Allow me here to confess how awfully common I find myself to be that I could ever posses a weakness such as this. One would say it's only human. Not I.

    A vampire is a beauty forged to fool the witted, but beyond that quiet, bioluminus gaze, beyond that glitter and complexity, lie a demon with demon falsehoods and with a demons intent, and I had known it infinitely better than most.

    Our kind is death romanticized, a danger flowered apart in such a way that one forgets oneself wholly. It is true that there are the rare exceptions; two, mayhap three that I've happened upon in my two centuries. Save this, the danger will be there always, as a vampire's instinct will be there always. I myself, while blundering hopelessly through my faith, had battled against these same instincts and lost miserably, miserably. It is simply the nature of it, and such natures cannot be undone.

    And so you must take these things so much to heart that you are not blinded.

    Dare you not be blinded. Dare you not for a moment.

    Within my grief, which in my young mind felt most profound, I fled.

Oh, how little I knew of grief then. How horribly little indeed.

I had made for the fields and into the familiar sanctuary of the cool forest, towards the sweet draw of my heart that was its lush extremes. There I had wandered many times before and knew quite well the paths, the clear springs, the full, grassy meadows where I would nap blissfully beneath the warmth of the noonday sun.

    The days were spent with the sweet of the berries, the sweet of wild anemones and pale pasque flowers, the sweet of the green, mossy grass. Everything sweet and sweet and sweet, that I might never leave. I was comforted marvelous much, and like a child I fully believed that I could very well live there forever, nested like some strange bird with the fairies and enchanted maidens who dwelled there surely.

Until finally, with all the stupidity I could call upon, I had ventured further than I had ever dared to endeavor, where the untamed wilderness was menacing and black, until I was all but hopelessly lost.

Never had I known the eerie dark, or seen how the moonlight cast down like silvery lace upon everything it touched in such a way that it seemed the forest held breathing, haunting life, undiscovered and unsought.

And what a wonderment it is to me now that I myself have inevitably become that haunting, unknowing shadow personified.

    But then the cold light of night was damp and unforgiving, and I was hungry. I slept among the roots of the rough oak trees, and the nights were finally so frigidly cold, that my body shivered from aching fever. And then it was that no sweetness of the longing day could mend it.

   The sun would rise and pain my eyes, bake my hot skin so that I laid in unbearable agony. I pressed my cheek to the cool dirt, and it stuck to the sweat upon my face, and clung to my heated lips.

I thirst for water that my body had finally become too weak to find. My head pounded with aching fever that sent me into delirium. I slipped in and out of consciousness, and I couldn't know which state I had been during my visions.

    Above me I saw brilliant light all about a shining, golden face, and gleaming white wings from which casted the barest, pleasant breeze like so many fanning hands. I felt myself reach for them, only to fall limp onto the ground. I could not speak, could not part my parched lips to say, "I knew that you would come." I strained to look at their quiet gaze, the beam of light that was their face, until the light was gone away from my eyes altogether.

    When again my eyes were open, it was dark and that bitter cold again. Another night and I thought, no, I cannot go on. Every part of me was pain. Every part having their own particular sort of agony, that I felt sick upon vomiting.

Shown above were the swaying trees, the splendid stars, blurred in my vision as I lingered just below consciousness. And it seemed they met to form a silvery face that looked on; cold flames to make glittering tresses, and a silvery mouth that whispered, "You are found and you are safe," and I viewed it all with a feverish mind.

And then it was as if one of those cold flames reached to me, touching my face, grazing my forehead, and then finally lifting me from the earth.

    I was floating, the world passing in shadow and light in a mingling of vibrant colors that danced before my eyes in a pulsing blur.

    Then nothing.

    It was quiet, and the air was dense with this stillness. How I suffered in my awareness that I prayed to know nothing of consciousness.

I felt one beside me, and I was no longer beneath the trees, beneath the looming stars. I was in my bed, so soft yet void of comfort.

    I could see in the near distance a visage so spare, and then bright, moon-pale hues watching me quietly, wearily. Their infinite light cast like a beacon from the pitch. I felt their weight upon me, then upon my bed as this one leaned forward, and then an icy touch upon my cheek and I moaned.

    "You have caught death, Vittoria. Lift your head."

    This voice made me weep. It was the voice of God, I thought, vastly tender and gentle and profoundly musical.

   I heard the voice sigh and say velvety in the dark, "Not quite. Lift your head and drink."

"You're taking me then?" I asked in my languor, my voice rasp so that I hardly had breath enough.

"Lift your head and drink from this cup," he said again gently.

"Yes, your cup," I said in ardor, in my confusion, as I had read that the cup was the host of the Lord's life, and so I was desperate to drink it. But the cup was hot against my lips and I drew back.

"Do this, Vittoria, so that you will not ache. Drink it down. Leave nothing."

In utter weakness I did this, and the taste was bitter and of the earth and made my stomach churn. I fell back against the bed, my aching body rejecting what it just took in.

Again I was fed this earth, and again it was rejected, and I thought I might die most painfully if I were made to drink again, that I shook my head and wept.

    But there came a cold fount of nectar that entered my mouth, and I felt its coolness and its sweetness that was beyond anything I knew. And so quickly did it take the pain away, so that I lost all sense of my body, and I sighed.

"Would I catch that signing breath within my mouth," said the ethereal voice.

My mind refused these words forthright, so out of place as they were. I strained to see in my delirium, through my fog, and I opened my eyes to behold, so like those visions beneath the trees, the dark angel Phedré before me, peering with ghostly flesh of such I had never beheld.

Tightly, I closed my eyes. My head rolled against the pillow, sodden with sweat. 

He spoke my name softly.

"I will not go with you," I said to him. He then reached and gathered my fingers to his lips, to his cheek. And I said to him, my eyes laden with tears, "How art thou fallen from heaven, Morning Star, Son of the Dawn. How art thou cut to the ground, that didst lay low the nations."

And he placed my fingers now to his bowed head.

"Devil," I managed to say. Then I was out.

So keenly do I recall him sitting in the chair across my way. He was quietly reading God's words, and how profound the sight of it. He was the devil curious, a dark angel immersed, beyond beautiful and deadly white to the point of being diaphanous.

I sat up with ease, as though I could not know weight or weakness. I was well. Better still, I was with strength not yet known to me.

"It will pass," he said to me as he turned the page.

    In my clarity, it came to my surprise that he was so striking, that he was with obvious beauty that threatened to snatch your wits by the very root without apology. If dusk had eyes and was made to breathe, it was here now with me in this room.

He looked to me, impossible hues raising to me slowly, and I was spellbound. I begged the Lord He cast a pall upon my eyes, but I could see only that beautiful face, and that his hair was as if spun from night itself, long and pulled fine, and his eyes were blue in color so especially, as if a portion of sea were fixed there forever. But, too, he was faintly horrifying to look at, inhuman as he was in his human clothes.

    How the moonlight mocked my vision, that was now absolutely vivid and clear. This flood of gentle light illuminated his casts of features, giving to him the likeness of a statue carved from limestone by skillful hands, deft and precise and with the most flawless precision, that it seemed quite impossible to me then that such a face should move.

    Yes, I admit that in spite of myself, I was in thralled. He was the consonants of a fallen angel, that was much true. And I wondered what manner of horror could produce such a beautiful and terrible creature?

And upon that question, I wonder still.

    "From where did you obtain this?" he asked me, raising the Bible.

    I said nothing, said nothing of the kindly servant who gifted it to me in secret.

    He sat it down upon the table beside him, movement so quick, I scarce saw it. And then he stood in the same manner, and I coward back.

    "You mustn't fear me, Vittoria," he told me, nearing me slowly now. "And just the same, you mustn't read from that book of lies again."

    The spell was broken.

♱