• I look out the window. Gray sky. His eyes were gray. The gray of a November sky. And he was as cold. He was always as cold as a November sky.

    . . .


    I am beautiful, and I have been always. Before the Internet. Before the television, the telephone, and Edison's phonograph. Revered in Victorian England as one of the aristocratic beauties. Much sought in the Arthurian times. I have wed many times. I have lost count, but only one of them was by choice. I was given to men in the times of the Celtic gods. Used as a means of payment in the times of Christ and Caesar.

    . . .


    I look down into my hand and see the blood on the beaten silver. The dagger that I have had since time unremembered. And my blood on the blade. But not from my heart.

    . . .


    I think that I must have been the first and I know that I am the last. I don't know how old I am, how many I have killed, how many names I have had, how many deaths I have died.

    I turn away from the window, and begin to think of all the ridiculous things they have established as the fact of the folklore that I represent. Silver does not burn me. The sun does not kill me. I am not harmed by the words of the Christians' lord. None of it is true. Not the mirrors, shadows, garlic. I am designed to be well hidden, entwining with my prey, and can have no clues so obvious.

    I am pale, true, but few would find that unnatural. My hair is naturally black, but has been covered by many different tints. My eyes change at my own will. At the time of this writing, my hair is the color of blood at the roots and fades down to my natural black. There are silver streaks in it, and my eyes I change from gold to silver to blood red to black. I quite like the advancements vanity has made necessary. Before this age, I had to leave my eyes the same color for years.

    They all call me "goth" and "emo". Ha, if they but knew of my true fascination with blood. I am considered a dangerous and unapproachable beauty, but regardless of their considerations, I am approached regularly. I work at the bookstore beneath my apartment, selling limited editions and unabridged volumes of lies about my kind to the unsuspecting masses. This generation is unlike any I have seen before, apart from the Aztecs. All before have feared my kind. But now we are objects of fascination. The humans long to be of my kind, and they are misinformed as to our true natures. It is a laughable irony.

    Vampire. That's the name my species has had bestowed upon them. But there are those who would say that I am not a true vampire. I was never human. I was never born. I never drank the blood from another's wrist and writhed on the ground as the transformation took place. I was simply there. And they seem to think that we need to feed every night. I have admitted my fascination with blood, but I have no need to drink it. I did once, but that was over a century ago. No, my fascination stems from some place that is considered dark and is indeed deadly. Plain and simple - I love to see blood spilt, to see it running down the blade of my dagger.

    . . .


    Rey, oh how I loved him. And he loved me. He was probably the first one to mean those words. We met in my bookstore. He made me happy. And oh, how we loved one another.

    . . .


    Did I tell you there's a serial killer on the loose? The victims are always found with a pentagram carved into their chest, naked and bloody. The other details vary; some were found with bite marks, others with raw wrists and ankles from being bound by ropes. Some had over three hundred small incisions, and others were stabbed only once. There is one other thing that makes this killer notorious - the eyes are always gone from the body.

    . . .


    There was another whom I once loved. His name was Salm. He had the gray eyes, and he had the chill of November. He was a vampire, and we loved one another from the times of the Celtics, when he was born, and I changed him and I married him, to the time of the Civil War. I have not seen him since, save for once, and never will again, for you must remember, I am the last of my kind. He is dead.

    . . .


    I have been tracking this serial killer. It would seem that they have finally stopped, however.

    . . .


    Rey and I lived in my apartment above my bookstore and he saw me for what I was soon after we met. He never asked me to change him. I wish that he had.

    . . .


    The killer's final two victims were both male, and the first of the two was my Rey. But, I said before, I had been tracking this killer for the full twenty years of his rein. I had known his real identity, had found him, had been close enough to him to touch him. And the humans did not even know if he was a male or a female.

    I saw no problem with him killing. After all, I do it all the time, just for the simple pleasure of watching the blood. Some deaths are more rewarding than others. I do not know if this is true for human serial killers, but assume it to be so. I knew of him, but gave no help to the humans.

    And then he killed Rey. And I took the law into my hands.

    . . .


    The blood on my dagger is not human blood, but nor was it the blood of another vampire. I created him, and so whatever blood I gave him was still in his veins. It is my blood, but not from my heart. Salm had to die for killing Rey. The case will be closed in a few more years, and they'll never find his gray eyes.