Chapter 1

He looked at me differently then. I can remember the way his eyes would light up when I walked into the room, how longing crept into those emerald depths when he thought I wasn’t looking. But I was always looking at him, always aware. He was my last, but not the first. I made that mistake many times before his failure. His eyes I keep alive in my memories, for that is the only way he will be remembered.

He was the last of many. So many mistakes I made. So many lives I destroyed. So many I lost in the end that I will forever mourn. For what am I but an ageless memoriam to those who I ruined in my desperate need for companionship? Such a need, one I have found no other with the same amount of desire. I cannot comprehend why after such a long time that I still need them. My last child died several years ago, yet it is but a blink of an eye for me. That is a sad thing. I loved him very much. Loved him no more than any of my other children, nor any less. And soon, this ache I feel for him will subside and fall away, and I will only look back onto the fond memories I have of him. For anything else would bring me more self-hatred and pity than I will ever attend to again.

I am Kyrie. I have been called this name since my very birth and as such, I will be known as this until I am struck down, whether by my own hand or by another’s. It makes no difference to me. When one has lived as long as I, death is merely another adventure, another part of life. Centuries, countless years…I lived before there were numbers to live by. My age…it has no meaning, for none know it’s true number.

Am I a vampire? To this question, there are many answers. No. But that is not correct. Yes. Still not right. What I am…That is a thing I have pondered for so long. Even after meeting those of the species, I am no closer to my answers. I am merely an old thing from an old world that has found a place in the new. I don’t remember when it all became one big joke for me. When I stopped taking pity on myself and just enjoyed what there was to be offered to me. Far too late, I’m sure.

Here I was, driving down one of the countless streets of northern America, and I stopped at a shop. It was a small affair, a tiny book store run by an older woman who smiled gently at me when I came in. What she saw was the long, lean, supple body of a woman in her perfection, hair a hundred curls of pure blood falling into eyes of sapphire. A beautiful face, sensual grace, taunting voice…Thus, Kyrie. It was just after sunset and soon she would be closing to go home and go about her nightlife. I absently wondered if she had children, or a husband at home, but it really didn’t interest me. The need for companionship was pushed too far down in my mind. However, I was interested in her books. I made my way down the shelves, looking for any interesting things…and my eyes stopped at the word ‘Vampire’.

Now, I must tell you, I am not one of those who are haunted by what I am, nor one to rush head long into knowing my own secrets. However, I am a curious woman and have always been such. So when I saw this book, I felt the need to read it, know it, memorize it. I cannot really explain this part of me. There isn’t enough reason left in me to explain much, I’m afraid. I’m quite insane.

The book was a paperback and in somewhat good condition. Pulling it out, I found a nice cover illustration and the title in bold letter, ‘Interview With A Vampire’. It intrigued me and I opened it to read the first few lines. Immediately, my curiosity got the best of me. I had to have this book. I paid the woman for it, and she told me of others in the series that I could come back for if I wished. I thanked her for this and went back to my apartment.

If you know about Vampires, then you know the lore about always living richly and always having your wants pampered. Well, I suppose it’s the stubborn streak in me, but I simply abhor that. Snobbish and totally lacking real taste, I say. But then again, who says I have good taste? In any case, I do live in a poor apartment in an even poorer area of this city, and am quite happy with the arrangement. There is enough food and very little investigation into why my stupid mortals die. It always amuses me to watch the ‘policemen’ prod my corpses and wonder aloud why things happen and the like. It makes me wonder why they continue to live if their existences are so meaningless. Then again, I suppose I should be grateful, because they are my food after all.

Of course, who’s to say I really care what I should be?

But I digress. I’m getting completely off subject. I was talking about the book. Yes, that silly book written by a silly old man who couldn’t figure out that he was old yet. Honestly, how does one expect to last long when one is constantly gushing about how horrible one’s live is? It’s such an old thing. A wounded hero, I suppose. It was completely grating on me, but I did finish his book. I can’t say I liked it. I found myself pitying his creator for having to put up with the stupid boy.

And the master! Well, his book of course came next. ‘The Vampire Lestat’ indeed! Such an original title I’m sure has never been seen! At least this boy had a little bit of personality. Not wallowing in self pity (well, he did in some instances that I was quite revolted over) but taking life in both hands and damning anything that came! Ah, a man after my own heart. If only I could understand his need for that damned whiner and the child after being shunned not once, but twice by both! It still confuses me. Perhaps I am simply too heartless to understand. I certainly hope so, otherwise it would mean I could be capable of the same and that is utterly damning I think. Ah, but I am coming again off of my topic! The boy, Lestat, I wanted to meet him. I had not yet met him in my travels, thorough as they were of course. And I mean thorough in the most sarcastic way imaginable.

But it was not he I met next. It was not even a Vampire I found. No, it was a young man, though a boy to me, who had broken into my apartment that I found. Of course, my first reaction was to simply drain him and be done with it, but in the middle of this, he stopped struggling and I stopped drinking. It was an odd thing. I simply lost my drive and pulled away to look into his face. The boy looked tired. There were purple circles around his dark green eyes and his skin was a pallor of worried proportion when thinking of mortals. He was very ill, I realized, and would last only a little longer. I wondered of him, how he had gotten this ill, how he was living now, how he was coping. He intrigued me. And it seemed I intrigued him as well. Peeking into his thoughts I saw he did find me interesting. The running tangent in his mind wasn’t ‘oh my god, oh my god, there’s a vampire killing me and I’m gonna die.’ No, it was more like ‘wow, redhead. How interesting.’ It was refreshing actually. I found myself chuckling softly at him.

“You aren’t afraid,” I said to him, a smile at my lips. But it was not a kind smile, nor was it a cruel one. It was merely there, and he understood that I would give nothing more or less.

“I’m dying anyway,” he said with a silly, lopsided grin. I was fascinated by how his lips curled that way, one side higher than the other. I have always liked lips, especially those of mortals when they spoke, or in their expressions. It makes me wonder what my own look like when I do the same. Are they beautiful, as this boy’s were? Or very ugly as I’ve seen on quite too many people? Then again, why bother centralizing on such a trivial thing as lips?

“You are,” I told him with a nod. “Shall I make it quicker for you?”

“If you want to,” he answered. He hadn’t stopped grinning and his eyes were laughing at me. I wondered what was so funny…

“You taste poor,” was my reply in a very cruel voice I hadn’t noticed was mine at first. Then I blinked my eyes. He noticed my confusion and laughed softly.

“One would think,” he said kindly. His tone stuck me very oddly. What right did he to speak to me in such a way, with such…nicety to his voice? I was going to kill him after all but even this did not deter him! He confused me. And I have never liked being confused. So to spite him, I decided to leave him be. At least for that night.

Watching him stagger away as if drunk, I called out to him to come back the next night. And he stopped, turning to look back at him, and that damned, kindly smile took his face again. I wanted to rip his lips off, but I was sure he would still grin just as nicely with teeth alone. And then I was struck with a sudden fear. What if he didn’t come back? But that was completely unconceivable! Of course he would come back! But I was scared.

“You will come back?” I called to him. And he nodded and left. I stood there, watching him go. I didn’t know why. I just did it. And confused myself. Did I mention that I hate being confused?

The rest of that night was spent reading my current book, ‘The Vampire Armand’. This one reminded me of the first, of Louis. Louis the Pathetic Lover. The Poet, the Innocent, the Most Human of Vampires. However, Armand was quite different than the weak Louis. He was much, much stronger. Bitched just as much about life in general though and that didn’t make reading his words any easier. A few things confused me, mentioning of events I hadn’t been witness to and others I’d only heard rumors of. Then again, it was my fault for not reading them all in sequence. I was to read ‘Queen of the Damned’ after Lestat’s book, but it was my little book keep didn’t have that one. She promised to find it though and said that reading this one before it wouldn’t ruin too much of the suspense. Not that I cared, for history can be taken in so many combinations.

I slept little that day. Of course, I never sleep a full day, nor a full night, but have many small naps in between. I suppose it is my oddness because I am not a Vampire, yet I am. The sun does not scare me. I simply ‘live’ for the day and ‘die’ as soon as the sun falls from the sky. It is very painful, actually. I dislike the transition, but what am I to do about it? Well, I could stay in one form, the dead one, for as long as I wished…but then I would miss the sun again and ‘live’ as long as my body allowed. Two, maybe three days, depending on how well I fed before. I was once told that the only reason I ‘live’ is that my new blood sustains me. But then, in my ‘dead’ body, how is it any different? I will never understand it.

I was very much ‘dead’ when the boy came first and when he returned the next night. He was still sickly, but it wasn’t annoying. I found it…endearing. Oddly, of course, but it was still such. I liked him. It was an instant like, one I did not understand, but it was there. I liked him very much for no reason at all. Or was there a reason I simply couldn’t see? It mattered very little. The liking was there and that was that.

When he came to my door, he knocked it and I opened. At once, I felt very happy. He had come back to me! Simple pleasure, I know, but it was there. I welcomed him in warmly, leading him to sit in the very comfortable chair I kept for my reading. We talked. Long, long hours we talked. Until I was sure I had nothing more to say and then he would mutter something to spark my mind again, and I would continue. By the end of the night, I knew everything about him. How his mother used to sing him lullabies. How his father was in the military and off on some war. How his sister was married, but had lost her last pregnancy. How his brother was starting the second grade. How he’d been kicked out of his home only a few years before How he was in his last year of high school, and living as well as he could on a meager budget. Many, many things he told me. And I loved him for it.

“Stay with me,” I said.

He smiled. “I wouldn’t use your kindness that way, Madam Vampire.”

“It wasn’t a request,” I growl, enraged that he would deny me. “You will stay with me.”

“Will I?” he wondered and his lips quirked into a wider grin. It annoyed me! I hate being annoyed about as much as I hate being confused. So enraged was I that I didn’t really notice when he started to cough. By the time I did, there was blood on his hands. I was fascinated. Blood, on his pale hands, he shuttering with each motion and the red continued to splatter on his skin. I wasn’t sure when I was upon him but the next thing I knew he was going slack in my arms and my teeth were buried in his neck. I jerked away from him, staring. He was not dead, but there was very little chance he would survive. His eyes stayed on me, though I could see they tried to stray away. And he smiled.

“Do I get to die yet?” he rasped out, his voice so very rough that I wanted to cry.

“No, you don’t get to die,” I told him instead, glaring at him. “How dare you think of leaving? I told you, you will stay with me!”

And he laughed. Even with his abused throat he laughed. And it was a horrible sound. A very horrible sound. One I could stand no longer. I threw him to the floor, backing away as he looked up towards me. He lay on his back, arms spread without the strength to move them. He looked very small there, but still he smiled. He just…smiled. And it unnerved me so. He should have been begged for me to spare him. He should have been glaring at me and hating me for being the revolting bringer of death that I was. Be he didn’t. Wouldn’t. He refused to do what was expected of him! He deliberately didn’t do it! He simply wouldn’t! It unnerved me so. Oh how it unnerved me.

“Stop it,” I found myself whispering. And the smile disappeared only to be replaced with something more horrible. Worry. His face was one of worry. And I found it worse than his smile. I couldn’t help myself. I screamed at him. “STOP IT!”

He didn’t. He lay there, so close to death, and he was worried for me, not for himself, for me. He worried for me.

My knees gave and I was on the floor, staring at him. He gathered the strength to pull himself to me, but only close enough to lay his hand on my leg. I wanted suddenly to pull him close and hold him for eternity. But I did not want to give my kiss again. Not when there had been so many before that had left me in the end. I found myself crying and telling him this. I told him everything about each I had sired, about the failed experiments. I cried and my face was stained with the blood of my tears. But he listened until I was finished. He was feverish and barely coherent, but he listened.

I lay down beside him, staring into his face. He wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t frowning either, but he simply lacked the strength to show anything with his mouth. His eyes…his eyes were different. They showed a kind of reverence… a kind of love. I fell into these emerald depths, mesmerized, begging for this love.

I don’t remember breaking my own skin and letting him drink. I honestly don’t. But it did happen. And he became mine.

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Well, that was the first chapter. What did you think? I was trying to introduce both sides of Kyrie's personality, the kindly and the not so kindly aspects.

About the Anne Rice books references....I am a huge fan of her books, but that doesn't mean Kyrie has to be. Actually, it would have been very strange for her to be a fan of the books when they are so different than her own personality. Plus she's a little insane of course.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to another. I've written and rewritten this so many times...It's my baby. Thank you and see you next chapter!