I have remained in silence and solitude for nearly three hundred of my years, leaving my quiet home in New Orleans only to feed. There is a certain measure of fear that follows me in these ventures, now. It is not that I shall be discovered by the mortal kind- this has already been guaranteed by my outcry in this electronic manner. It is that I shall love again. That I shall desire the adoration that I have taught myself for the past centuries to detest. For it is not out of dislike that I kill, but out of sheer love. Love, for the one that dies by my hand, and the desire to experience them in the most intimate way that I know. My feelings remain hidden, though, behind a regality that was passed to me by the man who began my eternity.

~ ~ ~

His name was Chancus. Chancus Ambanca, a name whose origin I have neither bothered nor cared to trace. The time was also 1621, and we lived on the family homestead in France. All I know is that, prior his destruction, he was the eldest known. He picked me for reasons I do not know. I was not an extraordinary birth. I was the middle child of a family of five children, a wretched and sickly mother, and a drunken father. They were never violent. Merely ignorant of us. I grew up on my own for the most part, despite the care of one servant named Martha, who made perfectly obvious the burden it was to keep me tidy. When she was not cooking or attending to the rest of her chores, she tried to teach me to be a lady. She reminded me every day that it would be a day soon that my father should come out of his drunken spell and arrange a marriage, and that I should be duly ready to take on the responsibility that a wife would marr. I learned to cook reasonably, clean reasonably, sew reasonably, and, above all, adore my brothers, who were, merely for genitalia, somehow superior to myself. I grew into this philosophy easily as any impressionable child would, and soon grew into an equally impressionable debutante, ready for marriage by society's standards. My coming out party was where I met the world. It was where I met Chancus, as well. It was nearing eight in the evening, and the sun had well hidden itself beneath the hills. He introduced himself to my father as Lord Louis des Pres, son of some wealthy French baron. My father's whiskey-bent eyes immediately perked when the Lord told him that he had an interest in me.

"A pretty one, she is, for sure," Chancus said in his French accent. It was the first strange thing that hit me. His accent was, no doubt, genuine, but strange all the same, for it was an accent that carried a weighty age to it, not like the accents of the current French, which were much lighter. It was an accent that seemed to bear a burden of sorts at the same time. He was handsome creature himself, with long, dark hair, pulled back at the base of his head. His skin was smooth and white, and he had the most striking eyes I had ever seen on a person. They were a chocolatey brown and seemed eternal with depth, except for a sort of longing at the very end of the tunnel.

He took my small hand in his, brought it to his mouth, and kissed it gently. My father beamed through his enebriation. I bowed my head courteously to him, but he put his hand beneath my chin and raised it so that we were once again eye to eye.

"Yes. So pretty. So very pretty. . ." he trailed off and I could see that he was studying my features, causing a blush to appear on my cheeks. He chuckled at this.

"So unused to praise, are you? So sad."

At this comment, I straightened myself and replied, "Praise is not where the discomfort comes from directly, my lord, but your own forwardness in giving it to one whom you barely know." He was surprised at my speaking, I could tell, but not in a manner that caught him at a loss, something that I sensed to be nearly impossible to do. The tension between us had, though, become more eased with this showing of wit on my part.

He then took my hand and led me into the courtyard. The moonlight danced back and forth through the tree branches and over his face as I looked at him. The summer air was sweet with the season's flowers that graced the dirt path on which we traveled. Our pace began to slow when we were well out of sight of the house. He turned to me, and broke the silence that had been controlling the two of us for the entire journey.

"Tell me, my pretty one, what is your name?" he said to me and smiled. For the first time, I could see the two pearly fangs. A slight gasp hung on my tongue, but I caught it before it escaped.

"Coletta. Coletta de Fantaine," I replied, trying to maintain the look of comfort that I had previously held.

"A pretty name," he said to me, "Tell me, Coletta, would you like to live forever?"

A laugh escaped my lips before I could contain it. I looked up at him, but his eyes maintained the same firm and serious edge that they had the entire journey to this point. It seemed as if the words would never come, but finally I edged out, "How do you mean by this?"

No sooner did I let this phrase go than he had me in his arms. They were strong and muscled beneath his frock coat, and wrapped easily around my waist with room to spare. He held me tight to him and began to kiss me, my lips, my cheeks, my forehead, and working his way down to my neck. The pure rapture in his lips made me issue a light moan and fall completely into his grasp, leaving his arms to support me. It was then that the twinge of pain stabbed through the ecstacy. Before I knew it, I was grapling to him, not for pleasure but strength as he was slowly sucking at my neck. The world around us faded in and out of my vision, and I felt light. Eventually, our surroundings faded from my vision and it became just the two of us, locked together. I could hear his heartbeat pounding in my ear, synchronizing with my own fading one. It was then that I began to feel distant, detached. It was also then that he let me go. My body clattered to the ground in a heap of gowns and flesh. But I couldn't even feel the fall. He then leaned down to me and whispered, "Do you wish to live or die?"

My body began to seize up in pain. I could feel the death close to me now. It was taking hold. In all of this, I gasped, "Please. . . don't let me die." I felt his presence close above me. He had sat down next to my tortured frame, and begun to stroke my head. I opened my eyes and saw his shape above me, but the tears from the anguish obstructed me from picking out any clear shape. He picked me up and cradled me with his one arm. I heard him whispering soft French into my ear. Then, I felt warm droplets on my lips.

"Drink. . ." he whispered to me. I did as he ordered. Above my lips, I grappled onto the wrist on which he had made a large gash. I clamped to him and felt the life surging through me. A kaliedescope of beautiful colors filled my vision. My senses magnified, and suddenly the world around us seemed huge. I could hear the breath of every bird, even conversations back at my home. But at the same time that all of this was happening, I was generally oblivious to it. I merely concentrated on the life-giving nourishment that I suckled from Chancus' arm. All too soon, though, I felt him pull from me. I tried to hold on, but before I could comprehend the happening, he had pull completely from my grasp and was standing above me. I looked up at him with a childlike wonderment in my eyes, and he soon reached down and guided me to my feet.

"And how do you feel, my darling?" he asked, resting his hands gently on my shoulders. I hardly noticed this now. My entire world had changed. I gazed around through eager new eyes. Everything had changed, though I knew not how to explain it.