Chapter 5b

I traded in the BMW for a Porsche, and through the Internet I kept in touch with the world in order to be current on the latest developments. Wealth also allowed me to upgrade my equipment even further and I was able to hack into secured areas. Some of the things I learned about our politicians were startling to say the least, but I wasn't concerned with all that. Politics did not interest me nor did the affairs of men. Time and transformation had made me something different. I stood apart from the herd. I was the hunter and they the hunted. I was human in form only. Human affairs did not concern me as long as they did not impinge on my comfort and well-being. Yet, for all my indifference, I still strove to develop a set of ethics and examine my feelings and attitudes towards breathers. Since we fed on them, it wouldn't be illogical to regard them as cattle. The more I thought about it, though, the more I came to understand that that would have been a dangerous miscalculation. Intelligent beings aren't cattle and given the right circumstances they can be as dangerous as any vampire.

I reminded myself that much of my success where feeding was concerned depended on stealth and subterfuge. I also concluded that because my survival depended on the taking of blood, this very act was also responsible for shaping my attitudes towards those that sustained my existence. Something in me was repelled by the idea of taking of blood for its own sake. It was centred on the old homily about 'eating to live and living to eat'. The idea of becoming a creature that drank blood to assuage its lust for blood was abhorrent. I realised that I needed to safeguard myself from becoming a thing that was driven by a ravenous lust for blood.

After much self-examination I realised that compassion was the safeguard that prevented an intelligent, reasoning life form from becoming a mere leech. If I could feel compassion for those deserving of it I would not fall into the trap of regarding breathers as so much cattle. Perhaps the death of all emotion is true death. Perhaps those that followed the Dark Path had expelled all emotion from their cold hearts. In them, the expulsion of emotion was replaced by appetite in every sense of the word.

Then there was the acquisition of knowledge. The constant pursuit for knowledge was a vampire's salvation from the ennui of long life and the corruption of immense power. As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even a vampire doesn't need the stigma of being absolutely corrupted. That was the trap into which the Dark Ones fell and I did not need to go down that road. Therefore I strove to temper my vampiric nature with compassion and to pursue a thorough and in-depth study of all things vampiric. Knowledge is the key to true understanding.

Thus began my studies of the occult and the history of the nosferatu on which very little true literature exists. I began to collect books on the occult from every source imaginable, often travelling to other lands in my quest. It was in Hungary that I discovered The Book. I found it in a dingy little shop in Budapest. It was written in First Speak and it was unspeakably old. Not even a human adept would recognise it for what it was. It was crudely illuminated in dull ochre and rusty hues. The contents in that book were written in faded hieroglyphs, utterly incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't literate in First Speak. Naturally, the bookseller couldn't make head or tail of it. First Speak has seventy-two alphabets. There are eight different ways of pronouncing the vowels alone but thankfully the consonants remained constant. It's millenniums older than Sanskrit. In fact, the Sanskrit alphabet is a simplification of the First Speak alphabets.

I developed this skill, learning all the various true names of things during my sojourn in the hills overlooking Kojali. Odali insisted that I learn to read and write in First Speak. As I said before, knowing the true names of things is the foundation to magical ability.

I flipped through the pages in a careless manner. It would have been foolish to show the book seller I was really interested in that book.

He had brought out the book when I asked him if he had anything on the occult on his shelves. I don't think he realised the true value of the book. He must have thought I was a tourist who dabbled in magic. This was an opportunity to foist the book on a naïve tourist. I did not disabuse him of his preconception.

"Real skin," the bookseller whispered conspiratorially as he stood beside me.

"You don't say," I replied blandly. "Whose skin?"

He gave me a dark look and shrugged, making a move to take the book back. I moved it out of his reach and held on to it.

"What language is this?" I asked innocently. He shrugged his shoulders and again tried to take the book back. Apparently my flippant approach put him off. I again moved it out of his reach.

"OK I'll take it. It would make an interesting addition to my collection. It would be like having a souvenir from Dachau." I grinned evilly at him. He replied with an equally evil grin. He named a ridiculously high price. I shook my head and countered with one ridiculously low.

"I'm taking it for the skin, man," I growled growing irritated. My eyes had begun to glow. They usually do when I get irritated. The old Hungarian shuddered and agreed at once. Hungary might not be Transylvania but the countries aren't too far apart.

It was about this time that I discovered I needed fresh sustenance only once or twice a week and I usually took it from females. There's something about women that attracts me. They're made the right way. In that matter the Creator was on the ball. The problem with women is in their nature. They have an over-supply of vindictiveness, with extra helpings of malice and so forth. It would seem that vindictiveness, malice and the propensity for revenge are somehow more concentrated in them than in males. I'm not saying that men were made picture perfect. What I'm saying is that women have a higher concentration of those traits than men. It probably has something to do with their physical limitations. To offset man's brutish strength they have to pack a little more venom, in a manner of speaking. Their bite had to be worse than their bark. Notice, too, that men tend to bark more. Get a woman really mad at you and she'll smile and start stirring strychnine into your tea.