Lucius - Thousand Year Old Vampire - Part 17

49.1 I knew that Quintus had burned down our house. I knew that he’d come for me again. The house meant nothing to me. Quintus words, that I had no love in my life, did. I’d miss the lyre that he’d broken, but I hadn’t played in years as it were. I hadn’t thought about what I wanted from life in a long time. The last few years had just happened to me, without direction days and years just passed.

Alexandros was silent, he had shame written across his face. Of course he wasn’t to blame for what had happened but he seemed to think he should have foreseen or prevented the attack. A better man might have comforted him or talked to him. I might have done so in years passed. His discomfort meant little to me now.

Would I ever find something that I loved in my strange existence? Would I dare to, or would Quintus we waiting to take that away?

I don’t think I ever had any feelings for Claudia. Octavia always felt more like a daughter than anything else. I’m not sure that sort of companionship meant much to me now. But what would mean something?

I had fragments of memories of me searching the approval of others. Why had that ever been important? I felt a new kind of hunger, I yearned for meaning.

Claudia spoke about humans as a foreign species, she seemed to have forgotten that Alexandros was a mortal. Her own memories of her time before immortality was long lost to her.

Time had claimed many of my own memories of my mortal, what I did remember I relished. It started out as a desire to see the humans as they lived their life. What it looked like looking in from the outside.

That first time when I attempted to climb a building my intention was only to observe. I wanted to view the family as they ate their supper and see how they lived within their home.

I saw it as an innocent action at first, as far as sneaking up and observing people in their homes was innocent. Alexandros pointed out that it had been harder to find victims in the street at night due to the patrols.

One night I found myself watching a man as he slept alone in his bed. I had the sense that I’d done the same thing in a dream once. I crept closer and closer, waiting for him to wake up. Some echo of humanity prevented me from attacking a sleeping man. That’s what I told myself at least.

I wanted the fear to be there in the room with me. The smell of panic and the caught breath. Before morning came I had to make a sound so that he woke up in time to see me.

Observation was still my first goal as I climbed into homes at night. I told myself that I wouldn’t attack unless the victims woke up on their own. I seldom was able to keep these promises to myself. I always woke them up.