The Vampire-Alien Chronicles Read Free Page A

them.  After that it was only a matter of time.  Then it was that I quit persecuting Humans.  Suddenly I was more intrigued than angry.
    They had begun to change as well by then.  They had begun to look more like me, but I had not noticed.  I had been living like an animal.  I knew only the thoughts of the predator.  Yet suddenly my mind had been awakened.  Vast potentials opened before me.  I began to study them and to lear n.  It was during this intense study of Humans that I first saw the Others.  I heard them in my head before I actually saw them.  I heard dozens of voices in my head all at once, wordless yet completely understandable.  They heard me, as well.  They were suddenly aware of me as I was aware of them.  This was before I learned how to control myself.  Learned how to control my thoughts.
    “This is the modern era.  Humans have put their superstitions behind them.”  Sonafi said, but she wasn't really pushing the issue.  The New World had been good to us.  We have thrived here.  I could think of nothing which would convince me to return to the land of my birth.  I had ceased to hunt them, but the Humans of the Old World would never forget me.  I had hunted them too long.  Verbal histories had been passed down.  The fear those earliest Humans had felt for me was still strong in the peoples of the Old World.  We may have been forgotten here in the United States, but we were still remembered there.
    My eyes shifted to and lingered momentarily on the detail and craftsmanship of the exquisite weapon under my hand.  It was the finest blade I had ever seen and made by my friend.  He had been the finest blade-smith who had ever lived.  I had offered the gift of eternal life, but he was only one of the few who having been made the offer had declined.  Hamaterara Cumosachi had been his name and a Human who had nothing to fear from the afterlife.
    I well knew that Hamaterara would have nothing to fear in the afterlife, and he had assured me of my own goodness, even knowing how I fed, but I have always wondered how God will greet me when my day does arrive.  Could those things I had done before the dawning of reason ever be forgiven?  I returned my hand to my side, my attention to my wife.
    “They will never put us behind them.  We have done too much.”  I said.  Nor was it only what I had done personally.  To add to my crimes I had unleashed a wave of Vampires I confusedly had thought would become my new family.  I had been wrong.
    “You are probably correct.  I do not know that I would ever wish to return to those turbulent times.”  Sonafi said.  “We were never safe in those days.  Always running and always looking over our shoulders.”
    “It may not be good that we grow complacent, but it has been restful.”  I soliloquized.
    “I don't think you will ever really grow complacent.”  Sonafi told me.  “I do not believe you are capable of complacency.”  Her eyes flickered to the Katana on its stand behind the sofa and then back to my own eyes.  Amused, I could not help the smile which rose to my lips, or help noticing the fascination with which she beheld it, and the teeth my smile revealed.  Even a Vampire could not resist her fascination with another Vampire's teeth; so white and milky, flawless and symmetrical, ideal and perfect, like everything else about a Vampire.  If it weren't for our aversion to the sun, we would be the most perfectly crafted creatures on the face of this world.
    “We don't need the superstitious peoples of the Old World to keep us vigilant.”  I said.  “We have the Others for that.  I can remember every visitation as if they had only occurred yesterday.  I would never be able to forget the Others.  Not ever.”
    “Nor I.”  Sonafi said softly, vehemently, the memories flooding her mind.  A mother does not soon forget the children she watched murdered right in front of her own eyes, no matter how long ago it had