Immortal

The moment I saw him I knew. I suppose any one of us would, by now. We’re so used, via movie and novel, to the nature and ways of The Vampire (capital letters intended), we can—or ought to—spot one at two hundred paces. And go grab ourselves a sharpened stake—

Or, of course, not. . . .

I had been sent, that is persuaded, to attend the October Ball at the Reconstruct Mansion, by my father, Anthony. He said, and here I quote: “You’ll find it interesting, I think.”

“Why?” I had demanded. For this wasn’t how I wished to spend the first five days of the month.

“Because the world is full of people like the Kokersons. If you like, Lel, put this down as the final part of your education. You’ll learn how such people tick.”

“Tick in the sense,” I said, “of clock or bomb?”

“Either,” replied my elegant, lovely, and infuriating father.

October is fall. Time of flaming, falling leaves, of mists and dreams, before Halloween and winter close in. I’d had my own plans, but there you go. Dad knows it all. (The trouble is, as far as I can tell, he usually does.)

And so I accepted the Kokerson invite and packed my bags and caught the train to Chakhatti Halt, and then took a cab driven by a very sweet guy, who looked and spoke just like a really jolly Tyrannosaurus Rex (I do not lie) in (quasi-) human form.

I call the castle Reconstruct Mansion, did so from the very start, the moment I read in a newspaper that they had imported the edifice, once a huge old castle-type house from someplace in Eastern Europe, and were having it rebuilt stone by stone, in a vast parkland some other place, well outside the small town of Chakhatti. The Kokersons, obviously, are very rich. One of them won a lottery about twenty years back. I had seen photos of them. I really didn’t want to go. But go there, Anthony thought I must.

In case this makes my dad sound like a manipulative monster I have to state right here and now that is the very opposite of what he is. As I said, it’s just—he seems to know about . . . everything. But then, that’s how he is.

My name is Lelystra. It’s a family name, only usually I have myself called Lel by those who are my friends. Call me Lel, all right?

“Oh! You should have called—we would have sent a car! And you are Lelystra? What a delicious name! Oh, we wouldn’t dream of mangling it down to Lel!!!”

So they greeted me, the Kokersons. A never-ending family, only lacking a father (had he run away? I might have). Toothy, bronzed sons and toothy, bleached daughters, and boisterous aunts, and an uncle like a dark satanic Bill (his name), and the mother, Mrs. Kokerson, or Ariadne, as I was told to call her. She was sixty going on fifteen. That is, she was sixty, but had somehow stayed fifteen in all the wrong ways. I felt an immediate requirement to look after her, steer her away from the cocktails—she was much too young to even taste one—and perhaps introduce her to some youth-fully elderly male.

I flew upstairs with wings of worry on my feet and leapt into the cover of a bright white bedroom, with a bed the size of a softball field.

I tried to put through a call to Anthony. Cunningly he was in a meeting. I left a message. “Dad, I am going to kill you.”

Let me describe the reconstruct castle.

An apparent ascending thousand feet of coal-blue stone, with towers, cupolas, balconies, verandas, staircases inside and out like static stepped waterfalls, and some of them just as slippery. The window glass is lightly polarized. From outside the windows look like smoky eyeglasses. Inside they color day sky green, and night sky purple, with pink stars. The landscape all around is private and full of trees, lake, and deer. October stags bellowed from the woods all night, waking me regular as a fire alarm roughly every thirty minutes.

It was all a gigantic theme park.

The theme, presumably, was the Kokersons, or their fantasy about themselves. The feel of fake antiquity and illusory age was so intense it was quite serious.

And we all had to dress in the clothes they provided, females in flowing gowns, males in gothic tailoring, nothing later than 1880, or earlier than 1694. We were like refugees from a muddled movie set. Even the house was like that.

Two days, two bellowing nights passed.

The day of the ball, everyone (or the Young People, at least) spent all morning and afternoon compulsorily in hot tubs, being massaged, creamed, pedicure-manicured, topped off by shampoo and styling (as if for a cat show). Then came the dressing up in the most extreme clothes yet.

I yawned and yawned, blaming it on the wake-up calls of the noisy stags.

My dress, which Ariadne had chosen me, was white. (Ariadne: “So perfect with your lovely pale hair.”) My hair is natural, but somehow the hairdresser had gotten it to go even paler—scared it, maybe. My skin is white too. I like the sun but never take a tan. In the white dress I vanished without meaning to, became a sort of plaster statue figure lacking any features, apart from my eyes which, thank the Lord, are very dark gray.

I thought, I shall attend, play their silly game, dance a few of the minuets and waltzes (anything modern was absolutely out), and retire graciously soon as I can, later saying I was still there all the while. I’m good at that sort of thing.

Either that is selfishly self-protective, or my kinder side not wanting to offend or hurt. I have no idea which and I don’t care. It works. I escape, others aren’t upset.

So I descended the indoor glass-slippery, glass-slipper stair, and entered the ballroom (like the outside of a bridal cake, icing sugar and gilding, with grapevines of chandeliers). I glanced around.

And that was when I saw him. And knew him. Or rather, knew what he was.

And all along my spine, rising upward, ran the kind of prickly electricity that on a cat reveals itself as the fur standing on end.

Ariadne sailed by, right on cue.

Me, casually: “Who is that? I do like his costume.”

“Yes, isn’t it glorious? But I’m sure you notice that he’s very handsome too,” she enthused at me.

I answered calmly. “Yes. Quite a good face.”

“And perfect masculine physique. Strong, like a dancer’s. And his hair—”

“Is it really so long or is that a piece?”

“No. It’s all his own. It’s only that usually Anghel ties it back. How romantic he looks, doesn’t he? I’m not surprised you’d pick him out. But I have to warn you, Lelystra, he’s cold as snow. Cold as—” She fought for an even more cryogenic noun.

“As very cold snow?” I helpfully suggested.

“Well, er, yes. The coldest of cold snow. We’re all quite crazy over him, and my two daughters are besotted, but he’s only ever polite. But then, Anghel has escorted movie stars. Always in demand. He only arrived an hour ago.”

“Really.”

“He’s been offered parts himself in so many movies—”

“But always coldly and politely refused,” I supplied. I tried to keep all trace of irritation from my voice. Obviously he wouldn’t take a part in any film. You only had to look at him to see it—this one would never be up at the crack of dawn and out on location in the blazing sun.

He was A Vampire.

Someone called Ariadne then, and she floated off on a sea of people dancing polkas.

Anghel (a name to conjure with) might be any age from twenty to six hundred. Or more. He looked about twenty-two. His hair was black as if he had washed it in the night outside. His eyes were blacker. He was pale, paler no doubt than I was. It wasn’t any kind of make-up. He had a handsome—no, a beautiful—and cruel face. It was his mask, evidently, to keep all of us just far enough away—or if near then suitably nervous and/or impressed—while he chose his victim for that night, maybe for the weekend. It wouldn’t be more, because also evidently he hadn’t killed anyone by drinking their blood. His dates might keep quiet, or be made to “forget” what had gone on, but surely word would have gotten around if none of them ever went home. His quaint costume was that of some European nobleman of the eighteenth century. All black, need I add, and embroidered, the tall black boots flittering with quills of steel and his coat with wild lace cuffs of sheerest snow white (to match his manner, perhaps).

He was unmistakable!

I felt I should have known he’d be here, been warned. Maybe I took my ignorance too much to heart.

Yet my—almost outrage—made me linger after all. None of the rest of them, it seemed, could figure him out, and put their fascination down only to his looks. I had to assume too that now and then, if only after dark, he had been spotted in everyday garb where, frankly, even if his hair was tied back, and he wore jeans and a baseball cap to advertize the Chakhatti Arrows, he would stick out like an eagle in an aviary of pigeons.

I am not ashamed of what I next did. I felt it was my right and duty. If everyone else was blind, I wasn’t. Oh, I’m nothing so gallant as a vampire-slayer, not me. Sorry if you hoped that was the next bit. No, I am just a nosy eighteen-year-old woman who sometimes—okay often (thank you, Dad)—takes herself a tad too seriously, and who hates to be beaten once she wakes up to a challenge. So, well . . . Reader, I followed him.

Back on the glacial dance floor a thousand feet pounced, pranced, and stumbled, and the band played and the chandeliers shone.

And I slid like a panther, all right a white one, through the mob, spying on wicked Mr. Anghel whose second name no one seemed to know. (I had asked again, here and there, about him.)

First off he danced a waltz with a dazzled girl, who almost swooned and then was non-swooning and dis-dazzled when he abandoned her for another. (Later in the evening I came across knots of unsettled young women fuming or sighing or even sobbing—or plotting how to lure him back.)

He went through about ten girls in ten dances. He was picky, wasn’t he? Of course, his partners, did they but know, were better off not being the selected maiden for the night’s feast.

I did note he could dance stunningly well. Wondered briefly if he’d be as good in a club, decided he would be, as the vampire kind are simply wired to move well, in whatever context. It comes with the territory.

He never actually spotted me. I took care he didn’t. I’ve said I’m pretty brilliant at seeming to be there when I’m not. I’m pretty good at doing the reverse too. But now and then he glanced around, looking for a split second slightly uneasy. He was A Vampire. He realized that someone was on his track. But I could see too he didn’t truly reckon anyone was or could be. His madly apparent vampiricness was the camouflage. He was like an actor in the rôle of The Vampire. He wants to convince he is exactly that. The true vampire would cut his hair, dress in rags, and keep in the shadows.

All this anyhow, he center stage, me stalking unseen, went on for about two hours.

Then, he found her.

I was startled, and then less so. She was completely loud in clothes and make-up, with gold neon for hair. Quite pretty but mainly like a flag. The ideal choice. She thought she was the Star of the Night. She had convinced a lot of other people too that she was. Few therefore would doubt he thought so.

The target of some, by now, seventy-odd distracted jealousies, he drew her smoothly off the floor, and next they melted away onto another flight of watery stairs, and so down and out and in between the velvet curtains of the night.

It was rather more challenging hunting them now, in all my white shimmer, for the dark was dark even if a half moon was rising on the lake. Yet here too, I could hide. A slant of moonlight through the shrubs, a blond deer slipping from tree to tree—a trick of the eyes. That was me. (I’d better own up. Anthony taught me these skills, though I did have natural talent.)

He and she were fairly unoriginal in their choice of resting place, but then, I suppose, if you have a vast lake like a polished silver tray, and everywhere else the backdrop of darkness, you simply have to perch the edges of both. Which means, presumably, Anghel The Vampire was a romantic? He must have bought into his own legend in a big way.

I watched them a while, as they sat on a bench at the brim of the water. They talked, he speaking low and she . . . well, she had a kind of high and penetrating voice. “Oh, wow!” she kept saying, and, “What did you do then?” I could catch his words too—my hearing is fine—but they sounded like sort of movie dialogue. Quite good movie dialogue, but. He was telling her about his harsh life, and the novel he wanted to write, and sometimes he quoted a little poetry (Byron, Keats), and though when most guys do that they come over as truly useless, when he did it, it was quite impressive. But it was all a show, a sham. It was him being The Vampire, in the movie rôle he had invented, and for which he’d coined this well-written script.

I wondered if he even made himself sleep, by day, in some sort of tomb. If so, probably a really comfortable one, with a crystal goblet of bottled water on the side. . . .

And then, quite abruptly, for somehow—even knowing it had to—I hadn’t foreseen exactly when it would happen, he was bending toward her.

I thought, Is she honestly so dumb she thinks this is just going to be a kiss?

Sure. The idea of vampires is romantic. But not when you actually think about what they do. They bite you. Which, if that wasn’t what you wanted, or expected, is an assault in anyone’s book. And then—they steal your blood. Because again, unless you genuinely desire to nourish them in this way, it’s theft. So what do those two procedures demonstrate a vampire to be? Shall I say: A mugger.

When he moved, so did I. I darted forward and burst out on them, white as vanilla ice cream. I made my voice even higher and more piercing than hers—which took some doing.

“Oh, hi! Am I interrupting? Sorry! But I’m just completely lost—and this is such a HUGE place, isn’t it? Oh, do you mind if I sit down on your bench? I’ve been wandering around for over an hour. I mean, where is that castle? You wouldn’t think, would you, you could lose a place that HUGE, but—” and down I flopped, with the sigh of a woman who just is not going to move for a while.

They were both gaping at me. She looked furious too. He, more as if he had just gotten the answer to a question that had been bothering him for hours. I had no doubt the answer was: Yes! This plaster-of-Paris person is the one who was following me!

I let a few moments pass, but neither she nor he spoke. Anyone else but the character I pretended to be would have grasped, however miles-thick they were, that monsieur et mademoiselle wished to be left alone.

Not I.

“What ever do you think of the ball?” I sparkled at them. “Isn’t it too divine?”

“Then why,” he said, in a low, dark, awful tone, “don’t you go back to it?”

I’d tempted him from cover.

“I just said, you see,” I replied, “I’m lost.”

“I doubt that,” he said. “If you walk up that path there, the path you just came down, I guess, you can see the house. You can’t miss the house.”

“Oh, really?” I gasped, and right then the neon girl clutched his arm, so for a second he scowled at her. She was in fact too thick herself to realize how terrible this scowl was. She said angrily, “Come on, Ang” (she pronounced that to rhyme with hang) “let’s just get outta here.”

And this was when the stag came shouldering from the woods about twenty feet away along the shore, noiseless and then extremely noisy, as branches went rushing and snapping out of the way of its great-antlered head, lit silver by the moonlight. Its eyes flashed electric green—and it bellowed.

That sound, from far off, had been devastating. Being close to it could cause total panic. I’d hoped so anyhow, when I was mentally coaxing the stag—that is, one of the stags—to come find us by the lake. This first-class animal had obliged. Neon spurted to her feet. Her eyes—her hair—had gone insane. She shrieked—and ran. She left us, him too, and bolted away, around the water and then off into the woods.

He, of course, didn’t move.

Nor did I.

The stag though snorted down its gorgeous Roman nose, pawed the grass once as if to say, You owe me, Lel, then turned and sauntered back among the shadows.

He spoke once more.

“So you can do that too.”

“Excuse me?”

He sighed deeply, stood up, and turned his elegant black velvet back to me. His black hair swung. “This is set in concrete then,” he said. “You are to be my downfall.”

“Er,” I fluted, “my name’s Lel.”

“Let’s not play games. I know you judged me at once, in the house. So, Lel. When do the heavies arrive?”

He had set his baleful eyes on me again. To my annoyance I found I wasn’t ready for them. I should have been, shouldn’t I. I wasn’t a complete dope, like Neon.

“Why don’t you sit down,” I said.

“And let’s talk it over? Very well.”

But he stood there. Right next to me. I found too I was uncomfortably over-aware of him, but I should have been able to cope with that, because I already knew the power he had, and in my case, prepared as I was, that power really could not and would not be having an effect.

For quite a while then, we stayed, in silence.

The moon silvered the lake, shining it up like an old dollar.

Finally I glanced sidelong at him. He looked magnificently and broodingly sad. Then, just sad. Like a child whose dog died, and he never forgot, even ten years later, the way you don’t ever forget the ones you love. Things like that.

“Shall I tell you how I came to be—how I got like I am?”

This was what he eventually said. I’d already heard most of what I took to be his “line.” Obviously nothing to do with vampires, but ancient feuds and some curse of his “ancestors” he hadn’t believed. He had been born on the borders of France, in a mountain region. His family were aristocrats who had lost everything way back in the 1790s. He had escaped them, and now lived in one room, out here in Chakhatti (the sticks), an impoverished writer who worked nights waiting tables and pumping gas. But of course this mixture of Vampire Angst and modern day necessity was all baloney (as Dad might say).

I hazarded a guess. “Your family is well off, something in big business maybe. They live here and you were born here. You were also well-educated, went to a top grade college—but left on discovering your true . . . how shall I say, vocation? Your family meanwhile still support you financially, because you tell them you are teaching yourself to be a writer.”

He threw me a swift glare. “Not bad. Actually I received a legacy—enough money to survive. That was from an aunt of mine. They always thought she was crazy, but she was—what I am. She was—”

“A vampire,” I said.

“I have to assume,” he said, flexing his hands (perhaps practicing how he would strangle me), “you don’t believe vampires exist. That is, in the mythic sense. You just imagine I’m dangerous.”

“Wrong again. I know true vampires are quite real. And I know, Mr. Anghel, you belong firmly among them.”

“Usually people dismiss my interests as . . . a fantasy.”

I gazed hard at the lake. He was much too distracting.

“The only thing that’s a fantasy here,” I answered, pleased at my own crisp tone, “is your total misunderstanding of what being a vampire entails.”

“Some secret society—a code known only to the few—” he solemnly said.

“No. Frankly, the opposite,” He had turned and I felt him stare at me. It was compelling but I didn’t allow myself to react. To the lake alone I added, “You need to talk to someone. If you’re as messed up as I think you are, you need some help.”

He gave a bitter, quite violent laugh.

“Sure. You mean a shrink.”

“You need,” I continued, “to speak to my father.”

“Your—your what?”

“Father.” I opened the tiny white glitzy evening purse I’d been given, and pulled out one of Anthony’s cards, and handed it to him.

He stared at that, now.

“This is some joke, right?”

“No joke, Mr. Anghel—”

“Will you quit that Mister stuff—how fucking old do you think I am?”

“You could be a thousand. But no joke. This is for real. If you prefer, I can start you off on the road to redemption by just asking you nine straight questions. All you need do is reply, and be honest.”

Finally our eyes met.

I thought—well. I thought in one big golden blank. To my relief my voice came out again, not in a husky squeak, but crisp now as very dry toast. I was at my most business-like, and that was how I asked those nine questions.

“First question: Do you reflect in mirrors or reflective surfaces?”

“I don’t look anymore. Obviously I don’t. I’m undead. My soul—or whatever—that’s gone. So, no reflection. The night I realized I threw any mirrors away. And yes, I’ve learned to shave by touch. I’m good at that, dexterous. It seems to be part of what I am, what I can do, now. The same as I can seem to vanish, even on an empty sidewalk . . . that kind of thing.”

“Okay. Second question. Do you go out by day?”

“You are kidding me. What do you think? Do I look like a case from a burns unit? Yeah, I did once make a mistake. Last winter. I was walking around in broad daylight for one half hour. I was blistered so bad, even inside my clothes, I had to hide for three nights. My skin, bits of it, fell off in patches. No. I don’t go out in sunlight. Sunset is dawn for my kind.”

“Question three: How old are you?”

“Twenty-two this fall. Next week in fact. I suppose I’ll live forever, but I only got started on this thing about sixteen months ago.”

“Question four—”

“Wait a minute—”

“Question four—” I paused, but he didn’t interrupt again. Just looked. With his sorrowful dark eyes. “Do you take and drink human blood? Is that your food?”

“Yes. You know that already. That was what you broke up back there. Me, trying to take and drink and feed on blood.”

“Question five.” (He sighed. Nothing else.) “Do you otherwise eat and drink?”

“No. Oh, water’s okay—a glass of wine. Even a beer or a coke. Fluids seem to digest. I don’t risk anything else.”

“So your last meal was—”

“Sixteen months ago. I threw it right up.”

“So blood is your only sustenance. Which leads us to question six: How often do you do this?”

“Once a week. Roughly. I can go a month without, if I have to. But if I don’t it’s—all I can think of.”

“Rather like partying with a so-called recreational drug, yes?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said icily. “I never tried those.”

“Fine. Question seven: Do you shape-shift? I mean, can you seem to become another thing, an animal say, or even an inanimate object?”

“Yes.” (He sounded almost embarrassed, as if he boasted and hadn’t wanted to.) “A wolf. Mostly. But once I—I kind of made myself kind of like a phone booth.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. “Did anyone try to—get inside and make a call?”

He grinned.

Oh. The grin was beautiful too.

“Yeah. But the door stayed shut.”

I pulled us back to grim reality.

“Question eight: Ever killed anyone, Anghel?”

“My God—no. No. I don’t—I’m careful. It’s bad enough being—what I am. I don’t want to be a murderer as well.”

We were both standing up now. I wasn’t sure when I did.

I said, “Question nine, then. And this is the last one. How did you find out you’d become a vampire?”

“How did I—? Look, I’d had suspicions before that we—my family—had the gene for it. I suppose it is a gene. Like some families having the gene for red hair, or a particular allergy. . . . I know how it is in books, movies. Someone does it to you, takes your blood and makes you a vampire, just like they are. It didn’t happen that way. I said my aunt—I came to realize she was—she was a vampire. She’d just seemed to think she was mad. Everybody put everything weird about her down to that—avoiding sunlight, not eating, that stuff. By the time I connected it all up, she’d been dead two years. And she had left me the legacy. Like she knew I would be the same. So I put it together. I still didn’t believe it at first. I said, I want—wanted to be a writer. So I started to write about it, about my life if I had been, if I was, a vampire. I was trying to sort it out.

“Then I met a girl at some party in Manhattan. And she’d read a story of mine, a pretty lurid one, in some magazine and she—she wanted to act it out with me. Scared me. But when I’m scared—then sometimes I have to do it. Prove to myself I can. So, we did. I didn’t hurt her. It’s important to me you understand that. She loved every minute, and I had a real difficult time putting her off after. But for me—something changed. Something changed when I took the blood. It was—” he hesitated, looking out at the lake and the moon—“it was like finding something in your own self, meeting who you really are—and I wasn’t who I’d ever thought. And I was—not better—but I fit. And when I went out of the apartment, everything—the street, the city . . . it was alive, and I was alive, in a way it and I had never been, not until then. Do you begin to see? I can’t explain it. I can write with words, use them, make them work. But with this, I can’t find the words. It was like I’d walked out—not of a room, but of a dark cave. My whole world had only been a cave—but now the lights were on and the true world was there all around me, and inside me, forever.

“So I’ve answered all your questions, and now I guess your wonderful father and his men arrive and finish me off. Right, Lel? That name on the card though, that’s a lie, isn’t it? Only one thing puzzles me. Shouldn’t it read ‘Anthony Van Helsing’?”

I shook my head. “Oh no, it surely should not. That name on the card is a family name. It’s mine too.”

He looked quizzical. Sad and quizzical and courageous, all ready to meet some horrible bloodthirsty anti-vampire end of sharpened stakes and villagers with flaming torches ready to burn him alive.

It must have been that that made me feel protective, and want to put my arms around him.

But anyhow that was when he laughed again, a very different silky, inky laugh—and then he was gone. There instead stood a great black wolf, the height of a mastiff dog, with eyes like rubies. The wolf too seemed to be laughing. But the next second it sprang away, and dove along the lake shore and into the trees.

And my next move? I stood there cursing myself.

I knew he wasn’t headed for the house, or the town. He had vanished not only from his human shape but out of the life of anyone who’d recently known him. Though everything he said, I was certain, was honest and true, with my artful, smug little plans I’d cornered him, and blown the whole thing. I’d lost him. And worse than that, I had lost him also his own chance of living free and safe in this mad world he had only properly come to see sixteen months before. Oh, Lel. Clever, cunning, know-it-all, stupid, dumb damn Lel.

My father is a physician. He deals with sickness of the psyche and the mind. He has endlessly various patients. He is good.

He went into this line of work, as he would be the first to say, because he had already cured both himself, and another member of his family, of a pretty dire life-destructive mental illness. His name, which is real enough, is quite a talking point, but he’s found, as I have on the whole, it causes startled amusement rather than giving anything away. It’s like that thing about camouflage I mentioned earlier.

Vampirism isn’t a disease. It isn’t a possession or an evil spell or the devil’s work. It’s a way of evolving. Because the human race did and does evolve. Superman, Batman—they’re already around out there. If they keep a low profile, do you blame them? A vampire, or what’s come to be called a vampire (the word seems to come from ancient Turkey, and means something like magician), is just one more variety of this evolving super-race, the one we watch on screen and read about in books, but which most of us seldom think may just have sat there next to us on the subway.

Vampires are this: They grow up but stay young for a very long while (centuries sometimes). They don’t need food or drink, though they can eat and drink a little, if they want. Taking another person’s blood can bring out awareness of themselves and what they are. But that is only because they have already bought into the idea. That is, they think it will, so it does. And in fact where they can come to awareness of the truth without assault and robbery, they come to it better and more fully, and with far less damage to themselves. Put it this way: They only go after that blood because they have the notion they are, on some level, vampires. So taking the blood isn’t needed. What is needed is just facing up to the facts.

Feeding on or drinking blood is—redundant. People are not the allotted prey, and blood is not the essential food. No vampire on Earth has to have blood. Just as they don’t have to have ordinary food or fluid either. So the Blood Feast made so popular in stories only has value (if that is the right word) in sometimes shocking them into focus for themselves. And believe me, it also hurts them on some deep level too. If you aren’t a vampire, though, grabbing blood won’t do a darn thing for you. I mean you won’t be able to shape-shift or apparently disappear, let alone live to three hundred and forty-nine. Oh, and no vampire can turn anyone else into one by taking their blood. Unless, of course, they already were one to start with.

So, the meaning of blood for vampires is basically a misunderstanding. It has nothing to do with drink or food, with goblets and dishes and the dining table of the world. It is bloodlines—it’s genes—as Anghel said. And if you’ve gotten that gene, you have it. You are a vampire, a Being of the Blood. And one day you’ll wake up, and know, even if it takes till you’re fifty and you look in a mirror (yes, I did say mirror) and think—I only look twenty-two still. How can this be?

Because vampires do reflect in mirrors, in all reflective surfaces. They cast shadows too. They can even go out all day long in the blazing summer sun. No tan, sure. But the sun won’t fry you. Unless, of course, brainwashed by hundreds of years of legendary propaganda, you believe it will.

You see, all that stuff is a psychosomatic illness. It seems real, so real you’ll have the symptoms, as can happen with any major psychosomatic sickness. And in fact a vampire’s own abilities can turn against him to reinforce the myth. A vampire can seem invisible—so in that looking glass, he is. So you come up in blisters too, and seek a big box to sleep in, and hunt down innocent people and mug them for blood. You can even throw up at the smell of garlic, or pass out at a powerful religious symbol. But it isn’t for real. It is a kind of guilt trip. The vampire knows he is superior. That frightens him. So, unconsciously, he tries to keep himself chained up. No one can be harder on us than we are ourselves, once we’ve gotten started.

Otherwise, a vampire can live forever, maybe. But you don’t need a stake or fire to kill him. You can just shoot a vampire dead, and you won’t need a special bullet. Vampires are long-lived, not invulnerable. What they can also do are things like seem to be other creatures, vanish, sometimes fly, and, obviously, call animals to them and ask them to do things—like a stag, for example. We don’t abuse these gifts. Not when we grasp what we are and why. But then, some of us are lucky. I grew up in a partly vampiric family. I knew by age three what I was, and when I found on my tenth birthday I could turn into a fox, my Dad took a photo of me like that. I still have that picture. Yes, cameras can catch us too.

My father does look remarkably young. He puts it down, to his patients, as the vitamins he takes. And his name—our family name? Draculian. Anthony Draculian. Lelystra Draculian. But no, we’re not from that famous branch of our kind (the Romanian one, brought to public attention in the 1800s by clever Mr. Stoker). Though, if you trace bloodlines back far enough, we are related.

And there, you see, these were all the things I should have said to poor handsome unhappy Anghel. And instead I’d been flustered and messed up.

I had to stay another two days with the Kokersons. I did it and it was hell. But then, there wasn’t much point in running back to Dad two days early, howling about my dismal failure. Anghel was gone. I knew I’d never see him again, I knew I could have helped and instead I only helped make his life worse.

I did put one call through to Dad. But he was with a patient. Oh, let it wait then till I was home. I’d have all the rest of my days after all, to blame myself, and to regret.

Anthony has his office way across town. We live in a big russet brownstone on the corner of Dale and Landry. It’s a nice area.

I’d tried to call him again from the cell phone booth on the train, but he was back in another eternal meeting. No one was home.

I dumped my bags and then took the little elevator up to our roof garden. It’s only a little garden, a kind of outdoor living room. The last roses were dying on the walls, but the grapevine had big purple grapes. I took some off and ate them, gazing down over the parapet at the sun deciding to sink, as it always does, west of the city.

I had never felt I had to go rob someone of their blood. Lucky in that, I said. Lucky me. I’d had it all very easy. Only when Mom died—I was fifteen then. That had been hard. She wasn’t like us, Dad and me, or my uncle. She didn’t have the gene. I knew they’d talked about—when she was older, how they would handle that. . . . But it never happened, a truck in town saw to that. It killed her. And we, Dad and me, we wouldn’t be immune to that either.

The sky was rose-gold. Birds were flying like scribbles over it. The city made its noises of trains and cabs and people, but I knew the moment my father came back in the house I would sense it, I always did. And then the oddest idea went through my mind. It made me straighten up and hold my breath a moment. This strange thought was—had my father, my clever amazing father who seemed always to know everything—had he known too Anghel was due to be at the Kokerson’s weird ball. Had he known I would see what Anghel was—might try to alter things—even think I’d be the one to save Anghel from the dark he’d stumbled into? If that was it, how much more awful it was going to be, telling Anthony that I hadn’t—

And this was when I picked up what must be Dad, that silent step of his I can always hear, just inside the door below. And next the elevator rising.

I was horrified. Not of Dad—of the thing I’d have to say. I braced myself, with the taste of the grapes in my mouth. And out onto the roof he walked. But it wasn’t Anthony. It was Anghel.

I froze. Like the biggest fool (the one who wins the Oscar for idiocy), I said, “Whuh?”

And he grinned.

His hair was tied back, a long, long black tail falling down his back. He wore jeans, a shirt, a light leather jacket. Even this way, as I had predicted, you couldn’t miss he was something else. Different, astonishing.

He said, “It’s okay, Lel. I have a pass for the door. Your father gave it to me. He trusts me. Can you?”

Anthony only ever trusts those who really can be trusted.

But I’d been kidding myself, hadn’t I? It wasn’t just I felt I’d messed up, let Anghel, a patient, down. It was me I was unhappy for. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking of him. I thought I had lost him for good. But here he was.

Very coolly I said, “It’s early for you to be out, isn’t it? I mean, the sun’s not down yet, is it.”

“He said—Anthony said—take it slow, but try a few new things. So, I do. Just an hour after sunrise, an hour before sunset. And look—” he was close now, holding out his strong, elegant hands. “Not a single burn.”

I swallowed. “So you are my father’s patient.”

“Since yesterday. I’ve made great strides, yes?”

“Yes. Good.” Lamely I studied the buttons on his shirt. They were fine, for buttons. It was better than looking up into his eyes.

“Lel,” he said quietly, “thank you.”

So then I had to look. When I did, those hands reached out and gently took mine. His touch was fiery, but what else? Something in his eyes had altered too. They weren’t less overpowering exactly, but—there was something else in them now. I could see—Anghel. That is, I think I mean I could see who he truly was. A man not cruel or mean or a robber, never stupid, rich in possibility, brave, yes, gallant—only wanting to find his way.

“I apologize for the wolf stuff—the shape-shift,” he said to me. “I was—confused. Had to sort it out. As you see, though, I didn’t lose the card. And I called Anthony, and I saw him yesterday. He’s okay, your father.”

“Yes, he is.”

He still held my hands. “Lel,” he said, and then, very softly, “Lelystra—” And for the first time in my entire life my name sounded wonderful to me, as if I’d never heard it before—“Lelystra, you saved my skin. You saved my sanity. You stopped me becoming something I’d never want. And I don’t want—I can’t make you any promises, or ask for any. Not yet. Not until I know I’m really there, where I have to be. Where you are. But if I make it, then—”

The whole roof was glowing now, the walls, the vines, the grapes, blood-red from the sunfall. And in the blood-red light Anghel leaned forward and kissed my mouth. It was a marvelous kiss, weightless yet profound. As gently as he, I gave it back to him. There in the sunset light as red as blood.