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my hand over his mouth, but... something took hold of me. My hands went to him, my nails-they are very sharp, very hard. I tore open his throat. He choked on his own blood.

I stood there, trembling, watching the black blood spurt out from him, his body thrashing on the bed in the pale moonlight. He was dying. I had seen people die before, in Paris, in the war. This was different. I had killed him. A great passion seemed to fill me, and I felt... desire. I had read often of desire in the books I stole, of lust and the carnal urges to which man is heir. I had never felt any of it. I had looked on naked women, on men, on couples locked in sexual congress, and none of it had touched me. I could not comprehend all this nonsense I read of uncontrollable passions, lusts like fire. But now I knew them. The blood flowing, this fat rich man dying in my hands, the noises he made, his feet beating on the bed. It all excited some animal deep within me. The blood drenched my hands. It was so dark and hot. It steamed as it came from his throat. So I leaned forward and tasted it. The taste made me mad, feverish. Suddenly I had plunged my face into his neck, ripping with my teeth, sucking up the blood, tearing, swallowing. He stopped thrashing. I fed. And then the door opened, and there were men with knives and rifles. I looked up, startled. How I must have terrified them. Before they could act, I was through the window and gone into the night. I had the presence of mind to grab the money belt as I went. It had only a fraction of the man's fortune in it, but it was enough.

I ran long and far that night, and passed the next day in the root cellar of a farmhouse that had been burned and abandoned.

I was twenty years old. Among the people of the night, a child still, but now coming into adulthood. When I woke that night in the root cellar, covered with dried blood and clutching the money belt to me, I remembered my father's words. I knew what the red thirst was at last. And only blood will sate it, he had said. I was sated. I felt stronger and healthier than ever in my life. Yet I was sick and horrified as well. I had grown up among your people, you see, and I thought as you did. I was no animal, no monster. There and then, I resolved to change the way I lived, so such a thing might never happen again. I washed, stole clothes, the finest I could find. I moved west, away from the fighting. Then north. I took rooms in inns by day, hired coaches to travel from town to town each night. Finally, with difficulty due to the war, I made my way to England. I took a new name, determined to make myself a gentleman. I had the money. I could learn the rest.

My journeys had taken me about a month. My third night in London, I felt strange, sick. I had never been ill in my life. The next night was worse. The night after, finally, I knew the feeling for what it was. The red thirst was on me. I screamed and raged. I ordered up a fine meal, a great rich red slab of meat I thought would slake the yearning. I ate it, and willed myself to calm. It was no use. Within the hour I was out on the streets. I found an alley, waited. A young woman was the first to pass. Part of me admired her beauty; it burned in me like a flame. Another part simply hungered. I almost tore her head off, but at least it was over quickly. Afterward I wept.

For months I despaired. From my readings, I knew what I must be. I had learned those words. For twenty years I had thought myself superior. Now I found I was something unnatural, a beast, a soulless monster. I could not decide whether I was a vampire or a werewolf, which puzzled me. Neither I nor my father had the power to turn into anything, but my red thirst came on me monthly, in what seemed a lunar cycle-although it did not always coincide with the full moon. That was a characteristic