New Tales Of The Vampires Pandora Vittorio, The Vampire

1 OT twenty minutes has passed since you left me here in the cafe, since I said No to your request, that I would never write out for you the story of my mortal life, how I became a vampirehow I came upon Marius only years after he had lost his human life. Now here I am with your notebook open, using one of the sharp pointed eternal ink pens you left me, delighted at the sensuous press of the black ink into the expensive and flawless white paper. Naturally, David, you would leave me something elegant, an inviting page. This notebook bound in dark varnished leather, is it not, tooled with a design of rich roses, thornless, yet leafy, a design that means only Design in the final analysis but bespeaks an authority. What is written beneath this heavy and handsome book cover will count, sayeth this cover. The thick pages are ruled in light blueyou are practical, so thoughtful, and you probably know I almost never put pen to paper to write anything at all. Even the sound of the pen has its allure, the sharp scratch rather like the finest quills in ancient Rome when I would put them to parchment to write my letters to my Father, when I would write in a diary my own laments . . . ah, that sound. The only thing missing here is the smell of ink, but we have the fine plastic pen which will not run out for volumes, making as fine and deep a black mark as I choose to make. I am thinking about your request in writing. You see you will get something from me. I find myself yielding to it, almost as one of our human victims yields to us, discovering perhaps as the rain continues to fall outside, as the cafe continues with its noisy chatter, to think that this might not be the agony I presumedreaching back over the two thousand yearsbut almost a pleasure, like the act of drinking blood itself. I reach now for a victim who is not easy for me to overcome: my own past. Perhaps this victim will flee from me with a speed that equals my own. Whatever, I seek now a victim that I have never faced. And there is the thrill of the hunt in it, what the modern world calls investigation. Why else would I see those times so vividly now? You had no magic potion to give me to loosen my thoughts. There is but one potion for us and it is blood. You said at one point as we walked towards the cafe, "You will remember everything." You, who are so young amongst us yet were so old as a mortal, and such a scholar as a mortal. Perhaps it is natural that you so boldly attempt to collect our stories. But why seek to explain here such curiosity as yours, such bravery in face of blood-drenched truth? How could you have kindled in me this longing to go back, two thousand years, almost exactly to tell of my mortal days on Earth in Rome, and how I joined Marius, and what little chance he had against Fate. How could origins so deeply buried and so long denied suddenly beckon to me. A door snaps open. A light shines. Come in. I sit back now in the cafe. I write, but I pause and look around me at the people of this Paris cafe. I see the drab unisex fabrics of this age, the fresh American girl in her olive green military clothes, all of her possessions slung over her shoulder in a backpack; I see the old Frenchman who has come here for decades merely to look at the bare legs and arms of the young, to feed on the gestures as if he were a vampire, to wait for some exotic jewel of a moment when a woman sits back laughing, cigarette in hand, and the cloth of her synthetic blouse becomes tight over her breasts and there the nipples are visible. Ah, old man. He is gray-haired and wears an expensive coat. He is no menace to anyone. He lives entirely in vision. Tonight he will go back to a modest but elegant apartment which he has maintained since the last GrRice, Anne is the author of 'New Tales Of The Vampires Pandora Vittorio, The Vampire', published 2004 under ISBN 9780345476869 and ISBN 0345476867.