Swans

I met her one hundred years ago. My hair had a little less grey in it and my eyes still danced with the youth of a freshly turned vampire. It was at a party-the last New Year's Eve party that I have ever bothered to attend amongst the mortals. I had selected a meal for that night. The virgin neck of the Mayor's daughter. I was something of a connoisseur, back in those days. I had been following her for nigh upon seven nights and was prepared to make my move. My fangs, oh, how they ached for her blood!

I weaved my way through shadows and sweating, intoxicated mortals, like smoke and dust, slithering past all the coarse, cumbersome bodies. I saw that girl, she had her Father's hand pressed to her chest. His piggy eyes wouldn't stop blinking. He appeared to be in such a state of drunken euphoria that he had started to weep. The time was eleven o' clock. Midnight and the new millennia was fast approaching.

And then she arrived, out of the dark corners of the room, thick tendrils of shadows reached out and pooled, just behind the virgin girl. hen she, my nightly tormentor, materialised behind the girl, talons draped across her virgin neck, claiming it as her own. Of course, none of the mortals noticed this.

Her name was Italian-though it has been many, many centuries since that ancient vampire noblewoman had deigned to visit the land of her birth.

Viviana. That was her name. She had hair the colour of blood and eyes to match. She flashed me a purple smile and my onyx tongue turned to stone. I hissed, warning her off and she giggled. She became smoke and left the girl, drifting in my direction like a lightening vapour trail.

Oh, how I tried to bat her away but she was strong and so, so beautiful. Her eyes were diamonds, her translucent teeth were crystal shards and she wrapped her endless coils, all over my neck and I shuddered, oh, how I shuddered like a leaf in the thrall of storm clouds.

We waltzed-she dragged me, truth be told-above the cracked stone parapets of the town hall as the moon shifted towards the new millennia. The air hummed with our energy as I borrowed my smoking fangs in her jet black neck and when she moaned it looked like she was yawning and I caught a glimpse of the vast chasm of her mouth, overflowing with serrated teeth. I feared her not. Not any more. I fell in love with those serrated teeth, her little nose, her black dimples, her spectral locks.

The clock rang. Midnight had arrived. The mortals all locked tongues like children and squealed with delight. My old target, the virgin girl, got her first kiss from a man that her Father would one day make her husband. I cared not. Viviana held me. She stroked my hair and kissed my neck. It is said that swans mate for life. I arched my neck like a swan as she morphed into a great, black bat. Her crimson eyes twinkled as she told me that it was time to go. I begged her to stay but she could not. The realm of the ancients, the elder demons, the Master vampires was calling to her, reverberating horrid warnings amongst the clanging of mortal bells and so she could not stay. I offered her my heart, plucked it from my chest like a slice of cake and held it, still beating before her red pupils. She kissed it once then ascended into the purple sky. The moon swallowed her up before I could glean what direction she glided in.

I tried in vain to see her again. I returned to that great hall for many years after that fateful encounter. My old meal, the virgin girl blossomed into a truly exquisite mortal. Her mate, the one chosen by her Father succumbed to a terrible poison, left in his wine by wicked little sprites. I chased them away but it was too late. The cup reached his lips and he dropped like a lump of ice. The girl, now a woman with two children was driven mad by her grief and, twenty New Year's Eve's later, cut her throat two minutes before midnight. No more parties were held at the old hall and I lost my only lead. I tore the wings off countless sprites for that foul trick. The woman's children grew up, tortured and embittered against the world. One of them, a boy with hollow cheeks and yellow eyes took to carving up impoverished women, for his twisted amusement. That is, until I trailed him into a dark corner and tore his loathsome throat to shreds. The other grew fat and lonesome in his dead Mother's house. He dined on cheap food and became enamoured with a prostitute riddled with disease. They died together, one black Christmas Eve, surrounded by the filth of their lives, destined to crumble into the dirt, unloved and forgotten by all except me. I still take flowers to their gaunt tombstones. Her Father was institutionalised and met his mortal end in a dark cell, haunted by the shades of his offspring and the whispers of malevolent sprites that even I did not have the power to banish. The town withered away after this tragedy and was finished off by a fire started by some humourless phantom.

I continued my search, though it was all for nought. Thousands of parties I visited, in every corner of the globe. France. America. Italy. Russia. India. My Viviana was nowhere to be seen. She had disappeared into the heavenly underworld, far beyond the reaches of lesser demons such as myself.

I found another mate, of course. A little vampire from the cold region of Scotland. We settled down on the edge of a little mortal town and hunted evil-doers for food. Their blood tasted like sand upon my old black tongue. Nothing could compare to the taste of Viviana's purple flesh.

You were my only true solace, daughter of mine. Your pretty wings and dark emerald locks have helped alleviate the pain of my grief, in recent decades. I wish you many more centuries of happy hunting. And, should you ever catch a glimpse of your namesake, the first Viviana, tell her I'm waiting in the cold clutches of Scotland and that I have never forgotten her terrible, beautiful eyes, eyes that burned like savage rubies. I would love the celebrate New Year's with her, one last time. Swans, they mate for life, you know.