Chapter Five

I could feel his presence creeping upon me as I lay on my bed thinking. He needed sustenance, I had distracted him from his hunt. Blood could keep him for weeks, months in some cases. Emotional energy could hold him for only hours, maybe a day. Fear worked well enough, zeal even better, but harder to come by. But passion and lust were indicative of a vampires reputation for a reason.

I would assume that humans cannot recognize the feeling of a vampire creeping into their mind, but I could. He was walking into my dreams, dreams I controlled, conscious dreams; he was seducing me, persuading my emotions. I could have stopped him if I’d wanted to, but I had been the cause for his distraction and André and I had long since come to an agreement. Telling someone they can only sleep with one person for the rest of their life is easy when one is only looking at living another 60 years or so at most. But André wold be 27 forever. My kind had no physical needs, not even sexual ones, but we still had emotional ones. I longed for tenderness and mental intimacy, and he needed nourishment, so I did not deny him.

I let him enter my mind, I let him seduce me, I let him show me what it would be like to lay with him; what he would do to my body, he did to my mind. And we were both comforted.



Later that morning, I lounged on pillows in Anna’s luxurious gazebo. She had always had a taste for the palatial lifestyle, a carryover from her upbringing. Anna, along with her mate Celeb, were older than me by a few centuries, and I often sought her comfort and advice on difficult matters. The sudden arrival of the young vampire had caught me off guard; I couldn’t think with him resting in my basement, I could hardly think of what to do with him at all.

“Is he cute?”

“Be serious.” I scolded Anna. She giggled.

“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get you to lighten up. You always get so solemn when you think. There’s no point in going about such things so gravely.”

“But this is a grave situation!”

“Okay, okay, explain to me thy exact concerns.” She stood up, walked over to bottle of Celeb’s homemade, 1957 vintage wine, and filled my glass to the top. “Drink another glass, it’ll clear thy head.

“No it won’t.” We both breathed a laugh at the irony of her statement, but I took a healthy quaff. “I’m concerned because he’s so ignorant to the serious issues going on in this area at present. He knew nothing of our kind, he obviously hasn’t been approached by Romulus yet, or he wouldn’t have been eating stragglers in the parks. He is completely vulnerable.”

Anna nodded, expressionless, as if she was interviewing me. I generally disliked this trait of hers, because it forced me to think too hard on my own statements, but I ignored the instinct and continued with my feelings.

“Also, I’m concerned because he’s absolutely infatuated with me. He wouldn’t leave my presence until sunrise, and I have the feeling he won’t leave me until he’s asked every possible question he can from me.” I paused to collect my thoughts for a moment before continuing. “Thou should have seen the way he prostrated before me. It was absolutely unsettling.”

Anna gently responded. “This is a young man who gave himself over to a life of everlasting hunger. Is it not understandable that he would likewise give himself over to any power that seemed awe-inspiring.”

I digested her words. We were silent for a moment longer before she continued. “Hast thou told André yet?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t want to discuss the matter with him until I had made a decision. He doesn’t take change without direction well.”

Anna nodded thoughtfully while taking an elegant sip from her glass. She gazed out towards the South, where the rays of the sun were brightest. A warm zephyr blew past her, wafting the scent of her hair and skin towards me. She smelt mostly of Easter lilies, the same as my grandmother this time of year, so many centuries ago, but summer was coming in, so there was the subtle earthy tone of geosmin to it, like tilled dirt in a garden.

“I’m reminded of my grandmother.” I stated in our mother tongue, the language fitting better with the tone.

“I’m like her in many ways.” Anna replied. My grandmother left this world over two millennia ago, but in our language, we never refer to people in the past tense. It is uncharacteristic of our kind to think of people as not still existing, and our culture doesn’t believe that those that once were existing can ever cease to be. In addition, our eidetic memory lets us see things as clearly as they were the moment it happened. I closed my eyes letting the scent of Anna blend with that of my grandmothers, seeing her golden hair, so like Anna’s as well. Springs on Cyprus, the island of my birth, the sensation of being small, the sound of Eteocypriot in the markets...

“I think thou should bring him here.” Anna said, disturbing my daydreams. “At true midnight. I’d like to meet him. And I fancy he’d like to meet me.”


I stayed late into the afternoon at Anna and Celeb’s, leaving only when Big Girl and Little Boy, my darling, demanding feline companions, randomly showed up to yell at me for not being home all day, and on top of that letting a stranger stay in ‘their’ basement.

When I got home, there was no sign of the young vampire but it was still light, so it was likely he was still in repose. I was planning on dying some yarn for weaving, so I started the process of creating the dye on the stove.

37 minutes into the process, I heard the young vampire moving around. The basement door opened into the kitchen, where he politely closed the door behind him, and then stood perfectly still, watching me.

“You’re cooking?”

I smiled. “Specifically for the purpose of making dye for fabric.”

He walked over to stand next to me, watching over my shoulder. “What’s in there?”

“Beets in this one, for deep red; red cabbage in the other for an inky purple; carob pod in the third for a grayish color.”

“What are you making?”

“ A linen dress. I finally finished collecting enough material.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to buy one?”

I breathed a laugh. “I’m making a traditional dress in the style of my people, so I prefer to make it in the same manner.” I paused from my work and looked at him. “Besides, I need something to keep me busy.” I finished chopping up the beet root and placed it into the last empty pot to boil. “There. Now just to let it cook for a while.” I said smiling to the young vampire. “Come with me.”

I lead him outside into the back yard to stand beneath the stars. “The wind is always warm now.” I commented.

“I don’t really feel it anymore.” he said, looking up at the sky, holding his arms.

“Thou has never told me thy name.”

He looked down at me blank faced for a moment, before looking shyly at his feet, which I just noticed were bare, just like mine. “Jack.”

I looked up at the sky again. “I like that name. It has a nice sound.”

“What’s your name?”

“Elanor.” I replied.

There was a moment of silence before, to my surprise, he responded. “No. It’s not.”

I studied him before answering. “Can thou read my thoughts?”

He still looked down, pushing at the dirt with his foot. “Not clearly. It comes in strange flashes. Usually just what you’re seeing. But just then, you thought of two things. A daisy, and that you weren’t telling the truth.”

“It wasn’t a daisy.” He finally looked at me. “The flower is called a spring star in English, but in my language it’s called ‘El-Anor’: ‘Star-sun’. And it’s been my name for longer than thou’st been alive.”

“When did you start using that name?”

“When it became more popular than my prior name.”

“Which was?”

“Anor.” I said matter-of-factly. This made Jack laugh rather heartily, and I was taken off-guard by the sudden sound of it. I smiled and actually looked downward. “Anor sounded like Aénor, the name of the duchess of Aquitaine. It was really popular for a while.”

“Is Anor you’re real name?”

“No. We stopped using our real names long ago.”

There was another long silence before he worked up the courage to continue. “Why?”

I sighed, which he took to signify my frustration. “Sorry. I don’t mean to annoy you.”

“No, no, it’s not that! It’s just... there was a time we didn’t have to hide; when I was young. We didn’t try to blend with the humans, we didn’t have to. They knew we were something different. They looked at us with reverence.”

He walked up to me “So what happened? Did the vampires have something to do with it?”

I looked at him, so close to me again. It was a strange closeness now, now that I was so exposed. “No... possibly... it’s hard to determine, it didn’t happen quickly. The war was partly responsible. The other was the concern that the humans were starting to worship us. At first, before I was born especially, the humans just saw us as something else. But the religions, the gods, all started getting mixed up, and not many centuries after I was born, we had become deified by many. The elves, the vampires, our war. It was all so mixed up. And it was all right in front of the humans. Humans begged to be turned into vampires, because they thought it would make them gods as well. The numbers were getting overwhelming, so, we disappeared.

Jack stared at me deeply, his eyes glowing yellow-y green, like a cat’s. He reached his hand up as if to touch my face, but suddenly, he looked to the side as if he heard something, and in half a second he was near the edge of the lawn, near the small wooded stream, a fox in his grasp, already being drained of it’s life.

“Thank you. The cat’s have been concerned about the fox attacks lately.” I spoke to him as though he was still standing next to me, but I knew he could hear as well as I could.

“I’m sorry for being rude. It’s just that I’m quite hungry and I realized he was there...”

“No, don’t be sorry. Of course I understand. Like I said. They’re getting unruly. They’ve been killing some of the local house-cats.”

Jack stood there, holding the lifeless form in his arms almost longingly. I walked over to him as fast as he had walked there, but slowed a few feet behind him. I held out my hands to take the remains from him, which he solemnly placed in my arms, and then I turned, walked 20 yards to a pile of brush, and placed the remains gently on it, leaving nature to the rest.

I walked back towards Jack, then to the house, Jack silently following me.

“The dye is ready.” I said breaking the silence.