Excerpt: In His Reckless Eyes

The passenger’s name is Sir Atman Sąsiuvinis. His current umbra is almost eighty years old, but his personage does not look a day over thirty. That’s because his human body died at that young age and he is now immortal. An umbra is a shadow, or soul, that inhabits Atman’s body. It’s a bit like reincarnation. The soul inside him is what sustains him. It is his life force.

Atman still has the mortal mind he possessed as a human. His personality does not change when his body inhabits a new soul. His mind just gains the memories and knowledge of the person who has died. Therefore, he is a man of great brilliance because he has possessed thousands of souls since he first became what he is now.

Historians have called him a soul eater, but Sir Atman prefers to be known as a psychic vampire, or as his kind call themselves: psukhē, which means “breath, spirit, or soul,” which is also the root word of psychology, the study of the mind. So over years, psychic vampires have called themselves “the Psy” for short.

Blood sustains the life of an ordinary vampire, but that vampire must end a life to obtain what it craves, what it needs. Atman’s kind even refers to those other vampires as Bloods. But what Atman needs comes after death, not just before it. It’s deeper than blood. It’s the soul and spirit of a human that leaves the body at death which he needs.