The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (14 page)

One benefit of the surviving truths is that there are humans who actually seek out vampires in an attempt to gain beauty or immortality. This benefits the Volturi when they want a human front as a façade.

T
hough there are a range of vampire lifestyles, the most common is nomadic. The majority of vampires move frequently, never settling permanently in one place. This pattern is partly an attempt to hide from the notice of humans. If too many humans disappear from one area, suspicion might be aroused and the Volturi might take notice. Also, if a vampire interacts regularly with humans, eventually the humans will notice that the vampire isn’t aging. Another aspect is boredom. Vampire lives are so long that many keep up a continuous search for novelty.

A few covens are exceptions to this rule, and maintain semipermanent or permanent homes. Doing this requires a great deal of subterfuge—if the coven wants to avoid suspicion and keep the Volturi from becoming involved—and most vampires don’t care for the hassle.

Most commonly, a coven is made up of two members. One feature of the unchanging nature of vampires is that they mate for life. Once they fall in love, that feeling never fades. As a
general rule, only the bond between mates is strong enough to survive the competitive drive for blood. Larger covens are less stable, and usually end because of internal violence.

The second bonding force, and one that is—unlike romantic love—able to keep a large coven stable, is ambition. Vampires are competitive by nature, and some vampires have been able to evolve this competitive disposition into a greater cause capable of uniting many individuals into a secure whole. The pursuit of power is that bonding cause for vampires. The Romanians were the first to do this successfully for a significant length of time.

The third, and rarest, bonding force is the vampire conscience. Very few vampires are born with or develop a value for human life. The consumption of human blood is such a known aspect of vampire life that few ever question it; the driving thirst for human blood seems irresistible. However, those who do learn to value human life in spite of this reality are able to subsist on animal blood. Vampires who live this way are sometimes referred to as “vegetarians.” Animal blood is unappealing to vampires, and thus a difficult diet to maintain. Those who make the sacrifice, though, experience related benefits. In the absence of human blood, the competitive drive disappears. Vampires are able to form bonds of love in addition to the bond between mates. The weak coven alliance is replaced by a strong, family-style union.

Another prevalent vampire trait, along with strong romantic bonds and the intense competitive streak, is that of a vengeful nature. Related again to their unchanging state, vampires are not forgiving; they do not move past an insult or injury. The most common example of vampire vengeance is the aftermath of the loss of a mate. When a vampire loses his mate, he never recovers from it. He cannot rest until the party responsible
(usually another vampire, given the strength necessary to destroy a vampire) is eradicated. Centuries can pass without lessening the ferocity of his need for vengeance.

T
he biological passing of vampire traits is one of the least common exceptions to normal vampire life. Out of the thousands of vampires on the planet, there are only five known hybrids in existence, and these five all originated from only two sources.

Male vampires do have the capacity to pass on genetic material with a human female partner. However, it is beyond the ability of most vampires to be so close to a human physically and still resist the lure of her blood. Also, vampires are so much stronger than humans that any loss of self-control at such close proximity can quickly lead to mortal injury to the human.

Female vampires still carry ova similar to human ova, but the unchanging state of their bodies results in a total absence of a reproductive cycle. Even if the female vampire could somehow continue this cycle, her frozen body would be unable to grow and change to accommodate a growing and changing fetus.

One hybrid, Renesmee Cullen, was created by accident as the result of a rare romantic bonding between a vampire and a human. The other four hybrids, Nahuel and his three sisters, were all purposely created as an experiment by a vampire named Joham.

Vampire hybrids have both vampire and human traits. They are much stronger and faster than humans, with sharper senses, but not as strong, fast, or sharp as a pure vampire.
They are strong enough, however, that human females are rarely able to survive the gestation period. The movement of a hybrid fetus causes extreme injury to the more fragile mother. If the gestation is survived, the birth is not. The usual method of delivery for a hybrid is for the hybrid to make her own escape from the womb. The hybrid must utilize her teeth, which have more in common with vampire teeth than human teeth, to pierce the amniotic sac—a membrane nearly as durable as vampire skin. This is too traumatic to the human body to be survived. Only the introduction of vampire venom to the mother’s system can heal the injuries incurred; only one mother has ever survived to become a vampire.

Like the amniotic sac, a hybrid’s skin is almost as durable as her vampire parent’s skin, but it does not have the same prismatic reaction to sunlight. Hybrids can also have supernatural abilities, though not all do. Like humans, hybrids have a circulatory system and are warm-blooded. They can eat solid food, but generally find blood more appealing. They also sleep. Their irises come in the usual range of human colors, and do not change in response to diet. In the first few years of their lives, hybrids grow and change like humans do, though at an extremely accelerated pace. After roughly seven years, the hybrid reaches physical adulthood and settles into the same unchanging state and conditional immortality that vampires enjoy. The hybrid mind develops much faster than the physical body; a hybrid has the mental capacity of an adult human by the time of her birth. Hybrids learn quickly to communicate with their caretakers, picking up their first language mere weeks after birth. This capacity for physical and mental maturation is what sets the hybrid apart from the immortal child.