene becoming a Vampire), then your original gene will almost always be the strongest. However, the new Night gene will always be there in the person, but usually at a lower percentage.

    Now, Sirith Magi are a completely different beast altogether. Their dominant gene doesn’t have anything to do with their family tree. As I said previously, Night genes battle each other, and with Siriths this is a particularly big affair. Their dominant gene will eventually settle at about the age of thirteen, but they will chop and change a lot more than a standard hybrid.

 

    So, just to finish off, and as a bit of an example, I’m going to answer those initial questions:

 

“Do Vampires feel the cold?”

 

    They don’t feel it so much as they sense it and know it is there. You’ll find that if a Vampire looks cold, they probably don’t want you to know that they’re a Vampire, it’s more to blend in.

 

“Does Avangelene have to drink blood?”

 

    Yes and no. Due to her changing gene percentage, she may have to if her Vampire side is particularly present, but more often than not, she will only have to feed if she uses Vampire abilities…hence she often avoids it.

 

“Why does Cybelle only blush sometimes?”

 

    Again, her percentage changes. Her Vampire side cannot blush, and it’s her dominant gene, so often this works in her favour. That’s why she often accompanies her blushing with a line such as “damn my Witch side.”

 

“Why is Cybelle heavily Vampire, but Lina heavily Witch?”

 

    As I say, in Sirith Magi, the dominant gene has nothing to do with the persons family history; Cye’s just settled on Vampire. However, Lina is no longer in her own body, she is borrowing one belonging to a Witch. Because of this, she is unable to access any genes she used to have as a Sirith, because she’s effectively not one anymore. It’s just her soul in this body, to put it plainly, nothing else.