Chapter 10
I spent my first few years as a vampire laying low, doing whatever I had to do to survive and reading as much as I could without raising suspicion.
I started with folklore (Portuguese, Slavic, Polish, Irish, Egyptian, Romanian, Albanian, you name it), then moved on to poems like The Giaour and The Bride of Corinth, a few short stories and then novels like The Vampyre and Carmilla, among others.
It didn’t take long to figure out nobody knew what the hell was going on.
Stake through the heart, they said. Fire. Silver. Garlic. Bollocks.
But I just kept reading, kept thinking: Someone must know. One of these books must hold the key. I just have to find it.
They didn’t.
Instead, the more stories I read, the more confused I became—each seemed to contradict the last. I mean, did I really bring the plague? Should I invest in a coffin? And what the fuck was up with the bats?
In fact, the only thing every story did agree on was vampires were really bloody hungry. It was a hunger that, in the end, would win out over everything else. A hunger I’d seen play out in real time with Hans. A hunger that made us kill; made us . . . bad.
I wasn’t bad, was I? I’d done bad things, but I felt guilt.
I had a conscience. I’d tried to save that boy.
Ever since Hans, I’d lived off blood from hospitals or choked down animal blood, even though it was revolting, did very little for me, and was not without its own moral quandaries.
And it’s not like I’d chosen to be this way.
Honestly, I identified with the humans in the stories I read far more than the so-called vampires. Who the hell was writing them? And where were they getting their information?
It was like reading the worst review of yourself from all angles, some of it lies, some of it truths you don’t want to rehash. And you can only hear bad things about yourself so many times before you start to accept them as truth . . . as inevitable.
So, I made a choice.
If I was going to be stuck here on this earth for eternity, with no god, no others like me, and no real guidance, I couldn’t leave my fate up to chance. I couldn’t keep looking outside of myself for answers. I would need to decide for myself.
Who did I want to be?
To be honest, it was a lot simpler to define who I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be someone who elicited the look of terror I’d seen in that boy’s eyes. I didn’t want to be a monster, like the vampires I’d read about. I didn’t want to be a vampire at all.
And thus, with the aid of a circle of salt, some blood from a butcher and a candle (I don’t know, I just wanted to make it feel official), I vowed that no matter how hungry I got, I would not do harm.
I would not give in to my darkness. I knew I couldn’t feed off humans nicely because once I started, I couldn’t stop and someone always died—so I wouldn’t feed off them at all.
I would find a way to accept my grim fate gracefully.
And even though I couldn’t remember who I’d been as a human, I would hold on to my humanity with everything I was.
But to do that, I needed to turn away from vampires altogether.
I lost myself in human stories instead. In these, I found everything I yearned for, but was denied, in life.
Hope. Warmth. Positive outcomes. Happiness.
Meaning. Purpose. Fragility. The poetry of a ticking clock and moments that passed and could never be retrieved.
In short, the trimmings of mortality. And most of all, love.
True love.
The kind of love that was intoxicating and fated, that while always complicated, always requiring sacrifice and a fight, and always coming with a hefty dose of pain, would always win out in the end.
The kind of love where you are never too little and never too much, where someone sees every part of you—darkness and all—and loves you anyway. The kind of love that changes you.
I confess, I still cheated on my promise to turn away from vampire stories.
I watched vampire movies, read vampire books, and woke up early to get to the library before it closed so I could pore over folklore.
I’m drawn to the darkness just as much as anybody else, probably more so.
And I still wanted answers. But these forays into the dark side always left me in even more despair.
Even more certain that I did not, under any circumstances, want to be a vampire.
Honestly, it wasn’t until the likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and True Blood and others that came after them that I found representation of vampires .
. . like me. Vampires who had clung to their humanity, vampires with souls, and consciences—vampires with love stories that were much like those in the human stories I adored.
Vampires that were almost human. I mean, they weren’t all good, but some of them were, and that was enough for me.
They made me feel seen, less strange. Less terrified of myself. Less alone.
But in the real world, it’s always been just me, alone.
Friends have always been transient. Aside from Freddie, there’s been no romance to speak of.
And aside from Hans, the only other vampire I’ve ever met was some sulking guy I happened upon by chance in the 1990s, in Berlin.
But he left the bar without even saying goodbye when I told him that I only drank from the bag.
Mainly, I’ve told myself this was a blessing in disguise, at least I’d never fall prey to the darkness through peer pressure.
But every year on the fifth of May, I have commemorated my vampire birthday with a sad little candle in a cupcake I do not eat. And, every year, without fail, there is one specific vampire I have yearned for, despite myself. Who am I kidding, I’ve thought of him daily.
My sire—the one who made me this way.
Even though it appeared that he’d abandoned me, in my more vulnerable moments I’d think: What if .
. . What if I was being unfair to him? What if he’d been kept from me?
Kidnapped, or buried in cement? What if he’d been looking for me this whole time?
I’d let myself imagine us meeting again, that feeling of warmth, of understanding, feeling protected, like it wasn’t just me against the world alone anymore—I’d imagine myself hearing the reasons for his absence, feeling the pure relief of realising I wasn’t unlovable after all.
But then I’d think about Hans and Count Orlok from Nosferatu and Lord Ruthven from The Vampyre or Count Dracula and that would snap me back into reality.
What if my maker was a monster like them?
I mean, that would be just my fucking luck.
Aside from which, where would I even find him?
For a long time, I did nothing. I just waited for the wondering, the longing, to stop. But I’ve watched the moon rise and set 55,016 times now and I still think of him, wonder about him.
So, two years ago, I decided it was finally time to look for him.
Because, with the advent of the internet, I could now search anonymously from the safety of my flat, which was a lot safer than putting a ‘wanted’ ad in a local newspaper or anything else available to me before.
If I found him, and he turned out to be bad, I would simply go on with my life and pretend I didn’t know.
But if he was good, like me—which was possible—I would no longer be alone.
Of course, this was all before I met Jonathan, because once he came into my life, I didn’t need anyone else.
But that’s how, after multiple false starts—TikTok videos by supposed vamps; Reddit threads; meet-up groups run by healthy-looking men named Craig or Geoffrey and attended by humans in latex with coloured contact lenses; weeks wrangling with Tor only to realise the dark web is bullshit—a cautious little vampire like me ended up here. On this VHC website.
Because what better way to find a vampire than to start chatting to a bunch of vampire hunters?