else, this would have set her slightly on edge. With Theroen it was simply natural.

“Who are you?” Two asked, smiling slightly.

Theroen nodded, as if he approved of the question.

“I am Theroen Anders. I was born in Norway, in the late fifteenth century. My family emigrated to Great Britain while I was still very young. It was there I met Abraham, there I felt the temptation of immortal life and succumbed to it. I haunted London like a bloodthirsty ghoul for hundreds of years. The new world called, we answered, and have been here since.”

He raised his eyebrows, as if questioning whether this would suffice. Two smiled, shook her head.

“No, Theroen. Who are you?”

He grinned, expecting this.

“You’d have me condense four hundred years into an evening?”

“Four hundred years are four hundred years. A story’s a story, Theroen. It will take as long as it has to.”

Theroen looked into her eyes, and Two felt herself swimming suddenly. She gasped.

“Don’t fight.” Theroen’s voice, next to her yet distant. “Don’t fight, Two.”

Two breathed deeply. Stopped fighting. Floated. Descended.

* * *

His belief in God was unshakeable, impossible to destroy. It was the glowing light which directed his every action, his every thought.

Theroen had been a priest for less than half a decade, and he still loved God in the pure, glorious, righteous way reserved even in the clergy only for the very young. His black robes were only clothes; his faith was his armor, and Theroen cut through the sea of unbelievers around him without a fear in the world.

Two resisted this vision, incredulous. Theroen, a priest? It was impossible, this being who seemed so utterly comfortable with his vampire nature. Theroen reminded her again not to fight the trance. Sit, watch, understand.

His parents. Mother, hair blonde, eyes blue, every bit the Scandinavian woman. Lithe, tall for the time, full at the bust and hips, she was a picture of beauty standing at the window in Theroen’s tiny room, singing lullabies, whispering softly to her young child where they might someday go, what they might someday see.

Father, dark in hair, dark in eyes, like Theroen himself. Grecian in ancestry, but without the wiry curls, which had been ironed from his head by the passing of generations.

Theroen, child of no more than a year, black hair, brown eyes, his mother’s pale skin, the face a combination of features which would someday serve to make him a handsome young man. This face would make women shake their heads behind his back. A priest? Looking like that? A waste.

Theroen did not know if his memories of this time were accurate, or fabricated from stories and assumptions. He believed them to be honest recollection, but would never truly know. In these memories, mother and father fight sometimes. Living is difficult. The house is small, drafty, uncomfortable. The theatre has not called in weeks. They have no roles.

In London, though, there is work. Father makes trips there, auditions repeatedly, desperate, despairing. The alcohol is beginning to take hold of him even now.

He is granted reprieve when the notice finally arrives. An actor is needed. He has been called. At three years of age, Theroen said goodbye to the land of his birth, a land he would never see again.

Never? Two asked, pulling back from the vision momentarily, never in so many years?

Never has there been time, nor any great desire. Theroen answered.

It was a happy childhood. London before the industrial revolution, a thriving metropolis, dirty to be certain but still possessed of a remarkable charm Two could find no words to describe. Theroen, nine, running through the streets ahead of his mother and father. Running to see the players in the square, the Italian players with their puppets and music and dancing. Laughing and running, never seeing the horse bearing down on him, its rider as distracted by the sights and sounds as Theroen himself.

The horse tried to clear him, but failed. Theroen remembered the sharp crack of its hoof against his forehead, the blooming brightness in front of his vision. He remembered the second hit, coming as the back of his head connected with the cobblestones. The force of the impact was tremendous. He imagined that everyone in the world must have heard the sound of it.

All of this was clear in his mind, but Theroen remembered no pain. Only the flat, hard cracking sound and then rolling, horrified faces rushing toward him, the world graying, fading. His mother, tears pouring from her eyes, pulling at her own hair