I was born a Talon. It was 1362, and believe me, it was a harder time than it is today – whatever year today might be. I write this memoire to be as immortal as myself, and therefore will tell only of the dates past, not of those to come.

My mother’s name is unknown to me still; my father’s not as unknown, but he is of little importance. He comes into my story very briefly, and then I only refer to him as the man who slept with my mother. Or rather, the vampire who slept with her. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For the purposes of this memoire, however, I will give him a name.

Vampires are myth; nothing more. Or so they say. I am proof of otherwise. In the mid 1300’s, my father, a vampire by the name of Colin, was seeing my mother. He was a vampire to the very core, but he had a slight affection for my mother, who was human to the very core, and susceptible to all of his vampire whiles, including his ability to “glamour” her into doing whatever he wanted, and then her forgetting about it afterwards. Never mind that he didn’t need to glamour her for very long before she did whatever he wanted without it; she was in love.

My father was – and, I believe, still is – one of the very few vampires on this earth that are referred to as the incubus, a seductive breed of male vampire that can actually, for some reason, procreate. Even I don’t know how it happens, or how it’s even possible, that an incubus can exist. But I believe it’s hereditary. So if a human man is prone to it, and he has a son, and then that son is turned, chances are his son will be an incubus. But, I suppose, it’s more likely if the vampire had children as a human.

But I digress.

My father was “seeing” – for lack of a better word – my mother for about two years before she became pregnant. I’m not sure why it didn’t happen sooner – or maybe it was just that it took that long for it to become obvious; I don’t know – but eventually my mother did become pregnant. It was soon very obvious, too, because she was only pregnant for about a month before she was full term. When it became clear to him that neither she, nor more likely the child inside her belly, would survive, he released her, and broke the attachment. He did it in the most horrible manner, too.

They had gone to an inn, it was called “Talon and Claw”, but everyone in the area just referred to it as “The Talon”. It was January, and bitingly cold. I’ll be honest when I say, that I don’t know the exact location I was born; it’s been too many years. But I do know it was in England.

Anyway, in the middle of the night, Colin (my father’s name, if you remember), left while my mother slept, the blankets draped over her rotund body. I know the story only because my caregiver – who comes into my life shortly – told me, as she watched from the window. She knew the moment she saw my father, that he was a vampire.

My mother had me when she woke, and she did not survive the birthing. Medical advancements have made huge leaps and bounds since that time, but in January of 1362, I was born. My caregiver, a young vampire by the name of Selena, named me Anna, and she gave me the last name Talon, after the inn. Since then, every half-breed has been referred to as a Talon.

Selena had long brown hair and deep-set blue eyes, in a heart-shaped face. She was beautiful, forever young, and extremely maternal. She hadn’t chosen immortality, and had given up having a family when it had chosen it her. She had always wanted children.

I grew quickly, and soon, Selena had to abandon her job at the inn, otherwise everyone would know I was something not quite human. She loved me. She was one of the few vampires that mainstreamed then; the ones that did their best to fit into society, with what they were given.

But there was only so much Selena could do for me. After all, she was confined to being asleep during the day, whilst I was able to walk about in sunlight quite freely – and after being only four years old, I was already physically, emotionally, and mentally mature enough to be an eighteen year-old young woman, and soon surpassed Selena in looks. Not that I was prettier than her; I meant that I looked older than her. Selena was turned when she was fourteen, and though she was many years older than that, she still looked like a child.

It became apparent very soon, that if we were to remain mainstreaming, we had to mend our ways. I, at the very least, could eat human food, though I found it – at the time – to be repulsive and vile, and I preferred blood, even if I could only drink animal blood. I had fangs of my own, and used them when I went hunting about twice a week.

Selena could not eat human food; she had nothing human about her anymore. She also couldn’t stomach animal blood – though I couldn’t tell you why. So she had to resort to glamour. When she’d about glamoured everyone in a village, we would move on. We were always moving.

It wasn’t long before rumours about two women began to spread throughout England, and we watched ourselves very carefully, making sure that we spent time in a village less and less. I cut my hair short, and wore it wild and untamed, because I found the men folk left me alone that way. It was red, and many of them thought I was something that was otherworldly – which, if they’d known the truth, would have meant their death. My father had been Irish, and thus had resulted in my red hair.

There came a time, though, when my happiness, however miniscule, had to end. In the summer of 1389, when I was only 27 years old, Selena was caught drinking a woman’s blood in an ally. I was in the trees nearby, drinking from a calf, when the villager saw her. She tried to run; she didn’t want to kill him. But he sounded the alarm, and then the whole village – all the men, at least – were after her. They tied her to a stake and tried to burn her alive, but when they saw that it didn’t work – it just weakened her slightly – they figured out soon enough what she was, and they staked her. I watched from the trees, crying bitter tears, salty and corrosive, as I watched her body shake violently, and all the blood in her body spewed forth, like water from a whale’s blowhole, and she became nothing more than a dry husk, which then disintegrated. Her remains were burned. I watched that, too, and swore vengeance on the villager who reported her.

AN: Well, it has been a while... this is a vampire story that I drew up a couple nights ago at 11pm while listening to songs by Immediate Music. I was inspired after watching season 1 of True Blood (HBO; season 2 comes out June 14th). I don’t pretend to know all there is to know about vampire legends; I’m experimenting. I’ve also read Twilight... ;P

Anyways, R&R. CC is welcome, flames are not. (Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve said that. :D)