Excerpt: Icon's Tears: A Vampire Story

Memory’s a bitch, a harsh and relentless lover, especially when you’re as ancient as I am. So then why do I keep all these remembrances around, objects d’art from time past, memory hanging onto them, greedy and rapacious? Ah, because I am old, and solitary, and I am now the only one to infuse these objects with real meaning, not what the human scholars say, oh no! And yet sometimes the burden of all this I have created bears down on me, not like the world on Atlas, nor as a hurricane bows a tree, but more as the force of gravity itself bears down on the loftiest peaks, rooting them to one place and at least temporarily (for they are far older than even myself, and even my own lifespan is a mere blink of an eye to these far-beyond-immortal monsters) holding them down from shrugging off the creatures that crawl upon them. Yet I have force, and movement, and a modicum of free will, and can create my own earthquake, tidal wave, disaster, to wipe out all I have created, destroy these memories and the objects encasing them and start anew, as a coral atoll rises from the ocean bed to become untouched, inhospitable land.

But I digress, I forget, I have not properly introduced myself. Allow me to metaphorically sweep my plumed velvet hat to the floor as I bow, in the manner of the court of Louis VI. Enchante, madamoiselle, I murmur, so low that you must bend forward to hear, your plump white hand in mine twitching in silent protest from the whisper of air as you force a smile and curtsey deep, your blue silk dress rustling in unconscious mimicry, and you smile fixedly at my left ear so as to avoid gazing into my eyes. Oh, yes, I know all those tricks. Over the centuries they have become quite familiar. Something about my eyes unsettles you mortals, perhaps the fact that they are coal-black, not just deep brown, but actually black as cinders, coal, mined from the bowels of the earth; or perhaps the red rim where my eyelids touch them and which until recently I have been unable to hide. Perhaps my pale skin, some days dry and papery, others like alabaster or marble, cool and smooth, depending on my immediate appetite.

Perhaps those were just more perceptive times. Certainly the art of camoflauge, with which those courtiers were so obsessed, thinking themselves experts, has progressed to the finest art. I have pressed the hands of hundreds of ladies in the past few years alone, welcoming them to my museum, speaking at their evening engagements, and not once have I felt that same timid shudder. Tinted eyeglasses hide my eye-blood signs, and modern makeup, so smooth and natural, can indeed “improve” even the most aged of skin. It amuses me that, in this world today, vampires are all the rage and yet I walk among you, my hands touching your flesh, my mouth speaking into your ear, mere inches from your exposed, naked throat, and I sense no frisson of knowledge among any of you.

Is it the subject of my museum that fills you with such unwarranted confidence? One might expect to be safe in a museum dedicated to religious icons -- that is, if one were ignorant of our true nature, relying on modern novels to supply knowledge, claptrap by Anne Rice, those Edward books, and all those “rom-coms,” as I believe they are called, with the vampire as the seductive hero, charming and handsome with a heart of gold. Idiots.