Chapter 1
“Can you think of anything lonelier than being a vampire in a world that doesn’t believe they exist?” Armand said pensively before taking another sip of his wine. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Of course.” The man sitting across from him, in front of the fireplace at Club Chevalier, responded with a dry smile. “But then it can only be hypothetical, since such creatures don’texist.”
“Are you certain, Maurice?”
“Yes. In this day and age, how could one survive withoutbeing discovered, when everyone knows everything about the people around them? Or can find out by simply inputting a name in any of the various search engines. There is no privacy anymore, Armand.”
“I suppose you have a point.”
Maurice studied the man. “What brought that to mind anyway?”
Armand lifted one shoulder. “Just a passing thought, because of an amusing short story I read about a clan of vampires who try to acclimate to living in the human world. Quite ridiculous. The author took great liberties with the vampire mythos in order to make it work. She might as well have been writing about, say, a na?ve Icelandic family from a small village moving over here and trying to fit in, when they don’t speak the language or understand what life is like in the middle of a very populous city.”
“An interesting comparison. I doubt even someone like that would be totally unaware of what they were facing. As I just said, with the Internet and all…”
“Oh, I agree,” Armand replied. “I was just trying to come up with what might be a similar, if simplistic, comparison. I don’t suppose there really is one. A true vampire, if one is going to believe the myths, would be constrained to being out only when the sun is down. How would one explain that? And blood drinking? I should think people would begin to notice if there was a sudden onset of what could only be put down to anemia among the local population.”
“And what about your next door neighbor who still looks in their mid-twenties although they’ve been living there for well over ten years?” Maurice added.
Armand smiled. “That would be a dead giveaway. Pardon the pun.”
“Not to question your taste in literature,” Maurice said, “but why on earth did you read that story in the first place?”
“I was in the reading room. Someone had left a book of occult short stories on one of the side tables. Being bored, I delved into it. Pure and utter trash, of course, but reading one or two did kill an hour of my time.” Armand pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to look at his Breguet watch. “Speaking of killing time, I’ve done enough of it this evening. I have to leave. I’m certain I’ll see you another evening.”
“I’m always here,” Maurice replied with a laugh. “In fact, there are times when I’m certain the staff wonders if I’ve taken up residence.”
Armand smiled, clapping his hand on Maurice’s shoulder. “If the club had arrangements for that, I’m sure you would have.” He gave a slight bow and left the room, and the building.
Moments later, he was in his home, three miles from Club Chevalier. He had owned the house since just after he’d moved to Denver in 1919. Not under his current name, Armand Lyon. When he first came to the city, he had been Arnaud Martel. Then other variations—all supposedly progenitors of who he now was. His name at the time of his turning, well over fifteen hundred years ago, had been Estienne D’?vreux.
Do nottell me vampires don’t exist, Maurice. I am proof that they do. Not that I will reveal it to you, or to any human. We are real. And we are lonely. How could we not be? Or, I suppose, I should say I am. I can’t speak for the others as I have virtually no contact with them except when, occasionally, we cross paths late at night.
True, Armand had acquaintances—Maurice, for one. Humans he dealt with in a peripheral context—either men at the gentlemen’s club where he’d just spent the evening, or his employees and clientele at Le Restaurant de la Nuit ?ternelle, the small, very exclusive, restaurant he owned. It was open from dusk to dawn and catered to the elite of the city. While he kept on top of everything that happened there, he rarely visited in person. He trusted his people. He wouldn’t have hired them otherwise.
Armand recalled his rather satirical comment to Maurice about anemia as he changed out of the well-tailored suit he had been wearing into something more suitable for trolling the alleys on the edge of downtown for his supper.