Chapter 151 - Interlude part 3

I do not sleep in a coffin, but I'm sure you've already deduced that, you should know me well enough by now. Some vampires do. Even in this day and age. It is a specious affectation, an ironic nod to the superstitions that have always surrounded our kind. I've never been one to put on airs, however. I have no delusions about my place in the grand scheme of creation. A bizarre mutant leech, that is all I truly am, but that doesn't mean that I don't pamper myself.

I sleep in a sumptuous four poster bed, a great custom-made bier of cherry and oak, with hand-carved columns and thick draperies of deepest red interwoven with gold threads. I commissioned the bed when I moved to Liege in the early 1900's, and I paid the craftsman lavishly when I saw the work that he had done for me. The columns are decorated with reliefs of leaping animals and delicate foliage, very detailed, in a swirling art nouveau style, which I find intriguing and lovely.

After leaving my captive so abruptly, I retired to my bedchamber. I snatched off my clothing and sought refuge in my covers. The room was dark and quiet, the thick drapes filtering out not just the light of the sun but the sounds of traffic from the street below. Despite the comfort of my dark, warm bed, however, I found that I could not sleep. I was too angry.

I was angry with my captive. Angry at his presumptuousness. And I was angry with myself, that I had allowed the mortal to upset me.

You should kill him now! I said to myself. He has begun to sniff out your schemes. If you allow this farce to continue, he may find some advantage.

He might be a mortal, but you cannot underestimate his intellect. He is every bit the predator that you have accused him of being, and you are not half as invulnerable as you like to portray yourself. He has already guessed part of your plans. You know it is only a matter of time before he discerns the rest!

Plans? I argued with myself. What plans?

I was lonely, that much was true. And I had allowed this wicked mortal to live, so far, because of that loneliness. All the rest was a jumbled mess of longings and half-formed strategies, a catalogue of what-ifs and do-I-dares. My mind pursued a faint possibility-- helplessly, against my will-- but my intrigues were a hopelessly elaborate house of cards, one that would collapse at the removal of any piece.

My captive mortal could no more guess my ultimate goal than he could conceive of some way to take advantage of my desires, I consoled myself. The fool actually believed I was sexually attracted to him! Alas, for him, all paths save one led to his destruction.

And only if I dared to try again.

My thoughts circled the prospect, a hungry fish eyeing a worm. It knew the worm dangled from a hook. It could see the bright, shining barb… but the meal was so tempting!

An end to this unceasing existence.

I have tried so many times before! I won't bore you by enumerating the methods of self-destruction I have experimented with over the eons. I've already told you how I've thrown my body from great heights, tried to drown it in the sea, burned it with fire and acids, poisoned it with man's deadliest drugs and nature's most lethal venoms. I have sent the cells of my flesh to the most advanced medical research facilities on the globe, hoping their scientists, and the tireless computers they man, might unlock the secret of my annihilation. I never sent a sample of the Strix, the living black blood that animates my flesh. No, never that! For the sake of the world! Only a scraping of my cold, white flesh. All I ever received back from them was a listing of my flesh's elemental components—complex structures of carbon and silicon—and inquiries begging me to divulge the origin of the material that I'd sent to them. Or more of it. In all my time here on Earth, I have only ever seen a true immortal like myself destroyed once, and replicating the circumstances of it are hopelessly impossible.

And yet...

Perhaps there is another way.

Thinking of death, I drifted into darkness.