“Okay, a quick question,” I said. Harold nodded with a glance at the window. “You’re saying that Bovine’s people were not cows at that point, but were people like you, just vampires?”
“Yes,” Harold said. “In fact, it is rumored that vampires originally came from our species, but that fact is lost in time, if true.”
“It’s that way on other dimensions,” Aahz said, “so it is more than likely it was that way here as well.”
Harold nodded. “I had heard that as well.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Count Bovine, who was not a stupid individual, understood that something had to be changed or his people would wipe out my people, who were his people’s only remaining food source.”
“Makes sense,” Tanda said. “You lose your food, you die as well.”
“Exactly,” Harold said. “So he struck a deal with the few remaining of my people to take his people away for all but the nights of the full moon, if my people would serve his kind during that time as food.”
“And your people agreed?” Glenda asked, sounding as stunned as I was feeling.
“I don’t think my ancestors had a choice,” Harold said. “Using the magik of this area, Count Bovine put a spell on the rest of my people. Then, using an even more powerful magik spell, he changed his people to cows.”
“So while they were cows,” Aahz asked, “why didn’t your people just kill them all? Seems like it would have been easy.”
“It would have been,” Harold said, “if not for the magik that keeps us from doing just that, and keeps us from advancing. The magik allows us to do nothing but prepare for the round-up. Month in and month out, for centuries now, we have done nothing else.” Harold just shook his head and went on. “Bovine’s people became contented cows, careful how they treated us during the full-moon nights when they regained their normal form and had parties. We became the feed animals, content to do nothing but prepare constantly to serve our cow masters. It was survival for us, but not much of one.”