Author’s Note: Here’s something that popped in my head tonight. I know it’s the beginning of something but there is a lot I’m unsure of about where this will go. It’s my first try at anything vampire-related so I’m just going to let myself ease into it for now. Chapter one will come soon, I hope.

Before Sunrise

By: Luciana Malfoy

Prologue

Beneath the black sky, the streets of East London were quickly becoming deserted as the thunderous downpour of raindrops began to fall steadily, soaking all in their path and causing the bustling patrons to seek shelter wherever they could squeeze in or crawl under. If they had looked above the steeples moments earlier instead of concentrating on their dismal destinations, they would have glimpsed the darkened clouds rolling in to bring the impending storm down upon the city in all its chaotic beauty. Within minutes, the sounds of footfalls upon the cobblestones could no longer be heard by any such unlucky soul that remained masochistically in the storm’s path.

No, no souls lingered in the darkness on this particular night. Oh there were figures there, moving within the cold passages, following the storm. I knew they were there, though I could not glimpse them from my window as I sat up high above the streets. But I sensed them just the same. If you sit real still and place an observant eye up to the glass pane, you can almost see the quick movement of a cloak as it becomes caught in the moonlight for a split second before disappearing into the shadows beyond. They were always there, night after night, wherever there was darkness to shroud them. And they will most likely continue to be, in the nights that are sure to follow this one. I never knew of their presence as a child, rather I never paid much attention to what loomed beyond the light. Perhaps I feared the dark and did not particularly want to know what waits in it. I cannot remember, for it was so long ago. In fact, at times it seems a lifetime has gone by since I was a young girl.

It also seems like a lifetime has gone by since I first took notice of these strange beings that were normally only found skulking through one’s nightmares, or if they were lucky, erotic dreams. They make the night their haunt. They hunt, that’s what they do, but not with guns and knives. They hunt with profound desire. That is what drives them. A desire for flesh, they lust for it. But they also crave something else, something that mortals possess that they don’t. Foolish as I was in my younger days, I didn’t know what that something was that they wanted so badly, but I do now. And I suppose, it’s my fault. I suppose I awakened the desire inside them, long ago. And now, their passion seems to be out of control as they search for the one thing they crave more than anything else. The one thing they cannot possess. To say these figures were like the warm, nurturing beings you’d find cuddled up in front of their fireplaces, with the blankets pulled close as well as their loved ones, would be a mistake. One that would be quite easily made, but if you were to come across these night crawlers, you’d be sorely mistaken if you took them as one of your own. These beings, ones who have no soul and therefore no remorse for their actions, pitiless though they are, could be quite entrancing when they feel the need to be. Although not for the reasons you or I would be. They do not charm to win affection nor do they indulge in carnal knowledge the way us mortals do. They lure you into their waiting arms with tempting seduction, only it is often too late before you realize they have led you to a hell far worse than any folklore can describe.

These night crawlers, known to many as lamiae, are an abhorrent bunch to be sure but contrary to popular belief are not ethereal or demonic in creation. At least, that’s my opinion. They seem, rather, to be an oddity in an otherwise balanced equation of good and evil. Controlled by neither side, the lamiae are purely survivors, preferring to remain in the shadows for the most part, concealing themselves only to grant mortals brief visual access to their physical presence in the moments before claiming them as their next victim. Though highly virulent in nature, to gaze upon the physical beauty of one of these beings would make even the most conservative person have visions of lewd desires dancing about in their heads. And that, my friends, would always be used to the utmost advantage in securing their prey.

Do not think for a moment, that I detest these beings, for you will be wrong in your assumption. On the contrary, I have grown to have a strange kind of affection for them. I do not merely tolerate them, as one would think I would. No, I look upon them as I would look upon any stranger I pass on the street. Except that I am certainly no stranger to them. They all know me. And just as mortals talk in hushed whispers about them, I suspect they do the same when it comes to me. If it were not for the events of the past, I would be just another glimmer of light to them from their dark corners, which is how they normally see mortals from their point of view. But somehow, in my adventures into their world I managed to slip past their hungry eyes and into a state of lingering obscurity while they are on the hunt. I’m not sure if I should be grateful for that or not. I suppose, I should be. But, in all honesty I’m finding it hard to be.

Do not ask me how or why these beings were first introduced into our quaint little world, for I do not know. Perhaps they were birthed from the cracks between this world and the next when our creator had conjured all living things in our universe. But that theory is questionable, as are the hundred other theories thought up by children and bored adults who are looking for a simplistic basis for their bedtime stories. The folktales, both modern and ancient, that surround them have always been content to label them as “the undead”. Beings that rose up from their graves in search of the coppery red liquid that pumped through the veins of the living, so as to secure their existence. Those tales that were spun long ago merely satisfied the minds of the simpletons gullible enough to believe that’s all there was to the legend. I, myself, never believed it. Not in my youth and surely not now. Oh sure, I believed the part about them drinking blood but I doubted that that was all that mattered to them, just as I had my suspicions that there was a possibility they coveted something far more precious than blood from their mortal victims. The lamiae, I suspected, were far more complex than any local myth made them out to be and that got me interested. So, one night much like this I went in search of one. I don’t really know what I was expecting to find. But whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t what I got.