Chapter 3: The Angel of Death

I had no fear for my life. If he had wanted to kill me, he would have already. I realized that the warm feeling I had been getting was him feeding on me, but I was confident in my assessment that he wouldn’t make me his next victim. He wanted me to panic, to flee, and leave him, but I couldn’t. Instead, I leaned forward and embraced him. He became very shocked at my reaction.

“Who made you the way you are?” I asked.

“I have never told this story before,” he said, as he sat down. “But I have rehearsed this over and over in my head, at least a hundred times. I was born in 1863 to Harold Dean Hunter and Elizabeth Anne Hunter. My parents were very wealthy, and we lived in a rich neighborhood in New York. A nanny raised me. My mother had a terminal illness, and the doctors could find nothing to ease her pain. My father couldn’t stand to be at home and see his wife dying, and she would rather he wasn’t there too, so he spent most of his time at work or at the tavern. When my mother died in 1869, my father hung himself. After that, I was raised in a foster home until I was eighteen. I was given my inheritance, which had collected a lot of interest in twelve years. I gave my foster family some of the money and then moved back into my birth home.

“I lived on my own for a long time, working hard and investing my money wisely. I fell in love with my neighbor’s cleaning girl. She was the oldest child in her family, and all of the money she earned went to help feed her brothers and sisters. Her name was Antoinette, and she had the most beautiful brown eyes. She always wore her hair up, covered by a scarf. I walked her home one evening, and she had told me about her family, how her mother was not well, and how her sisters worked in a fabric mill for very little money, and her brothers shined shoes in the square. I lavished her with gifts: clothes made with silks from the Orient, perfume from France, jewels from all corners of the world, most of which she probably pawned for much-needed things, and I wouldn’t have minded. We would walk along the boardwalk every night, and then I would drive her home in my car.

“One night, I parked by the river and just sat there looking at the stars until I dosed off. I was awakened with a violent shake of the car, and a figure pounced on me and began feeding. When I was to the brink of death, my assailant looked at me, and it was my lovely Antoinette. She was in shock at what she had done and sat on the seat weeping. She didn’t want me to die, so she fed me on her blood and gave me immortality. She ran off into the night, and I never saw her again, but I never really looked for her either. I thought it would be too painful for her.