“Are these the eyes you ‘dare not meet in dreams’?” I ask the boy. The English undergrad stops trying to squirm out from under the delicate sole of my Ferragamo sliders and looks to his bag. Before the effects of a bad trip made him want to beat me, he had been studying at the library. I know because I had been there too. “You seem surprised. I know my Eliot.” I laugh softly. I have seen their surprise before. I feel my tongue catch on my left canine and that quickly ends my laughter. I can tell he notices my change in demeanor. “I only bothered to memorize the ones about death, though. I had to focus most of my schooling on kicking ass.” He doesn’t get the joke and it pains me. I remember when they were intelligent, when reminders of mortality didn’t strike them dumb. I remember so much that will never return. I am glad that some of it cannot.

I smooth back my hair and lick the bruise on my lip. Blood rushes to heal broken flesh and soon the skin of my face, too, has been made flawless. A dark lock of hair falls apart from the rest and scrapes along my cheekbone. I remember the last night of my life as if it was happening this instant. My uncle had promised me the use of his boat so that I might steal my girl away from her overprotective parents for a night. They did not approve of my accent. She loved it the way that women here in America love it. She had begged me to sail across to Morocco without stopping, but I was not reckless. I also had more in mind than simply sailing. We dropped anchor off of a small island not far from Gibraltar. It was little more than a rock, but the skies were open above us and it felt safer to be near land than in the middle of the sea. I had always opted for safer.

When my uncle took me into his crew, it had been rough. I grew up quickly and coarsely, but I had no choice. I caroused as well as the rest of the sailors on board, but I was never one of them. My father had been an aristocrat, my uncle told me. My blood was too rich for the life he had in mind. When we reached Spain, I found other jobs. I worked as a deckhand on the beautiful vessel of a wealthy but perverse monsignor. I fell in love with the ship until he fell in love with me. He soon had convinced me to work as a servant in his home. He thought the salt air and constant exposing was aging me too quickly. I was at first drawn to the pay and then to the ladies of the villa. They are all dead now, but they were beautiful then. And they taught me pleasures I never could learn from my master. They taught me many other things as well: poetry, music, dance, and a love of mischievous wit to name a few. But they were soft and only knew the domestic arts. It was a merchant’s daughter, Francesca, who taught me what I would need to survive: bargaining, how to manage my money, making a quick getaway, and deception. Kicking ass came later.

Francesca and I had made love at sunset and lay naked in each other’s arms on the prow of my uncle’s boat as the stars began to shine. The moon was high but it was almost empty, providing very little light. A scraping sound roused me from my foggy reverie. I could feel that the night was cool now, too cool to be so exposed. I began to draw in the anchor when I saw that we had drifted toward the rock and bumped against it with every wave. It was beginning to ruin the finish. My uncle would be angry for sure. I turned back toward Francesca to ask her to help, but I could not see her. I am glad that it was so dark. I do not wish to have that image burned into my mortal soul. It was bad enough the next night when I saw her ruined body through undead eyes.

I was aware of my monstrous new existence almost as soon as I awoke that night. Shortly after the sun had set the next evening, I opened my eyes to darkness. It was all I could remember from the night before, darkness and laughter. And fear of course. I thought it was that night and that I lay trapped beneath living shadows on the prow of my uncle’s boat, but it was not shadow that trapped me. It was rock. I gasped for breath, but no breath came. It did not need air, but I would also find none, trapped as I was at the bottom of the sea. It was determination and the power of my vampiric blood that saved me from spending an eternity in a watery grave. I escaped from that nightmare of a fate and swam quickly to the surface. I was on-board and crying tears of blood over Francesca’s mutilated body when I heard scraping against the side of the boat. It was not a rock but the fingers of the fiend I would later understand to be my sire. I smelled the spicy sweetness of his blood across the length of the boat and was on him almost as soon as he stopped smiling.

The Beast already knew what I had yet to learn. I took the life of my weakened sire with a ferocity I have yet to encounter again. As I drank his lifeblood, I could taste the floral blush of Francesca’s spirit. I cried over her body again before I pushed it into the sea and let the creatures of the deep erase what had been done to her. The fiend I left exposed on the deck of the boat, although I had already killed him and consumed his soul. I had no idea then that I had broken a covenant, but I would do it again if my Beast did not beat me to it this time.

“I sent your picture to my girlfriend,” the junkie finally sobers up enough to say. I had blocked him out of my mind while he babbled in fear under my foot. He had looked ready to vomit, but now he props himself up on his elbows and then against debris in the alleyway. “She’ll find you.”

I watch him fumble with his shirt, but too little of it remains to be of use to his modesty.

“She has connections,” he stammers. He tries to put away his phone, but I am soon on top of him, a knee in his withering crotch. The phone clatters to the ground and I worry that he will piss himself and ruin my pants. They’re new, to me, and I find it troublesome to replace my clothes these days. I never know what will last more than a few months. I trust that to the fashionable men I take them from.

“Via via,” I say. I want him to tell her and for her to tell her friends and them to tell theirs until finally the connection is made. I trace a finger along his bare stomach and across a sensitive nipple. He cannot help but laugh, but the terror returns to his eyes as my fingers move to his chin and my hand covers his neck. I could break it, but it would accomplish nothing. Sweat breaks at his hairline and I can smell the poisonous taint of drugs. Every enforcer of the law says to cut off the supply. But it’s a class war they’ll always deny. But just cutting off demand is futile. Better to breed fear and distrust, let the well poison itself. Let the sheep learn some self-respect.

“It won’t do you any good,” I whisper into his ear, ending the sentence with a lick to the base of his ear.

He moans despite himself.

“The photo, I mean. Don’t get too distracted now. After all, I’m just a figment of your imagination.”

“Why me?”

“Drugs kill.” I bite into the artery of his neck and taste the bitter tang of heroin. It feels like acid boiling down my throat, but he could use a little detox. I know the last thing he will see will be my body melting into shadows as they paint phantasmal horrors along the brick of the alleyway.

Unsteady on my own feet now, I leave him to his nightmares. It is better this way, better that he seems to learn on his own. Life has so many lessons and there are so many teachers. I am but one of them and there are many worse. The Mob may find that another nightmare has cut off a small segment of their demand, but it is hard to find one shadow in the middle of the night.