… yet it felt in that moment like an ancient torture chamber, silent but for the drip of water and the sobbing of the damned. I remember sinking down against the wall in my despair, my last moments of being human…
Then someone shut the door.
They’d been shadowing me for months, years. In retrospect, I felt they’d been watching me all my life. They had marked me as “special” in some way, prime raw material for vampire-hood. Who knows why they chose this moment? Perhaps it was my anguish that drew them. Or merely the scent of my rain-watered blood.
They were vampires and yet they were angels. I mean that they believed they were angels, messengers from a punishing God, something more than mere demons. Simon, a magnificent golden man with extraordinary deep yellow eyes like a cat’s. Fyodor, an attenuated male with silvery flesh and snow-white hair. Rasmila (Callee?), a woman with dark brown skin, her hair a fall of blue-black silk.
In that annihilating moment, all my human concerns fell away in a blast of lightning from heaven.
“Sebastian,” they said, their voices as mellifluous, amused, and coldly sonorous as bells. “Don’t be afraid. We have come only for your blood and your soul.”
Only.
I remember how different the world looked, afterwards. Nets of light webbed a clear deep sky; I’d never before seen with such clarity, never dreamed that such crystalline beauty was hidden from mortal eyes. I could see for miles; northwards to the Galtee and Knockmealdown mountains, to the towers of Cahir Castle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary and Cashel of the Kings; closer at hand, my own beloved estate. The stump of the old stone tower was a shadow behind the new house, which appeared a great, pristine mansion like a gold casket swathed in deep blue twilight. Three storeys it has, with tall imposing windows, a pillared portico that soars the height of the frontage. All was wrapped in night-colors I’d never seen before. The air was sweet and icy, like wine.
How unutterably beautiful it was, the home that I built for myself. For us.
And then I walked away.
I left, only because of what I became. What need had I for anything of the mortal world? I needed no wife or child, no home, no land or wealth, none of that. All I needed was blood, and the wonder of my new senses.
I had no intention ever of coming back. And yet…
Here I am again, unseen in the shadows, a ghost haunting the ruins of my own life.
There are two ways I might proceed with Elizabeth. The road of instant violation and swift death; or the slower path of enthrallment, followed by a wasting decline into madness. Each has its own pleasures, so I am undecided. I live in the moment, watching how the warm light gilds the swell and dip of her breasts, the way her tongue flicks out to make her lips glisten.
“A spirit?” she whispers. And then, “I know you. I’ve seen you before.”
This shocks me. No one is meant to see me! Her parents never have, nor their servants nor any of their numerous visitors and relatives. They’re aware of me; I am the guilty secret that no one mentions. They shiver and start at shadows, but they don’t see me. “When have you seen me, fair one?” I ask very gently.
“When I was a child. You never spoke to me before.”
When last I was here, Elizabeth had indeed been a small child. Her older brother lay dying of a mysterious wasting disease, so crazed by strange ecstatic nightmares that they called the priest to exorcise him… Ah, memories. She doesn’t know that I was responsible. Obviously she glimpsed me, yet never connected my appearance to his death.
“What did you think, when you saw me?”
“I don’t know. You were just a face in the shadows. A sad and restless soul with such beautiful eyes.”
“You weren’t afraid, then?” I smile in relief. “You know I’m a friend.”
“Yes,” she murmurs. So, she has some dim memory of me, which has imprinted itself favorably upon her. And thanks to that—after her initial alarm—she’s receptive. She sees me, not as a threat, but as someone familiar, fascinating. A lonely, mysterious phantom!
The idea of killing her, swiftly or slowly, loses its appeal. Instead—to win her trust! Her love. There’s a novelty.
“You are the ghost of Blackwater Hall,” she says, speaking as decisively as a child.
“Yes.” I laugh softly at that. “I suppose I am.”
Her eyes grow more intense.