Thoughts of a Vampire by Drew L Sharpe

Edgar sat in an antique leather wing chair in the corner of the darkened library, looking out the tall narrow window as he sipped a glass of cognac. He had never been a fan of the day, even less is after the fateful night he spent with her so many years ago. He could remember as if she stood before him, her long, flowing raven hair, her eyes the color of the summer sky, and the body that reminded him of a porcelain doll. 

She had been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen when she walked into the library on the arm of one of his father’s gentleman’s club friends. The older man had introduced her as his daughter, Daniella. Edgar had been all but blinded by her beauty. He hadn’t noticed that they only came to see his father once the sunset. That they never partook of dinner or drinks while in the manor. All he had focused on was trying to win her attention. 

Within a few short weeks, he had done so. They spent evenings at the house where his father could chaperone them and got rather close. Six months and two official dates in public later, he had requested a meeting with her father. Her father had been kind to him, welcoming him into their lives and giving his blessing for marriage. 

It was another six months before they were married. In that time, Edgar learned many things about his bride-to-be. He learned she loved roses and for her; they bloomed at night. He learned she hated cooking and loved her meat as rare as any man in from the hunt. He learned she adored music, but couldn’t carry a tune with a bucket. What he hadn’t learned were her secrets. The ones she kept even from her father.

Those secrets came on their wedding night. After the sunset ceremony, that made them man and wife in the eyes of God and people of the little town they were in. That night when she came to the marriage bed, she brought her secret with her. He lay sated beside her for the first time, when she reached up and touched his face. What began as a light caress within a breath changed to something that would scar him for eternity. She had levered herself over him, pinning him in place. Her smooth hand had turned his head and held the side of his face to the pillow, exposing his neck to her. 

The power in the hand that held him in place had made his skin prickle. But it wasn’t until he felt her lips on his neck and the grate of the tips of fangs as they tore his flesh that understanding had finally come. As he felt her drink his blood, the caress of her lips nearly as pleasing as what they had just finished, he knew his life would be forever changed. For that was the moment she had turned him into the same creature she was. A night-dwelling vampire.

She changed him that night, then before he could wake from the sleep of the dead, she was gone. He was alone in their room. Nothing of hers remained. Not that there had been much belonging to her in the house. When he tried to contact her father, no one could find him. Edgar knew at that moment nothing was ever going to be the same again. He studied, learned, and interacted with people in as normal of a manner as he could while still keeping to the night and the darkness. 

He made a promise to himself that he would never take human blood or a human life to survive. He kept that promise for over two centuries until the night he faced her again. His – wife – showed up on the doorstep of the manor he had built at the top of Sesri Bluffs without warning and with an attitude. She was angry with him because he had lived without hurting the humans. She liked the chase, the death, the feeling of power. And she had wanted that power over him.

Edgar had told her to hit the road, locking the door behind her. He kept his ear to the ground and thus kept tabs on her. When she started killing in his town and leaving corpses just lie around, he handled it the only way he knew how. He took out her throat. That was the day he learned Daniella’s ultimate secret. As her blood had passed his lips, he felt the power flow into him. A power so strong it left him dazed on his knees. 

Now, an additional century later, he was the oldest vampire in the country and with all the control Daniella had lived and killed for. Life was good. He could welcome a new way of life for the vampiric world. A life of sharing and working with the humans instead of feeding on them.

A smile touched his lips as the tall ship he had been waiting for finally sailed into view through the window. Now it was time to face the rest of the elders.