I stood bathed in blood, clinging tightly to the young woman I had brought with me, a large gash torn into her throat. I drank down her lifeblood as it flowed out in ever weakening spurts. Some would call me a monster if they saw me in such a state, but some might call me a bibere sanguinem… actually no one alive would call me that, it had been many years since anyone who would understand that had met me. Put simply I am what modern people would call a vampire, a drinker of blood, an immortal hunter of the night.

Some fools have gotten it into their head that we could resist the call of blood and feed on animals. I tried that once, I threw up for hours afterwards, it doesn’t work. Do not believe those horrible lies. A fledging vampire will burst into flames when touched by sunlight, a vampire must feed on human blood to survive, and we aren’t dark mysterious lovers who have a heart of gold. No, true vampires are things of nightmares for humanity, creatures that hunt them in the night when they believe they are safe and at the top of their food chain.

Allow me to introduce myself before I get too far gone, I am one Tullius Maximus Gaius, though I do allow my modern friends to call me Max. I was human once, many centuries ago. To give a hint at how long ago, I served in Julius Caesar’s Legion when he marched into Gaul as an equites tribune. I am older than the calendar, older than Christianity.

However, I have lost my original point, the woman in my arms, I do not even remember her name. I had met her at a club with some absurd name, and convinced her to come to my manor, it wasn’t very hard. I did not even need to employ any of my power. There were a couple of reasons I had chosen her, though I would be lying if I denied that the main reason was that she called me short. By modern standards I am just shy of being considered below average, standing at the American measured five foot nine inches.

As the blood slowed more and eventually stopped coming I dropped her body onto the stone floor. She would not rise as another vampire, there were requirements to transform a simple human into one of their own predators.

I kicked her body a little away from me as I looked down at myself. My white silk shirt torn when she had struggled during the initial bite and soaked in her blood, I would have to burn it. My slacks fared no better, they would join their counterpart, in fact I decided the entire outfit was a loss.

Looking around my foyer I shrugged slightly and stripped, grabbing my phone and wallet out of my pockets. I lived alone without hired help, I would have to clean up my own mess later. I dropped the bloody clothes leaving them in a pile on the floor as I walked up to one of the bathrooms to rise the blood off. Simply because I drink blood does not mean that I enjoy being covered in it.

Once I was rinsed off I toweled myself dry before going to change into a new set of clothing, a plain black t-shirt, and dark jean pants, forgoing shoes.

I passed by a mirror and looked at myself, mussing my shoulder length curly black hair out of my face into a presentable fashion. Oh yes, vampires can see themselves in mirrors. Sometimes a false myth protects better than supernatural strength and speed. My storm-gray eyes stared back for a moment before I decided I was acceptable and set about my task.

I wrapped the woman’s body in a large sheet of construction plastic to keep from dripping excess blood throughout my home and on the carpets. That’s why I killed her on the stone flooring of the foyer, easier to clean up. I carried her body out into the predawn darkness towards a woodchipper. Don’t give me that look, it’s actually a lot more efficient than anything else. Toss the body in, mulch it, and then mix it with wood mulch and shit, literal shit. Afterwards toss in a full bottle of ammonia and then the human police have a challenging time proving whether or not it was human or animal blood. Even more so if you toss in the occasional pig body to mix it with.

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With the woman properly mulched I tossed in a couple of logs and used a garden hose to spray off the blood. A good fertilizer, blood.

I walked over, taking my time as I raked the bloody mess together, tossing in manure to make it worse. It smelled something foul, but I had dealt with even worse things in my life. As I finished up I pushed it all into a pile to compost properly, waste not.

As I made my way back into the manor I looked up at the sun rising just over the horizon. I slammed the door before the rays could shine on me directly. I had not realized I had been outside for over an hour, time seeming to pass by so quickly the last few years. It would not be good to be caught outside during daylight.

Working a handful of switches blackout curtains all around the house began to fall. My distant neighbors all believed me to be an eccentric, I did nothing to dissuade them of this misperception. I sighed as I looked at the puddle of blood spreading slowly over the stones in front of me. I needed to clean that up.

‘Maybe I should create a new fledging to clean up around the place… though my last one was such a disappointment.’ I thought to myself as I gathered up absorbent rags from a small closet just off the foyer. A fledging would make it easier for me, but not all people were cut out to be a vampire. Especially modern folk, so squeamish they were, likely to starve themselves than feed on their one-time fellow mortals. I sighed as I worked to clean up the mess.

Once all the blood was soaked up in the rags I tossed them on top of my blood-soaked clothing. Next, I moved to gather chemicals to get rid of the blood including ammonia, but it wasn’t alone, the chemical cocktail I used would hide my crimes from investigators, I had been investigated several times over the years but had never been caught. Finally, I only had one chore left, I gathered up the blood-soaked clothing and rags into a bag and dumped them into the furnace in the basement.

‘All done, now let’s see what is on the news.’ I flopped down on a couch in my entertainment room, grabbing the remote controller for the television I turned it on.

“-rist attack in Berlin, leaving several dead and dozens wou-.”

“Boring.” I changed the channel to another news station.

“-Smith has a new lo-.”

“Gossip.”

“-reports of a strange new virus sweeping through the streets of London.” I sat up, this was new, I hadn’t heard of any new sicknesses recently. The last big scare was over two years ago, some new variant of the flu that quickly passed. “Those infected have become lethargic, unresponsive to any outside stimulus much like a coma patient but with signs of brain activity. Sources say that some have shown signs of violent behavior. So far there have been no confirmed deaths from this virus and steps have been taken to contain it.”

“Ha, contain a virus? That’s as possible as eating tomato soup with a fork.” A pain in the ass but if one worked hard enough it could be done. I spent a couple more hours watching the strange reports beginning to spread, the virus appeared to be some sort of weaponized virus that had been released in the city. All flights were grounded, and they were working to find those who had already departed.

I flicked off the tv and moved over to my computer. Slapping the space bar to pull it out of sleep mode I signed in and began to scroll through internet videos on one of the most popular sites out there. No, I was not looking up porn. I watched some of them and got a laugh, there were a few people who could take someone even as old as me off guard by their scripts.

Again, I spent several hours watching videos and laughing, then I watched some conspiracy theorist, laughing almost as hard as I did at the actual attempts at comedy. Then I ran across something that made me pause, a man claiming that he had witnessed a group of government agents capture a person who wasn’t a person, they moved too fast and were too strong to be human. And when the sun came up the not person caught fire before the agents smothered them and tossed them into a blacked-out van.

I looked the date of the video, it was almost three years old. It sounded like they witnessed the capture of a vampire. I had heard of orders and societies that sought to kill my kind, and others still that sought us out for knowledge, but never had I heard of one that captured us. I knew it would be very difficult to capture one of my kind. Even a newborn fledging could rip a stop-sign out of the ground, cement block and all. Why go through all that trouble just to capture a being that would do nothing but try and kill you once they woke?

I blew the video off, what good would it do to think about it now, three years after the supposed event. I locked my computer out of habit before jumping back to the couch and deciding I was going to sleep for a few days.