I classify the Hypernaturals books as Science Fiction first and SF Romance second. This is in part because I spent a great deal of time and thought about building the world and its rules, and the basis for th rules was this one simple concept: It had to be possible.
Not probable. Not likely. Just possible.
I spent time in meme-space, thinking about how to make various aspects of Vampire lore possible. For example, Vampires are supposed to be much stronger than humans. It ranges quite a bit, but ten times is common. I found an article in 2010 about a new polymer muscle tissue being developed for use in replacement arms. It was related to events of the day and soldiers returning from Iraq missing arms and legs due to improvised explosives.
The article said that when a small current was applied to the polymer, it shrank in a linear way, the same way human muscle tissue did, and the hope was that this would lead to the ability to construct very human looking replacements. The polymer was able to, in the same diameters, produce ten times the force of anything human tissue could create.
Humans are nothing BUT long chain hydrocarbons so I went with five times stronger for a female Vampire. After all, once you can bench press a Smart car, you can already pretty much take care of yourself against a human.
The next problem, however, was that a muscle that strong would snap human bones under use. It would not be good to have all those broken limbs every time you had to fight yourself out of a situation. There you are, pre-history Vampiress, laying by the campfire with your chosen meal of the evening and their brother comes along and catches you having a drink. It doesn’t matter that you have chosen one is under your control due to your close up arsenal, you have a super angry sibling to deal with and now you have to fight. And then you break your own arm taking a punch at them? Yeah. Evolution will clean that right on out of the gene pool.
Bones had to be stronger. They needed resilience and strength and Calcium is just too brittle.
Metal absorption was my answer. A long time ago I was a VW air-cooled mechanic, and there was a very famous series of engine blocks that were a big pain in our collective tushes. The Series ‘H’ engine block. It was a new allo that VW came up with to try and make the block lighter. They added magnesium to the Aluminum in a larger quantity than in the previous series. The result of the new alloy was that it was very soft and that led to all sorts of issues down the road.
Softer. Lighter. Less brittle. Just did not do well with screws because it was too soft. Alloys are interesting things and its amazing all the properties you can end up with IF you combine the materials the right way.
I also thought about just the fact that being less vulnerable to metal pollution would be a positive evolutionary trait. Sure: a million years ago to be exposed to it you would have to be living in a place that had a lot of it. Which led me to Terlingua.
I was standing in the graveyard in Terlingua, Texas. ( http://ghosttowntexas.com/terlingua.html ) and I was looking at all the people who had died making fuses for bombs in WWII. Key ingredient: Mercury. To protect themselves from exposure they used a homeopathic remedy and consumed a small amount of the liquid metal every so often to ward off dying from being exposed to large quantities of it. They understood Mercury was bad for them. They just did not understand tissue accumulation. Some of the victims of this were infants.
I could not help but think it would be far better to evolve a use for all that stuff inside us. It’s metal. It’s a conductor. It can combine with other things to be useful.
And so my Vampires have evolved to make a use of all the metal they are exposed to, starting with the iron in the blood. And it went to the bones to make them more resilient against their polymer muscles.
That is how a female Vampire is five times stronger than you.
