How long had it been this way? Ageless though he looked and felt, mentally, spiritually he felt the centuries he'd lived. How long had he been this way?

A thousand years, he guessed. Too long. He could never be sure of his exact age; calendars were not commonly available when he was born. He stood, at the tower's edge, looking over the city below. New York City bustled and teemed with life, even now at the dim hours of pre-dawn, giving him pause to the marvel that was humanity.

He pondered humanity often, trying to decide if he missed it or loathed it entirely. Too often, lately, he had decided that he missed it more than he could fathom, causing him great suffering in his soul. If he could have a soul. He still wasn't entirely sure if it was possible.

He turned and strode away from the tower's edge and into the depths of the building itself, seeking out his bed in the darkened penthouse. In the morning, he decided, he'd have to take a trip to the country to seek out a man with whom he'd had a passing relationship since the man was young.

The man had been a violent youth, who had brutalized those he found different from himself, spent time in prison for his crimes, and returned to society much changed; for the better.

Prison had initially strengthened the man's prejudices, taught him new ways to commit evil, and given him reflexes and skills that only prison can give you, but he'd eventually figured out that the world was much bigger than all that. Subsequently, the man found spiritual enlightenment. The man found Buddha. Tom knew that the man would not let him down.

* * * * * It was early in the morning, not quite so late that the mists had burned away, when he found the man's home in the flat plains of Texas. He rolled his late model truck to a stop in front of the man's home, stepped from the cab, and made his way slowly to the front door. He paused a moment, considering one last time the correctness of his actions, and knocked solidly on the door. It opened.

The man stood there, his face grizzled with days old stubble, his breath stinking of whiskey, burning his visitor's nostrils even three feet away.

He swaggered a bit, eyes foggy, slowly taking in the figure in front of him.

Dimly, his eyes seemed to brighten, and his brows raised a bit, recognition dawning upon him.

"Is that you, Tom?" The words came hesitantly. The visitor nodded. Tom had been one of many names he'd taken over the years, and was as good as any other name he used.

"It's me, Clayton." Tom removed his dark black sun-glasses to further prove himself. "Can I come in?"

The two sat and talked for several minutes, politely bringing the other up to date on the few events that had transpired since they'd last met, each quietly sipping a beer. Although he was unable to taste the beer, Tom never turned down the gracious offerings of his hosts, feeling it ingracious of him at best. Finally the conversation turned to the reason for Tom's visit.

Tom drank his beer a bit, sitting in silence.

"Well," he began, thoughtfully, unsure if he should continue. "I decided to let you in on a secret of mine."

Clayton's eyebrows shot up as he moaned, reproachfully, "Aw Tom, don't tell me you're gay!" Relief crossed his face as Tom chuckled and shook his head.

"No, Clayton, much worse." Clayton's face registered confusion, as he tried to ponder what was possibly worse than homosexuality, which he'd been raised to believe was a sin punishable by death. Although the Buddha had no particular teachings Clayton had ever found on the subject, he still tended to hold with his rigid upbringing. Tom knew, from past experience that if he had said that he was homosexual, Clayton would have asked him to leave and severed all contact with Tom. It was still harsh punisment, but it was a far cry from the savage beatings he'd seen Clayon deliver in the past.

"You may not want to know." Tom drank his beer a bit. "Hell, you may not even believe me." He'd recited the speech a hundred different ways before, through similar situations. Clayton wasn't an especially close friend of his, and normally Tom wouldn't share his secret with the man, but this time was special.

"Tell me." Clayton's voice was almost hoarse. Tom recalled how violent Clayton had been as a youth, and then would not have thought twice about beating the man that sat before him into the proverbial bloody pulp. But oftener than not, these days, he knew that Clayton found himself alone and wondering if he hadn't been misguided in his findings and teachings. He and Tom had had long talks about this some years before, and he'd been pondering it ever since.

"Very well. I am a vampire." The last sentence rolled off his tongue, and he waited, gaguing the other man's reaction. Clayton sat in silence for a few moments, before bursting out into laughter and slapping his knee.

"That was a good one, Tom." He wiped a tear from his eye. "You had me going there for a second!" Tom waited until the laughter subsided, before continuing.

"I'm glad you find it amusing," more rehearsed lines. "But I'm finding immortality to be a colossal let-down." He stood and leaned over Clayton.

"I have chosen to impart to you the secret of immortality, of life itself, if you'll have it."

Tom's demeanor had changed, a presence that only age could bring.

Something that he'd previously held back rushed to the front of his being, and it was clear to Tom that Clayton believed him now. The two sat, eye to eye for a moment, before Clayton finally spoke.

"Why me?" His voice was barely a whisper, but Tom heard him clearly. "Why not someone more... deserving?"

"Because you," Tom poked a finger at Clayton. "Have much to learn and otherwise very little time to learn it, without my help. Becoming a Buddhist was a step in the right direction: It's primed you for the explanation of the process, and will make it easier for you to accept."

Tom stood and paced, considering where to begin.

"Once upon a time," he decided, figuring the old ways were probably still the best. "Only Buddhists and like-wise spiritual people ever became vampires. I myself was a Baal worshipper in early Anglund, but found myself easily able to accept the foreign principals." He had stood to pace the floor, and now turned to look at Clayton. "I am, by my best guesses, around nineteen-hundred and ninety-eight years old, give or take for errors in the Roman calendar." He pointed again to Clayton. "You, too, could live to see the wonders of the future, if you take me up on my offer." He waggled the finger back and forth. "But there are several conditions."

Clayton seemd to allow himself to follow along and entertain the notion that Tom was indeed a vampire.

"What conditions?" His voice was a bit firmer, though still filled with suspicion and doubt.

"First and foremost, you must kill me." He paused to let it sink in.

"Don't worry about a return to prison, or agony on my part. I assure you it's quite painless for you, and I... I will revel in the expierence. My body, being as old as it is, will immediately catch up to time. Likely I will turn into a pile of bones, or dust. I'm not sure, as no vampire has ever bothered to live more than a few hundred years." He turned from his pacing to again face the man.

"Why do I gotta kill ya, Tom?" Clayton frowned. Tom had been one of the few people that he could speak to honestly about religion, and they both knew that Clayton would be lost without a mentor.

"It's not a requirement, but a personal request." Tom rubbed his chin, wondering again if this was the right thing to do. He could stop it now, with a quick flick of his wrist and twist Clayton's neck. He'd done it before. No, he said firmly to himself, pushing the idea away.

"Secondly." He said, then paused to consider. "Secondly, you must not share your seceret freely. It was tried once, Clayton, and look at the image vampires have now." He sighed, his face betraying some of his age as he sat heavily in his chair again. "They become jealous and fearful, the humans.

They're xenophobic, no matter how hard they try not to be. They can't help it, and it's best you don't try. At least, not yet. Perhaps in a few hundred years you'll find that humans have evolved and actually begun being humane, but I'll leave you with the warning and your own judgement."

"Finally," his voice was almost weary. "I must explain the delicate balance of immortality." He himself had never bequeathed his gift to another soul, and now found himself breaking away from familiar thought-patterns. "If you want, I'll continue, if not, I'll leave and never disturb you again. It's your choice."

Clayton thought, for a moment, as Tom spoke again.

"I won't give you the knowledge unless you decide you want it, but I won't let you decide until I impart to you the facts as I know them to be true."

Silence grew between them. Finally, it was decided to continue.

"First, vampires don't need to drink blood."

"They don't?" Clayton's eye shone with curiosity. "I thought that that was what made 'em a vampire!"

Tom chuckled.

"I would never do such a thing to someone I've allowed in my good graces for such a long time." He said, with some dramatic flair. "Vampires, true vampires do not consume blood in any way."

"What do you eat, then?" Was the next question.

"In your sense of the word, I don't."

"C'mon, Tom," Clayton frowned. "Even vampires gotta eat. Every living thing has got to eat!"

"This is true," Tom smirked. "But I am not living. Nor dead. I simply exist."

"So how did vampires get associated with drinking blood?"

"Sexual deviation," Tom turned away, to look out the window, before drawing the curtain shut. Before Clayton could question further, he continued. "My kind exists slightly out of phase with reality, as best as I can explain it.

We are visible, we can be heard and touched and feel the most brute force, such as being struck by a car, but we are without intricate, delilcate feeling. We can not feel the caress of a lover, we cannot taste the sweetness of the water."

He leaned against the wall, hands thrust into the trouser pockets of his Levi's.

"As vampires grew in numbers in the dark ages, many were driven insane by the loss of these basic sensations." Clayton nodded as Tom spoke, gesturing for him to continue as he sipped the beer. "This often led to silly notions amongst my people, the foremost being that blood held mystical properties.

The theory was that blood was the essential life force, and if enough was consumed from a being, you'd inherit their feelings of taste and touch for a short while. The younger the blood, the longer the effect." He sighed and chuckled. "It was absurd, and I knew it, but it didn't prevent almost nightly killings of young peasant women for nearly a century. Women were thought to have more blood than men at the time. Little was understood about the human phisiology at the time."

"Did you ever try it?" Tom balked at the question for a moment, caught off-guard.

"No, of course not." He frowned. "I couldn't bring myself to kill anyone for any reason. Especially not for something as self-serving as that."

"Then how do you know for certain that it didn't work?"

"To be honest, I really have no proof." Tom said, with a quiet voice. "By the time the theory was presented, I'd already been a vampire longer than I'd been human. I'd forgotten what it all meant and felt like, and I couldn't relate to the explanations offered to me."

"So there's no proof either way?" Clayton asked, baitedly.

"True."

"So how do you turn other people into vampires, then?" Clayton smirked.

"I thought that they had to drink your blood."

"I'll tell you that later, Clayton." Tom said as he walked across the room and sat heavily in the chair again. "A few myths must be dispelled first."

"Which myths?" Clayton had discarded the beer, and was now sitting on the edge of the chair, completely engrossed in the conversation.

"Do you have a gun?" Tom say, by way of an answer.

"Of course, Tom. Why?" Clayton leered. "You gonna shoot me?"

"No," Tom grinned back. "You're going to shoot me."

Clayton frowned; the conversation had turned odd again, and he let Tom know. In short order, Tom had convinced Clayton that they would be alright, and that Tom was still sane, despite popular opinion. Finally, Clayton got up and returned with his Desert Eagle, holding it firmly by the grip and pointingly it directly at Tom.

"Aim for my heart, don't try to fudge the shot." Tom said firmly. "I want no mistake about the mortality of the wound."

Clayton hesitated, then raised the gun in front of him an arm's length away, taking careful aim.

"You're sure now, Tom?" He asked. "You can back out at any time, you know."

"Just shut up and shoot me!" Tom snarled. A split second later and Clayton had squeezed the trigger. The gun reported, and Tom pushed back against the chair as the bullet thuded softly with impact.

"Tom!" Clayton howled. "Tom are you alright?" He dashed across the room to Tom, who hadn't moved.

"Oh," said Tom weakly. "I forgot that those knock the wind out of you."

"You're okay?" Clayton's voice was timid.

"I'm fine." He said shortly. "I just didn't let all the air out. It was a shock to my lungs."

"I thought you said you couldn't feel anything?" Clayton frowned.

"Not with the tongue or skin," Tom smiled. "But my lungs still need air, and they will burn if I don't get any." After a moment, he fingered the hole that the bullet had made, expanding it a little as he reached thumb and forefinger in to remove the spent steel. "I haven't been shot since they made these things out of lead."

Tossing the bullet aside, Tom gestured for Clayton to take his seat. He sat back and rested his elbows on the armrests, bringing the finger-tips of each hand together.

"All that mythos about staking through the heart was invented by scared people, who needed a way to fight back." He rubbed his chest. "It does work to a small degree, staking. It causes enough discomfort to make the vampire want to lay down for awhile."

He continued to massage the bullet hole, which had scabbed over.

"Vampires have an accelerated healing factor. What takes a human a week to heal, takes a vampire around four minutes." He removed his hand, and the scab with it, revealing perfectly mended flesh. "The only way vampires can truely be killed is to remove it's heart from it's body."

Clayton leaned forward.

"Well, there are other ways."

"So what defense does a human possibly have against a vampire?" Clayton frowned. "Garlic? Holy relics?"

"Nuclear bombs." Tom smiled. "When the Allied Forces dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasake, several vampires living there at the time were killed at ground zero."

"Really?"

"Not even a vampire can stand up to a heat of that fury."

"So how did the myth about garlic and holy relics come about?"

"Garlic is fairly obvious, Clayton." He smiled. "A vampire has an accelerated sense of smell. Breath that bad has been known to bring my kind to tears."

"Holy relics?" Clayton asked.

"I'm not quite sure," Tom shrugged his shoulders. "The best I can tell is that some vampires, who had been commiting these murders, had been feeling bad about things. When people showed them the cross or the religious symbols, they'd get an intense feeling of guilt and leave." He rubbed his neck. "I'm sorry that I don't have all the answers. Only those that are affected by holy relics could ever tell you."

"Tom," Clayton began, after a few moments.

"Yeah?"

"Are there other vampires?"

Tom sighed and frowned.

"Not in anymor. For three hundred years, there haven't been more than fifty of us." He looked up at Clayton. "There was a large hunt organised against us, in the old country. They killed hundreds of us. The only ones that managed to survive were the old ones, such as myself. After centuries of being basically alone, most of my kind killed themselves. The last one I knew about died twenty years ago." He sighed and turned to his own thoughts for a moment. "It's for the better, I think."

"Why would you think that?"

"To be honest, my kind have had problems co-existing peacefully with humans. I'm out-numbered six-billion to one." He frowned. "And I'm afraid that the mental state of the people today would make matters horribly worse than they were in the old days. People today would have a power trip, try to take over the world."

"I understand." Clayton nodded, fully sober now.

"Any more questions?" Tom asked.

"Just one," said Clayton. "Can you turn into a bat?"

Tom laughed; a genuinely amused belly laugh. After a moment, he calmed himself down then smiled at Clayton.

"In a manner of speaking, yes." He smiled broader. "Among several of the 'powers' of vampirism, there is a heightened psychic abilities. It's latent in humans. Vampirism tends to take latent, or dulled human traits and turn them hypersensative. I can implant a suggestion in your mind, right now, that I'm Elvis." He smiled again. "Have you yet wondered why you were so quick to believe me?"

Clayton was visibly awed, as he considered this. The presence he'd felt had been Tom pushing a mental suggestion on him. He smiled back.

"Amazing."

"Are you ready now?"

"Yes."

Tom rosed and strode over to Clayton.

"This is going to hurt," he said softly. "A lot."

With that, Tom reached out and grabbed Clayton by the neck. Canines that hadn't been apparent before suddenly appeared in his mouth like razor-edged daggers. Clayton whimpered as Tom sunk the teeth into the man's jugular, rested them there for a moment, then pulled away, licking the wounds.

"Wh-what's hap-hap-happening?" Clayton stammered, as a hot firey feeling spread to every inch of his body.

"Vampirism is much like a viral infection." Tom said softly. "It's passed along by a venom that we produce in our fangs. It's a lot like a snake."

He pushed Clayton, who had still been standing, into the chair. "The very essence of your being, your cells, are being rapidly infected. You're going to... die... for a moment."

He watched as the man's body bucked.

"It's very fast-acting." His voice was calm. "Try no to be scared. Your heart will stop as the cells are infected. It'll start again on it's own."

As he spoke, Clayton's body siezed up a foot off the chair, as if he'd been lifted by a pole in his abdomen, then slumped limply into the chair again.

Tom watched, waiting in the silent room. For awhile, neither man moved.

Then, as if suddenly splashed with icy water, Clayton inhaled a loud, deep breath as he sat forward. Immediately he shielded his eyes against the crack of light that came through the split in the curtains.

"Your senses are in overdrive." Tom spoke, almost in a whisper. "You'll be very sensitive to all sensory perceptions for several days, but you'll begin to get adjusted to it." He smiled. "It takes time, but you've got all the time in the world, now."

* * * * * It had been exactly three hundred years, to the day, since Julius Cervara, known to him then as "Tom", had imparted to him the wisdom and the gift of the vampires. He recalled, with some trepidation, the initial disbelief, the gradual understanding, and finally the acceptance. Tom had entrusted with him the powers of the immortals, and with it the responsibilities. He was glad to have them.

With solemn grace, he moved to the balcony and gazed out at the stars that hung in the inky sky over New York. With a low voice, he spoke to the stars, envisioning them as the soul of his once mentor.

"I know that you had intended me to use my gift your way, Tom, as you had learned to use it through your many years of life." He paused to reflect this, then corrected himself. "Through your many years of existence. But I am not you, Tom. You never realized, did you, the truest extent of your gift?" He chuckled. "The world is there for our kind, Tom! The humans are there for us to command, to do with as we please!" He smiled and shook his head. "But you never understood that, did you Tom? Fool."

He looked down at the city below, shook his head and returned to his bed chambers. A nubile female sat in waiting, beside his bed, naked save for the wispy veil that shrouded her pretty face from him. Although she did not raise her head to him, her eyes followed his as he trod across the room, and sat upon his bed.

"Attend me, girl." He spoke firmly. "And be embraced."

She rose to the bed and crossed the distance between him.

"Yes, my Lord." She spoke softly. "May your empire reign until the end of time." And it did.