"You might be wondering how I even got to these cursed streets. It wasn’t long before Spain was feeling the effects of the Great War. With the Race to the Sea, even the Mediterranean was starting to feel hot. The little city on the Rock had become my new home. Gibraltar was a governmental nightmare even before the War, but with Britain distracted, I had more than bumbling bobbies to contend with. My people, or rather, people from my country, were slowly moving into every port city as part of new allegiances. At first I was glad to see the sorts of beauties I knew from back home. I even romanced a few in the early months of 1915. But then I got carried away and the family started talking. Ten girls in ten weeks all seduced by the same devil? I thought I was invincible. It turned out I was careless. I moved away from the bustle of the town and the girls’ angry fathers.

"One night a recently widowed young Sicilian found me asleep in a cave off the beach. She thought I was the monster who had killed her husband. I wasn’t. I almost never killed, even in those early nights. I couldn’t tell her that. I could barely run away, drugged as I was by daytime. She held a cross up to the sky as if to exorcise me. I would have laughed were the sun not burning away my flesh. My shadow even tried to outrun me to the sea. I barely found underwater shelter before I blacked out. I was lucky to have fed the night before, else I wouldn’t have survived.

"I soon awoke again in the dark embrace of the night, but I was in no shape for seduction. Over the next few nights I fed off of fish, slowly regaining my strength and my delicate complexion. One night I even made love to an octopus. Its ink was playful compared to mine. The blood eventually attracted sharks, but I enjoyed our dance. It filled me better than tuna. I think sometimes I know how the wild ones must feel, the ones who hide in the woods outside of the city. But there are dangers there far greater than a mako shark. There are dangers now everywhere.

"I found the woman on her walk home from an evening Mass. She recognized me from the cave but we got past that. I had taken enough of her blood that she was unsure of her emotions. She cried because she felt she was sinning against the ghost of her husband. I told her no woman but Mary could resist the Devil. She believed me and died with a clear conscience. But her memory still haunts me. I feel her lurking in the walls of my veins, when I have gone too long without nourishment. There are so many lurking there.

"Eventually I left the Rock and came to America. I began the journey by swimming. I was so confident in those nights and loved the feel of the ocean waves against my body. I had no idea how far it was and how little lay between me and my destination. After the third night I found a passenger liner just setting out on its voyage. I tagged along and made my way on board. At first I played at sailor. I had loved that life, but this boat was nothing like those I had worked on, and there were too many logistics to manage, too many minds to constantly alter. I found a lonely bachelor and joined him for the night. I kept him in my thrall until we reached New York. It was easier to fool one man than a hundred. I took my leave of him and he cried. I saw him over the years in the city, at bars and clubs and eventually speakeasies. He asked me once how I always stayed so young. I laughed and kissed his lips before drinking from his blood for the last time in a brothel. I had too many souls to enchant to be so tethered. The Twenties more than simply roared.

"I had left the world of the living to its nuclear anxieties more than ten years before he finally saw me again, in the autumn of 1957. I had not feared the eternal winter they threatened, but I shuddered to think of the explosions that would cause it. I had found sanctuary in the Atlantic and slept for years, but the blood of New York was calling to me once more. After a performance of Carmen, I received a letter complimenting me on my voice. He wrote that he wished he had heard it when we were alone those first nights on the ship. He would not have minded falling in love with a demon had I always been so sweet. He would leave everything to me when he died. I only needed to claim it. I was not sure what “it” exactly was.

"The letter was not threatening, but it was enough that I traded in my arias for rock ‘n’ roll. I did not care that he might see me again at the opera, but I knew I needed a younger, more forgetful crowd if I wanted to perform. The club managers always wanted to publicize with photos, but I told them I was like Dorian Gray – they had to paint me, and they did. It was a good gimmick, but as the rebels’ decade came to a close, I knew it was a dead end. In the 1979, video killed the radio star, but in 1963, the Polaroid camera had already killed me.

"I fled to Boston, another harbor city with enough de Lucas and Maximilianos to not stand out. No one knew what to make of my disappearing act, on-stage as well as off-. The photographs my fan had taken caused a scandal, but they didn’t trace it back to what I was. Some thought I was an alien, or a ghost, others a holograph, as if I had stepped out of the future. My guess was that Michaela, future Prince of New York knew otherwise, so I ran.

"There are many things in my 120 years of which I am not proud, but running isn’t one of them. My twenty years of work with The Family is. At first I justified it, the way I justify my existence every night, but then even selfish interests showed me the error of my ways. When every girl I kissed bled more than one opiate and half the boys carried a plague, I knew the world was going to Hell. I joined up with a motley crew of unbelievable types on the Atlantis – a few like me and even some witches and wizards. It’s been as many years since I left the family business, but I still feel gratitude when I cut off some of their supply or frighten away demand. They’re after me. I know that. And soon I’ll have to run again, probably real soon. Until these waters get too hot again, though, I’ll do what I can. What the Hell else can you do with eternity?"

I gently touch the blonde's cheek with the back of my hand and her eyes flutter up to me. At first she backs away from my touch, but then her blush warms us both. She looks down at my manicured fingers, such grooming as I now complete every evening that I plan to be in such company. We never had such needs when I was alive, but things are so different now, so vain. I love it. So does she. "What brings you here, beautiful?"

She hasn't heard any of what I have said, or at least she hasn't understood it. All she knows is that I have a beautiful accent and a hearty voice that makes her quiver when I speak Italian, or French, Portuguese, or most any other language. Maybe not Cantonese. She nuzzles against the underside of my neck and I stroke her hair while I lift her arm. She smells of lavendar and it turns my stomach, but I cannot fault her. How would she know that her natural scent is far more delectable to my refined sensibilities? I kiss my way along her arm until I reach her wrist. Then I drink.