The night I met the vampire, it wasn’t dark and stormy. It was a pretty ordinary night, no clouds getting in the way of the moonlight, the streetlights operating normally, no smell of rain in the air. I wasn’t thinking about vampires… I mean, who does? Among normal people, anyway; no doubt lots of little Goths and Masqueraders were thinking their dark wine-red thoughts of the undead, but I don’t like scary movies and walking blood-sucking corpses just aren’t my thing, you know? So I wasn’t expecting him. When a total stranger came out of a side street and started matching his pace to mine, I thought “mugger” or “religious freak”. But if he was a mugger, he was awfully well-dressed. No, no evening dress, no flowing cape or starched white shirt and white tie, but a really nice suit that moved like it had been tailored for him, not bought off the rack at J.C. Penny. I know good material when I see it, and the dark grey stuff moved like top of the line. Why didn’t I run? Because he didn’t look like a walking corpse. He paused under a streetlight to ask me the time, and I got a really good look at him. My first impression was how short he was, maybe five-six, tops. He didn’t try to hide it, either, by wearing builtup shoes or the like. Short and solid, one of those bodies that are muscular without being lean. He had short-cropped dark hair, maybe brown, maybe black, it was hard to tell in the light. “Could you please tell me the time?” he asked. If that wasn’t a Rolex on his own wrist, I was a sheepdog. But something in his eyes, in his tone, made me stop and look at my watch. His eyes. Dark, like his hair, an indescribable colour. Beautiful eyes, eyes that you could get lost in, eyes that promised depthless secrets, eyes that held the world’s pain. Eyes that bored into mine, into my brain and heart and lungs, eyes that owned me. “You do have the time, do you not?” His voice was gentle, commanding, backing up the promise of those eyes. He did not say “Good even-ing,” he did not bid me enter freely, he did not have the requisite Lugosi accent. The precise, clipped tones of the BBC are not what I have been led to expect from a vampire. He sounded like he had just graduated from Eton, not as if he’d stepped out of a castle in the windy, wolf-haunted mountains of Transylvania. I’m not into guys, you understand, but his eyes… and he was good-looking, too, in a way that’s hard to describe. Not classically handsome, but the kind of face you could rely on, the kind that promised he’d be solid as a rock, that you could lean on him. Maybe it was that solid, muscular body and the kindness and pain in those eyes. But he had a good face, strong, but there was something… closed there. Something I couldn’t see past. Something not shown in those eyes. So I looked at my watch. And found his teeth fastened in my wrist as soon as I exposed it to him. He moved like a snake on acid, grabbing and striking so quickly that I couldn’t even think of pulling my wrist away. Cold, quick agony, then the strangest tickling sensation. He wasn’t sucking so much as… lapping. Like a dainty little British cat. Blood, black in the lamplight, trickled down the side of my wrist and he delicately caught it with his tongue, the biggest damn politest butterfly I’ve ever seen sipping my life nectar. He looked up once, those eyes catching the lamplight, making me gasp… or perhaps that was the work of his tongue on my wrist. “Forgive me,” he said, with a little bow. “If this were not a dietary necessity, then our paths should never have crossed. I assure you that you will be unharmed, as I take only enough to fill a wine glass, less than you would give for a blood donation. I suggest to you that you forget this encounter.” Funny, I’ve never been the suggestible type…