44.1 Alexandros protected me and Claudia from the watchful eyes of the mortals. Even I was getting better at blending in again under his tutelage. Alexandros seemed a master of their world. Not just that he still was a mortal, he had an eye for details understood the subtle whims of the modern humans. Still he missed the real danger, when an immortal came calling.

40.1 Years passed in an uncomfortable pace. I tried to be aware of how I spent my days and before sleeping I’d try to remember my past. Claudia claimed she didn’t worry about lost memories. She said she’d only forgotten the bad parts, but Claudia had started to loose her memories to old age even before she became an immortal.

35.1 She was dead, for days this was my constant thought. Some days “she” meant Octavia, other days I was thinking of Fabia. It felt easier to mourn my losses than to consider that I’d slept for so long. A hundred years, that was longer than a person lived.

31.1 Fabia’s visit had dazed me. I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t the real Fabia. In my heart I knew that it to be real, the Gods had intervened and plucked her from another time to give me another chance.

28.1 The house stirred as a visitor came to see me. No one knew what to make of it. I didn’t get visitors. When we had visitors they were people who came to see Marcus. Octavia led the visitor into Marcus’s study where I waited. When we met the woman looked at me and I stared back at the ghost.

25.1 As the years passed our activities in the city started to get noticed again. There was talk of packs of hunters searching for monsters of the night. The army did patrols within the city. More than once Octavia suggested that we should leave Rome.

26.1 With Octavia at my side I came out from the shadows again. No longer was I the stranger in the dark corners of Marcus’s house. I was no longer the unseen menace, but instead one that walked among the people.

22.1 Claudia’s black hair started to have touches of gray. At first I wanted to pull out the offending straws. Not because I cared about her appearance. No, because of the constant reminder of how time treats mortals. A lifetime now seemed short. Within decades both Claudia and Marcus would wither and die. Time was the greatest monster, it would end so many more lives than I ever could.

16.1 It became clear that Marcus was right. In the coming years there was a great fire in Rome. It killed more people than I ever could. There were rumours of what had started the fire. If true, if the blame lay at the hands of the emperor himself. How could I be the monster?

12.1 I’d begun to find joy again. Claudia looked at me with admiration. When hunting criminals, I didn’t feel like the monster I’d come to identify myself with. What we were doing might be vile and in ways cruel. Those hurt by our actions were all bad people. I try to remember that.