no part of them or their existence they let us alone.
Infinitely more interesting were the occasional rogues we glimpsed in the middle of society, lone and secretive vampires pretending to be mortal just as skillfully as we could pretend. But we never got close to these creatures. They ran from us as they must have from the old covens. And seeing nothing more than fear in their eyes, I wasn’t tempted to give chase.
Yet it was strangely reassuring to know that I hadn’t been the first aristocratic fiend to move through the ballrooms of the world in search of my victims—the deadly gentleman who would soon surface in stories and poetry and penny dreadful novels as the very epitome of our tribe. There were others appearing all the time.
But we were to encounter stranger creatures of darkness as we moved on. In Greece we found demons who did not know how they had been made, and sometimes even mad creatures without reason or language who attacked us as if we were mortal, and ran screaming from the prayers we said to drive them away.
The vampires in Istanbul actually dwelt in houses, safe behind high wall and gates, their graves in their gardens, and dressed as all humans do in that part of the world, in flowing robes, to hunt the nighttime streets.
Yet even they were quite horrified to see me living amongst the French and the Venetians, riding in carriages, joining the gatherings at the European embassies and homes. They menaced us, shouting incantations at us, and then ran in panic when we turned on them, only to come back and devil us again.
The revenants who haunted the Mameluke tombs in Cairo were beastly wraiths, held to the old laws by hollow-eyed masters who lived in the ruins of a Coptic monastery, their rituals full of Eastern magic and the evocation of many demons and evil spirits whom they called by strange names. They stayed clear of us, despite all their acidic threats, yet they knew our names.
As the years passed, we learned nothing from all these creatures, which of course was no great surprise to me.
And though vampires in many places had heard the legends of Marius and the other ancient ones, they had never seen such beings with their own eyes. Even Armand had become a legend to them, and they were likely to ask: “Did you really see the vampire Armand?” Nowhere did I meet a truly old vampire. Nowhere did I meet a vampire who was in any way a magnetic creature, a being of great wisdom or special accomplishment, an unusual being in whom the Dark Gift had worked any perceivable alchemy that was of interest to me.
Armand was a dark god compared to these beings. And so was Gabrielle and so was I.
But I jump ahead of my tale.
Early on, when we first came into Italy, we gained a fuller and more sympathetic knowledge of the ancient rituals. The Roman coven came out to welcome us with open arms. “Come to the Sabbat,” they said. “Come into the catacombs and join in the hymns.”
Yes, they knew that we’d destroyed the Paris coven, and bested the great master of dark secrets, Armand. But they didn’t despise us for it. On the contrary, they could not understand the cause of Armand’s resignation of his power. Why hadn’t the coven changed with the times?
For even here where the ceremonies were so elaborate and sensuous that they took my breath away, the vampires, far from eschewing the ways of men, thought nothing of passing themselves off as human whenever it suited their purposes. It was the same with the two vampires we had seen in Venice, and the handful we were later to meet in Florence as well.
In black cloaks, they penetrated the crowds at the opera, the shadowy corridors of great houses during balls and banquets, and even sometimes sat amid the press in lowly taverns or wine shops, peering at humans quite close at hand. It was their habit here more than anywhere to dress in the costumes of the time of their birth, and they were often splendidly attired and most regal, possessing jewels and finery and showing it often to great advantage when they chose.
Yet they crept back to their stinking graveyards to sleep, and they fled screaming from any sign of heavenly power, and they threw themselves with savage abandon into their horrifying and beautiful Sabbats.